Tag: banks

Shorties Sematary

Nothing about mortgages or housing today, I promise!

When did Progressives turn into Reaganites?: With Progressive “ideas” like these, we don’t need Conservatives. Doesn’t matter, the Party Of No shoulders on. Maybe everybody thinks the Underpants Gnomes will take care of the problem.

The other side of the coin: Everybody’s favorite Liberal President, Richard M. Nixon! That damn Commie signed the EPA into law, called for true universal health care, and made Father’s Day an official holiday.

Speaking of Conservatives: b***s*** like this and this are why I don’t listen to most of them.

I Shot a Bank in Reno, Just to Watch it Die: Bank Failure 83 this year. It’s only June. 90 banks have missed their TARP payments, so watch out for more to come.

I’m not sure I entirely agree, but it’s an interesting thought: why baggage fees are good for most travelers, with bonus bagging on airport security.

Aim Carefully When Shooting Your Foot, You Wouldn’t Want to Mess Up Your Pumps: I’m not worried about Sharron Angle anymore. Between blowing off a major news outlet in a market that represents 80% of the voting base (there’s a link for video goodness) and not having any money, Senator Reid has no problems.

On Why Medical Care is More Expensive: Not only is it more complicated, it actually works now. Speaking of which, how quaint that USA Today thinks patients have any control over the use of electronic medical records! Oh yeah, and it looks like your doc will only have a 21% pay drop from Medicare in June. Which by the way is generally a lean month for doctors anyway.

The Beginnings of  Made For TV Disaster Movie: The Night the Oil Rig Exploded. Several scenes already sketched out, with character development and dialogue, ripped from real life.

On Teacher Assessment: It’s only fair to assess them on stuff they have some control over.

It turns out that Moving is Expensive and Inconvenient: Raising taxes on the rich doesn’t cause them to move to other states. If it did, there would be no multi-millionaires in California and lots of huge mansions outside Primm.

On Fraudulent Debt Collection: Has it really gotten to the point where all somebody needs to do is claim you owe money? Even if you do owe money, there’s stuff you don’t have to tolerate from debt collectors.

Why, No Matter What the GDP is, We Are Still in a Recession: Only the very rich have money to spend.

The “Experts” show their Ignorance Once Again: Experts declare that kids don’t need close friends. Parents scratch their heads, wondering where the heck kids will learn to have relationships with other human beings.

The Crazy Neighbor: Whew!

Have a great weekend, folks! Feel free to let me know what you think of the ads in comments.

Mortgapocolypse

Before we get to today’s news, let’s start with a bit of history and background on how banking and lending works. Long ago, the first bankers realized that the odds of everybody wanting their money at the same time were just astronomical. So if they were to lend some of that money out at interest, not only would they profit, but they could pass on a little bit of that interest to depositors, making people want to deposit money with them. Charging of interest is even discussed in the Bible, so we know it happened in Biblical times. This process in fact creates money, so it’s very important to the economy.

But let’s fast-forward to a mythical and highly simplified bank somewhere in America. We’ll call it Bailey Bank. Bailey’s got ten thousand depositors with an average daily balance of $1,000. Simple math says they have roughly $10,000,000 in deposits — small by modern standards but still nothing to sneeze at. The Federal Reserve Bank regulates how much money they need to have on hand, and also says how much needs to be deposited with them for emergency purposes. They still have plenty of money to lend out.

So Bailey makes a few dozen mortgage loans, and lends for a few farms and small businesses too. If they are short on cash, they can borrow money from nearby Potter Bank or from the Federal Reserve, at interest rates set by the Fed. These are the rates that Greenspan used to mess with, and the ones Bernanke can change today, not the rates that banks charge us but the rates they charge one another and the rate that the Fed charges them.

When they came to the point where they didn’t really have more money to lend, they sold a bunch of mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Fannie and Freddie paid them to be the servicers — sending the bills and collecting the money — and paid Bailey most of the money they would have earned by keeping the mortgage until it was completely paid off. This left Bailey with more money to write more mortgages. But Fannie and Freddie have rules about what they will and won’t buy. So Bailey changed some lending policies to make sure that Fannie and Freddie would buy their loans. There are properties that you almost can’t get a mortgage on because other banks did the same thing.

You already know the sad story of banks being left holding the bag in the foreclosure crisis they created. And maybe you even have seen how banks are driving down property values in your neighborhood by dumping properties at ludicrously low asking prices.

