foreclosure search

The game was to move
money under a scheme of deceit and fraud. First sell the bonds and
collect the money into a pool. Second take your fees, third take what’s
left and get it committed into “loans” (which were in actuality
securities) sold to homeowners under the same false pretenses as the
bonds were sold to investors. By controlling the flow of funds and
documentation, the middlemen were able to sell, pledge and otherwise
trade off the flow of receivables several times over — a necessary
complexity not only for the profit it generated, but to make it far more
difficult for anyone to track the footprints in the sand.

If the loans had actually been securitized, the issue would not arise. They were not securitized. This
was a mass illusion or hallucination induced by Wall Street spiking the
punch bowl. The gap (second tier yield spread premium) created between
the amount of money funded by investors and the amount of money actually
deployed into “loans” was so large that it could not be justified as
fees. It was profit on sale from the aggregator to the “trust” (special
purpose vehicle). It was undisclosed, deceitful and fraudulent.

Thus
the “credit enhancement” scenario with tranches, credit default swaps
and insurance had to be created so that it appeared that the gap was
covered. But that could only work if
the parties to those contracts claimed to have the loans. And since
multiple parties were making the same claim in these side contracts and
guarantees, counter-party agreements etc. the actual documents could not
be allowed to appear nor even be created unless and until it was the
end of the road in an evidential hearing in court. They used when
necessary “copies” that were in fact fabricated (counterfeited) as
needed to suit the occasion. You end up with lawyers arriving in
court with the “original” note signed in blue (for the desired effect on
the Judge) when it was signed in black — but the lawyer didn’t know
that. The actual original is either destroyed (see Katherine Porter’s
2007 study) or “lost.” In this case “lost” doesn’t mean really lost. It
means that if they really must come up with something they will call an
original they will do so.

So the reason why the paperwork is all
out of order is that there was no paperwork. There only entries on
databases and spreadsheets. The
loans were not in actuality assigned to any one particular trust or any
one particular bond or any one particular individual or group of
investors. They were “allocated” as receivables multiple times to
multiple parties usually to an extent in excess of the nominal
receivable itself. This is why the servicers keep paying on loans
that are being declared in default. The essential component of every
loan that was never revealed to either the lenders (investors) nor the
borrowers (homeowner/investors) was the addition of co-obligors and
terms that neither the investor nor the borrower knew anything about.
The “insurance” and other enhancements were actually cover for the
intermediaries who had no money at risk in the loans, but for the
potential liability for defrauding the lenders and borrowers.

The result, as anyone can plainly see, is that the typical Ponzi outcome — heads I win, tails you lose.

***

So
the paperwork was carefully created and crafted to cover the tracks of
theft. Most of the securitization paperwork remains buried such that it
takes search services to reach any of them. The documents that were
needed to record title and encumbrances was finessed so that they could
keep their options open when someone made demand for actual proof. The
documents were not messed up and neither was the processing. They were
just keeping their options open, so like the salad oil scandal, they
could fill the tank that someone wanted to look into.The game was to move
money under a scheme of deceit and fraud. First sell the bonds and
collect the money into a pool. Second take your fees, third take what’s
left and get it committed into “loans” (which were in actuality
securities) sold to homeowners under the same false pretenses as the
bonds were sold to investors. By controlling the flow of funds and
documentation, the middlemen were able to sell, pledge and otherwise
trade off the flow of receivables several times over — a necessary
complexity not only for the profit it generated, but to make it far more
difficult for anyone to track the footprints in the sand.

If the loans had actually been securitized, the issue would not arise. They were not securitized. This
was a mass illusion or hallucination induced by Wall Street spiking the
punch bowl. The gap (second tier yield spread premium) created between
the amount of money funded by investors and the amount of money actually
deployed into “loans” was so large that it could not be justified as
fees. It was profit on sale from the aggregator to the “trust” (special
purpose vehicle). It was undisclosed, deceitful and fraudulent.

Thus
the “credit enhancement” scenario with tranches, credit default swaps
and insurance had to be created so that it appeared that the gap was
covered. But that could only work if
the parties to those contracts claimed to have the loans. And since
multiple parties were making the same claim in these side contracts and
guarantees, counter-party agreements etc. the actual documents could not
be allowed to appear nor even be created unless and until it was the
end of the road in an evidential hearing in court. They used when
necessary “copies” that were in fact fabricated (counterfeited) as
needed to suit the occasion. You end up with lawyers arriving in
court with the “original” note signed in blue (for the desired effect on
the Judge) when it was signed in black — but the lawyer didn’t know
that. The actual original is either destroyed (see Katherine Porter’s
2007 study) or “lost.” In this case “lost” doesn’t mean really lost. It
means that if they really must come up with something they will call an
original they will do so.

So the reason why the paperwork is all
out of order is that there was no paperwork. There only entries on
databases and spreadsheets. The
loans were not in actuality assigned to any one particular trust or any
one particular bond or any one particular individual or group of
investors. They were “allocated” as receivables multiple times to
multiple parties usually to an extent in excess of the nominal
receivable itself. This is why the servicers keep paying on loans
that are being declared in default. The essential component of every
loan that was never revealed to either the lenders (investors) nor the
borrowers (homeowner/investors) was the addition of co-obligors and
terms that neither the investor nor the borrower knew anything about.
The “insurance” and other enhancements were actually cover for the
intermediaries who had no money at risk in the loans, but for the
potential liability for defrauding the lenders and borrowers.

The result, as anyone can plainly see, is that the typical Ponzi outcome — heads I win, tails you lose.

***

So
the paperwork was carefully created and crafted to cover the tracks of
theft. Most of the securitization paperwork remains buried such that it
takes search services to reach any of them. The documents that were
needed to record title and encumbrances was finessed so that they could
keep their options open when someone made demand for actual proof. The
documents were not messed up and neither was the processing. They were
just keeping their options open, so like the salad oil scandal, they
could fill the tank that someone wanted to look into.

FAIR Blog » Blog Archive » Juan Williams, Fox <b>News</b> Liberal

It's not totally clear what he means by that, but Williams does a pretty good job as a Fox News Liberal-- i.e., someone willing to attack left-liberal groups and leaders while doing very little to promote an actual left-leaning ...

Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> And Views About China Stocks (Oct. 27 <b>...</b>

Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: Shares in automaker Hong Kong-listed BYD tanked by 9% after the company said profit fell by 99% in the third ...

BREAKING <b>NEWS</b>: The Hobbit Stays In New Zealand | Hobbit Movie <b>News</b> <b>...</b>

The night is darkest ere the dawn... and dawn has ever been the hope of Men! After days of closed door talks between New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and.

atlanta property management

FAIR Blog » Blog Archive » Juan Williams, Fox <b>News</b> Liberal

It's not totally clear what he means by that, but Williams does a pretty good job as a Fox News Liberal-- i.e., someone willing to attack left-liberal groups and leaders while doing very little to promote an actual left-leaning ...

Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> And Views About China Stocks (Oct. 27 <b>...</b>

Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: Shares in automaker Hong Kong-listed BYD tanked by 9% after the company said profit fell by 99% in the third ...

BREAKING <b>NEWS</b>: The Hobbit Stays In New Zealand | Hobbit Movie <b>News</b> <b>...</b>

The night is darkest ere the dawn... and dawn has ever been the hope of Men! After days of closed door talks between New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and.

The game was to move
money under a scheme of deceit and fraud. First sell the bonds and
collect the money into a pool. Second take your fees, third take what’s
left and get it committed into “loans” (which were in actuality
securities) sold to homeowners under the same false pretenses as the
bonds were sold to investors. By controlling the flow of funds and
documentation, the middlemen were able to sell, pledge and otherwise
trade off the flow of receivables several times over — a necessary
complexity not only for the profit it generated, but to make it far more
difficult for anyone to track the footprints in the sand.

If the loans had actually been securitized, the issue would not arise. They were not securitized. This
was a mass illusion or hallucination induced by Wall Street spiking the
punch bowl. The gap (second tier yield spread premium) created between
the amount of money funded by investors and the amount of money actually
deployed into “loans” was so large that it could not be justified as
fees. It was profit on sale from the aggregator to the “trust” (special
purpose vehicle). It was undisclosed, deceitful and fraudulent.

Thus
the “credit enhancement” scenario with tranches, credit default swaps
and insurance had to be created so that it appeared that the gap was
covered. But that could only work if
the parties to those contracts claimed to have the loans. And since
multiple parties were making the same claim in these side contracts and
guarantees, counter-party agreements etc. the actual documents could not
be allowed to appear nor even be created unless and until it was the
end of the road in an evidential hearing in court. They used when
necessary “copies” that were in fact fabricated (counterfeited) as
needed to suit the occasion. You end up with lawyers arriving in
court with the “original” note signed in blue (for the desired effect on
the Judge) when it was signed in black — but the lawyer didn’t know
that. The actual original is either destroyed (see Katherine Porter’s
2007 study) or “lost.” In this case “lost” doesn’t mean really lost. It
means that if they really must come up with something they will call an
original they will do so.

So the reason why the paperwork is all
out of order is that there was no paperwork. There only entries on
databases and spreadsheets. The
loans were not in actuality assigned to any one particular trust or any
one particular bond or any one particular individual or group of
investors. They were “allocated” as receivables multiple times to
multiple parties usually to an extent in excess of the nominal
receivable itself. This is why the servicers keep paying on loans
that are being declared in default. The essential component of every
loan that was never revealed to either the lenders (investors) nor the
borrowers (homeowner/investors) was the addition of co-obligors and
terms that neither the investor nor the borrower knew anything about.
The “insurance” and other enhancements were actually cover for the
intermediaries who had no money at risk in the loans, but for the
potential liability for defrauding the lenders and borrowers.

The result, as anyone can plainly see, is that the typical Ponzi outcome — heads I win, tails you lose.

