Saturday, February 21, 2009

Mortgage Plan Lies of Omission

According to Fox Business News, Obama's new mortgage rescue plan will not work because it does not take into account a well known aspect of lending, namely PITI.


"Friday, February 20, 2009
It's a PITI -- Why Obama's Mortgage Plan Doesn't Work

Mark Lieberman, Senior Economist
FOX Business News

It’s a PITI.

How did so many smart people get it wrong?

The ambitious mortgage rescue plan offered by the Obama Administration appears to miss a couple of critical elements which could -- unless corrected as details emerge -- leave the plan dead on arrival, and that would be a pity.

Indeed PITI is at the root of the problem.

In mortgage parlance, PITI represents Principal, Interest, Taxes and Insurance: the components of the monthly mortgage payment. Typically, according to knowledgeable insiders, the latter two elements -- real estate taxes and homeowner’s insurance -- represent about 1/3 of the monthly payment. Lenders generally require borrowers to pay those expenses monthly into an escrow account to ensure property taxes will be paid -- or, in the event of damage, that the property (collateral for the loan) is protected.

PITI -- with some other factors -- is the numerator in the equation used to determine the target percentage of a borrower’s income under the Administration’s plan to make mortgages affordable.

The arithmetic using the examples offered by Treasury to illustrate the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan suggests the goal of bringing the monthly payment down to 31% of gross (pre-tax) monthly income may be illusive at best.

In addition to PITI, mortgage lenders include all mortgage payments -- including those for home equity lines of credit and home equity loans -- in computing the ratio. The Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan, or HASP, doesn’t address those obligations.

These omissions not only could be, but are, significant.

Mortgage payments are calculated using three factors:

The interest rate,
The amount of the loan and
The length of the loan.
Tweaking any one of them could change the monthly payment -- with a different outcome."


My question is, with all these "smart" guys working on this plan, did they really miss this vital point? Doesn't everyone know that lenders take into consideration Principal, Interest, Taxes and Insurance when computing loan to income ratios? And what about PMI, Private Mortgage Insurance, which is required for loans which exceed 80% of a home's value? Will PMI be waived for these folks, or is this another oversight?

My guess is that the Obama administration did not forget these details at all. Instead, they simply knowingly failed to include them in the details released to the public, as adding in their additional cost will significantly increase the cost of the program. The spin-meisters realized the real price tag would be too much for responsible mortgage payers to stomach, but once the program is a fait accomplis, and the true cost emerges, it will no longer be front page news. People are already outraged at the thought of bailing out irresponsible homeowners. When the actual cost of this program becomes known, will they revolt, or will they simply shrug their shoulders and acquiesce to yet another slick move by our "transparent" new President?

Friday, February 20, 2009

A Modest Proposal

I love this piece written and sent to me by a true American!


Dear American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists,
Marxists, Obama supporters, et al:

We have stuck together since the late 1950s, but the whole of this
latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I
know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future
generations, but sadly, this relationship has run its course. Our two
ideological sides of America cannot, and will not ever agree on what is
right, so let's just end it on friendly terms. We can smile, chalk it up
to irreconcilable differences, and go our own way.

Here is a model dissolution agreement:
Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each
taking a portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two
sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that it should be
relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide
other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.
We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them. You are welcome
to the liberal judges and the ACLU. Since you hate guns and war, we'll
take our firearms, the cops, the NRA, and the military. You can keep
Oprah, Michael Moore, and Rosie O'Donnell (You are, however,
responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move them).
We'll keep the capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical
companies, Wal-Mart, and Wall Street. You can have your beloved
homeless, homeboys, hippies, and illegal aliens. We'll keep the hot
Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEOs, and rednecks. We'll keep the bibles
and give you NBC and Hollywood . You can make nice with Iran and
Palestine and we'll retain the right to invade and hammer places that
threaten us.

You can have the peaceniks and war protestors. When our allies or way
of life are under assault, we'll provide them job security. We'll keep
our Judeo-Christia n values...You are welcome to Islam, Scientology,
Humanism, and Shirley McClain. You can also have the U.N. But we will
no longer be paying the bill. We'll keep the SUVs, pickup trucks, and
over-sized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can
find.

