Charlsie sent this Op-Ed today and I agree with it 100%:
I’ll say this upfront: I hope the titans of finance who expect us little people to save them are ashamed of themselves. But at the same time, in painting Main Street solely as a victim of a rapacious Wall Street, we are being hypocritical.
We are all to blame.
Step back. The securities that are poisoning the financial system are made up of mortgages and home equity lines that are going sour. . . . “Innovation” on Wall Street meant that the institution that made the loans could sell them off, and bankers could carve up those loans into new instruments, which they in turn sold to investors around the globe, with the result being that no one felt responsible for ensuring that the person who got the mortgage or the credit card or the home equity loan could actually pay for it.
But who made the decision to take on that mortgage she couldn’t really afford? Who lied about her income or assets in order to qualify for a mortgage? Who used the proceeds of a home equity line to pay for an elaborate vacation? Who used credit cards to live a lifestyle that was well beyond her means? Well, you and I did. (Or at least, our neighbors did.)
Amen.
I have a fairly broad sense of humor. I generally find practical jokes pretty funny. This one, not so much:
The 20-year-old Atlanta woman was never raped or injured but said she got a steady flow of telephone calls, text messages and visits to her apartment on Sept. 19th all from men who wanted to be part of a rape fantasy described in a Craigslist advertisement.
Some of the men showed up on her doorstep and “tried to enter the apartment,” the police report said.
This might be funny if the internet were not filled with complete weirdos… it also sounds like a decent Crim hypo.
On Sunday night the internet connection that I had been borrowing for the last few weeks mysteriously disappeared. It reappeared, encrypted, several minutes later. I didn’t care much for this turn of events, to be honest.
Now, when I lived in Tuscaloosa, I had very few problems with Comcast. When I moved to Indiana things were almost as good (for the most part). Then I moved to Illinois where I had, literally, months of trouble and they only seemed to care about it after I had moved out. Now, because they did end up putting some effort in, they’re the fastest option, and, on the whole, Comcast has been decent I decided to give them a shot not to suck here in Atlanta1.
For you non-literary types, this is really, really weak foreshadowing
Tags: Comcast Sucks
Yesterday was a crazy, crazy day. So crazy. I drove over to Athens for lunch and some tailgating before driving back to Atlanta to watch the game. Scout wouldn’t have done well for the 14 or 15 hours he’d have been alone had I stayed.
Speaking of Scout, his old collar (now 2+ years old) broke last week. He got a snazzy new collar as a gift from a friend of mine yesterday, and he really likes it. At least I think that’s why he gets all excited when I put it on him.
So USC drops one to Oregon State. ESPN provides this as a headline:
Oh, ESPN, you're so funny.
Game summary or dire warning about certain kinds of contraception? You tell me.
The U.S. News law school rankings are a pretty big deal. Everyone (in the law school world) cares about them. Why? Because prospective students care about them far, far more than they should. In fact, there are no shortage of students who base their choices solely on those rankings.
Having worked with the admissions office at IU for the three years I was in law school, I can tell you that schools try really hard to keep their LSAT and UGPA medians up. Typically they do it by offering scholarships or other benefits. Behind the scenes, the schools are playing a careful balancing act, trying to keep their median numbers up by being very careful about who they offer on the margins.
It has really always been a bit of a game, but nobody has ever (at least as far as I know) tried quite so hard to gimmick their way into the top 5. Enter Michigan Law’s new admissions policy:
UM undergraduates who have at least completed their junior year … with at least six full-time semesters of attendance on the UM-Ann Arbor campus and a UM cumulative grade point average of ≥ 3.80 are eligible to apply.
And they have to agree not to take the LSAT.
No, really. The best obituary ever. Let it be known: when I die, I want this to be the mold out of which my obituary is crafted, and it had better be funny, damnit.
Jim, who had tired of reading obituaries noting other’s courageous battles with this or that disease, wanted it known that he lost his battle. It was primarily as a result of being stubborn and not following doctor’s orders or maybe for just living life a little too hard for better than five decades.
. . . .
He was sadly deprived of his final wish, which was to be run over by a beer truck on the way to the liquor store to buy booze for a date. True to his personal style, he spent his final hours joking with medical personnel, cussing and begging for narcotics and bargaining with God to look over his loving dog, Biscuit, and his family.
Read the whole thing.
In lieu of flowers, he asks that you make a sizeable purchase at your favorite watering hole, get rip roaring drunk and tell the stories he no longer can.
Will do, Jim.
Yesterday I missed a turn and ended up having to drive by the Tower Liquor store near my apartment that I knew (thanks, Charlsie) carries sweet-tea-flavored vodka, so I figured that was a sign. I stopped in and picked up a bottle. There’s very little to say about it but YUM. This stuff is seriously good.
The serving suggestion is vodka & water (half and half) with a twist of lemon. That’s yummy. So is an Arnold Palmer with Firefly substituted for the sweet tea. I had heard that you really can’t taste the alcohol, which is not really true. You can definitely taste it, it’s just very, very subtle… although I guess how subtle depends on the ratio.
Bottom line? Buy this stuff if you like sweet tea and getting drunk.
The “Bush’s Failed Economic Policies” is incredibly pervasive. Of course, blaming the president for the economy is a knee-jerk, if intellectually lazy, thing to do but you can’t say that the practice is not encouraged by presidential candidate’s promises to “fix” the economy. Nevertheless, it’s interesting that Bush is taking so much heat for the economy, even in light of this from 2003:
The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.
Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.
. . .
Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.
”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”
Oh those brilliant financial minds on the left… what would our country do without them? (Answer: Prosper)
(Via: Ken)
