Links and Minifeatures 2009 05 25 Monday (Memorial Day)

Carnival of Personal Finance # 206

Democrats Discover Gitmo's Virtues

If so, Guantanamo will join the growing list of security tools that President Obama once criticized as out of keeping with American values but has since discovered are very in keeping with protecting the nation. Wiretapping, renditions, military tribunals, Gitmo -- it turns out the Bush people weren't a bunch of yahoos but often thoughtful defenders against terrorism. This is all progress, though America might wonder if it could have been spared the intervening drama.

Michael Barone: Obama Changes Course on Antiterrorism

But that didn't end political debate, as Obama apparently hoped, but heated it up. Dick Cheney demanded the release of memoranda showing whether the interrogations had produced intelligence that saved American lives. Left Democrats protested Obama's decision to rule out prosecution of CIA interrogators, while conservatives decried his refusal to rule out prosecutions of Bush administration lawyers (a matter for Attorney General Eric Holder, he said, as if he couldn't issue a direct order). Word was given out that Holder would decide against prosecutions. Then, last week, Obama reversed himself and said the government would appeal the court order and not release the photographs.

I'd say Dick Cheney is decisively winning the debate on what the Bush Administration did and whether they were justified in their actions. By his actions, Obama has conceded every point to date, deciding to stay basically in lock-step with Bush era policies.

Victor Davis Hanson: Ministers of Truth

Perhaps the media doesn't get it that the American people can more easily take the bias of an attack-dog, go-for-the jugular media that claims it is the watchdog of the public trust and therefore must skin the president, far more than such carnivores suddenly becoming sheepish and obsequious, as ministers of truth, rephrasing and repackaging the party line. How odd that just six months ago we had screaming reporters and columnists talking about the near-end-of-days with Bush -- and now doing contortions to assure us that things suddenly aren't that bad after all, or that we must give Obama flexibility and time to sort out the prior mess. Quite scary, all this chest-thumping about tough journalistic integrity of 2001-8 suddenly devolving into, "Hey everyone, we can reassure you that the Emperor really does have clothes on."

Our president isn't quite as advertised.

In both cases, though, we have learned something about Mr. Obama. What animated him during the campaign is what historian Forrest McDonald once called "the projection of appealing images." All politicians want to project an appealing image. What Mr. McDonald warned against is focusing on this so much that an appealing image "becomes a self-sustaining end unto itself." Such an approach can work in a campaign, as Mr. Obama discovered. But it can also complicate life once elected, as he is finding out.

Obama's dangerous debt

The wonder is that these issues have been so ignored. Imagine hypothetically that a President McCain had submitted a budget plan identical to Obama's. There would almost certainly have been a loud outcry: "McCain's Mortgaging Our Future." Obama should be held to no less exacting a standard.

The question actually is a fair one. If McCain had done what Obama did, the reaction would have been swift, cacophonous, and entirely negative. The difference is that McCain wouldn't have done this. Look at the man's long record of public service - he's devoted a lot more energy to eliminating waste than funding it. But Obama (predictably) did otherwise.

Wow! Republican Chairman Michael Steele channels Martin Luther King

Peace isn't Arab goal

International consensus or no, the two-state solution is a chimera. Peace will not be achieved by granting sovereignty to the Palestinians, because Palestinian sovereignty has never been the Arabs' goal. Time and time again, a two-state solution has been proposed. Time and time again, the Arabs have turned it down.

When one side wants war, the alternatives for the other are war or baring their throat for the knife. It takes both sides to achieve peace. The central truth is that the Arabs want the Jews eradicated more than they want peace.

I may not agree with everything Greg Swann says here, but he's certainly more right than wrong. NAR exists for the purpose of pulling the wool over the eyes of legislators and consumers so the big chain brokerages which control it can continue pocketing absurd amounts of money.

Don Surber: There are two Americas. People who work for a living, and public employees.

Turns out when you win elections, you'd better not free the terrorists you promised to free while demonizing your predecessor unjustly, lest the voters hold you responsible for the results: Senate votes 90-6 not to close Guantanamo prison

By their votes, congressional Democrats unveil the hypocrisy of pretending the unlawful combatants at Guantanamo Bay are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

So, now we get the truth.

The big ugly snarling truth.

