From today’s Mass readings – I thought it very appropriate given the burdens we all face, and the extra burdens my family has been carrying of late:

Brothers and sisters,

You have forgotten the exhortation addressed to you as children:

“My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord

or lose heart when reproved by him;

for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines;

he scourges every son he acknowledges.”

Endure your trials as “discipline”;

God treats you as sons.

For what “son” is there whom his father does not discipline?

At the time,

all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain,

yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness

to those who are trained by it.

So strengthen your drooping hands and your weak knees.

Make straight paths for your feet,

that what is lame may not be disjointed but healed. – Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-14

All of us balk at the troubles of life – but wisdom dictates that we accept the good and the bad and remember that the bad, even if deliberately caused by others, is permitted to happen, at least in part, because we are to learn from it.

There will be an “unexpected” drop in home sales reported next week. Remember, it is going to be unexpected – so, look surprised when the MSM reports it to you.

GOP up by 7 in Washington State senate race. This is another one of those 2010 races we GOPers were supposed to have no chance at all.

MSM is starting to notice China’s real estate bubble – they are still behind the curve as they are just now getting around to noticing its existence. The fact that it has already burst still escapes them, for the most part. Good question to ask, however: does China’s government buy a couple more years of political peace by sustaining absurdly high real estate prices, or risk potential revolution by allowing the crash to happen right away?

Charlie Cook has a prediction about the outcome of the mid-terms which Democrats may read and Republicans must ignore. No, seriously – all you darned Republicans out there stay off that link! Now, why did you go an click it? For crying out loud – just remember: don’t get cocky.

Miss USA – a Moslem – understands the necessity of not building the mosque at Ground Zero. This makes her both very pretty and very smart – pity our liberals can’t muster the same IQ as Miss USA.

2010 Democrat campaign strategy: Run Away!

From the Associated Press:

The rate at which U.S. homeowners fell behind on their mortgage payments remained stubbornly elevated in the second quarter.

In the three months ended June 30, the number of mortgage holders 60 days or more behind on their payments was 6.67 percent, credit reporting agency TransUnion said Tuesday. That’s a big jump from 5.81 percent in the second quarter of last year, and well above the historical norm of 1.5 percent to 2 percent…

Later in the report the MSM earns its Slavish Devotion to Obama Award by spinning that late payments are rising slower than they did last year. Woohoo! We’re not going bankrupt quite as fast as we were last year! Give Obama a second term!

The fact of the matter is that unemployment is increasing and people are exhausting all resources to maintain mortgages with eliminated or reduced income – adding to the mix is the increasing willingness of people to just walk away from their “underwater” mortgage in “strategic default” (meaning you can pay for the house, but choose not to). This situation will only get worse until new ideas start to be implemented aggressively in what will amount to a bankruptcy reorganization of America’s housing market. Long time readers know my preferences, but just about anything which doesn’t involve either bailing out the banks nor attempting to maintain artificially high home prices should be on the table – we need to think and we need to act. The Keynesian dogmas of a dead, liberal economic system simply won’t do the trick.

HAT TIP: Mish’s

Whatever it costs, we should put this out on TV every day from now until the election.

HAT TIP: The American Catholic

This is a good thing to have – it shows, in graphic terms, the increasing economic disaster…a disaster made worse, not better, by Obama’s foolish, tax-and-spend liberalism policies:

From the Associated Press:

Nearly half of the 1.3 million homeowners who enrolled in the Obama administration’s flagship mortgage-relief program have fallen out.

The program is intended to help those at risk of foreclosure by lowering their monthly mortgage payments. Friday’s report from the Treasury Department suggests the $75 billion government effort is failing to slow the tide of foreclosures in the United States, economists say…

We’re on track, according to the linked article, for 1,000,000 foreclosures in 2010 – far outstripping the 900,000 we had in 2009. But the really bad news is that we might have 1,500,000 in 2011. This will put massive downward pressure on home prices, thus putting ever more people “underwater” and that, in turn, will increase the phenomena of “strategic default” (people bailing out on homes they can afford, but which are underwater) – and so yet more downward pressure.

This is a crisis of massive proportions. Even if nothing else goes wrong with the economy, this will be enough to push us in to full-blown Depression. We need to get creative here – just modifying the payment so people are still stuck owing banks the massively over-inflated home prices of 2005 simply won’t do the trick. We have two tasks in front of us:

1. Keep as many people in their homes as possible via “cramming down” the mortgage to match current market value.

2. Get as much of the inventory off the market as possible by working out incentives for foreclosed homes to be leased for 2-5 years rather than sold.

I’ve discussed this issue here, as well as many other times over the past two years. I realize it is unfair to the people who aren’t “underwater” that some people will have their mortgages crammed down. I realize that it is, often, best to just let things take their course – but we’re facing the complete collapse of home values in the United States. The loss of that stored wealth would cripple our economy for a decade. Think of all the follow-on things which go with homes: televisions, washer/dryer units, landscaping, etc, etc, etc. Houses drop to 10% of their 2005 value, my friends, and we’re well and truly in a bad spot – and they can drop that low, and take the remainder of the economy down with them. 25% unemployment might seem like a good thing at that point.