You can give everyone healthcare, if you can find any practicing
doctors. We'll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a
right. We'll keep The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the National
Anthem. I'm sure you'll be happy to substitute Imagine, I'd Like to
Teach the World to Sing, Kum Ba Ya, or We Are the World. We'll
practice trickle-down economics, and you can give trickle-up poverty its
best shot.

Since it often so offends you we'll keep our history, our name, and our
flag and our GOD and prayer. Would you agree to this? If so please
pass it along to other like minded patriots, and if you do not agree,
just hit delete and hang on. In the spirit of friendly parting.

Sincerely,

AN AMERICAN

P.S. Also, please take Barbra Streisand and Jane Fonda


As an added point to this proposal, I would also like to suggest that we split the nice beachfront property, as I am an ocean kind of gal.

Obama's Revenge; Connecting the Dots

An interesting piece from the Canada Free Press which begs the question why so many of these issues were not investigated prior to the election. We've all heard this information before, but Ms. Swisrky connects the dots in a compelling fashion which really gives one pause.


By Joan Swirsky Sunday, February 15, 2009

"Once upon a time, a white teenager from Kansas got pregnant by her black Kenyan boyfriend, Barack Obama Sr., or was it her husband? Whatever. (I say whatever because we’ve never seen either marriage or divorce certificates). Some say the couple was in Kenya visiting relatives when the birth of their son, Barack Obama Jr., occurred. No matter. (I say no matter because we’ve never seen an authentic birth certificate). By the time the baby was two years old his father abandoned him for his other wife and child in Kenya.

I wonder how toddler Barry felt when his father left him, and never reappeared until a single time when the boy was 10. Bewildered? Sad? Lonely? Angry? What do two-year-olds do with those feelings?

It didn’t take long for Barry’s mother to meet and marry an Indonesian native named Lolo Soetoro. They moved to Indonesia, where her child became Barry Soetoro, took on Indonesian citizenship, and was presumably schooled in public, Christian, and Muslim schools. (I say presumably because we’ve never seen those school records). But when Barry was 10 years old, his mother sent him back to the U.S. to be raised by her parents, Madelyn and Stanley Dunham, although she kept her baby daughter Maya Soetoro with her.

I wonder how the by-now fully-sentient young Barry felt when his mother sent him packing. Sad? Jealous of the baby who remained behind with mommy? Confused and dizzy by the disparate cultures – languages, customs, foods, sights, sounds, schooling – he had experienced? Resentful? What did Barry do with those feelings?

By the time he was 10, the boy had been abandoned three times – by his father, stepfather, and mother. And although he was raised by his white grandparents in Hawaii – where “people of color” were not his color – he found out soon enough that his mixed-race background rendered him, in effect, an outsider. Did that make him feel self-conscious, indignant, victimized?

But he wasn’t altogether an outsider. In Hawaii, young Barry met Frank Marshall Davis, his first and perhaps most influential mentor. The infamous Marshall, a Communist activist (and self-confessed pedophile) taught Barry – was it Obama, Soetero, Dunham? – that white people were the devil incarnate and that blacks were the most “victimized” people on earth.

Yet the abandoned and rejected child was lucky. His white-devil grandparents gave him a comfortable life in Hawaii, and an education that apparently qualified him to attend several prestigious schools – Occidental College in CA, Columbia Univ. in NY City, and Harvard Law School in Cambridge, MA.(I say apparently qualified because we’ve never seen any of his college transcripts).

BARRY MORPHS INTO BARACK

After his undergraduate days at Columbia, Obama chose not to go to graduate school, but instead held various jobs in the Big Apple and then moved to Chicago to become a community organizer. Although he had been exposed to American exceptionalism through his life in the United States and his privileged education, it is clear that his experiences in impoverished Kenya and totalitarian Indonesia, as well as his exposure to Marshall and the other radicals he had met during his years in New York – among them the unrepentant domestic terrorists William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn of Weather Underground infamy – made the deepest and most lasting impressions.