This also left Fannie and Freddie behind the 8-ball, and it may yet cost American taxpayers $1,000,000,000,000 to fix it. Why bother? Because banks have stopped counting on holding mortgages until they mature and count on selling the paper to investors like Fannie and Freddie. Without someone to buy the paper and give banks more money to lend, lending will dry up even more than it already has. And that means almost nobody buys property without cash. It may already be too late to save Fannie and Freddie; they are being delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. It would be polite to say that’s a negative for the stocks.

But there is one ray of sunshine in the mortgage mess: the arrest of Lee Bentley Farkas of mortgage company Taylor, Bean & Whitaker. He and unnamed conspirators are accused of fraud in the TARP program, “misappropriating” $400,000,000, and causing the collapse of Colonial Bank by selling them $1,500,000,000 in bad mortgages. I agree that this prosecution is a good start.

In closing: Arizona still keen to repeal the 14th Amendment even as its schools wonder how to comply with state law; homelessness in America; China owns 13% of the publicly held national debt; some people said I was nuts when I suggested that some religious nuts favored the life of an embryo that couldn’t even become a baby over that of a fully grown woman; terrorist nitwits; and sometimes buttons are better than velcro.

Life Imitates Monty Python

First, it was the news that Scotsmen were “universally unhealthy” and indeed “living dangerously” when it came to their lifestyles. Sadly, the first thing that popped into mind was that they were universally bad at tennis as well:

Punchline here, if you are unfortunate enough not to remember this.

Then mere hours later, I stumbled upon an item about bearded women taking on the “good old boy” network in France. Please forgive me for automatically thinking of this:

Makes it hard to take the world seriously.

In Closing: proposed stupid laws (LIEberman really thinks there’s an internet “off” switch someplace that the President could pull??); smart judge; gee, what could possibly make somebody nervous in an airport?; Desai pleads not guilty; bank closure 82; earlier school day == more teen car crashes (can we hope that the insurance companies actually do something good for us and pressure school districts?); and for Japanfilter, the Ikaros Solar Sail. Don’t fly too close to the sun, guys.

2001 Maniacs: Field of Shorties

The Truth About Cattle Grazing: done correctly, it can help restore the land.

Two Funny Things and a Lot of Unfunny Ones about Racism: Let’s get rid of the Mexicans, and Who translated this for you? There’s a movement afoot to pass laws that violate the 14th Amendment on the grounds that not everyone born here has parents that are really not American enough. By not American enough, they generally mean “brown.” There are a number of problems with this, aside from Constitutional issues (funny how some people only like the Constitution some of the time). First, you might end up with people who can’t prove they were born anywhere because the law denies them a birth certificate. Second, you might end up with people who are effectively not citizens of any nation, because they weren’t born in the country of their parent’s citizenship. Third and finally, who gets to decide what constitutes “American enough”? At least “born in U.S.” is a simple to apply measure.

More on Friday’s lousy employment report: Good, bad, and ugly. Really ugly.

Obligatory Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Items: Woo, recapturing a whole 10,500 barrels a day. Really interesting that a BP exec managed to dump a third of his company stock a month before the disaster. You would think they could find a cable tie to keep stuff out of the way on the equipment BP is using a mile below the surface. Harry Reid thinks BP should pay for the clean-up (more on Harry come Tuesday with the Nevada Primaries, probably over on TMV). And on BP’s spill “plan”.

Civil Forfeiture Must Go: Guy sells truck on a payment plan. Truck gets seized by the cops. Cops don’t care that guy still has title and is owed money on said truck. Somehow I bet GMAC doesn’t have this problem.

And it’s only June 6: 22% of states have passed new abortion restrictions and 81 bank failures so far this year.

Speaking of the Banks: 6 made $51,000,000,000 last year; the other 980 lost money.

While we’re on the topic of making money: Just the threat of Federal enforcement makes companies want to restate their earnings.

How Laws are Really Made: Most people of my generation were taught that it works something like this, but the truth is a bit more complicated.

Run Sarah Run!: Ten reasons she should just keep doing the speaking circuit and stay the heck off the ballots.

Two Medical Items: Did you know that if enough doctors decide “No, that isn’t enough money for that procedure and we won’t take that insurance anymore,” the Government can decide they are in violation of anti-trust laws? And scroll down for a breakdown of infant mortality rates in developed nations, compared to health care spending per capita and military spending as a percentage of GDP. The United States has a shameful showing.

And Finally, Japanfilter: Fireflies.

