Apparently the Community ReInvestment Act cited was altered in 1975 (i believe) when then prez Clinton directed his Sec of Treasury Reich to make it easier for peeps to qualify for mortgage loans. Sadly, although many (including GWBush) raised or claim to have raised warning flags since 2003 concerning the direction of the mortgage lending market, nothing was done, any efforts were seemingly met with the evil eye...."you just don't want poor people to have a house". Barney Frank and Chris Dodd are among those that appear to have had their hands on the wheel...(see video on You Tube 2004 session Democrats Defend Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac from Regulations) but there are plenty of helpers and those who stood silent or had their pockets open receiving money from the mortgage industry. They should, Democrat and Republican, fired and fined. Now we have to clean up the mess. I am not wholly in favor of this "free lunch" bailout. I am, however, a bit nervous like most people since I don't know the extent of the fallout. I do not expect that the government will bail me out if I cannot meet any of my debt obligations. I'm not in the correct socio-economic strata...yet.... Consider for a moment the social engineering involved in having the government, through regulation/deregulation of lending institutions and legislation like the Community ReInvestment Act and more, put every American (citizen or not) into a home...whether or not he/she can afford that home. While declaring that this financial activity is "private enterprise" and simply execution of capitalism (freddie mac and fannie mae), the truth is sadly revealed when the GOVERNMENT jumps in to "save" these "private" financial institutions from themselves and their ignorant, greed-soaked decisions by buying up/guaranteeing all this "bad paper",
with TAXPAYER money. And it appears that, at least, some of the lenders who resisted freeing up funds to the "sub-prime" market may have been tagged as prejudiced and/or discriminatory and "pressed" to join in the movement...be "patriotic"... or else suffer exposure to the media as being EVIL, MONEY-GRUBBING ELITIST.
Plenty of hands in the cookie jar on this one....OUR cookie jar. Not many choc chips left.
Fear not...the sun will rise in a little while...things always look better in the sunlight.

E-mail to Daughter

[I have a very intelligent, very talented, highly educated adult daughter steering her ship through the current storm taking place in OUR country. She wants dialogue. She is trying to separate fact from fiction (Ooooo...that's a tough one when it comes to our politicians). But the great thing is that she wants a dialogue and she is trying not to swallow the Kool-Aid of either camp.]

In the past 8 months or so I have received many emails from friends forwarding Obama and some McCain stories, supposedly factual. In almost all of the Obama cases the stories were not accurate or completely false. After getting bunches of these I started emailing back to tell the friend that I had discovered that the story was false. Then I started suggesting that, at the least, they run the story through Snopes (although not 100% accurate it is a pretty good source...and easily accessible) before spreading it around. I also told them that although I was not voting for Obama it was/is not because of his color or because of this misinformation...it is for other reasons.

There is so much misinformation being spread about all of the candidates how can citizens tell what is true and what is bull. It can take a lot of time. Also, human nature is to more easily accept as fact those things which tend to support our own bias (conscious or subconscious). This is the way it is for most people and we often times go through our lives daily without really recognizing this. Of course, I am no different than you on this. I do feel that I, unfortunately, tend to be in the annoying position of seeing both sides of many arguments, situations, conflicts. In some cases, like with the Obama misinformation, people mistakenly think that I am for a particular thing when I argue some point which seems to support it. As with Obama....I am not FOR Obama... I am against all of the BS "facts" (Oh...there is that "fact" thing you spoke of) that fly around the internet and are all too readily accepted as gospel by those who happen to already have a bias for or against whatever it is.... It is just accepted.... I don't care who the misinformation is about... Several months ago this was bothering me so much I wrote about it on my blog. I have not written anything is a couple of months.
So...Butt-Faced Muffin... I am passionate about defending people....whomever.... Obama, Palin, McCain and Biden (not that much about Biden...something strange about him... but mucho experience in Washington)...
I gonna watch to Sicko flick.... I also gonna be pulling some info from different sources for other issues...where possible I will cite sources....this means I not gonna be having time for some other things....oh well.....I will still have to make time to work...
all for now... I try to remember what the Holacaust survivor told me in 1975 while we were in a poetry writing class at C of C....she said that as a child in Germany she had learned
"believe half of what you see and none of what you hear".
interesting philosphy....from one who witnessed a government perfect the propaganda/misinformation machine to subvert citizens' sense of compassion and destroy others.
Whoa.....I better stop now..... OK...... we will pick this up again.... for now... I happy you are interested in what is happening in your country....
old but not completely irrelevant..........................................."farty"

[gotta go now... no head-ache but I gotta go do my "patriotic" duty (as Joe Biden says) and go to work so I can gen some tax revenue for my government to distribute to those who surely need it more than I. So when the Cancer Society or Heart Association or Relief Fund calls I can truly say
"I Gave At The Office". I really gotta go now. I do feel a head-ache comin' on.]