Thursday, August 31, 2006

Mortgage Worries

Having purchased a medium-sized home about 2 years ago, these type of articles concern me. Hindsight being 20/20, I'm glad I didn't take the too-good-to-be-true type of offers that mortgage lenders were offering at the time. I also insisted on a flat rate loan. If you've got a mortgage hanging over your head, break out the paperwork and read all the terms again. I would suggest adjusting and preparing accordingly for the worst if your loan falls into one of the categories mentioned in the housing articles, such as the ones linked below. Even if it doesn't, you'll probably have to prepare for home devaluation or other side-effects of a bubble bursting (such as job losses) which will likely effect everyone across the board.


The Great Housing Crash of '07
The housing bubble is a $10 trillion equity balloon that will explode sometime in 2007 when more than $1 trillion in no-interest, no down payment, adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) reset; setting the stage for massive home devaluation, foreclosures and unemployment. ("By some estimates housing activity has accounted for 40% of all the jobs created since 2001". Times Online) July's plunging sales are just the first sign of a major slowdown. The worst is yet to come.

Nightmare Mortgages
They promise the American Dream: A home of your own -- with ultra-low rates and payments anyone can afford. Now, the trap has sprung.

Those who took the bait are in for a nasty surprise. While many Americans have started to worry about falling home prices, borrowers who jumped into so-called option ARM loans have another, more urgent problem: payments that are about to skyrocket.

Foreclosure filings up 34% in Palm Beach County

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

A Handy-Dandy Guide To U.S. Foreign Policy

Courtesy of Nicholas von Hoffman and The New York Observer, 8/16 Issue, Page 4.

A Handy-Dandy Guide To U.S. Foreign Policy

Q: What is the difference between a regime and a government?
 
A: A regime is a government disliked by the United States. A government is a regime that the United States likes.
 
Q: Are all axes evil?
 
A: No. An example of an axis of good is the Washington-London axis, which is an axis of very good because it is mostly Anglo-Saxon. The Paris-Berlin axis is good, but not as good as Washington-London.
 
Q: Recently, reports from Iraq have it that crowds are stoning the police when they arrive after a massacre. What does that mean?
 
A: In certain Arab-type countries, this is considered a support-the-police gesture, similar to Americans who put support-our-troops decals on their S.U.V.s.
 
Q: It seems that the attacks and killings in Iraq are growing. What should a current-events buff make of it?
 
A: Higher levels of violence indicate that the terrorists are growing weaker and more desperate. We should welcome news of larger slaughters as proof of progress and an indication that our troops will be home sooner.
 
Q: Sooner than what?
 
A: Sooner than soon. Just remember the good news is that 3,149 Iraqi civilians were killed in June, up from 2,669 in May. Washington Middle East experts are predicting 6,000 a month in the near future and 15,000 by Election Day.
 
Q: Is Iraq near civil war?
 
A: No. A civil war must be declared by both sides, and since Iraq has one government that is too weak to do anything anyway, a civil war is impossible.
 
Q: Please help us to understand how they can be trying Saddam Hussein for killing 148 people 24 years ago when on some days they are killing twice as many in Iraq now. Does that make sense to you?

A: You have to take the long view. Remember, we are in Iraq to stay the course. By 2030 C.E., which is 24 years from now, anyone killing so much as a goat will be tried and convicted. Do not allow miscellaneous factoids to confuse you. Stay focused and remain good to go where the Commander in Chief points.
 
Q: What are some of the signs that show we are winning the war in Iraq?
 
A: When we first liberated Iraq, the locals only tried to kill American military and were often not successful. Over time they have gotten better at that, which is proof of how American foreign aid is working.  But the sign of the biggest improvement is that the Iraqis are now killing each other. In the bad old pre-American days, a few of them under Saddam Husseins orders used to kill other Iraqis, but most Iraqis were forbidden to kill each otherbut now, under democracy, all can slaughter each other. And next year there will be vastly improved electric service.
 
Q: What is an asymmetrical war?
 