Oklahoma Shitbowl

I do try to avoid unnecessary profanity, but what Oklahoma is doing is profane.

Maybe by now you have heard that any woman unfortunate enough to be pregnant in Oklahoma will find great obstacles to her care. For one thing, her doctor is allowed to lie to her about whether he has reason to believe there are fetal anomalies that will become birth defects. After all, she may decide that carrying a baby who will die soon after birth or require expensive, time monopolizing care is not something she wants to do. To some people, that makes her a “selfish slut,” but to most people that makes her “normal.”

Moreover, any woman seeking an abortion in Oklahoma will have to get an ultrasound, look at the pictures, and listen to a description of the embryo or fetus. And fill out a privacy-invading questionnaire. No exceptions for victims of rape, incest, or women who already know there is something seriously wrong with the embryo/fetus.

The ever brilliant (and very sarcastic) Digby points out how this bill will fail:

Sure the dumb bitches can’t be allowed to make their own decisions about taking on a lifetime of care or consider implications for their own health and well being. What the silly little twits don’t know won’t hurt them, right? But you’d think that the important members of society like insurance companies and employers would have a stake in something like this.

Here’s the thing. Failing to note fetal abnormalities on the ultrasound and still billing the insurance company is called fraud. Fraud, unlike medical malpractice, is a criminal offense. Do that to a patient whose care is paid for under a Federal program and it’s a federal crime with federal time. Fine, Doc can’t be sued for malpractice; he can go to prison instead.

Doc is also subject to ethics rules, and those would include telling patients the truth. Doc can lose his license if someone makes an ethics complaint with the state board of medical examiners.

If enough big employers lose enough Edna Employees to the care of severely disabled babies, they will find a way to sue doctors who hid those conditions. After all, big employers often have an entire legal department. And that would fall under general liability rather than med-mal.

So believe it or not, I think the insurance companies will provide the work-around for this. Remember that under the health insurance reform that was just passed, they can’t exclude children with pre-existing conditions. They have a vested interest in preventing severely disabled babies from being in their pool of insureds. What they will do is insist that ultrasounds be done in an independent imaging facility — not the doctor’s office or an affiliated facility — and insist that a full copy of the report be provided both to them and the mother-to-be. This will outrage obstetricians because they make good money on ultrasounds and the equipment is not cheap.

Oh well, maybe they should have objected to this bill before it became law.

In Closing Arizona Update: the smartest thing you are likely to read about illegal immigration this week; let the lawsuits begin; polls, demographics, and the future; boycotts are already underway; even some prominent Republicans think Arizona has gone too far; gee, who could have seen harassment of day laborers coming??; Hispanics vow to fight this law.

In Closing For Real This Time: Tell us what you really think about Goldman Sachs, Barry! (And why doesn’t your blog read like this? Maybe you should dictate your posts); high school graduates going to college rather than competing in the dismal job market, but does anybody really believe that 70% of the jobs that will be available in 4 years needs a college degree?; a security expert from one of the most secure airports in the world calls full-body scanners a waste of money; The Vaccine War; America doesn’t rule the world and shouldn’t be allowed to say what other nation’s product labels can include; reduce the deficit by expanding Medicare; get rid of “too big to fail”; and finally, if you are in a position to do something nice for J.P., please do.

Knitting Things

There was a witch who knitted things:
Elephants and playground swings.
She knitted rain,
She knitted night,
But nothing really came out right.
The elephants had just one tusk
And night looked more
Like dawn or dusk.

–Karla Kuskin

So much stupid has been committed by various Republicans in the last day that I thought about adding to yesterday’s post. But then I realized that things had merely come full circle.

Oh sure, it’s easy and fun to figure out how many chickens you should take with you to the doctor’s office for various services! Just punch it into the Lowden Plan Chicken Calculator! But please don’t forget to scroll all the way down. The amazing thing is that she’s not backing down one inch from her chicken-barter statement. She could have said she merely meant that we need to be flexible and think outside the box for solutions, anything other than suggesting it was really desirable to show up at Doc’s place with a truckload of chickens.

Of course it’s almost obligatory to point out that if the Democrats have a single functional brain cell, they will line up behind Senator Dodd and insist that every Republican choose to stand either with reform or with corruption on financial services reform (heck, we may have to make the Democrats do it too).

I suppose I did gloss over GOP Chairman and token “black man” Michael Steele admitting that African Americans really have no reason to vote for the Grand Old Party today. Why did I put “black man” in quotes? Because if he were either one he would have told *ahem* people like these where to shove their signs.