***

So
the paperwork was carefully created and crafted to cover the tracks of
theft. Most of the securitization paperwork remains buried such that it
takes search services to reach any of them. The documents that were
needed to record title and encumbrances was finessed so that they could
keep their options open when someone made demand for actual proof. The
documents were not messed up and neither was the processing. They were
just keeping their options open, so like the salad oil scandal, they
could fill the tank that someone wanted to look into.The game was to move
money under a scheme of deceit and fraud. First sell the bonds and
collect the money into a pool. Second take your fees, third take what’s
left and get it committed into “loans” (which were in actuality
securities) sold to homeowners under the same false pretenses as the
bonds were sold to investors. By controlling the flow of funds and
documentation, the middlemen were able to sell, pledge and otherwise
trade off the flow of receivables several times over — a necessary
complexity not only for the profit it generated, but to make it far more
difficult for anyone to track the footprints in the sand.

If the loans had actually been securitized, the issue would not arise. They were not securitized. This
was a mass illusion or hallucination induced by Wall Street spiking the
punch bowl. The gap (second tier yield spread premium) created between
the amount of money funded by investors and the amount of money actually
deployed into “loans” was so large that it could not be justified as
fees. It was profit on sale from the aggregator to the “trust” (special
purpose vehicle). It was undisclosed, deceitful and fraudulent.

Thus
the “credit enhancement” scenario with tranches, credit default swaps
and insurance had to be created so that it appeared that the gap was
covered. But that could only work if
the parties to those contracts claimed to have the loans. And since
multiple parties were making the same claim in these side contracts and
guarantees, counter-party agreements etc. the actual documents could not
be allowed to appear nor even be created unless and until it was the
end of the road in an evidential hearing in court. They used when
necessary “copies” that were in fact fabricated (counterfeited) as
needed to suit the occasion. You end up with lawyers arriving in
court with the “original” note signed in blue (for the desired effect on
the Judge) when it was signed in black — but the lawyer didn’t know
that. The actual original is either destroyed (see Katherine Porter’s
2007 study) or “lost.” In this case “lost” doesn’t mean really lost. It
means that if they really must come up with something they will call an
original they will do so.

So the reason why the paperwork is all
out of order is that there was no paperwork. There only entries on
databases and spreadsheets. The
loans were not in actuality assigned to any one particular trust or any
one particular bond or any one particular individual or group of
investors. They were “allocated” as receivables multiple times to
multiple parties usually to an extent in excess of the nominal
receivable itself. This is why the servicers keep paying on loans
that are being declared in default. The essential component of every
loan that was never revealed to either the lenders (investors) nor the
borrowers (homeowner/investors) was the addition of co-obligors and
terms that neither the investor nor the borrower knew anything about.
The “insurance” and other enhancements were actually cover for the
intermediaries who had no money at risk in the loans, but for the
potential liability for defrauding the lenders and borrowers.

The result, as anyone can plainly see, is that the typical Ponzi outcome — heads I win, tails you lose.

***

So
the paperwork was carefully created and crafted to cover the tracks of
theft. Most of the securitization paperwork remains buried such that it
takes search services to reach any of them. The documents that were
needed to record title and encumbrances was finessed so that they could
keep their options open when someone made demand for actual proof. The
documents were not messed up and neither was the processing. They were
just keeping their options open, so like the salad oil scandal, they
could fill the tank that someone wanted to look into.

FAIR Blog » Blog Archive » Juan Williams, Fox <b>News</b> Liberal

It's not totally clear what he means by that, but Williams does a pretty good job as a Fox News Liberal-- i.e., someone willing to attack left-liberal groups and leaders while doing very little to promote an actual left-leaning ...

Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> And Views About China Stocks (Oct. 27 <b>...</b>

Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: Shares in automaker Hong Kong-listed BYD tanked by 9% after the company said profit fell by 99% in the third ...

BREAKING <b>NEWS</b>: The Hobbit Stays In New Zealand | Hobbit Movie <b>News</b> <b>...</b>

The night is darkest ere the dawn... and dawn has ever been the hope of Men! After days of closed door talks between New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and.

FAIR Blog » Blog Archive » Juan Williams, Fox <b>News</b> Liberal

It's not totally clear what he means by that, but Williams does a pretty good job as a Fox News Liberal-- i.e., someone willing to attack left-liberal groups and leaders while doing very little to promote an actual left-leaning ...

Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> And Views About China Stocks (Oct. 27 <b>...</b>

Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: Shares in automaker Hong Kong-listed BYD tanked by 9% after the company said profit fell by 99% in the third ...

BREAKING <b>NEWS</b>: The Hobbit Stays In New Zealand | Hobbit Movie <b>News</b> <b>...</b>

The night is darkest ere the dawn... and dawn has ever been the hope of Men! After days of closed door talks between New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and.

foreclosure homes

Florida foreclosure mill owner who chucked out 70,000 families in 2009 is unspeakably rich

Cory Doctorow at 10:28 PM Tuesday, Oct 19, 2010 

David J. Stern is a Florida lawyer who operates a foreclosure mill, a firm that foreclosed on more than 70,000 homes last year. According to a deposition from Tammie Mae Kapusta, a former employee, Stern's firm cut many corners, foreclosing on homes without serving notice, ignoring mortgage payments that would have prevented foreclosure, and "yelling at" employees who talked to homeowners on the phone, because that was "giving them too much time."

Apparently, it's working for Stern, who just bought the mega-mansion next to his mega-mega-mansion on a private island so he could tear it down and install a tennis court. Seriously, this guy sounds like the villain in a Carl Hiaassen novel, except Hiaassen's villains are more believable and less evil.

But while the banks are ultimately responsible, the root of the problem appears to lie with "foreclosure mill" law firms like Stern's. These operations process foreclosure cases on behalf of lenders, and their business model is based on moving the paperwork through as quickly as possible. That's why such firms have pioneered practices like "robo-signing" -- whereby their employees process thousands of court documents in pending foreclosures without ever actually reviewing them, as the law requires. Of course, it's in the banks' interest for their contractors to move quickly, because the faster a foreclosure moves, the less time a struggling borrower has to fight it...

And from Mother Jones:

His $15 million, 16,000-square-foot mansion occupies a corner lot in a private island community on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. It is featured on a water-taxi tour of the area's grandest estates, along with the abodes of Jay Leno and billionaire Blockbuster founder Wayne Huizenga, as well as the former residence of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. (Last year, Stern snapped up his next-door neighbor's property for $8 million and tore down the house to make way for a tennis court.) Docked outside is Misunderstood, Stern's 130-foot, jet-propelled Mangusta yacht -- a $20 million-plus replacement for his previous 108-foot Mangusta. He also owns four Ferraris, four Porsches, two Mercedes-Benzes, and a Bugatti -- a high-end Italian brand with models costing north of $1 million a pop.

Is David J. Stern the poster boy for the foreclosure mess?

(via Lowering the Bar)

(Image: Sign Of The Times - Foreclosure, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from respres's photostream)

Response from a Banker:

You ungrateful louts!

We bankers worked hard to give the great unwashed masses one helluva “going into bankruptcy” party that lasted for almost four years! We gave a bunch of worthless lumpens an opportunity to live in a house well beyond their means. Now that we have to separate them from the houses and herd them back into the flea infested tenements appropriate to their life’s station, some bottom feeding lawyers have the gall to suggest we don’t have a “legal” right to foreclose. Well I’ll be gob-smacked if that’s not enough to make a grown man cry. As GWB responded when asked about what the Constitution might have to say he retorted, “It’s just a goddamed piece of paper.” We bankers know what we know. And we know these houses belong to our RMBS whether we did everything according to your outmoded rules or not. They belong to us. Get used to it. It’s hard enough to have to explain to some turbaned oil sheik why the 10 million dollars of the RMBS he bought are now worth half that let alone trying to explain why we might not even own the houses that backed the loans. But we want to be fair. So we paid a little overtime plus incentives for a bunch of our backoffice people in India to review the files. By golly they didn’t find a single problem except for one fellow who found over half his cases were problematic. The only good thing about that was we only had to pay him half what the others got. And then we fired him since it was obvious he was a trouble maker.

We bankers are geniuses when we bother to think about it. We managed to turn an $80,000 rathole in the ghetto of Pittsburgh, CA (and that’s 90% of it) into a $280,000 palace in just three years and then sold it to a poor Hispanic cook working at a retirement home. He makes $45,000 a year and his wife works at McDonald’s making $20,000. You should have seen the happy looks on their three kids’ faces at the housewarming. We got them into a great negam loan that only cost $650 a month for the first three years. Sure, it ballooned to $1400 but it looked like that house would be worth nearly a million by then. At least that’s what the Iranian real estate salesman said. And he was their best friend so they certainly thought he was giving an honest opinion. How could he have guessed it would auction for $55,000 three years later? Life is uncertain. And now they’re back in a two bedroom apartment with cots and a sleeper in the living room. I like to think this experience has whetted their appetite for a better condition of living now that they’ve had a first hand experience at “living the dream.” Unfortunately, the refinance mortgage they took out two years in for a half percent better rate didn’t have the “jingle keys” provision so they’re paying back the $250,000 they owe the bank week by week. But you know what? They made a deal with us and they signed the papers. We didn’t have a gun to their head. A deal’s a deal. You gotta respect the law in these matters. That’s very important for you to understand. We expect you to stand by your commitments and read the fine print.

You need to understand that we’re just middle men who go out and put deals together for our “clients.” Our clients are primarily the Sovereign Wealth Funds all sitting on piles of cash accumulating from the obscene profits being made on oil. That money has to go somewhere and it’s our job to create investment opportunities that at least appear to have a better rate of return than T-Bills. We’re just working schmucks like anyone else. Maybe paid a little better – but we earn every dollar! It’s hard working with fools on both sides of the deal. Our tongues are bloody nearly every day.

You all have the gall to want to “rein in” the investment professionals at Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan. Do you realize what would happen if you had your way? If our great investment bank’s operations were curtailed, the clients would just go elsewhere to find someone willing to put together a great money making deal like, for instance, buying a 75 year lease on Chicago’s parking meter operation. Suppose that deal hadn’t gone through. An hour’s parking would have remained at two bits instead of a buck. By jacking the rates, extending the hours and making the meters operate seven days a week instead of five we are doing our part in reducing traffic conjestion. And what thanks do we get? None. Shows you just how sincere these “green” people are. All they can do is belly ache about the loss of street fairs because the new meter owners demand fair compensation for the lost revenue. It’s obvious these “street fairs” are losing propositions or they’d make enough money to pay the franchise with money left over. We’re promoting social efficiency by eliminating these economically sterile activities. We have stores if the lumpenfolk want to buy things. In fact we have more “store per person” than any other country in the world – nearly 25 square feet of it. We need to generate sales in those stores so the renters can pay back the CMBS holders. Street fairs are diverting dollars to sales that do not benefit our clients and, therefore, do not benefit our country.

