Actually, if you accept "bailout logic" at all, this makes the most sense and should have been done from the beginning (which is why I didn't object when McCain proposed it).

If people's ability to pay their mortgages are at the heart of the problem, why are we fucking about several steps up the chain from there, trying to stabilize banks and inject capital to make up for bad mortgages? Why not just firm up the mortgagees themselves, which would, in turn, fix the problems of the institutions holding them as assets?

It's unfair, yeah, but all of this is unfair. And maybe it's not so unfair -- anyone with good credit and a mortgage can refinance at a new lower rate.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is considering a new plan to lower mortgage rates in an effort to resuscitate the U.S. housing market, a government official said.

The Treasury, which already has a program to buy mortgage- backed securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, could step up those purchases to drive down interest rates on some loans to 4.5 percent, the official said on condition of anonymity. The plan is preliminary and could change.

The deliberations come as President-elect Barack Obama pledges fresh action to help American homeowners, and on top of a $600 billion initiative announced by the Federal Reserve last week to buy mortgage debt. Mortgage applications surged by a record last week and the average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate loan dropped to 5.47 percent, the lowest level since June 2005, the Mortgage Bankers Association said today.

“Lower mortgage rates will allow households to fortify their balance sheets, and we will likely see consumer spending come back a little quicker than it would otherwise,” said Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte, North Carolina. At the same time, “it's not going to be an instant panacea for what ails the economy,” he said.

While lowering mortgage rates to 4.5 percent would allow most homeowners to refinance into a cheaper loan, far fewer will actually qualify, said Rajiv Setia and Nicholas Strand at Barclays Capital in New York.

“Over 90 percent of the mortgage universe out there would be refinancable, but you can't force banks to lend to people,” said Setia, a fixed-income strategist for Barclays.

Well, you kinda can, given that we increasingly own banks.

Posted by: Ace at 03:53 PM | Comments (55)
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Officials suspect that a batch of write-in votes were mistakenly counted twice.

W3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUs">Franken is protesting. Um, based on what? If the votes don't exist, they don't exist.

How About a Little Coulter? Ah, there's that sweet, sweet scorn.

The head of the Washington State Democratic Party orchestrating this ballot theft [in the disputed gubernatorial election] was Paul Berendt. Guess who is advising Al Franken on the Minnesota recount right now? That's right: Paul Berendt.

Get ready, good people of Minnesota: You have no idea what is about to hit you. And, per usual, the Republicans clearly haven't the vaguest notion what is about to hit them.

Just this week, liberal Ramsey County "discovered" 171 new votes from a single voting machine in a single precinct. An analysis by John Lott shows that these newly "discovered" votes represent yet another statistical improbability that favors Franken: Despite the fact that Maplewood precinct No. 6 gave Franken only 45.4 percent of the original, untampered-with vote, the newly "discovered" votes gave Franken 53.2 percent of the vote.

Also, you will notice that Franken is obsessively fixated on the absentee ballots, a specialty of the vote fraud experts at ACORN. Inasmuch as only 5 percent of absentee ballots were rejected in Minnesota, Franken already has fraud baked into the cake. But he needs more.

He is demanding to be given the names of voters whose absentee ballots were rejected. Why would he need the names of the voters? Unless ... he plans to track them down, determine how they voted and then ferociously fight to qualify the absentee ballots only of known Franken voters.

Franken can pretend to be generous -- by not demanding that all rejected absentee ballots be counted -- while in fact being manipulative -- by requesting that only the ballots with votes for him be counted. That's exactly what the Democrats -- led by Franken adviser Berendt -- did to steal the 2004 election in Washington state.

But first, Franken will need the names. Then he can check voter registration lists, ask around or, in a really aggressive move, call the rejected voters directly and bully them into admitting who they voted for. If they say "Coleman," I promise you they won't get a call back to ensure that "every vote is counted."

There is absolutely no other reason to get the names of those whose ballots were rejected.

We'll find out in the next few weeks if Barack Obama's "new politics of hope and change" includes turning the cleanest state in the union into one of the dirtiest.

Posted by: Ace at 03:33 PM | Comments (31)
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You had a nice run while it lasted kid. The party is over now. Times are tough all over..

He was the world's cuddliest money-spinner - a snow white ball of fur that hundreds of thousands of people flocked to see.

But today, looking considerably dirtier and more down-at-heel after a roll in the earth, Knut the polar bear is facing eviction from his home at Berlin Zoo as the credit crunch bites.

Zoologists are concerned for his mental welfare and fear that because he only knows contact with humans he has developed psychopathic tendencies...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 02:36 PM | Comments (49)
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Not nearly as funny as Donkey Punch.