Right there is where we start knitting. We’re in the process of transcending mere Stupid Republican Tricks and tying them back to the racist, sexist claptrap that I railed about — with some resistance I might add — a few weeks ago. Racism? Check! Sexism? Huh, let’s see… sexism, sexism….

Oh here! I personally think it’s pretty freaking objectionable to send out a newsletter to your base suggesting “Let’s take [Congresswoman] Betty Sutton out of the House and put her back in the kitchen.”

Yeah. Since her previous job was not as a chef, that is offensive as hell. Can she at least keep her shoes, or would they like to see her barefoot and pregnant too? And [expletive] them for trying to make it somehow acceptable to say this. Oh, says the local official who approved the mailing, we haven’t gotten any complaints! And so, then, the donations are rolling in on that crap? What do his wife and daughters think of that rhetoric? Are they proud of what Daddy said?

Obviously this man doesn’t speak for the entire party. There are women Republicans. Former Secretary of State Condi Rice for example. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Senate Candidate Sue Lowden of Nevada.

Here’s some free advice to the Republican Party. You can’t continue to alienate the 51% of Americans who are women and the 12% of Americans who are black and actually keep winning free and fair elections. If they continue on their current path, they will more and more resemble a misshapen toy elephant made of yarn scraps, with only one tusk.

In Closing: on airlines; surely nobody expected the SEC to investigate anybody; I hope this movie doesn’t suck; speaking of movies, Food, Inc. streaming free for a limited time; Orcas are more than one species; what part of the Americans with Disabilities Act didn’t the school understand?; Japanese mechanical dolls; and Worst Person in the World, 33 AD.

Stupid Republican Tricks

Seriously, there has been so much stupid that I don’t know where to start.

I could start close to home with Senate candidate Sue Lowden, who thinks we should be able to barter with our doctors and pay with, for example, chickens!

I could go down the road a bit to Arizona’s new racial profiling illegal immigration law, which “requires state and local police to determine the status of people if there is ‘reasonable suspicion’ that they are illegal immigrants and to arrest people who are unable to provide documentation proving they are in the country legally.” By the way, “reasonable suspicion” means the cop doesn’t like you and/or you’re brown. I don’t think most people appreciate that most people don’t carry proof of citizenship in their pockets — NO a Driver’s License is NOT proof of citizenship! Never has been, shouldn’t ever be.

But wait, maybe that’s what Senator McCain was getting at when he said that illegal immigrants are deliberately causing car accidents! I certainly can’t think of any rational reason that anybody — particularly someone here illegally — would cause accidents. Insurance fraud?? What a dangerous way to make money!

It’s OK though, because Representative Bilbray says a cop can tell if somebody is illegal just by looking at their clothes! So tell me, what exactly is the difference between the shirt I buy at Target and the shirt that an illegal immigrant buys at Target? I don’t want to accidentally get the wrong one. And certainly you’d better not dress up for any ethnic festivals in Arizona without sticking your birth certificate or naturalization papers in your pocket!

Then again I could go to the horse’s mouth — Washington D.C. — and examine the party of NO!’s “Just scrap it and maybe start over” strategy on almost every initiative. Oh, and let’s not forget that it is at least partly thanks to the Republicans that the newly passed health insurance reform bill still allows rescission and still has no way to control wild increases in premiums.

Not that the Democrats are innocent, but certainly no wonder people are “fed up with political incivility.” Anybody who wants to be re-elected had better pay attention to public sentiment now.

In Closing: Freezing a 787 for science; look, putting twins in different homerooms to see which one learns to read better doesn’t prove that reading skills are 82% genetic, just that the teacher and classroom aren’t 100% to blame/praise for the results!; Homelessness, it’s not just for addicts and the mentally ill anymore (sadly, for some people, it’s what’s for dinner); a scathing truth about “successfully” parenting a crowd; high schools preparing kids for college without a thought of preparing them for work; if the Fed is going to print money, do you suppose they could send some my way?; congrats to GM on paying back the TARP money to the Feds; green Navy vessels on the ocean blue; the various watch lists and no-fly lists aren’t just an annoyance, they divert attention from real threats; on long term unemployment; oh waah, companies are having a hard time raising prices; let’s see how far the rotten banking practices extend; and school lunches have officially become a matter of national security.