My suggestion is that you folks get back out there and start spending again because, face it, that’s the only task you’re really fit to perform. You are the Great American Consumer and it should make your chest swell with pride. Your consumption is a vital part of the wonderful world wealth making machine. China makes stuff and you consume it and digest it and drop it out your backsides. We have tried to keep you supplied with enough dollars so that you can do your job. But now you have reneged on your obligations. You have failed to heed your wonderful V.P. Dick Cheney’s advice to hold hands and buy an SUV. There is a price to be paid for your stubborn refusal to spend beyond your means. You are now “little people.”

So stop whining about your government catering to the banks. We fund your government. You bitch and moan at the thought of any tax increase so your government has to come to us, hat in hand, every year for a couple trillion dollars in loans. You think a government in that kind of financial condition is in any position to tell us how to run our business? Just keep in mind that the Fed is an independent organization. In fact it can’t even be audited. I advise you entertain a certain meekness when dealing with the organization that owns your government and that your uncharitable understanding of the situation puts the cart before the horse.

Small Business <b>News</b>: Social Media Secrets

Pssst. We've got something important to tell you about a new tool that can totally transform your business. In terms of upfront investment, there is no cost,

FAIR Blog » Blog Archive » Juan Williams, Fox <b>News</b> Liberal

It's not totally clear what he means by that, but Williams does a pretty good job as a Fox News Liberal-- i.e., someone willing to attack left-liberal groups and leaders while doing very little to promote an actual left-leaning ...

Nevada Voters Complain Of Problems At Polls - Las Vegas <b>News</b> Story <b>...</b>

LAS VEGAS -- Some voters in Boulder City complained on Monday that their ballot had been cast before they went to the polls, raising questions about Clark County's electronic voting machines. Wednesday, October 27, 2010.

bench craft company complaints
bench craft company complaints

Small Business <b>News</b>: Social Media Secrets

Pssst. We've got something important to tell you about a new tool that can totally transform your business. In terms of upfront investment, there is no cost,

FAIR Blog » Blog Archive » Juan Williams, Fox <b>News</b> Liberal

It's not totally clear what he means by that, but Williams does a pretty good job as a Fox News Liberal-- i.e., someone willing to attack left-liberal groups and leaders while doing very little to promote an actual left-leaning ...

Nevada Voters Complain Of Problems At Polls - Las Vegas <b>News</b> Story <b>...</b>

LAS VEGAS -- Some voters in Boulder City complained on Monday that their ballot had been cast before they went to the polls, raising questions about Clark County's electronic voting machines. Wednesday, October 27, 2010.

bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints

Florida foreclosure mill owner who chucked out 70,000 families in 2009 is unspeakably rich

Cory Doctorow at 10:28 PM Tuesday, Oct 19, 2010 

David J. Stern is a Florida lawyer who operates a foreclosure mill, a firm that foreclosed on more than 70,000 homes last year. According to a deposition from Tammie Mae Kapusta, a former employee, Stern's firm cut many corners, foreclosing on homes without serving notice, ignoring mortgage payments that would have prevented foreclosure, and "yelling at" employees who talked to homeowners on the phone, because that was "giving them too much time."

Apparently, it's working for Stern, who just bought the mega-mansion next to his mega-mega-mansion on a private island so he could tear it down and install a tennis court. Seriously, this guy sounds like the villain in a Carl Hiaassen novel, except Hiaassen's villains are more believable and less evil.

But while the banks are ultimately responsible, the root of the problem appears to lie with "foreclosure mill" law firms like Stern's. These operations process foreclosure cases on behalf of lenders, and their business model is based on moving the paperwork through as quickly as possible. That's why such firms have pioneered practices like "robo-signing" -- whereby their employees process thousands of court documents in pending foreclosures without ever actually reviewing them, as the law requires. Of course, it's in the banks' interest for their contractors to move quickly, because the faster a foreclosure moves, the less time a struggling borrower has to fight it...

And from Mother Jones:

His $15 million, 16,000-square-foot mansion occupies a corner lot in a private island community on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. It is featured on a water-taxi tour of the area's grandest estates, along with the abodes of Jay Leno and billionaire Blockbuster founder Wayne Huizenga, as well as the former residence of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. (Last year, Stern snapped up his next-door neighbor's property for $8 million and tore down the house to make way for a tennis court.) Docked outside is Misunderstood, Stern's 130-foot, jet-propelled Mangusta yacht -- a $20 million-plus replacement for his previous 108-foot Mangusta. He also owns four Ferraris, four Porsches, two Mercedes-Benzes, and a Bugatti -- a high-end Italian brand with models costing north of $1 million a pop.

Is David J. Stern the poster boy for the foreclosure mess?

(via Lowering the Bar)

(Image: Sign Of The Times - Foreclosure, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from respres's photostream)

Response from a Banker:

You ungrateful louts!

We bankers worked hard to give the great unwashed masses one helluva “going into bankruptcy” party that lasted for almost four years! We gave a bunch of worthless lumpens an opportunity to live in a house well beyond their means. Now that we have to separate them from the houses and herd them back into the flea infested tenements appropriate to their life’s station, some bottom feeding lawyers have the gall to suggest we don’t have a “legal” right to foreclose. Well I’ll be gob-smacked if that’s not enough to make a grown man cry. As GWB responded when asked about what the Constitution might have to say he retorted, “It’s just a goddamed piece of paper.” We bankers know what we know. And we know these houses belong to our RMBS whether we did everything according to your outmoded rules or not. They belong to us. Get used to it. It’s hard enough to have to explain to some turbaned oil sheik why the 10 million dollars of the RMBS he bought are now worth half that let alone trying to explain why we might not even own the houses that backed the loans. But we want to be fair. So we paid a little overtime plus incentives for a bunch of our backoffice people in India to review the files. By golly they didn’t find a single problem except for one fellow who found over half his cases were problematic. The only good thing about that was we only had to pay him half what the others got. And then we fired him since it was obvious he was a trouble maker.

We bankers are geniuses when we bother to think about it. We managed to turn an $80,000 rathole in the ghetto of Pittsburgh, CA (and that’s 90% of it) into a $280,000 palace in just three years and then sold it to a poor Hispanic cook working at a retirement home. He makes $45,000 a year and his wife works at McDonald’s making $20,000. You should have seen the happy looks on their three kids’ faces at the housewarming. We got them into a great negam loan that only cost $650 a month for the first three years. Sure, it ballooned to $1400 but it looked like that house would be worth nearly a million by then. At least that’s what the Iranian real estate salesman said. And he was their best friend so they certainly thought he was giving an honest opinion. How could he have guessed it would auction for $55,000 three years later? Life is uncertain. And now they’re back in a two bedroom apartment with cots and a sleeper in the living room. I like to think this experience has whetted their appetite for a better condition of living now that they’ve had a first hand experience at “living the dream.” Unfortunately, the refinance mortgage they took out two years in for a half percent better rate didn’t have the “jingle keys” provision so they’re paying back the $250,000 they owe the bank week by week. But you know what? They made a deal with us and they signed the papers. We didn’t have a gun to their head. A deal’s a deal. You gotta respect the law in these matters. That’s very important for you to understand. We expect you to stand by your commitments and read the fine print.

You need to understand that we’re just middle men who go out and put deals together for our “clients.” Our clients are primarily the Sovereign Wealth Funds all sitting on piles of cash accumulating from the obscene profits being made on oil. That money has to go somewhere and it’s our job to create investment opportunities that at least appear to have a better rate of return than T-Bills. We’re just working schmucks like anyone else. Maybe paid a little better – but we earn every dollar! It’s hard working with fools on both sides of the deal. Our tongues are bloody nearly every day.

You all have the gall to want to “rein in” the investment professionals at Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan. Do you realize what would happen if you had your way? If our great investment bank’s operations were curtailed, the clients would just go elsewhere to find someone willing to put together a great money making deal like, for instance, buying a 75 year lease on Chicago’s parking meter operation. Suppose that deal hadn’t gone through. An hour’s parking would have remained at two bits instead of a buck. By jacking the rates, extending the hours and making the meters operate seven days a week instead of five we are doing our part in reducing traffic conjestion. And what thanks do we get? None. Shows you just how sincere these “green” people are. All they can do is belly ache about the loss of street fairs because the new meter owners demand fair compensation for the lost revenue. It’s obvious these “street fairs” are losing propositions or they’d make enough money to pay the franchise with money left over. We’re promoting social efficiency by eliminating these economically sterile activities. We have stores if the lumpenfolk want to buy things. In fact we have more “store per person” than any other country in the world – nearly 25 square feet of it. We need to generate sales in those stores so the renters can pay back the CMBS holders. Street fairs are diverting dollars to sales that do not benefit our clients and, therefore, do not benefit our country.

My suggestion is that you folks get back out there and start spending again because, face it, that’s the only task you’re really fit to perform. You are the Great American Consumer and it should make your chest swell with pride. Your consumption is a vital part of the wonderful world wealth making machine. China makes stuff and you consume it and digest it and drop it out your backsides. We have tried to keep you supplied with enough dollars so that you can do your job. But now you have reneged on your obligations. You have failed to heed your wonderful V.P. Dick Cheney’s advice to hold hands and buy an SUV. There is a price to be paid for your stubborn refusal to spend beyond your means. You are now “little people.”

So stop whining about your government catering to the banks. We fund your government. You bitch and moan at the thought of any tax increase so your government has to come to us, hat in hand, every year for a couple trillion dollars in loans. You think a government in that kind of financial condition is in any position to tell us how to run our business? Just keep in mind that the Fed is an independent organization. In fact it can’t even be audited. I advise you entertain a certain meekness when dealing with the organization that owns your government and that your uncharitable understanding of the situation puts the cart before the horse.

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Small Business <b>News</b>: Social Media Secrets

Pssst. We've got something important to tell you about a new tool that can totally transform your business. In terms of upfront investment, there is no cost,

FAIR Blog » Blog Archive » Juan Williams, Fox <b>News</b> Liberal

It's not totally clear what he means by that, but Williams does a pretty good job as a Fox News Liberal-- i.e., someone willing to attack left-liberal groups and leaders while doing very little to promote an actual left-leaning ...