Their messages of American imperialism and its white-devil culture clearly resonated in the thrice-abandoned boy. In his young-adult and adult years, free to choose his friends and pursuits, he opted exclusively for far-left socialists and Marxists, and activities aimed at relieving the suffering of people he perceived to be as victimized as apparently he felt he had been. He understood their feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and impotent rage, as well as the pain of fatherlessness. After all, his Harvard-educated father consciously chose to leave him. And his mother gave him away. Was that depressing to Barry? Infuriating?

When given the opportunity to join one of dozens of churches in Chicago, Barry – who had morphed into Barack – opted for the Trinity United Church of Christ, which was led by the fire-breathing Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose decades-long anti-American and anti-Semitic rants apparently resonated in Obama’s rejected and abandoned heart and soul. (I say apparently resonated because in over 20 years of regular attendance, Obama said he heard nothing inflammatory or anti-American, and we’ve never seen the videotapes of any sermon, although each one was unfailingly recorded).

“God damn America,” Wright raged. “The chickens have come home to roost,” he “preached” to his whooping and hollering congregation after 9/11. Obama heard nothing.

But it wasn’t only Wright who Obama was attracted to in Chicago. He was also drawn to another hate-spewing radical, Rev. Louis Farrakhan, as well as to the raving Father Michael Phleger, the radical Islamist Khalid Rashidi, his friends and neighbors the Ayers, and to equally-close friends “Tony” and Rita Rezko – Tony being the notorious “fixer” and now-convicted-and-imprisoned felon for fraud, bribery, and money laundering. What did the seemingly mild-mannered Obama find so irresistible in these angry and/or crooked people and others like them? Was it the same thing that a shy man finds in his attraction to a flamboyant girlfriend – and alter-ego, a person who expresses what he really feels but is unable to give voice to?

In these relationships and in community organizing – which offers inner-city mostly-black residents job training, tutoring, and methods to organize tenants’-rights groups and voter-registration drives, etc. – the twenty-something Obama apparently found his calling, and also a renewed and burning ambition.

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE

While his community-organizing job paid a paltry $12,000 or so per year, Obama somehow managed to pay his way through one of the priciest graduate schools in the world, Harvard Law School. (I say somehow managed because we have no record of his tuition payments). Even more amazing, he became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review without ever producing a written paper – or at least a paper that the public has ever read.

There is a good deal of evidence that Obama’s acceptance at Harvard Law – and his tuition – were facilitated by friends who had a vested interest in the community organizer. Among them was Percy Sutton, a former Manhattan borough president and ardent leftist, who was also Malcolm X’s lawyer. In an interview last year, the octogenarian Sutton stated: “I was introduced to [Obama] by a friend. The friend’s name was Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, and the introduction took place about 20 years ago.” Sutton described al-Mansour as “the principle adviser to one of the world’s richest men” and suggested that al-Mansour was raising money for Obama. Knowing that Sutton had friends at Harvard, al-Mansour asked him if he would write a letter to Harvard recommending Obama, which Sutton did most agreeably. This took place about 1988 when 27-year-old Obama was applying to Harvard Law.

Journalist Jack Cashill has credibly speculated that Obama’s two memoirs were actually written by his pal Bill Ayers, who was and is a University of Illinois at Chicago English professor, having escaped life in prison on a technicality. Two years [after he was admitted to law school], Cashill writes, “while still a law student, Obama improbably received an advance to write a memoir that would be called `Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance,’ which was published in 1995.” His second memoir, published in 2006, was “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.” (I suspect Cashill said “improbably received an advance” because, as stated earlier, Obama had not produced even one paper or distinguished himself in any way to have inspired a major publishing company to approach him).

Al this begs the question: Who writes two memoirs about himself before the age of 45? My own speculation is that it could be no one but a narcissist. As most people know in this age of pop psychology, the psychiatric disorder of narcissism derives from the Greek myth in which Narcissus, a handsome young man, became obsessed with himself and fell in love with his own image as he gazed into a pool of water. A lot of people have some degree of narcissism, which is characterized by grandiosity, an unquenchable need for admiration, unhealthy self-absorption, dependence on the affirmation of others, and also a lack of empathy, which is hidden by both personal charm and the kind of earnest language that pretends to “feel your pain.”