A bipartisan commission empanelled by Congress released a report today saying that terrorists are likely to carry out a weapons-of-mass-destruction attack somewhere in the world in the next five years.

The commission concluded that the terrorists are more likely to use biological weapons than nuclear weapons and that the United States is not prepared for such an attack.

In one scenario envisioned by the presidentÂ’s Homeland Security Council, the commission reports, terrorists driving a truck with a concealed sprayer would infect five different U.S. metropolitan areas with anthrax in two waves of attacks conducted two weeks apart.

“The Commission believes that unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013,” says the report.

Over 10,000 dead, the scenario projects.

Great.

Posted by: Ace at 02:27 PM | Comments (31)
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I am laughing my ass off.

First of all, content warning on this clip, which plays like most R-Rated thriller trailers -- a hint of sex, a hint of violence, etc. Upgraded Content Warning: I'm told it contains nudity, which I missed completely.

A bigger content warning if you decide to google "donkey punch" to find out what it is. It's not explained in the trailer what it is, except it's "proper hardcore." Here are some definitions, which actually aren't the one I heard, exactly. But it's along these lines.

Bear in mind, this isn't a real sex act. This is a made-up thing for producing laughs.

This is the funniest thing I've seen in a year. This isn't a goof-- this is a real movie, yo, a thriller about a bunch of guys and gals who get together on a yacht for drinking, drugs, and yes, donkey punching, until, you guessed it, one of the girls is killed in a particularly hardcore donkey punch session.

Now, this being the trailer for a thriller, will you be treated at the end to insistent drums and rapid-fire cuts of mayhem and violence? You'll just have to watch to find out.

They really made a movie called Donkey Punch. About actual donkey punching. And also, apparently, about shotguns and chainsaws.

Again, content warning for the clip.

Thanks so much to MattM.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:53 PM | Comments (92)
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Seriously.

Okay, that's not the article, that's a link to a blog with some really great photography of the abandoned Danvers State insane asylum. Love the tunnels connecting all the main buildings. My dick just rolled for initiative.

Here's the actual article.

In his forthcoming book, Born To Be Good (which is not a biography of Obama), Keltner writes that he believes when we experience transcendence, it stimulates our vagus nerve, causing "a feeling of spreading, liquid warmth in the chest and a lump in the throat." For the 66 million Americans who voted for Obama, that experience was shared on Election Day, producing a collective case of an emotion that has only recently gotten research attention. It's called "elevation."

Elevation has always existed but has just moved out of the realm of philosophy and religion and been recognized as a distinct emotional state and a subject for psychological study. Psychology has long focused on what goes wrong, but in the past decade there has been an explosion of interest in "positive psychology"—what makes us feel good and why. University of Virginia moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who coined the term elevation, writes, "Powerful moments of elevation sometimes seem to push a mental 'reset button,' wiping out feelings of cynicism and replacing them with feelings of hope, love, and optimism, and a sense of moral inspiration."

..

Keltner believes certain people are "vagal superstars"—in the lab he has measured people who have high vagus nerve activity. "They respond to stress with calmness and resilience, they build networks, break up conflicts, they're more cooperative, they handle bereavement better." He says being around these people makes other people feel good. "I would guarantee Barack Obama is off the charts. Just bring him to my lab."

...

. Since it's tricky to study the vagus nerve, [Haidt] and a psychology student conceived of a way to look at it indirectly. The vagus nerve works with oxytocin, the hormone of connection. Since oxytocin is released during breast-feeding, he and the student brought in 42 lactating women and had them watch either an inspiring clip from The Oprah Winfrey Show about a gang member saved from a life of violence by a teacher or an amusing bit from a Jerry Seinfeld routine.

About half the Oprah-watching mothers either leaked milk into nursing pads or nursed their babies following the viewing; none of the Seinfeld watchers felt enough breast dilation to wet a pad, and fewer than 15 percent of them nursed. You could say elevation is Oprah's opiate of the masses, so it's fitting that she early on gave Obama her imprimatur. And that for his victory speech was up front in Grant Park, elevation's moist embodiment, feeling so at one with humankind that she used a stranger as a handkerchief.

Obama causes one to lactate? Sounds about right.

Posted by: Ace at 01:41 PM | Comments (46)
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Wow.

They had a right to heroin. Who would have guessed?

Drug-addicted prisoners have received compensation because their human rights were breached when they were forced to go cold turkey, it was revealed today.

Around £11,400 was paid to three inmates at Winchester Prison in Hampshire after a court ruled that it was a breach of their human rights to deny them drugs such as heroin and substitute substances.

...