Nevada Voters Complain Of Problems At Polls - Las Vegas <b>News</b> Story <b>...</b>

LAS VEGAS -- Some voters in Boulder City complained on Monday that their ballot had been cast before they went to the polls, raising questions about Clark County's electronic voting machines. Wednesday, October 27, 2010.

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Small Business <b>News</b>: Social Media Secrets

Pssst. We've got something important to tell you about a new tool that can totally transform your business. In terms of upfront investment, there is no cost,

FAIR Blog » Blog Archive » Juan Williams, Fox <b>News</b> Liberal

It's not totally clear what he means by that, but Williams does a pretty good job as a Fox News Liberal-- i.e., someone willing to attack left-liberal groups and leaders while doing very little to promote an actual left-leaning ...

Nevada Voters Complain Of Problems At Polls - Las Vegas <b>News</b> Story <b>...</b>

LAS VEGAS -- Some voters in Boulder City complained on Monday that their ballot had been cast before they went to the polls, raising questions about Clark County's electronic voting machines. Wednesday, October 27, 2010.

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Small Business <b>News</b>: Social Media Secrets

Pssst. We've got something important to tell you about a new tool that can totally transform your business. In terms of upfront investment, there is no cost,

FAIR Blog » Blog Archive » Juan Williams, Fox <b>News</b> Liberal

It's not totally clear what he means by that, but Williams does a pretty good job as a Fox News Liberal-- i.e., someone willing to attack left-liberal groups and leaders while doing very little to promote an actual left-leaning ...

Nevada Voters Complain Of Problems At Polls - Las Vegas <b>News</b> Story <b>...</b>

LAS VEGAS -- Some voters in Boulder City complained on Monday that their ballot had been cast before they went to the polls, raising questions about Clark County's electronic voting machines. Wednesday, October 27, 2010.

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personal finances help

'When I married Donna, I could get both hands around her waist,' said my husband's grandfather. Pointing at his full-figured wife, he boasted, 'Now look how much I got. That's what I call an investment!' — Katherine Eby, via Reader's Digest.com

In essence, that funny anecdote is right. Of course it doesn't sound very flattering to Katherine's grandmother-in-law, but that's exactly what investment is all about: making sure that your accounts and net worth grow bigger over time.

Investment is that exercise of putting money in a financial account, in your business, in a friend's business, or even in some other companies' business, for the pursuit of growing one's money. Investment is an effort to get one's money to "grow."

Investment works on the principle of "compounded interest." Interest that is added to your principal, or initial investment, itself gets to earn interest. So if you've initially invested $200, at the interest rate of 2.5%, at the maturity term of one month, you'll be earning $5 at the end of that month. If you renew the term of your money, your $205 will then earn $5.13 ($5.125) when another month is over. Certificates of deposit accounts or time deposits work exactly like this.

On the other hand, mutual funds work on the principle of snowballed profits. Mutual funds are as good as stocks and bonds, only you don't manage them yourself. Rather, trained financial experts are hired to manage your money. To invest in mutual funds, you can look into a broker that charges low commissions and check out their offerings.

Basic Tips For Investing In A Business

Investments could also mean those things you purchase or put money in, in order to further your business. Most people take additional studies in order to get the credentials needed to help them advance in their chosen careers. Other people invest in machinery, gadgets and equipment in order to make their lives easier. Then, most businesses invest in people which make up their workforce — their much-needed manpower.

Here are three informal rules of thumb by which you can measure your investments and purchases:

Having a hard time managing credit card debt problems? Try using Creditable, a web app that can help you tackle your debt head-on by tracking your progress, generating suggested achievable goals based on your situation, and by allowing you to interact with other people that can help you.

The best part about Creditable is that it is free and anonymous, thus it can still generate your personalized goals even without submitting a credit report.

Creditable requires users to sign up before being able to use it, but the registration only requires an email address so you don’t have to divulge your identity. You do not have to be worried about security issues when using the site since you won’t have to reveal any personal information.

Creditable will also produce goals that are particular for your situation which can serve as your guide that can help you out of your current credit issues.

Creditable also fosters an online community where people can ask about credit related issues and receive advice from other people, who may have gone through your current situation. In addition, you can easily find other users that have the same goals as yours, for more social support.

Features:

• Manage your credits without revealing your identity.
• Track the progress of your credit, works with multiple accounts.
• Suggests achievable goals based on your particular situation.
• Connects you with other people that have similar credit issues.
• Provides personalized credit card suggestions when re-establishing credit.
• Similar Tools: Mint, Paystr, Accpal, TripLittle.

Check out Creditable @ http://getcreditable.com

RDR standalone DLC disc dated <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our news of RDR standalone DLC disc dated. ... Red Dead Redemption Review . Latest Videos. RDR: Undead Nightmare trailer 1 October, 2010. RDR: Legends & Killers DLC 6 August, 2010. Latest News ...

Probably Bad <b>News</b>: Parenting FAIL - Epic Fail Funny Videos and <b>...</b>

epic fail photos - Probably Bad News: Parenting FAIL.

Nielsen: 362000 Monthly Users For <b>News</b> Corp.&#39;s Times Paywall <b>...</b>

News International's silence on subscriber numbers for Times and Sunday Times online content continues, three and a half months after the paywall went up. But today audience research company Nielsen has taken a stab at estimating the ...

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bench craft company complaints

RDR standalone DLC disc dated <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our news of RDR standalone DLC disc dated. ... Red Dead Redemption Review . Latest Videos. RDR: Undead Nightmare trailer 1 October, 2010. RDR: Legends & Killers DLC 6 August, 2010. Latest News ...

Probably Bad <b>News</b>: Parenting FAIL - Epic Fail Funny Videos and <b>...</b>

epic fail photos - Probably Bad News: Parenting FAIL.

Nielsen: 362000 Monthly Users For <b>News</b> Corp.&#39;s Times Paywall <b>...</b>

News International's silence on subscriber numbers for Times and Sunday Times online content continues, three and a half months after the paywall went up. But today audience research company Nielsen has taken a stab at estimating the ...

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'When I married Donna, I could get both hands around her waist,' said my husband's grandfather. Pointing at his full-figured wife, he boasted, 'Now look how much I got. That's what I call an investment!' — Katherine Eby, via Reader's Digest.com

In essence, that funny anecdote is right. Of course it doesn't sound very flattering to Katherine's grandmother-in-law, but that's exactly what investment is all about: making sure that your accounts and net worth grow bigger over time.

Investment is that exercise of putting money in a financial account, in your business, in a friend's business, or even in some other companies' business, for the pursuit of growing one's money. Investment is an effort to get one's money to "grow."

Investment works on the principle of "compounded interest." Interest that is added to your principal, or initial investment, itself gets to earn interest. So if you've initially invested $200, at the interest rate of 2.5%, at the maturity term of one month, you'll be earning $5 at the end of that month. If you renew the term of your money, your $205 will then earn $5.13 ($5.125) when another month is over. Certificates of deposit accounts or time deposits work exactly like this.

On the other hand, mutual funds work on the principle of snowballed profits. Mutual funds are as good as stocks and bonds, only you don't manage them yourself. Rather, trained financial experts are hired to manage your money. To invest in mutual funds, you can look into a broker that charges low commissions and check out their offerings.

Basic Tips For Investing In A Business

Investments could also mean those things you purchase or put money in, in order to further your business. Most people take additional studies in order to get the credentials needed to help them advance in their chosen careers. Other people invest in machinery, gadgets and equipment in order to make their lives easier. Then, most businesses invest in people which make up their workforce — their much-needed manpower.

Here are three informal rules of thumb by which you can measure your investments and purchases:

Having a hard time managing credit card debt problems? Try using Creditable, a web app that can help you tackle your debt head-on by tracking your progress, generating suggested achievable goals based on your situation, and by allowing you to interact with other people that can help you.

The best part about Creditable is that it is free and anonymous, thus it can still generate your personalized goals even without submitting a credit report.

Creditable requires users to sign up before being able to use it, but the registration only requires an email address so you don’t have to divulge your identity. You do not have to be worried about security issues when using the site since you won’t have to reveal any personal information.

Creditable will also produce goals that are particular for your situation which can serve as your guide that can help you out of your current credit issues.

Creditable also fosters an online community where people can ask about credit related issues and receive advice from other people, who may have gone through your current situation. In addition, you can easily find other users that have the same goals as yours, for more social support.

Features:

• Manage your credits without revealing your identity.
• Track the progress of your credit, works with multiple accounts.
• Suggests achievable goals based on your particular situation.
• Connects you with other people that have similar credit issues.
• Provides personalized credit card suggestions when re-establishing credit.
• Similar Tools: Mint, Paystr, Accpal, TripLittle.

Check out Creditable @ http://getcreditable.com

bench craft company complaints

RDR standalone DLC disc dated <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our news of RDR standalone DLC disc dated. ... Red Dead Redemption Review . Latest Videos. RDR: Undead Nightmare trailer 1 October, 2010. RDR: Legends & Killers DLC 6 August, 2010. Latest News ...

Probably Bad <b>News</b>: Parenting FAIL - Epic Fail Funny Videos and <b>...</b>

epic fail photos - Probably Bad News: Parenting FAIL.

Nielsen: 362000 Monthly Users For <b>News</b> Corp.&#39;s Times Paywall <b>...</b>

News International's silence on subscriber numbers for Times and Sunday Times online content continues, three and a half months after the paywall went up. But today audience research company Nielsen has taken a stab at estimating the ...

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RDR standalone DLC disc dated <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our news of RDR standalone DLC disc dated. ... Red Dead Redemption Review . Latest Videos. RDR: Undead Nightmare trailer 1 October, 2010. RDR: Legends & Killers DLC 6 August, 2010. Latest News ...

Probably Bad <b>News</b>: Parenting FAIL - Epic Fail Funny Videos and <b>...</b>

epic fail photos - Probably Bad News: Parenting FAIL.

Nielsen: 362000 Monthly Users For <b>News</b> Corp.&#39;s Times Paywall <b>...</b>

News International's silence on subscriber numbers for Times and Sunday Times online content continues, three and a half months after the paywall went up. But today audience research company Nielsen has taken a stab at estimating the ...