Rosencrantz and Shorties Are Undead

Volcanoes!: Ok, the Eyjnafjallajökull eruption was bad, but usually when it goes the far more dangerous Katla volcano goes as well. Icelandic volcanic eruptions are blamed for temporary climate change that resulted in the Mississippi river freezing as far south as New Orleans and causing famines that eventually resulted in the French Revolution. Here’s 5 more great volcanic eruptions.

Real banking reform, now!: Mr. Reich presents what I consider to be a minimum regulatory laundry list. In the meantime, here’s some things you can do to figure out who really owns your mortgage. Oh, and if you are having trouble with your mortgage (or are in bankruptcy), pay extra close attention to this. Crap like that would not happen if it weren’t for “deregulation.” If you are a little lost figuring out the Goldmann Sachs story, here’s a nice analysis. Don’t forget that there’s a criminal investigation into what happened at Countrywide. Could it bring down Bank of America? We can only hope.

The recession is over? Like hell: The economy is very far from normal (and in my opinion will stay that way until the fundamental banking issues and certain insurance issues are solved).

Oh yeah, it’s 4/20: Did you know that a majority of Americans in the West support legalizing (and regulating) marijuana?

Stupid School Administrator Tricks: The story of a school district in Pennsylvania secretly using webcams in school issued notebook computers to spy on children gets deeper and weirder. They now admit to having some 56,000 pictures (and those are just the keepers and the ones they admit to having). Yet somehow, even though they have pictures of sleeping students, they miraculously don’t have any nudies? Yeah, I’m with Amanda on this one: suuuuure they don’t.

On the other hand: The Supreme Court isn’t amused by a SWAT officer who was reprimanded for texting his wife and girlfriend — both!? — on a police issued phone. Justice Stevens asked “Wouldn’t you just assume that the whole universe of conversations by SWAT officers who were on duty 24/7 might well have to be reviewed by some member of the public or some supervisor?”

Stupid Tax Tricks: Teabaggers who don’t know what they are talking about, and the myth that somehow corporations will pass on the cost of taxes on profits to customers.

Stupid Legislator Tricks: Apparently they are using some “new math” on Capitol Hill, as Senator Coburn is going on record as saying more money is “wasted” on Medicaid than is actually spent on it. Can’t he just admit he hates poor people and thinks any money spent on them is a waste? Either that or sign him up for Kumon.

Chemo sucks: but it is better than dying of cancer.

Almost makes me want to take up guitar: light-up guitar picks!

A cool cookbook, I hope: The Primal Blueprint Cookbook. Mine is on pre-order. So far all the recipes shared on Mark Sisson’s blog have been winners.

I will have more to say about this soon: Local interest lawsuit with nationwide ramifications.

Building a castle:  In the Ozarks. Now. It’s a pretty cool project!

Star Wars Japan Filter: Did you know that Mark Hamill went to High School in Japan? He’s working on a new movie project, by the way. And just to wrap things up, here’s an artist’s impression of what Star Wars characters would look like as done by Akira Kurasawa.

Flint and Steel

What happens when you strike flint and steel? Fire.

In this case, lots and lots of fire.

Back on March 25, the City of Flint, Michigan made the decision to lay off 23 of 88 firefighters and 46 of 150 police officers. Almost immediately, the fires started. Several fires, every night. Sometimes, 8 or 9 fires. Mostly, they were among the 3000 vacant structures in need of demolition. Two were apartment buildings. A couple have been occupied homes. All have been called “suspicious.” In fact, the Mayor calls them a series of “coordinated criminal attacks.”

The remaining firefighters are understandably exhausted, and this makes them prone to making mistakes that can maim or kill themselves or their co-workers. Citizens are not happy at all, because there is always the fear that their homes could be next — either as a primary fire or as fire spreads from the vacant houses that dot their neighborhoods. One interesting detail is that only 6 of the structures are specifically known to be bank-owned.

Not surprisingly, many are blaming the Mayor, who had to do whatever it took to close an estimated $8,000,000 to $10,000,000 budget shortfall. A recall effort is underway to get him out of office, but that won’t change the fact that the city needs millions more dollars than it has. The Mayor has proposed a $13,000,000 bond sale to both cover the shortfall and help the city get its financial house in order. Some say that just won’t be enough to do the job, but the Mayor’s budget for the next fiscal year projects a surplus.

The surprising thing — shocking in fact — is how little attention the mainstream media is paying to this. When Colorado Springs turned off the streetlights to save money, CNN and all the rest were there to make sure we all knew about it. But when a city in Michigan starts slowly burning to the ground, block by block, because they can’t afford enough firefighters? Only a bit of coverage from the local paper, a couple of firefighter groups, and the local ABC affiliate. It isn’t even a story in the newspapers down in Detroit, a mere 66 miles away.