We need to figure a way out of this – we need to both spread the pain and the benefits around. Bailing out banks has failed. Letting the market completely collapse will be ruinous (including to those of you out there who aren’t underwater or who have paid off your home…think about it: if you’ve got a paid off house worth 200,000 right now, how will you feel when its worth 100k? 50k? 20k?). We’ve got to put a floor under housing prices – we’ve got to get the massive inventory to go away, at least for a while.

Or we can just let things drift – and have a world of economic hurt. Our choice.

Naturally:

ShoreBank, a Chicago-area community lender praised by Democrats, was taken over by the government Friday and its assets sold.

Chicago-area Democrats pushed hard for regulators to extend bailout money to the bank from the government’s $700 billion aid program. The bank was praised by President Clinton and numerous other lawmakers and industry players. The bank was started in the 1970s…

Now I’d like there to be a minute examination of the banks books – if Democrats wanted to save this bank, there must be something screwy going on in there. They just don’t do that for any, old bank – always, always Democrats direct their bail out efforts towards those people and institutions which help Democrats. And I am doubly interested because it is a Chicago-area bank…not an area of the country noted for business and political ethics.

From Ramussen:

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Arkansas shows Boozman capturing 65% of the vote, while Lincoln earns 27% support. Four percent (4%) like some other candidate in the race, and three percent (3%) are not sure…

Lincoln won 56% of the vote in 2004, in a GOP year in a red State…she’s toast, and so are the rest of her sorry Democrats.

From Palin’s Facebook page:

Adversaries who have been trying to silence Dr. Laura for years seized on her recent use of the n-word on her show as she subsequently suggested that rap “artists” and other creative types like those producing HBO shows who regularly use the n-word could be questioned for doing so. Her intention in discussing the issue with a caller seeking advice was not to be hateful or bigoted. Though she did not mean to insult the caller, she did, and she apologized for it. Still, those who oppose her seized upon her mistake in using the word (though she didn’t call anyone the derogatory term) to paint her as something that she’s not. I can understand how she could feel “shackled” by those who would parse a single word out of decades of on-air commentary. I understand what she meant when she declared that she was “taking back my First Amendment rights” by turning to a new venue that will not allow others the ability to silence her by going after her stations, sponsors, and supporters.

I, and obviously many others, have been “shackled” too by people who play games with false accusations, threats, frivolous lawsuits, misreporting, etc., in an effort to silence those with whom they disagree. That’s why I tend to defend people who call it like they see it while others stop at nothing to shut them up…

And they do want us to shut up – which is why they do what they do. Liberals don’t want debate – they don’t want, at the end of the day, to live in a free society where we debate the merits of an issue. Liberals prefer a fascist society where everyone has to toe the party line and anyone who strays from the liberal narrative is hounded out of public life.

The basis for this is, of course, the liberals lack of understanding of truth – to them, there is no truth; everything is a social construct and they believe they’ve developed a superior construct to everyone else. To liberals, Dr. Laura subscribes to the wrong view and thus she must be silenced – her use of the “N-word” could be a lot of things, but it isn’t evidence that she’s secretly in the KKK or harbors racist views about black people. A lifetime spent helping people with their personal and social problems is reduced, by liberals, to the fact that she used the word. That is the act of hate, not the fact that Dr. Laura spoke the word.

But, liberals, your hour has struck. The political and economic system you have crafted over the past 80 years is coming apart at the seams. We’re going to first clear you out of DC, then out of those “commanding heights” of culture from whence you have destroyed lives and liberty. America will be restored – and, guess what?, you’ll like it better…freedom will be scary for you, but only for a while until you get used to it.

Doubts are being raised:

Academic scientists are challenging the Obama administration’s assertion that most of BP’s oil in the Gulf of Mexico is either gone or rapidly disappearing — with one group Thursday announcing the discovery of a 22-mile “plume” of oil that shows little sign of vanishing…

This is the sort of stuff which is really beyond a layman’s ability to judge – but some scientists are asserting that the oil is not going away. This is not to say that it will wash ashore – but it also isn’t to say that it won’t wash ashore. Bottom line: we’re not free from this crisis and the Obama Administration had better get cracking on contingency plans in case this stuff does come ashore at some point.

We’ve been blindsided by this spill several times and have all too much evidence of Obama Administration incompetence in this matter. It is hoped there is at least one adult in the Administration and he’s been looking in to this.

Isn’t the Obama T shirts which sold so well last year:

…One barometer of the plunge in excitement has been the sale of Obama-themed T-shirts, which designers had been banking on after the craze of last year. Clothing labeled with the president’s name sold by the thousands, helping to salvage a tough economic year for the island.

But this year’s T-shirt sales are much less brisk, merchants say.

“Last year, Obama gave you goose bumps, but I don’t think you’re going to see that this year,’’ said Alex McCluskey, co-owner of the Locker Room, who sold more than 4,000 “I vacationed with Obama’’ T-shirts last year. But so far this year, he said, his hot item is T-shirts of former President Bush asking, “Miss me yet?’’…(emphasis added)

Stick that in your pipes and smoke it, liberals.