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RDR standalone DLC disc dated <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our news of RDR standalone DLC disc dated. ... Red Dead Redemption Review . Latest Videos. RDR: Undead Nightmare trailer 1 October, 2010. RDR: Legends & Killers DLC 6 August, 2010. Latest News ...

Probably Bad <b>News</b>: Parenting FAIL - Epic Fail Funny Videos and <b>...</b>

epic fail photos - Probably Bad News: Parenting FAIL.

Nielsen: 362000 Monthly Users For <b>News</b> Corp.&#39;s Times Paywall <b>...</b>

News International's silence on subscriber numbers for Times and Sunday Times online content continues, three and a half months after the paywall went up. But today audience research company Nielsen has taken a stab at estimating the ...

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Being Right or Making Money

Juan Williams Admits His Fear Of Muslims On Airplanes Is Irrational

A lot of media noise has resulted from news that NPR fired Juan Williams for making a bigoted remark that he gets “worried” and “nervous” when he sees Muslims in their “garb” on airplanes. Williams’ defenders have blown the issue way out of proportion, with some falsely claiming he was either taken out of context or that the situation somehow mirrors Andrew Breitbart’s gross mischaracterization of comments made by former USDA employee Shirley Sherrod, a comparison that, as Media Matters noted, “just doesn’t make sense.”

In fact, Williams stood by his remark while discussing his sacking on Fox News yesterday. He complained that he got fired for being honest and that his comments were not bigoted. But what seems to be getting lost in the clamor is that — regardless of the intent of Williams’ conversation about Muslims — his comments about Muslims on airplanes are misplaced and bigoted. As the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent correctly observed, “The problem…is that in his initial comments he didn’t clarify that the instinctual feeling itself is irrational and ungrounded, and something folks need to battle against internally whenever it rears its head.” But today on ABC’s Good Morning America, Williams finally acknowledged that his comments were indeed “irrational”:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: I guess some people are wondering, should you have gone the extra step and said, “Listen, they’re irrational, they are feelings I fight?”

WILLIAMS: Yeah, I could have done that. In fact, I think it’s very important to sort of parse this. What I said was, that if I’m at the gate at an airport and I see people who are in Muslim garb who are first and foremost identifying themselves as Muslims and in the aftermath of 9/11, I am taken aback, I have a moment of fear and it is visceral, it’s a feeling and I don’t say, “I’m not getting on the plane.” I don’t say, “You must go through additional security.” I don’t say I want to discriminate against these people, no such thing occurs. So to me, it was admitting that I have this notion, this feeling in the immediate moment.

Watch it:

Last night, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow cut through the distorted media chatter on Williams’ firing to put it in the right context. Maddow noted that targeting Muslims “has been a Fox News specialty for a long time now,” and that the other important side of this story is that Fox News handsomely rewarded Williams with a $2 million contract for his Islamophobia. (Ironically, in abetting O’Reilly’s conspiracy theory that George Soros may have been behind his firing at NPR, Williams said, “Money talks. He is a puppeteer.”)

Maddow then knocked down the right-wing canard that Wiliams’ free speech rights have been violated:

MADDOW: Let’s be clear here. This is not a First Amendment issue. … The First Amendment does not guarantee you a paid job as a commentator to say what you want. Your employment as a person paid to speak is at the pleasure of your employer. In this case, it displeased Juan Williams’ employer, at least one of them, for him to have reassured the Fox News audience he too is afraid of Muslims on airplanes and that’s not a bigoted thing. … And so, Juan Williams lost that job. This is not a First Amendment issue. This is an issue of what your employer is OK with.

Watch the segment:

Read more about the story behind Juan Williams firing in today’s Progress Report.

Daniel Greenfield aptly sums up the prevailing madness and denial as it played out recently in the sentencing of Times Square would-be jihad bomber Faisal Shahzad. "It's About The Jihad, Stupid," by Daniel Greenfield in Eurasia Review, October 11:

So at long last the case of the Times Square Bomber is over and we heard it straight from the camel's mouth, that Faisal Shahzad wasn't upset over his mortgage or angry over Obamacare-- he was what he had always been, a Muslim terrorist trying to kill infidels in the name of Islam.

After the attempted attacked, the liberal media insisted on painting Faisal Shahzad as a tragic victim of the mortgage crisis, suggesting that the whole "car bomb near the Lion King" matter could have been averted with more government bailouts of borrowers who weren't paying their bills. That is how the axis of liberal media responds to every act of Muslim terrorism, by blaming Republicans and offering their own policies as the solution.

Worried about airplane hijackings? Elect us, and we'll make the Muslim world love us with hearty doses of appeasement and long deep bows. Afraid of shootings at army bases, vote the right way and we'll pull out all the troops so no more kindly Muslim psychiatrists come down with secondhand PTSD. Worried about car bombs, with more socialism no one will want to car bomb Times Square anymore.

But then Faisal Shahzad ruined everything by opening his mouth. "This is but one life," he said. "If I am given a thousand lives, I will sacrifice them all for the sake of Allah, fighting this cause, defending our lands, making the word of Allah supreme over any religion or system."

The Judge did her usual liberal shtick, foolishly lecturing Shahzad on how moderate Islam is. She suggested that Shahzad should "spend some of the time in prison thinking carefully about whether the Koran wants you to kill lots of people".

But who knows better what Islam really represents, Faisal Shahzad or Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum? Clearly Miriam thinks she knows better, as Time Magazine and Newsweek and the New York Times insist that they know Islam, better than the Muslims who keep misunderstanding what Islam really is.

But Shahzad wasn't quoting some wacky preacher living in a cave somewhere, he was quoting the Koran. The same book that Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer suggested might be illegal to burn. The same book that Democrats and many Republicans insist is really a beautiful book that teaches tolerance. Unlike Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, Faisal Shahzad didn't need to spend a whole lot of time thinking about whether the Koran really wants him to kill lots of people. He could just read it...

"He it is who has sent His Messenger (Mohammed) with guidance and the religion of truth (Islam) to make it victorious over all religions even though the infidels may resist." Koran 61:9

That is the source of Faisal Shahzad's justification for his Jihad.

But surely this lovely verse has nothing to do with violence, you might say. It just means that Muslims should go out and persuade people that Islam is the only true religion. That sounds convincing, doesn't it?

Except Koran 61 is titled, "Al-Saff" or "Ranks, Battle Array". That title comes from verse 61:4 which proclaims, "Truly Allah loves those who fight in His Cause in battle array". The next two verses go on to curse the Jews, like Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, for their unbelief.

Two verses down from Faisal Shahzad's quote, the Koran promises Muslims a way to save themselves from hell. What's their "Get Out of Hell" free card? "That ye strive (your utmost) in the Cause of Allah, with your property and your persons." The Arabic word used for "strive" is, "watujahidoona" or "You will make Jihad".

Yes. It's the Jihad, stupid.

Faisal Shahzad didn't lose his home to foreclosure because of the injustice of the American banking system. He gave up his home to foreclosure because he was using that money to build a bomb instead. This wasn't some sort of radicalization in response to failure, it was a plan all along.

He led the facade of a normal life. He got a good job and a mortgage. He had a line of credit. And he had Facebook. And then right after he got US citizenship, he quit his job, went to Pakistan for explosives training, and the Times Square Car bombing was set into motion. He didn't lose his home, he abandoned it. The home and the job, and the rest of the facade of the American Dream was a sham, a disguise. Just like the 9/11 hijackers.

Faisal Shahzad was carrying out the words of the Koran, to use his property and person to carry on the Jihad against the unbelievers. His property and money were assets in a religious war.

The media refuses to understand that. Even the judge sentencing him refuses to understand that. Instead Faisal Shahzad is being treated like some sort of stupid child who doesn't know his own religion, even though he has practiced it all his life and probably knows the entire Koran by heart.

Isn't presuming to know what Islam is about better than Muslims do, the same kind of arrogance toward the Muslim world that liberals routinely accuse America of? And doesn't that drive Muslims toward greater acts of terror just to define clearly what Islam really is? In the words of the Ayatollah Khomeni; "Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless... Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for the Holy Warriors!"

That is the great liberal farce, in which liberals begin by lecturing Americans on what Islam really is, and then conclude by lecturing Muslims on what Islam really is. And the Muslims laugh in their faces, when they aren't blowing them off. Liberals haven't convinced very many Americans that Islam is a religion of peace, and they certainly aren't going to convince very many Muslims....

autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: Tweaks to be made to Korean track

Korean Grand Prix organisers are making minor modifications to the new Formula 1 track on Friday night following complaints from drivers about potential trouble spots on the new Yeongam circuit.

Colts <b>News</b>: COLTS <b>NEWS</b>

Austin Collie (thumb) and Antonio Johnson (knee) have undergone surgeries, the Colts announced Thursday.

Surprise: Fox <b>News</b> signs Juan Williams to new $2 million deal <b>...</b>

Fox News Chief Executive Roger Ailes handed Williams a new three-year contract Thursday morning, in a deal that amounts to nearly $2 million, a considerable bump up from his previous salary, the Tribune Washington Bureau has learned. ...

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Juan Williams Admits His Fear Of Muslims On Airplanes Is Irrational

A lot of media noise has resulted from news that NPR fired Juan Williams for making a bigoted remark that he gets “worried” and “nervous” when he sees Muslims in their “garb” on airplanes. Williams’ defenders have blown the issue way out of proportion, with some falsely claiming he was either taken out of context or that the situation somehow mirrors Andrew Breitbart’s gross mischaracterization of comments made by former USDA employee Shirley Sherrod, a comparison that, as Media Matters noted, “just doesn’t make sense.”

In fact, Williams stood by his remark while discussing his sacking on Fox News yesterday. He complained that he got fired for being honest and that his comments were not bigoted. But what seems to be getting lost in the clamor is that — regardless of the intent of Williams’ conversation about Muslims — his comments about Muslims on airplanes are misplaced and bigoted. As the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent correctly observed, “The problem…is that in his initial comments he didn’t clarify that the instinctual feeling itself is irrational and ungrounded, and something folks need to battle against internally whenever it rears its head.” But today on ABC’s Good Morning America, Williams finally acknowledged that his comments were indeed “irrational”:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: I guess some people are wondering, should you have gone the extra step and said, “Listen, they’re irrational, they are feelings I fight?”