Or he could be a malignant narcissist., which psychiatrist Dr. Otto Kernberg, a legendary leader in thought disorders, compares to a narcissist on steroids. This variety involves paranoid traits (think of Obama’s thin-skinned, quasi-hysterical reactions to Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin), and ego-syntonic aggression, which means the person is perfectly in-sync with people who have the courage he lacks to lash out.

But consider the source! Obama’s father was a self-aggrandizing narcissist who thought nothing of throwing his son away to fulfill his own ambitions and his mother also threw him away for the same reason. Talk about DNA, which Obama perfectly exhibited when, during his campaign, he unflinchingly dispensed with both his white grandmother and his black “mentor” Rev. Wright for his personal ambition.

GROOMING THE PERFECT MARXIST CANDIDATE
This leads me to only one conclusion, which I wrote about in a former article: “Obama: The Trojan Horse.” My theory is that President Obama’s narcissistic charm, even temperament, skill with words (teleprompter included), hunger to please, radical agenda, and subterranean rage at the “unfair” American system have been brilliantly exploited by powerful leftist radicals and Marxists in the United States, who for decades have plotted America’s path to socialism. He is their pawn, totally dispensable but handy while the “aura” lasts.

These “handlers” saw in Obama the ideal blank slate on which to actualize their agenda, and they made sure the slate remained blank by concealing (or destroying) any evidence of his past, including his birth certificate, Selective Service record, visa(s), school transcripts, and other vital documents. All of which is costing his moneyed backers – including America-loathing billionaire George Soros – multimillions in lawyers’ fees to fight the proliferating lawsuits that seek the truth about this stealth president.

In fact, former ambassador Alan Keyes, one of the many plaintiffs seeking proof of Obama’s American citizenship, has reported that Obama’s lawyers have now filed a motion “to quash our effort to obtain the relevant documents…[which] confirms Obama’s ruthless determination to destroy anyone who continues to seek the information the Constitution requires. Obama thus signals his intent to bring financial ruin on those who won’t accept his cover-up of the circumstances of his birth is a tactical escalation. It confirms the common sense suspicion that he won’t act forthrightly in this matter because he has something to hide.”

It is clear that Obama and his fellow radicals are restive. In the less-than four weeks of his presidency, the new president has taken volumes from the Marxian handbook, which dictates that the stupid masses be blitzed with an overload of information, hollow press conferences, appointments, dismantling of formerly effective national-security programs, et al., in order to set the stage for a massive, Soviet-style takeover of our government, including a civilian national security force that Obama has said should be “just as powerful, strong and well-funded as the U.S. military.” Echoes of Nazi Germany in 1938, anyone?

According to writer Kyle-Anne Shrive, in Obama’s ascendance:

“We have yet to see a more perfect collision of Murphy’s Law with the Peter Principle. In only three weeks’ time, [he] has signaled to every terrorist on the planet that we are a sorry, groveling, ashamed nation ready to come to the diplomatic confessional. He is closing Gitmo within one year, has suspended trials there, and dismissed the charges against the U.S.S. Cole plotter. [He] has just put our money where his mouth is and is using $20.3 million to bring in Palestinian refugees from Gaza…[he] had the gall to pronounce the so-called economic stimulus bill absolutely free of `earmarks’ and `make-do work’…but according to the Congressional Budget Office [this bill] will do worse to our overall economy than no government action whatsoever.”

And Obama has done all this with the predictable double-speak that characterizes malevolent intention, i.e., touting transparency while concealing everything, speaking of integrity while appointing crooks and incompetents riddled with conflicts-of-interest, supporting energy independence while killing off-shore and domestic oil-drilling and nuclear power, and feigning optimism while he speaks of impending “catastrophe” in order to push through a pork-laden, trillion-dollar-plus Stimulus plan that rewards the corrupt voter-fraud organization Acorn with billions and unions with discriminatory union-only labor agreements, paves the way for socialized medicine, and threatens to take away the most cherished rights of We The People.