The facts that we knew all along: The terrorists at Gitmo belong at Gitmo.

All these nations that protested? Not a one of them will take these critters off our hands.

Congressmen who railed against Gitmo are showing their true colors.

The Gitmo Myth and the Torture Canard

What this account and others like it fail to take into consideration are the aggressive and unending efforts of a cadre of lawyers, activists, left-leaning Democrats in Congress, and civil libertarians against the facility, its purpose, its goal, and its existence. These efforts began even before it was opened, in November 2001, and continue to this day. The anti-Gitmo forces worked tirelessly to shape the public perception that Gitmo was the red-hot center of an aggressive policy approach that led the leftist financier George Soros to declare: "The biggest terrorist in the world is George W. Bush."

The enemies of Bush and Gitmo have succeeded brilliantly. But in so doing, they have done grave violence to the truth about the Guantánamo Bay facility, have aided in the release of prisoners who have since committed acts of terrorism outside the United States, and may yet succeed in having Barack Obama's government release young men with terrifying ambitions for murder and mass destruction onto the soil of the United States.

Federal government: we've run the 46% of the health care segment we have into $38 trillion of unfunded debt. The way to fix that is to give us the rest

If this seems like a "What the...?" moment to you, you're not alone. I doubt comedians could get laughs with this material. It's too far out there; the audience would be unable to follow them. But it's the line Obama and company are trying to sell.

Far and away my most searched article the last couple weeks has been When The Appraisal Is Below The Purchase Price for Real Estate

Everything I predicted in The Home Valuation Code of Conduct (New Appraisal Standards) is coming true. I've had appraisers choose trashed lender owned properties as appropriate comps for well cared for family properties. I'm doing a refinance for a client right now where the appraisal somehow came in forty thousand dollars below any close comparable sale - and it isn't the condition of the property. It's HVCC and the incentives it gives the appraisers to come in too low. Luckily in my client's case, I can still get it done (at least the guidelines say I can), but it's just sheer luck of circumstance that he didn't just waste his appraisal money, and there is nothing I can do to prevent situations where that happens. Nor can I so much as discuss the situation with the appraiser (for instance by furnishing the appraiser alternate, better comparables) when it does happen due to . People are paying these prices for these properties. If the appraisals we're getting don't reflect that, that is a problem at least as big as the inflated appraisals they're claiming were the reason they mandated HVCC.

Furthermore, given the state of my local market, we're seeing bidding wars on just about anything that's close to correctly priced and reasonably attractive. I strongly suspect the appraisal contingency is going to be on its way out, especially given the number of offers being thrown around where the buyer is putting way more than the minimum down.

Who does this hurt? Not the big investors. They've got the cash. It's the little guy trying to scrape together the money for his first property, for his family to live in.

I'll bet you the working people of this country are going to be so grateful to Andrew Cuomo that they do something appropriate to express their gratitude to him (and those behind him). I'd be saving up for bodyguards were I in their position. They're going to need them when people figure it out. Of course, they've got the money. Guess where it came from?

Identity Politics And Sotomayor

Indeed, unless Sotomayor believes that Latina women also make better judges than Latino men, and also better than African-American men and women, her basic proposition seems to be that white males (with some exceptions, she noted) are inferior to all other groups in the qualities that make for a good jurist.

Any prominent white male would be instantly and properly banished from polite society as a racist and a sexist for making an analogous claim of ethnic and gender superiority or inferiority.

So why isn't Sotomayor a racist? Quite simply, because minorities are still in Denial over what the mirror shows them.

In other words, she is a racist; it's just that our identity politics industry refuses to see in a Latina female what it would demand everyone see in a white male guilty of a fraction of the same offense.

How Joe Biden Wrecked the Judicial Confirmation Process

This isn't just a three day holiday. Take a moment to remember what it's about. Memorial Day specifically arose as a tribute to those who fought in the Civil War, but it now honors everyone who made the sacrifice from the Revolutionary War until today. Nor is it just for the troops who died - there's plenty of them who survive with life altering injuries. There are also families missing a dad or mom or brother or sister or son or daughter.

For all of those this day was meant to honor: Thank you isn't enough. We have a collective debt to you. I will always do what I can to see that we honor it as much as mortal humans can.