WILLIAMS: Yeah, I could have done that. In fact, I think it’s very important to sort of parse this. What I said was, that if I’m at the gate at an airport and I see people who are in Muslim garb who are first and foremost identifying themselves as Muslims and in the aftermath of 9/11, I am taken aback, I have a moment of fear and it is visceral, it’s a feeling and I don’t say, “I’m not getting on the plane.” I don’t say, “You must go through additional security.” I don’t say I want to discriminate against these people, no such thing occurs. So to me, it was admitting that I have this notion, this feeling in the immediate moment.

Watch it:

Last night, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow cut through the distorted media chatter on Williams’ firing to put it in the right context. Maddow noted that targeting Muslims “has been a Fox News specialty for a long time now,” and that the other important side of this story is that Fox News handsomely rewarded Williams with a $2 million contract for his Islamophobia. (Ironically, in abetting O’Reilly’s conspiracy theory that George Soros may have been behind his firing at NPR, Williams said, “Money talks. He is a puppeteer.”)

Maddow then knocked down the right-wing canard that Wiliams’ free speech rights have been violated:

MADDOW: Let’s be clear here. This is not a First Amendment issue. … The First Amendment does not guarantee you a paid job as a commentator to say what you want. Your employment as a person paid to speak is at the pleasure of your employer. In this case, it displeased Juan Williams’ employer, at least one of them, for him to have reassured the Fox News audience he too is afraid of Muslims on airplanes and that’s not a bigoted thing. … And so, Juan Williams lost that job. This is not a First Amendment issue. This is an issue of what your employer is OK with.

Watch the segment:

Read more about the story behind Juan Williams firing in today’s Progress Report.

Daniel Greenfield aptly sums up the prevailing madness and denial as it played out recently in the sentencing of Times Square would-be jihad bomber Faisal Shahzad. "It's About The Jihad, Stupid," by Daniel Greenfield in Eurasia Review, October 11:

So at long last the case of the Times Square Bomber is over and we heard it straight from the camel's mouth, that Faisal Shahzad wasn't upset over his mortgage or angry over Obamacare-- he was what he had always been, a Muslim terrorist trying to kill infidels in the name of Islam.

After the attempted attacked, the liberal media insisted on painting Faisal Shahzad as a tragic victim of the mortgage crisis, suggesting that the whole "car bomb near the Lion King" matter could have been averted with more government bailouts of borrowers who weren't paying their bills. That is how the axis of liberal media responds to every act of Muslim terrorism, by blaming Republicans and offering their own policies as the solution.

Worried about airplane hijackings? Elect us, and we'll make the Muslim world love us with hearty doses of appeasement and long deep bows. Afraid of shootings at army bases, vote the right way and we'll pull out all the troops so no more kindly Muslim psychiatrists come down with secondhand PTSD. Worried about car bombs, with more socialism no one will want to car bomb Times Square anymore.

But then Faisal Shahzad ruined everything by opening his mouth. "This is but one life," he said. "If I am given a thousand lives, I will sacrifice them all for the sake of Allah, fighting this cause, defending our lands, making the word of Allah supreme over any religion or system."

The Judge did her usual liberal shtick, foolishly lecturing Shahzad on how moderate Islam is. She suggested that Shahzad should "spend some of the time in prison thinking carefully about whether the Koran wants you to kill lots of people".

But who knows better what Islam really represents, Faisal Shahzad or Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum? Clearly Miriam thinks she knows better, as Time Magazine and Newsweek and the New York Times insist that they know Islam, better than the Muslims who keep misunderstanding what Islam really is.

But Shahzad wasn't quoting some wacky preacher living in a cave somewhere, he was quoting the Koran. The same book that Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer suggested might be illegal to burn. The same book that Democrats and many Republicans insist is really a beautiful book that teaches tolerance. Unlike Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, Faisal Shahzad didn't need to spend a whole lot of time thinking about whether the Koran really wants him to kill lots of people. He could just read it...

"He it is who has sent His Messenger (Mohammed) with guidance and the religion of truth (Islam) to make it victorious over all religions even though the infidels may resist." Koran 61:9

That is the source of Faisal Shahzad's justification for his Jihad.

But surely this lovely verse has nothing to do with violence, you might say. It just means that Muslims should go out and persuade people that Islam is the only true religion. That sounds convincing, doesn't it?

Except Koran 61 is titled, "Al-Saff" or "Ranks, Battle Array". That title comes from verse 61:4 which proclaims, "Truly Allah loves those who fight in His Cause in battle array". The next two verses go on to curse the Jews, like Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, for their unbelief.

Two verses down from Faisal Shahzad's quote, the Koran promises Muslims a way to save themselves from hell. What's their "Get Out of Hell" free card? "That ye strive (your utmost) in the Cause of Allah, with your property and your persons." The Arabic word used for "strive" is, "watujahidoona" or "You will make Jihad".

Yes. It's the Jihad, stupid.

Faisal Shahzad didn't lose his home to foreclosure because of the injustice of the American banking system. He gave up his home to foreclosure because he was using that money to build a bomb instead. This wasn't some sort of radicalization in response to failure, it was a plan all along.

He led the facade of a normal life. He got a good job and a mortgage. He had a line of credit. And he had Facebook. And then right after he got US citizenship, he quit his job, went to Pakistan for explosives training, and the Times Square Car bombing was set into motion. He didn't lose his home, he abandoned it. The home and the job, and the rest of the facade of the American Dream was a sham, a disguise. Just like the 9/11 hijackers.

Faisal Shahzad was carrying out the words of the Koran, to use his property and person to carry on the Jihad against the unbelievers. His property and money were assets in a religious war.

The media refuses to understand that. Even the judge sentencing him refuses to understand that. Instead Faisal Shahzad is being treated like some sort of stupid child who doesn't know his own religion, even though he has practiced it all his life and probably knows the entire Koran by heart.

Isn't presuming to know what Islam is about better than Muslims do, the same kind of arrogance toward the Muslim world that liberals routinely accuse America of? And doesn't that drive Muslims toward greater acts of terror just to define clearly what Islam really is? In the words of the Ayatollah Khomeni; "Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless... Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for the Holy Warriors!"

That is the great liberal farce, in which liberals begin by lecturing Americans on what Islam really is, and then conclude by lecturing Muslims on what Islam really is. And the Muslims laugh in their faces, when they aren't blowing them off. Liberals haven't convinced very many Americans that Islam is a religion of peace, and they certainly aren't going to convince very many Muslims....

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Fox News Chief Executive Roger Ailes handed Williams a new three-year contract Thursday morning, in a deal that amounts to nearly $2 million, a considerable bump up from his previous salary, the Tribune Washington Bureau has learned. ...

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Who's Making Money

My column tomorrow is about President Obama's recent attacks
on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for 1) collecting money from
foreign affiliates (totaling about 0.05 percent of its budget) and
2) sponsoring ads that criticize Democrats. White House Counsel Bob
Bauer insists the president did not mean to suggest any connection
between those two points, even though he repeatedly put them in the
same sentence, since that would amount to accusing the group of
violating the federal ban on election-related spending by foreign
nationals. Obama admits he has no evidence to support that charge.
But neither does he have any evidence to refute it! Which,
according to presidential adviser David Axelrod, is the whole
point—i.e., the
president feels no compunction about making shit up without
full disclosure, who can say whether the Chamber of Commerce is
violating the law? What is it trying to hide? Yesterday ABC Senior
White House Correspondent Jake Tapper, whose terrier-like tenacity
puts his allegedly dogged predecessor Sam Donaldson to shame,

pressed Axelrod on this line of "text-decoration: line-through;">innuendo reasoning:

TAPPER: So the Chamber says no foreign money is paying for
any of their political activities.

AXELROD: And I guess my answer to the Chamber is just
disclose where your money is coming from and that will end all the
questions....

TAPPER: Their answer would be why should they disclose. No
one's disclosing.

AXELROD: Right, and they have a point there. We tried to
pass a law in the Congress -- every Democrat in the Senate voted
for it, every Republican in the Senate voted against it -- that
said everyone has to disclose....The Republicans
blocked that bill, and the question to them and their allies is:
what are they hiding that they don't want the American people to
see?

TAPPER: But you're asking the Chamber to prove a negative.
"Prove that you're not doing such and such accusation."

AXELROD: It’s not proving a negative, Jake, because all
you have to do to clear up the questions is reveal who your donors
are from....

TAPPER: But there's a difference between the Chamber and
some of these other organizations, right? The Chamber -- we know
what it stands for, we know basically the money is coming from big
business  and corporations. These other groups...they have
names like "Americans For Prosperity," we don’t know what
they stand for or who’s behind it.  But the Chamber is
different, isn't it?

AXELROD: Well, we certainly do know about the Chamber,
that they have foreign affiliates and they do raise money for the
organization that way....

TAPPER: But what do you say to people who argue you are
demonizing an organization for a charge that nobody knows if it's
true or not?

AXELROD: Well I’m not demonizing the Chamber of
Commerce. I’m simply suggesting to them that they disclose the
source of the $75 million that they are spending in campaigns and
put to rest...the questions that...have been raised.

TAPPER: Isn't that like the whackjobs that tell the
president he needs to show them his full long-form birth
certificate so he can put to rest the questions that have been
raised?

AXELROD: The president's birth certificate has been
available to people.

TAPPER: The long form?

Axelrod conspicuously dodged that last question. What is he
trying to hide?

More on the lopsided, blatantly partisan DISCLOSE Act, to which
Axelrod refers in his second response,
here.

Each Sunday, This Week hits a new low. For sheer inanity, nothing to date has topped Meghan McCain on the show’s roundtable. What exactly does she bring to this? Well, self-parody for starters. Asked about Christine O’Donnell, McCain pronounces:

Well, I speak as a 26-year-old woman. And my problem is that, no matter what, Christine O’Donnell is making a mockery of running for public office. She has no real history, no real success in any kind of business. And what that sends to my generation is, one day, you can just wake up and run for Senate, no matter how much lack of experience you have. And it scares me for a lot of reasons, and I just know (inaudible) it just turns people off, because she’s seen as a nutjob.