A: There are several kinds of asymmetrical wars. One kind is when normal people fight dwarfs and midgets. Another kind is when normal people fight hunchbacks and or persons who have one leg shorter than the other. Another form of asymmetrical war is when Christians and Jews, generally thought of as white men, fight Arabs, generally not thought of as particularly white. Does that answer your question?
 
Q: What is the Geneva Convention?
 
A: The so-called Geneva Convention is held annually on a rotating basis by the pharmaceutical industry in Geneva, Ill., Geneva, Ohio, Geneva, N.Y., Lake Geneva, Wis., and Geneva, Switzerland. At these conventions, the delegates discuss questions of biomedical ethics.
 
Q: What is a Katyusha rocket?

A: It is a World War II rocket invented in 1937 by Georgy E. Langemak, Vladimir Artemiev, Boris Petropavlovaky and Yuryi PobedonostsevRussian Communists all. It is named after a girl called Ekaterina, nicknamed Katyusha. The weapon is notoriously inaccurate unless the person using it chants the names of its inventors five times rapidly. Its accuracy can also be increased by orders of magnitude if, while using the device, you sing the Katyusha song. No Arab has successfully sung the Katyusha song, which explains why Hezbollahs erratic fire hits civilians.
 
Nevertheless, equipped with Russian weapons like the Katyusha and Kalashnikov, the Arabs have a huge advantage over the Israelis and the Americans, who are forced to fight with World War III and IV weapons, many of which are so poorly designed that the persons discharging them may be hundreds or even thousands of miles away from the targets. This may explain why there is so much collateral damage to toddlers and nursing mothers.
 
Q: Who started the new war in Lebanon and why?
 
A: The terrorists started it out of spite and hatred.
 
Q: Why are the Arabs always kidnapping Israeli soldiers?
 
A: They claim they do it because the Israelis have 9,000 of their people in jail and thats the only way they can get them out. But, of course, the real reason is that they wish to drive Israel into the sea, and their plan is to do so by kidnapping all the Israelis one at a time, putting them on inflatable rafts and pushing them out into the Mediterranean.
 
Q: What is the Shiite Crescent?
 
A: It is a conspiracy that starts in Iran, goes through Iraq and ends up in Lebanon.
 
Q: What is a Shiite?
 
A: A member of an anti-American/Israeli Islamofascist sect. The Shiites were the ungrateful Iraqis who turned against the Americans after the Americans had liberated them from Saddam Hussein.
 
Q: So how do we handle that?
 
A: We sic the Sunnis on them.
 
Q: Who are the Sunnis?
 
A: Thats the Osama bin Laden/Saddam Hussein crowd. We get them to attack the Shiites, which they are doing right smartly in Iraq, and that way we keep all the Arabs at each others throats.
 
Q: Wouldnt that make matters worse?
 
A: No. It will show a healthy democratic diversity of opinion.
 
Q: Who should look at fromisraeltolebanon.info, a Web site showing pictures of dead Lebanese babies?
 
A: Nobody. They put these pictures up on the Internet to grab your attention and make you feel guilty as if you are killing babies. Do not fall victim to their crude propaganda.
 
Q: Is Israel like Nazi Germany?
 
A: No.
 
Q: How do the two differ?
 
A:  Israel is a deeply religious democracy with its own Bible containing a real-estate deed to the Middle East, while Nazi Germany did not have a Bible and did not put much stock in God since it had Adolf Hitler instead.
 
Q: But what about the accusations that the Israelis do things in Gaza and Lebanon which remind people of what the Nazis did?
 
A: Such accusations are only made by Islamists or persons with left-wing attitudes at a loss as to how to cause trouble since the fall of the Soviet Union. Also, French people sometimes say such things.
 
There are major differences between how Israel acts and what Nazi Germany did. For instance, when the Nazis decided to blow a community to kingdom come, they did it without any warning. The Israelis always warn first. They drop pamphlets from the sky, telling the residents they have anywhere from 20 minutes to a few hours to run for their lives. Thats time enough to slip on your flip-flops, scoop up the baby and get the hell out of the house before it gets bunker-busted. The Nazis would never give people that kind of humanitarian break.
 