As blogger Eric Gurr has said: “We still talk about the health care crisis, the environmental crisis, the oil crisis, the banking crisis. Let me tell you my friends you are about to learn the meaning of the only crisis that matters, the survival crisis.”

You can be sure that the sad-lonely-angry two-year-old, the jealous-confused-resentful 10-year-old, the self-conscious- cheated-victimized adolescent, and the man who found solace in and identified with his hate-America mentors is now determined to redeem all of his demons.

Unfortunately, he is acting out his rage on free-market capitalism, a free press, property and gun rights, a limited constitutional government, protection of the unborn, and everything else that is good and great about our country.

This is Obama’s revenge!"

Thursday, February 19, 2009

The Sheriff Joe Story

I'm not sure who first reported this story but thought it worth sharing.

SHERIFF JOE IS AT IT AGAIN!

Maricopa County was spending approx. $18 million dollars a year on stray animals, like cats and dogs. Sheriff Joe offered to take the department over, and the County Supervisors said okay.

The animal shelters are now all staffed and operated by prisoners. They feed and care for the strays. Every animal in his care is taken out and walked twice daily. He now has prisoners who are experts in animal nutrition and behavior. They give great classes for anyone who'd like to adopt an animal. He has literally taken stray dogs off the street, given them to the care of prisoners, and had them place in dog shows.

The best part? His budget for the entire department is now under $3 million. Teresa and I adopted a Weimaraner from a Maricopa County shelter two years ago. He was neutered, and current on all shots, in great health, and even had a microchip in sert ed the day we got him. Cost us $78.

The prisoners get the benefit of about $0.28 an hour for working, but most would work for free, just to be out of their cells for the day. Most of his budge t is for utilities, building maintenance, etc. He pays the prisoners out of the fees collected for adopted animals.

I have long wondered when the rest of the country would take a look at the way he runs the jail system, and copy some of his ideas. He has a huge farm, donated to the county years ago, where inmates can work, and they grow most of their own fresh vegetables and food, doing all the work and harvesting by hand.

He has a pretty good sized hog farm, which provides meat, and fertilizer. It fertilizes theChristmas tree nursery, where prisoners work, and you can buy a living Christmas tree for $6 - $8 for the Holidays, and plant it later. We have six trees in our yard from the Prison.

Yup, he was reelected last year with 83% of the vote.
Now he' s in trouble with the ACLU again. He painted all his buses and vehicles with a mural, that has a special hotline phone number painted on it, where you can call and report suspected illegal aliens. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement wasn't doing enough in his eyes, so he had 40 deputies trained specifically for enforcing immigration laws, started up his hotline, and bought 4 new buses just for hauling folks back to the border. He's kind of a 'Git-R Dun' kind of Sheriff.

TO THOSE OF YOU NOT FAMILIAR WITH JOE ARPAIO

HE IS THE MARICOPA ARIZONA COUNTYSHERIFF

AND HE KEEPS GETTING ELECTED OVER AND OVER
THIS IS ONE OF THE REASONS WHY:

Sheriff Joe Arpaio (In Arizona ) who created the ' Tent City Jail':
He has jail meals down to 40 cents a serving and charges the inmates for them.

He stopped smoking and porno magazines in the jails. Took away their weights Cut off all but 'G' movies.

He started chain gangs so the inmates could do fre e wor k on county and city projects.

Then He Started Chain Gangs For Women So He Wouldn't Get
Sued For Discrimination.

He took away cable TV Until he found out there was A Federal Court Order that Required Cable TV For Jails So He Hooked Up The Cable TV Again Only Let In The Disney Channel And The Weather Channel.

When asked why the weather channel He Replied, So They Will Know How Hot It's Gonna Be While They Are Working
ON My Chain Gangs.

He Cut Off Coffee Since It Has Zero Nutritional Value.

When the inmates complained, he told them, 'This Isn't The Ritz/Carlton......If You Don't Like It, Don't Come Back.'