Shameful.

Cross-Posted at The Moderate Voice

In Closing: unemployed workers per job opening (and remember, that’s the narrow, Department of Labor definition of unemployed); hell has a special place for people whose job is to find reasons not to pay unemployment benefits; relationship red flags (if I had limitless time and energy I’d add to this list); Should the Vatican have adopted the sorts of reforms already in place in the United States? Does the CSM really need to ask this question?; on school lunches; on “too big to fail” (um, yeah); So you call the cops to report a crime, do you really want his first question to be whether you can prove you’re a citizen?; if only there weren’t some truth in this letter from the Baby Boomers to their children; and one doctor tells us how she thinks Health Insurance Reform may cost everyone more money.

Low Hanging Fruit on the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

This is a special post for Blog Against Theocracy Weekend. Yesterday’s post was a repost of my 2007 offering.

Nobody is harmed by the fact that “In God We Trust” appears on our money.

Most of us can ignore public prayers at a public school event —  or compose our own alternate prayers and meditations in our minds.

Some of us held our noses when considering the political implications of who was chosen to offer prayers at President Obama’s inauguration, but nobody died as a result.

But church meddling in our newly passed Health Insurance Reform bill may well cause harm and perhaps even death to some people. However, since those people are women, some people don’t care. Moreover, church meddling in civil law may well bring harm to the poor in Washington DC.

It is of course the low hanging fruit: the Catholic Church.

In a petulant fit of pique, Catholic Charities threatened to cut off services to Washington DC if they actually made it legal for gay people to marry. When they realized that they could not in fact do that without legal repercussions, they instead decided to deny benefits to all new employee partners, gay or straight. Further, they demanded that new employees sign a statement that they won’t violate the tenets of the Church!

Remove the plank from thine own eye, Catholic Church!

If there were ever a stronger case for a public safety net rather than depending on the fickleness of charitable organizations deciding that this issue is important and this not, I am not familiar with it. As much as we all appreciate the work that charities do, it is simply not acceptable to pick up your ball (or shelter, or food kitchen) and threaten to go home if you don’t get your way. And pressuring new employees into signing documents regarding their private lives is just a little onerous, particularly in the middle of a recession where the only new jobs really being created are temp positions with the Census. Denying partners health insurance within weeks of a law being signed requiring mandatory insurance in a few years? Just twist the knife already in the new employee’s back.

Of course, it is now well known how the Catholic Bishops meddled in the Health Insurance Reform Bill, even over the objections of the Catholic Nuns — who for all their own faults aren’t accused of covering up dozens of priests who committed sexual crimes against thousands of minors under the age of consent. There. I didn’t call them pedophiles, but what they did is criminal and should be prosecuted. Since there was a clear conspiracy, no statute of limitations applies.

So then, when something tragic happens to a woman in your life and she must make the terrible decision to abort an embryo or fetus, remember that it would have been covered under her mandated health insurance policy if it weren’t for these meddling kid-molesters. If she finds it difficult to find a provider who will help her, remember that it is Catholic groups that have hounded doctors out of the business. And remember, not a single one of these Bishops will ever get pregnant, will ever have a wife who might get pregnant, will ever have a daughter who might get pregnant. Talk about no skin in the game.

As easy as it is to lob shots at the Catholic Church right now, I don’t want to overlook another serious threat to the separation of Church and State. Susie Madrak has pointed out that there is now an investigation by CREW into whether the shadowy religious group known as “The Fellowship” or “The Family” has been breaking the law by providing below market rents to the Congressmen who live in their C Street residence. Rep. Stupak and Sen. Ensign both could have [additional] problems as a result. Since it is relatively well documented that the purpose of this group is to put control of Congress in “godly” hands — their narrow definition of godly, of course — this investigation is necessary and overdue.

In Closing: They don’t make recoveries like they used to; job creation looks even worse compared to population growth; huh, I guess it is possible to teach a large number of students at once; I’ll say it again on the 19th, but this is what Militias are about; You can’t talk bad about your boss!; bankruptcy filings up you say? Well, as long as they aren’t spiking!; it’s surely a sign of Armageddon for me to link to Politico, but Banking Hypocrisy; melanoma may be more complicated than staying out in the sun too long (which never seemed to hurt our great grandparents much); and no, you should not laugh out loud if you see somebody drowning.