I suppose the comments would have more weight if not coming from a celebrity-by-nepotism with “no real history, no real success in any kind of business.” Other than her father and her propensity to bash conservatives, what exactly are her qualifications to discuss much of anything? Ah, but that’s more than enough for Amanpour.

McCain was also a font of misinformation regarding the impact of the Tea Party on younger voters:

MCCAIN: I wrote this out of personal experience. I know how I’m vilified on an absolutely daily basis. No matter what the Republican Party wants to think about this Tea Party movement, it is losing young voters at a rapid rate. And this isn’t going to change unless we start changing our message. …

AMANPOUR: She has a point, right? Young voters are the future. …

WILL: Not a political point. No, 20 months ago the question was, does the Republican Party have a future? In the last 20 months, we’ve had two things happen. A, the Tea Party movement has energized the Republican Party, and the Democrats are trying to hold onto one house of Congress right now. I don’t think that’s the sign of a party that’s in trouble.

DOWD: And I think Meghan’s right, but you have to also make the counterpoint. As Barack Obama won younger voters by 30 points. He as of right now has a difficulty getting any of those voters to a rally who have lost — a great deal are disappointed in what’s happened. …

So Amanpour brings on a political ignoramus, agrees with McCain’s “analysis,” and then must be corrected by two other guests who are too polite to simply say, “She doesn’t know what she is talking about.”

That was topped by Amanpour’s gleeful rooting for the administration’s crusade against political speech. There was this:

AMANPOUR: . . .I mean, where is campaign finance reform? Do you think it’s dead?

WILL: Dead.

AMANPOUR: Dead in the water?

WILL: Stake through it.

AMANPOUR: And you don’t like it all?

WILL: Absolutely wonderful development this year is — is the rolling back …

AMANPOUR: How can that be wonderful for a democracy, I mean, not to know where all of this money comes from and who’s putting it in?

WILL: What — what you’re talking about with the amount of money is speech. And the question is, do you have to notify the government before you can speak on politics?

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: … Justice Stevens (inaudible) that, you know, money doesn’t speak.

WILL: Well, almost all money in politics is spent on disseminating political advocacy. That’s just a fact. Now, Mr. Biden and — and the narrative from the Democrats has been this is secret money that the Koch brothers are putting into it. Well, get your story straight. Do we not — do we know who these guys are? I mean, some of them are about as anonymous as George Soros.

There isn’t a White House position for which Amanpour won’t vouch. There is no conservative principle that she doesn’t regard with disdain. How can unregulated speech be good for a democracy!? She is stumped.

I’m stumped, too. Amanpour is a ratings and journalistic disaster. It is hard to understand why she was picked for a serious Sunday talk-show-host position and even harder to understand what she is still doing there. The White House is taking an opportunity to clean house. Shouldn’t ABC News do the same?

robert shumake twitter

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robert shumake twitter

My column tomorrow is about President Obama's recent attacks
on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for 1) collecting money from
foreign affiliates (totaling about 0.05 percent of its budget) and
2) sponsoring ads that criticize Democrats. White House Counsel Bob
Bauer insists the president did not mean to suggest any connection
between those two points, even though he repeatedly put them in the
same sentence, since that would amount to accusing the group of
violating the federal ban on election-related spending by foreign
nationals. Obama admits he has no evidence to support that charge.
But neither does he have any evidence to refute it! Which,
according to presidential adviser David Axelrod, is the whole
point—i.e., the
president feels no compunction about making shit up without
full disclosure, who can say whether the Chamber of Commerce is
violating the law? What is it trying to hide? Yesterday ABC Senior
White House Correspondent Jake Tapper, whose terrier-like tenacity
puts his allegedly dogged predecessor Sam Donaldson to shame,

pressed Axelrod on this line of "text-decoration: line-through;">innuendo reasoning:

TAPPER: So the Chamber says no foreign money is paying for
any of their political activities.

AXELROD: And I guess my answer to the Chamber is just
disclose where your money is coming from and that will end all the
questions....

TAPPER: Their answer would be why should they disclose. No
one's disclosing.

AXELROD: Right, and they have a point there. We tried to
pass a law in the Congress -- every Democrat in the Senate voted
for it, every Republican in the Senate voted against it -- that
said everyone has to disclose....The Republicans
blocked that bill, and the question to them and their allies is:
what are they hiding that they don't want the American people to
see?

TAPPER: But you're asking the Chamber to prove a negative.
"Prove that you're not doing such and such accusation."

AXELROD: It’s not proving a negative, Jake, because all
you have to do to clear up the questions is reveal who your donors
are from....

TAPPER: But there's a difference between the Chamber and
some of these other organizations, right? The Chamber -- we know
what it stands for, we know basically the money is coming from big
business  and corporations. These other groups...they have
names like "Americans For Prosperity," we don’t know what
they stand for or who’s behind it.  But the Chamber is
different, isn't it?

AXELROD: Well, we certainly do know about the Chamber,
that they have foreign affiliates and they do raise money for the
organization that way....

TAPPER: But what do you say to people who argue you are
demonizing an organization for a charge that nobody knows if it's
true or not?

AXELROD: Well I’m not demonizing the Chamber of
Commerce. I’m simply suggesting to them that they disclose the
source of the $75 million that they are spending in campaigns and
put to rest...the questions that...have been raised.

TAPPER: Isn't that like the whackjobs that tell the
president he needs to show them his full long-form birth
certificate so he can put to rest the questions that have been
raised?

AXELROD: The president's birth certificate has been
available to people.

TAPPER: The long form?

Axelrod conspicuously dodged that last question. What is he
trying to hide?

More on the lopsided, blatantly partisan DISCLOSE Act, to which
Axelrod refers in his second response,
here.

Each Sunday, This Week hits a new low. For sheer inanity, nothing to date has topped Meghan McCain on the show’s roundtable. What exactly does she bring to this? Well, self-parody for starters. Asked about Christine O’Donnell, McCain pronounces:

Well, I speak as a 26-year-old woman. And my problem is that, no matter what, Christine O’Donnell is making a mockery of running for public office. She has no real history, no real success in any kind of business. And what that sends to my generation is, one day, you can just wake up and run for Senate, no matter how much lack of experience you have. And it scares me for a lot of reasons, and I just know (inaudible) it just turns people off, because she’s seen as a nutjob.

I suppose the comments would have more weight if not coming from a celebrity-by-nepotism with “no real history, no real success in any kind of business.” Other than her father and her propensity to bash conservatives, what exactly are her qualifications to discuss much of anything? Ah, but that’s more than enough for Amanpour.

McCain was also a font of misinformation regarding the impact of the Tea Party on younger voters:

MCCAIN: I wrote this out of personal experience. I know how I’m vilified on an absolutely daily basis. No matter what the Republican Party wants to think about this Tea Party movement, it is losing young voters at a rapid rate. And this isn’t going to change unless we start changing our message. …

AMANPOUR: She has a point, right? Young voters are the future. …

WILL: Not a political point. No, 20 months ago the question was, does the Republican Party have a future? In the last 20 months, we’ve had two things happen. A, the Tea Party movement has energized the Republican Party, and the Democrats are trying to hold onto one house of Congress right now. I don’t think that’s the sign of a party that’s in trouble.

DOWD: And I think Meghan’s right, but you have to also make the counterpoint. As Barack Obama won younger voters by 30 points. He as of right now has a difficulty getting any of those voters to a rally who have lost — a great deal are disappointed in what’s happened. …

So Amanpour brings on a political ignoramus, agrees with McCain’s “analysis,” and then must be corrected by two other guests who are too polite to simply say, “She doesn’t know what she is talking about.”

That was topped by Amanpour’s gleeful rooting for the administration’s crusade against political speech. There was this:

AMANPOUR: . . .I mean, where is campaign finance reform? Do you think it’s dead?

WILL: Dead.

AMANPOUR: Dead in the water?

WILL: Stake through it.

AMANPOUR: And you don’t like it all?

WILL: Absolutely wonderful development this year is — is the rolling back …

AMANPOUR: How can that be wonderful for a democracy, I mean, not to know where all of this money comes from and who’s putting it in?

WILL: What — what you’re talking about with the amount of money is speech. And the question is, do you have to notify the government before you can speak on politics?

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: … Justice Stevens (inaudible) that, you know, money doesn’t speak.

WILL: Well, almost all money in politics is spent on disseminating political advocacy. That’s just a fact. Now, Mr. Biden and — and the narrative from the Democrats has been this is secret money that the Koch brothers are putting into it. Well, get your story straight. Do we not — do we know who these guys are? I mean, some of them are about as anonymous as George Soros.

There isn’t a White House position for which Amanpour won’t vouch. There is no conservative principle that she doesn’t regard with disdain. How can unregulated speech be good for a democracy!? She is stumped.

I’m stumped, too. Amanpour is a ratings and journalistic disaster. It is hard to understand why she was picked for a serious Sunday talk-show-host position and even harder to understand what she is still doing there. The White House is taking an opportunity to clean house. Shouldn’t ABC News do the same?

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robert shumake hall of shame

robert shumake detroit

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Northwest <b>News</b>: Starbucks opens &#39;boozy bucks&#39; serving beer, wine <b>...</b>

News is a daily roundup of what's making headlines in the Pacific Northwest.

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iLounge news discussing the Loopt adds Facebook Places integration. Find more iPhone news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

robert shumake hall of shame

My column tomorrow is about President Obama's recent attacks
on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for 1) collecting money from
foreign affiliates (totaling about 0.05 percent of its budget) and
2) sponsoring ads that criticize Democrats. White House Counsel Bob
Bauer insists the president did not mean to suggest any connection
between those two points, even though he repeatedly put them in the
same sentence, since that would amount to accusing the group of
violating the federal ban on election-related spending by foreign
nationals. Obama admits he has no evidence to support that charge.
But neither does he have any evidence to refute it! Which,
according to presidential adviser David Axelrod, is the whole
point—i.e., the
president feels no compunction about making shit up without
full disclosure, who can say whether the Chamber of Commerce is
violating the law? What is it trying to hide? Yesterday ABC Senior
White House Correspondent Jake Tapper, whose terrier-like tenacity
puts his allegedly dogged predecessor Sam Donaldson to shame,

pressed Axelrod on this line of "text-decoration: line-through;">innuendo reasoning:

TAPPER: So the Chamber says no foreign money is paying for
any of their political activities.