Q: Is that the only difference?
 
A: No, not at all.
 
The Nazis had mass-murder factories where they poison-gassed and killed millions of Jewish and other people.
 
Israelis do not do anything like that. What they do when they come up against a million or so terroristo/Islamo-fascisto Arabistos is to seal off the buggers from land, sea and air so that nobody can leave and nothing can get in that the Israelis do not want to let in. If the people want food or medicine, theyve got to grow it, or else they can pray to Allah if hes such a big one-and-only G-O-D. Then the Israelis destroy the power plants, the water system, the sewage-treatment plants, the roads and the bridges and let the terroristo/Islamo-fascisto Arabistos stew in their own juices.
 
Q: Do the good guys ever kidnap anyone?
 
A: You need to think that question through a little more. Without stereotyping anybody, its safe to say that Arabs, who tend toward the sneaky and cowardly, kidnap. Americans and Israelis "capture".
 
Q: What is a ceasefire?
 
A: It is a word for surrender to people who do not have the stomach to see the war on terror through to the end.
 
Q: When will the end come?
 
A: When the Rapture does. At that time, swords will be beaten into plowshares (except for a few, just in case) and Jews will become Christians (or get their throats slit) and those left standing will join in celebrating the Second Coming with dancing, Pepsi-Cola and feasting on Arab-burgers.


And now, wisdom from Ms. Arundhati Roy; "The Day of the Jackels".

       
Pass it on.

Monday, August 07, 2006

George Galloway: Israel is a Terrorist State

George Galloway continues to tell it like it is on any media outlet that dares to bring him on. Sky News in the UK interviewed him about the Israel / Lebanon conflict and he let them have it.




Note how the techies at Murdoch’s Sky News potted down the volume on Galloway, as he made too much sense and was cleaning the anchor’s clock, and then brought up the volume of b-roll footage to drown him out. You’d think, by now, the corporate media would steer clear of Galloway, as he consisently tells the truth, a forbidden fruit in the fraudulent “war on terror,” that is to say state-sponsored terrorism against Arabs and Muslims resisting the murderous aggression of Israel and the United States.

Who is George Galloway? He's a British MP that the US senate accused of war profiteering. He let them have it as well, in 2005 when he came to America to testify.

Saturday, August 05, 2006

Cuttng through Israel's Propaganda War in the US

Four short clips of things Americans never see on US Television.


Exhibit #1 - Journalists who ask questions - Part 1



Calling it what it is - terrorism against a civilian population


UK correspondant John Snow interviews Israeli ambassador about Israel's attacks against Palestinians.


Notice that in the UK, television journalists don't automatically defer to Israeli government represenatives the way US news people do. Why is that?


Exhibit #2 - Journalists who ask questions. - Part 2



For European eyes only

CNN broadcasts different news in Europe than it does in the US. Why can't we get reporters like this on CNN-US? Instead we get Wolf Blitzer, a former employee of AIPAC, the Israeli War Party's lobby in the US.


Exhibit #3 - US citizens who say "NO!"



The US is mortgaging its future to support
the criminal activities of a foreign power - why?


Do you think all Americans are uninformed and/or unconcerned about America's relationship with Israel?

You would if you watch US TV.

The reality: Millions of Americans are aware that US foreign policy has been hijacked by the Israeli War Party - and they cannot get their voices heard because of US media news censorship.


Exhibit #4 - Daily brutality



What goes on in the refugee camps


The Israeli military thought this footage of a routine operation in the Occupied Territories had been destroyed. It wasn't and someone with courage ran it on TV - in Israel. Then, thanks to Canada, it was aired in North America. You will never see it on a US network.


Being on the receiving end of this kind of brutality is the norm for Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories.


Please share this page with your friends and colleagues


US citizens need two things they're not getting:


1. Factual reporting on what is going on in the Middle East and


2. Representatives in Congress who represent the interests of the United States, not of the Israeli War Party.


Thanks BrassCheck TV