Our First Geek President

Credit: Ta-Nehisi.

Any post that references Green Lantern, Bruce Campbell, Picard, MST3k, and Boba Fett...

The origins of "meh"

Thanks Ta-Nehisi.

You Know Your President Is Black When......

Coates:
...he paraphrases Sam Cooke in his acceptance speech, has an office of urban policy, and gives Ebony the first photo shoot.

I'm sure it also has something to do with the fact that Johnson publications, Ebony's parent, has deep ties in black Chicago. You know all them bougie South Side Negroes run together!

UPDATE: J Starr points us to this dope, dope cover from Ebony

Coates: Confusing that beauty for some sort of political qualification

This Is A Post From Ta-Nehisi Coates Today: What $150k Could Have Purchased

Coates: You know what, this isn't about the wardrobe. It's about incompetence. It's about a poorly executed campaign. McCain's response to all this? She needed clothes. I bullshit you not.

Why WRIGHT is WRONG

MONDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2008

8:16pm
THIS IS WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT.
Ta-Nehisi Coates Shares What Brought Him To Tears Today.
"Seriously guys sometimes we forget. Here's a note from a reader:

My father (85 year old African-American and, in fact, a "public
intellectual" who helped coin the phrase "African-American" 40 years
ago, a phrase we now take for granted on our census forms) and his wife
(77 old European-American, the term they both hope will replace "white"
someday, and life-long civil rights activist and academic) voted this
morning in Atlanta, GA. My stepmother emailed me this morning to tell
me about their experience, early voting, getting "fragile elderly"
treatment from the poll-workers, wishing she could kick up her
septuagenarian heels after casting her vote.

I sat in my office, reading her email, and wept. Then, I went down the
hall to my colleague's office, sat down, and wept. After seven decades
of constant struggle, my father walked into that booth and knew that his
life's work was now done. My stepmother can think of every person who
secretly and not-so-secretly thought of her as some kind of race
traitor, smile and think "I told you so!"

Obama will win, I'm sure he will. But today, my parents did. I am so
deeply, deeply grateful."
2:04pm
BILL MAHER'S NEW DEBATE RULES.
12:36pm
McCain YouTube Video; McCain declines to disown Obama-Osama comparison.
12:30pm
Florida Republicans start distancing themselves from McCain campaign.
"Even Gov. Charlie Crist, who helped deliver Florida for McCain during the primary, said he will be spending more time minding the state's weak economy than campaigning for the Arizona senator in the final weeks before Election Day."
10:56am
AN "OBAMA MONKEY" YESTERDAY AT A PALIN RALLY?
Yes folks, it is true, and here is the YouTube video to prove it. As Ta-Nehisi Coates says; it is not the one lone nutcase that is the problem; the world is full of wackos. It is the CROWD that allows it to happen.
"I wasn't going to post about this guy with the Obama monkey-doll. Then I watched the video again, and noticed something. There is nothing troubling about one lone racist nut in a crowd. What's troubling is the crowd. Dig how they just look on and smile uncomfortably. No one confronts him. This is the banality of evil, no? It isn't the guy doing the deed. Its the enablers who give comfort and haven to spew his hatred. On one level, I'm thankful for them. Anyone, who wants to now say that an Obama election proves that racism is dead will have to contend with this last week. And it isn't the nuts that this person must contend with---it's the crowds, the crowds who silently, and sometimes not so silently, just stand by and let it happen. They are all, to a man, cowards."


10:43
EPIC FAIL.
Andrew Sullivan calls out the overall result of the o-bomb-a-palooz-a with this link to an ABC News.com article. In his previous post, he refers to Bill Kristol's hypocritical article from yesterday calling for McCain to go positive. This after calling for McCain to go negative, just a few days ago. A gem from the press released snippet of McCain's new speech:
“The national media has written us off.,” McCain says in excerpts released by the campaign. “Sen. Obama is measuring the drapes and planning with Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Reid to raise taxes, increase spending, take away your right to vote by secret ballot in labor elections and concede defeat in Iraq. But they forgot to let you decide. My friends, we’ve got them just where we want them.”
10:35am
Is McCain going to pull off his new "Feisty" speech?
Mike Allen @ Politico.com thinks "it's more like hitting the panic button".
9:57am
Hearing A Lot About Reagan, Lately?
Larison on "The Power of Myths".

If You Don't Support Me You're Going To Hell

Atlantic blog: Are the Negroes responsible for the state of the economy?

Before you call the NAACP on me; this is the actual title of a post by Ta-Nehisi Coates. So there. Actually, check out his main page today, he had some good things there, including a reader's comments about "uppity".

FoxNews.com; always the voice of reason (!!?!) seems to know what brought Wall Street down; "Reckless Mortgages". By greedy, unethical, all-for-nothing insiders? Um, no. The article asserts that it was not unfair and deceptive practices either; but rather, allowing those with less than perfect credit and minorities to buy homes. It goes on to say that all of these (undeserving, it seems to imply) new homeowners artificially boosted the values of homes, by increasing demand.

Now, I can talk about this from first-hand knowledge and experience. I have been a mortgage lender for over 12 years. I am the first to admit that there have been plenty of unscrupulous, greedy, manipulative "brokers" and lenders out there. And almost all of them are gone, now. But we're seeing, finally, that the corporate forces behind these actions, (Ameriquest was one of the first major mortgage companies to fall, hard, with severe predatory lending penalties and class action lawsuits.) are in large part responsible for creating a mentality of nothing-to-lose lending.

However, these companies were also responsible for creating a culture of entitlement. Within the last year, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began drastically tightening their lending guidelines, most of the time because of pressure from the mortgage insurance companies. The MI companies have been cutting back and are the ones that eliminated, completely, all conventional 100% ("no money down") financing. And they're still making changes. But even with the "mortgage crisis" being a main staple of the nightly news; I still had customers that were seriously ticked that they couldn't finance 100% with extremely low credit scores. So, in a way, raising and raising the minimum credit score and eventually eliminating the programs completely mean, if they ever are restored, that they may be appreciated a bit more.

I have a major issue with tying "little to no verification of income" together with risky/bad credit. NEVER have seriously low credit score borrowers not had to verify their income. As an example; with conventional lending, I cannot think of a time that the lowest credit score available for "convetional low-doc", which was Fannie Mae's "stated" income program, was lower than 620. For those that aren't familiar with credit scores; 620, for years, was the cut off for "standard" (which was the highest tier, they had lower scores risk-priced, with the worst tier being over 4 times the monthly premium as the standard category).

Also, "conforming low-doc", what Fannie Mae did, was NOT a "no doc" loan. In many cases, "assets/reserves", (liquid funds; checking, savings, 401k, etc) had to be documented. A true no-doc loan, with most lenders, has always required a pretty high score. In addition, with most lenders (and I did not ever do business with Ameriquest, WaMU, HSBC, etc), a w2'd job had to be verbally verified, and self employed had to have verification of such from an accountant, business license, etc. So sure, that gave LOTS of leeway, but at the same time, the loans all required the income to be reasonable for the job.

Now, there were plenty of lenders that were the true "sub-prime", doing 2 year adjustable rate loans with THREE year prepayment penalties (pure evil, something I would NEVER have done, ever), that pushed borrowers debt-to-income ratios (the percentage their total payments were to their gross incomes) to unbelievable heights. But as the post by Ta-Nehisi Coates from the Atlantic points out;

People have to be responsible when they sign their names.

I could easily take up 5 pages with my opinions on all things mortgage. So tell you what, post your questions here, or Email me! your questions or comments and I can address them. Whew. Thanks for listening. LT