The payments were criticised by campaign group the Taxpayers' Alliance.
Spokesman Mark Wallace said in a statement: 'It's disgusting that law-abiding taxpayers have to stump up compensation because drug addicts weren't allowed to keep taking drugs in prison.

'It's extremely worrying that the compensation culture has grown so much and particularly that prisoners have obviously realised that this is an easy way to make a quick buck.

'It is also extremely unfair that if you are the victim of crime you are likely to get minimal victim compensation, if any, but it appears criminals are increasingly turning a tidy profit from the system.'

What the hell happened to Britain?

Posted by: Ace at 12:58 PM | Comments (71)
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Female teenagers. Kinda hot ones.

Though the joke is there, I can't really make it, because it's so wrong. And these kids are nasty little bastards.

Charges have been filed in Freeborn County District Court in the case of alleged abuse at Good Samaritan Society of Albert Lea.

The charges, filed Monday, range from mandated failure to report suspected abuse to criminal abuse of a vulnerable adult and assault in the fifth degree.

According to court papers, Brianna Marie Broitzman, 19, has been charged with three counts of assault in the fifth degree of a caregiver to a vulnerable adult, three counts of criminal abuse of a vulnerable adult, three counts of criminal abuse of a vulnerable adult with sexual contact, one instance of disorderly conduct by a caregiver, and one instance of mandated reporter failure to report.

Ashton Michelle Larson, 18, has been charged with two counts of assault in the fifth degree of a caregiver to a vulnerable adult, one count of criminal abuse of a vulnerable adult, four counts of criminal abuse of a vulnerable adult with sexual contact, two counts of disorderly conduct by a caregiver and one count of mandated reporter failure to report.

...

The details of abuse allegations surfaced after the release of a Minnesota Department of Health report Aug. 28 that concluded four teenagers were involved in verbal, sexual and emotional abuse of 15 residents at the nursing home in Albert Lea. The report did not release the names of the teenagers.

Light content warning for the rest. It's a newspaper, so it's not exactly graphic, but it does describe their actions in sufficient detail to raise eyebrows. more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:49 PM | Comments (96)
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Broken promises are nice when coming from a Marxist-curious Democrat.

Of course, he's still likely to raise taxes, as Captain Ed explains.

Larry Kudlow expresses his weariness of bailouts and proposes -- futilely, of course -- that what could actually get the economy going again is a large tax cut, especially on capital gains.

Posted by: Ace at 11:14 AM | Comments (50)
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Gotta say I'm on the pirates' side here.

The irony in this story is thicker than Rosie O’Donnell’s thigh. A hijacked Saudi tanker, the Sirius Star, taken by pirates off the coast of Somalia last week, is being threatened by Islamic militants who say they will “rescue” the ship from the pirates. Stating the hijacking is a crime against Islam (and really, what isn’t these days?), members of the Somali Islamist group al-Shabab arrived in the town of Harardhere to battle the pirates.

Now before we go any deeper into this story let us get some things straight. Piracy is in fact against Islam. So, al-Shabab, which happens to be one of the splinter groups battling for control of Somalia along with the deposed Islamic Courts Union (which was tossed out of power in 2006 by the Ethiopians with a little help from the U.S), is correct in that regard. Except, thatÂ’s not the sole reason they want to battle the Corsairs who hijacked the Saudi ship.

...Islamic militants claiming piracy is against Islam is dripping with such thick irony one must wonder how the words could pass the mouth of the person who utters such a phrase. But then we get down to the truth of the matter, where the exception proves the rule.

The fighters told residents they would battle the pirates because the tanker, which is loaded with 2 million barrels of oil, is owned by a Muslim country and should not have been taken.

So if the tanker were owned by someone not Muslim, hijacking it is not against Islam and is allowed according to the extremists. This is the problem with Islam today. Preying on those not Muslim is, if not accepted, then certainly tolerated, and in some cases demanded. In case any of you out there do not remember the early history of the United States, we’ve already dealt with this problem once. The first line from the Marine Corps Hymn is “From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli,” where Marines battled the Barbary pirates after Congress got tired of paying tribute to the potentates who ruled there and President Jefferson decided to flex a little U.S. muscle.

At least the pirates commendably adhere to the liberal value of equal treatment for all. Can't say the same for the xenophobic, racist* terrorists, of course.

Does any other religion distinguish between believers and nonbelievers when it comes to the prohibitions against murder and rape? As far as I know, that's a singular innovation of the RoP.

* We continue needing a word for what fundamentalist Islam is -- it's not racist per se, but it's just like that -- virulently so -- except based on religion rather than race. There doesn't seem to be a good word for it. Yet.

Perhaps Andrew Sullivan will invent one for us.

Posted by: Ace at 10:36 AM | Comments (66)
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