More On The Arizona Sheriff:

With Temperatures Being Even Hotter Than Usual In Phoenix (116 Degrees Just Set A New Record), the Associated Press Reports:
About 2,000 Inmates Living In A Barbed-Wire-Surrounded Tent Encampment At The Maricopa County J ail Hav e Been Given Permission To Strip Down To Their Government-Issued
Pink Boxer Shorts.

On Wednesday, hundreds of men wearing boxers were either curled up on their bunk beds or chatted in the tents, which reached
138 Degrees Inside The Week Before.

Many Were Also Swathed In Wet, Pink Towels As Sweat Collected On Their Chests And Dripped Down To Their PINK SOCKS.

'It Feels Like We Are In A Furnace,' Said James Zanzot, An Inmate Who Has Lived In The TENTS for 1 year. 'It's Inhumane.'

Joe Arpaio, the tough-guy sheriff who created the tent city and long ago started making his prisoners wear pink, and eat bologna sandwiches, is not one bit sympathetic. He said Wednesday that he told all of the inmates: 'It's 120 Degrees In Iraq And Our Soldiers Are Living In Tents Too, And They Have To Wear Full Battle Gear,
But They Didn't Commit Any Crimes,So Shut Your Mouths!'

Way To Go, Sheriff!

Hope and Change? Maybe Not.

The natives are getting restless. Or at least catching on to the man behind the smoke and mirrors. Now that Obama actually has to lead, and not just pontificate, Americans are slowly beginning to realize that maybe the campaign was a dream, and now they've awakened to the nightmare that is the economic reality of America today. How will The One handle the growing sentiment that perhaps he is not up to the task at hand?

Check out this video from the floor of the Chicago Stock Exchange.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1039849853


Further down the road, in Mesa, AZ, Dobson High School Advanced Placement government students watched the president's speech Wednesday. Here are some comments from the kids:


"Senior Syna Daudfar took some notes during the speech and was among the most vocally opposed to Obama's words.

At one point, when he talked about the costs of his stimulus plan, senior Maaike Albach and Daudfar looked at each other and said, "uh-oh."

"Overall I think it's a good idea, but he's not addressing the issues of the economic crisis," said Daudfar, a John McCain supporter who added he leans more toward being a moderate conservative. "The spending bill he just passed is just progressing the Democratic agenda rather than addressing the economic issues in the country."

Daudfar thinks Obama's plan is backward and deals with the "less important stuff" first. "Bailing out businesses" and "providing better regulatory systems for giving out money to businesses" should have been first, he said.

"If businesses can't afford to hire people, then people won't be able to work and pay off their mortgages," he said. "It's kind of like putting money into a funnel."

Albach, who is also a Republican, said Obama's plan sounds good but questioned how Obama can want to rely on "people's responsibility" when that is "what got us in this economic crisis in the first place."

"This puts us more into debt," said Albach, 18. "It's a horrible situation we're in."

Senior Brandon Miller wore a shirt with the words, "Hitler gave great speeches, too" above a picture of Obama.

Miller said he had been an Obama supporter "because of his speeches," but after debating the issues in this class and looking more into Obama's policies, his vote was swayed toward McCain. "I just don't believe all the things he's telling us. His goal is just too big and broad." Miller wanted to hear more about the costs and guidelines the stimulus bill entails.

Senior Katelyn Meyer, who also leans more toward being a Republican, said Obama's plan sounds good, "but it's easier said than done."

"I like the refinancing part, and I like the part about mortgages, but I'm afraid we're going to put the money in but won't see any effect," said Meyer, 18, who still thought it was "cool" to say the president was at her school, even though she didn't get to see him live.

How to Affect Change

Many of you ask, how can I be a part of the solution? How can I make a difference in the direction which the government takes in this country? Today, I highly recommend you check out this site which has a great article on how, as individuals, every one of us can contribute to making a difference.

http://standupforamerica.wordpress.com/2009/02/19/now-the-tough-part-getting-there-from-here/#comment-1761

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Middle East Geography Quiz

This is a really cool website sent to me by my mother. There's no time limit, and no score. It's just a really interesting interactive puzzle to test your knowledge of this very tumultuous part of the world. Give it a whirl and see how much (or how little) you know about the location of countries in the Middle East.

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/just_fun/games/mapgame.html