AXELROD: And I guess my answer to the Chamber is just
disclose where your money is coming from and that will end all the
questions....

TAPPER: Their answer would be why should they disclose. No
one's disclosing.

AXELROD: Right, and they have a point there. We tried to
pass a law in the Congress -- every Democrat in the Senate voted
for it, every Republican in the Senate voted against it -- that
said everyone has to disclose....The Republicans
blocked that bill, and the question to them and their allies is:
what are they hiding that they don't want the American people to
see?

TAPPER: But you're asking the Chamber to prove a negative.
"Prove that you're not doing such and such accusation."

AXELROD: It’s not proving a negative, Jake, because all
you have to do to clear up the questions is reveal who your donors
are from....

TAPPER: But there's a difference between the Chamber and
some of these other organizations, right? The Chamber -- we know
what it stands for, we know basically the money is coming from big
business  and corporations. These other groups...they have
names like "Americans For Prosperity," we don’t know what
they stand for or who’s behind it.  But the Chamber is
different, isn't it?

AXELROD: Well, we certainly do know about the Chamber,
that they have foreign affiliates and they do raise money for the
organization that way....

TAPPER: But what do you say to people who argue you are
demonizing an organization for a charge that nobody knows if it's
true or not?

AXELROD: Well I’m not demonizing the Chamber of
Commerce. I’m simply suggesting to them that they disclose the
source of the $75 million that they are spending in campaigns and
put to rest...the questions that...have been raised.

TAPPER: Isn't that like the whackjobs that tell the
president he needs to show them his full long-form birth
certificate so he can put to rest the questions that have been
raised?

AXELROD: The president's birth certificate has been
available to people.

TAPPER: The long form?

Axelrod conspicuously dodged that last question. What is he
trying to hide?

More on the lopsided, blatantly partisan DISCLOSE Act, to which
Axelrod refers in his second response,
here.

Each Sunday, This Week hits a new low. For sheer inanity, nothing to date has topped Meghan McCain on the show’s roundtable. What exactly does she bring to this? Well, self-parody for starters. Asked about Christine O’Donnell, McCain pronounces:

Well, I speak as a 26-year-old woman. And my problem is that, no matter what, Christine O’Donnell is making a mockery of running for public office. She has no real history, no real success in any kind of business. And what that sends to my generation is, one day, you can just wake up and run for Senate, no matter how much lack of experience you have. And it scares me for a lot of reasons, and I just know (inaudible) it just turns people off, because she’s seen as a nutjob.

I suppose the comments would have more weight if not coming from a celebrity-by-nepotism with “no real history, no real success in any kind of business.” Other than her father and her propensity to bash conservatives, what exactly are her qualifications to discuss much of anything? Ah, but that’s more than enough for Amanpour.

McCain was also a font of misinformation regarding the impact of the Tea Party on younger voters:

MCCAIN: I wrote this out of personal experience. I know how I’m vilified on an absolutely daily basis. No matter what the Republican Party wants to think about this Tea Party movement, it is losing young voters at a rapid rate. And this isn’t going to change unless we start changing our message. …

AMANPOUR: She has a point, right? Young voters are the future. …

WILL: Not a political point. No, 20 months ago the question was, does the Republican Party have a future? In the last 20 months, we’ve had two things happen. A, the Tea Party movement has energized the Republican Party, and the Democrats are trying to hold onto one house of Congress right now. I don’t think that’s the sign of a party that’s in trouble.

DOWD: And I think Meghan’s right, but you have to also make the counterpoint. As Barack Obama won younger voters by 30 points. He as of right now has a difficulty getting any of those voters to a rally who have lost — a great deal are disappointed in what’s happened. …

So Amanpour brings on a political ignoramus, agrees with McCain’s “analysis,” and then must be corrected by two other guests who are too polite to simply say, “She doesn’t know what she is talking about.”

That was topped by Amanpour’s gleeful rooting for the administration’s crusade against political speech. There was this:

AMANPOUR: . . .I mean, where is campaign finance reform? Do you think it’s dead?

WILL: Dead.

AMANPOUR: Dead in the water?

WILL: Stake through it.

AMANPOUR: And you don’t like it all?

WILL: Absolutely wonderful development this year is — is the rolling back …

AMANPOUR: How can that be wonderful for a democracy, I mean, not to know where all of this money comes from and who’s putting it in?

WILL: What — what you’re talking about with the amount of money is speech. And the question is, do you have to notify the government before you can speak on politics?

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: … Justice Stevens (inaudible) that, you know, money doesn’t speak.

WILL: Well, almost all money in politics is spent on disseminating political advocacy. That’s just a fact. Now, Mr. Biden and — and the narrative from the Democrats has been this is secret money that the Koch brothers are putting into it. Well, get your story straight. Do we not — do we know who these guys are? I mean, some of them are about as anonymous as George Soros.

There isn’t a White House position for which Amanpour won’t vouch. There is no conservative principle that she doesn’t regard with disdain. How can unregulated speech be good for a democracy!? She is stumped.

I’m stumped, too. Amanpour is a ratings and journalistic disaster. It is hard to understand why she was picked for a serious Sunday talk-show-host position and even harder to understand what she is still doing there. The White House is taking an opportunity to clean house. Shouldn’t ABC News do the same?

robert shumake twitter

robert shumake twitter

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Watershed debuts Waterproof Bag for iPad | iLounge <b>News</b>

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Watershed debuts Waterproof Bag for iPad | iLounge <b>News</b>

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Why do so many people often dive headfirst into starting their own online business or getting into an internet moneymaking scheme, when they would think twice about starting up a business or entering a get rich quick scheme offline? Because there's this persistent myth that the internet is the only place in the world where you can rake in tons of dough with zero investment. Want to make money off affiliate advertising? Sign up for a free webhosting account, build a site using a pagebuilder, slap some adblocks up and watch the money roll in. Want to make money off your photographs? Sign up for a microstock agency and snap pictures with your pre-existing budget point and shoot. Want to sell your graphic design services? Sign up with a crowd-sourcing website, then make a bid on a project using nothing but the image editor that came installed on your computer.

Easy as pie, right? Unfortunately not, and here's why: although it's true that you could technically spend no money at all getting an internet venture started, you won't go very far in terms of revenue. Why? Because the only way to really get anywhere is to invest some money. The reason? An important key to creating a successful online business is to present something as professionally as possible. And guess what? Professionalism costs money.

Let's examine this "professionalism = money" principle with a few examples. Let's say you want to make money from Google Adsense by putting up a website and placing some text ads on it. If you want to make any real money from this site, you can't just build a lame home page using a free web hosting account. You have to buy a domain for your site, get it hosted at a fee-based web host, and-- if you don't have the design skills-- either purchase a template or hire someone to design it for you.

It seems like a lot of trouble to go through, but there's a good reason for it. In order to make a decent amount of income money off of Adsense, you have to attract thousands, if not millions, of visitors a month. The only way you could come close to achieving that type of traffic is to have a site that people will take seriously enough to visit and recommend to other people. If you put out a poorly designed site hosted at a free web host that slathers it in chintzy ads, carves it up into a multitude of frames, and gives it a really long, indistinct URL like www.freewebhost34.com/~username/mywebhost, you'll never see the type of numbers needed to earn a substantial amount of money. So spending money to buy a domain, host your site, and even design it is a must if you hope to earn any kind of decent revenue off Google Adsense.

Let's look at another example-- microstock agencies. People have flocked to microstock in droves, because they believe that all it takes to make money is to just use any pre-existing budget old point and shoot that they have lying around. As a person who's done microstock I can tell you that nothing could be further from the truth. The major microstock agencies have very high technical standards in terms of the images they'll accept into their inventory; any image that falls short of the ideal will get rejected. What this means is that more often than not, when you join an agency you will have to invest in a pricy prosumer camera or DSLR that can take higher quality photos than the one your cheap point and shoot takes. You can try to submit images shot with a 3 year old $150 camera, but trust me-- you'll get nothing but a string of rejections for your efforts no matter how well composed they are.

One last example of this "professionalism= money" principle at work is freelance graphic design. Let's say you're absolutely brilliant with an image editor (in fact, you're the Picasso of computer graphic artists!) You decide to offer your graphic design services to the public, whether through your own portfolio site or as a member of a crowdsourcing website such as 99 Designs. If you want to make money-- real money-- you can't just use whatever OEM software came bundled with your printer or installed with your O/S. You have to invest in a high end graphics application like Adobe Photoshop, because one of the many requirements that clients demand from a professional designer is that the finished piece be delivered in Photoshop's native image format (.psd) so it can be customized to their liking. You could try to run your graphic design business by squeaking by on a generic image editor, but it would be at a huge cost. You'd lose out on scores of potential business opportunities, since you wouldn't be able to produce a .psd for many clients.

Bottom line? True to the entrepreneur's credo, if you want to do well at earning revenue online, you have to spend money to make money, because professionalism demands it. This doesn't necessarily mean that it's impossible to make any money should you not make a small investment, just that you probably won't make nearly as much as you could. So before you even think about starting an internet business or affiliate scheme, be prepared to spend the money you need to get your internet venture off the ground as professionally as possible. Resist the temptation to be a cheapskate, because the money you invest initially could make a huge difference in how much you wind up earning in the long run.


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Watershed debuts Waterproof Bag for iPad | iLounge <b>News</b>

iLounge news discussing the Watershed debuts Waterproof Bag for iPad. Find more iPad Accessories news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

Northwest <b>News</b>: Starbucks opens &#39;boozy bucks&#39; serving beer, wine <b>...</b>

News is a daily roundup of what's making headlines in the Pacific Northwest.

Loopt adds Facebook Places integration | iLounge <b>News</b>

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Watershed debuts Waterproof Bag for iPad | iLounge <b>News</b>

iLounge news discussing the Watershed debuts Waterproof Bag for iPad. Find more iPad Accessories news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

Northwest <b>News</b>: Starbucks opens &#39;boozy bucks&#39; serving beer, wine <b>...</b>

News is a daily roundup of what's making headlines in the Pacific Northwest.

Loopt adds Facebook Places integration | iLounge <b>News</b>

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