20 April 2008

Big news for a Sunday morning as the New York Times begins one of the largest ad hominem attacks of its competitors in the news analysis business I've ever seen!

You learn right off the bat, beginning in the second paragraph, where you are told, a bit breathlessly:

Now you may be asking yourself what the hell it matters whose plane it was, but if so then you just don't get how things are shaded. What if it had been a plane normally used by Michael Jackson? Ah, what visions jumped involuntarily into your head over that one?

No matter that the 9/11 Commission later branded Joe to be a liar, he knew how to set the stage for his play. And so, it would appear, does the New York Times.

What's that? Am I overlooking the extra negative vibe in that sentence? Uh...what was the rest of it again?

And the fact that it was carefully orchestrated, as contrasted with their normal hap-hazard way of waging war, for instance, tells you that they had something up their sleeve!

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves.

Is the New York Times going to spell them out in detail, we wonder? But, wait...it gets worse!

One can imagine The Evil One tearing his air in frustration--okay, what little hair he has--over the spectacularly inept job they have been doing for him!

Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley.

In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated.

Kids, get the message: you cannot trust the major TV and radio networks! But, thank God (pardon the expression, you have the New York Times to tell you the truth!

These dirty dogs were taken on tours of Iraq, given access to classified intelligence, and briefed by officials from every department, liars all of them, just so they would know what truths not to report, by accident!

The Pentagon defended its relationship with military analysts, saying they had been given only factual information about the war. “The intent and purpose of this is nothing other than an earnest attempt to inform the American people,” Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said.

It was, Mr. Whitman added, “a bit incredible” to think retired military officers could be “wound up” and turned into “puppets of the Defense Department.”

Many analysts strongly denied that they had either been co-opted or had allowed outside business interests to affect their on-air comments, and some have used their platforms to criticize the conduct of the war.

They can deny, even issue a critical report now and then, but we know they were all liars, really.

This is because the liberal media, in their hearts, really believe that everyone will do whatever they have to do in order to get money. And who can blame them, after the splendid example set by the Clintons and the entertainment business? For the liberal media, the military is composed of people who aren't really any different from themselves, at least in that respect.

Surely we all know what's happening here. Iraq, with bumps along the way, continues to improve. It's important, with an absolutely crucial election coming up in which Obama simply MUST be elected, that we start working on diminishing McCain's strongest point, which is success in Iraq.

Start by attacking the credibility of the messengers. Major TV and radio networks (Rush, this means you, not NPR!) cannot be trusted.

Amazing job, even for the New York Times. Frankly, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the phones of the attorneys of at least the six people whose pictures appear at the top of this article aren't ringing off of their hooks this morning. Even on Sunday morning.

Fortunately for him, fighting against his militia did not continue after they had been defeated. What else?

Iran would have been just as happy to have supported al-Sadr, you understand, except that he failed to win. Not for their failure to supply him with weapons, you understand, but did you read about how many men al-Sadr lost? Well, no, probably you haven't read much about that in the MSM, I have to admit.

...American military and civilian officials have repeatedly claimed that Mahdi Army units trained and equipped by Iran had played a major role in the unexpectedly strong resistance that government troops met in Basra.

Whether to counter those allegations or simply because, as many Iraqis have recently speculated, Mr. Sadr’s stock has recently fallen in Iranian eyes, the Iranian ambassador, Hassan Kazemi Qumi, on Saturday expressed his government’s strong support for the Iraqi assault on Basra. He even called the militias in Basra “outlaws,” the same term that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has used to describe them.

“The idea of the government in Basra was to fight outlaws,” Mr. Qumi said. “This was the right of the government and the responsibility of the government. And in my opinion the government was able to achieve a positive result in Basra.”

Pundits in America who had described the battles in Basra as evidence of either continuing sectarian violence or domestic political violence are struggling for words this morning. So is al-Sadr:

He compared the Iraqi government to that of Saddam Hussein and said that the government had become the enemy along with Sunni extremists and the Americans.

“You are using the politics of Saddam and his followers when he banned the Friday Prayer and displaced women and children; when he created divisions among groups of Iraqis; and used the politics of assassination,” the statement said. “If you do not stop we will announce a war until liberation.”

But the NYT twists itself a little bit, trying to involve Iran as much as possible. For instance:

But, of course, if Iran had anything to do with the retreat of the militia fighters in Basra, that would mean that Iran was actually associated with al-Sadr and able to influence the way he used his militia. Only we also have to have our faces rubbed in the fact that Qumi called them outlaws, and abandoned them to the mercies of the Iraqi government.

How strange is it that Iran wants to influence Iraqi politics, even if we were to presume Iran to be a benign neighbor in the same way that Canada and Mexico are to the United States? Don't Canada and Mexico do their best to influence American politics? Of course they do.

And do their lobbyists support both Democrats and Republicans, often at the same time? Of course they do.

And even though Americans consider Canadians and Mexicans to be friends and even relations, as well as neighbors, do we intend to let their governments control ours? No, we do not.

The Clinton ship is going down as friends and superdelegates abandon it like, well, the Clinton's don't actually use the word... (These excerpts are not in their original order in the article.)

People in the Clinton orbit say there are a varying gradations of perceived disloyalty.

In their eyes, the least offensive (if somewhat annoying) group are “likely” Hillary Clinton supporters who have not defected, in part out of recognition of past ties, but have not made public commitments to her, either. Until Friday, this would have included Mr. Reich, who had said he would not formally endorse Mr. Obama out of “loyalty” to Mrs. Clinton, a friend for over four decades whom he actually went out on a date with in their college days. ...

...“There is clearly a high frustration level among campaign types and from the Clintons themselves,” said Leon Panetta, a White House chief of staff under Mr. Clinton, who is backing Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.

It is partly reserved for former Clinton administration aides who are now with Mr. Obama: Greg Craig, who served as special counsel to Mr. Clinton during his impeachment saga; Anthony Lake, a former national security adviser; and Mr. Reich, who even before his formal endorsement Friday had spoken approvingly of Mr. Obama and critically of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.

“These are people that the Clintons gave an opportunity to serve,” said Mr. Panetta, speaking generally. “They helped give them the titles they now have, and made them a lot of money. I think the Clintons probably feel they are owed something.” ...

But one person’s “disloyalty” is, to another set of eyes, well-deserved “comeuppance.” And there is no shortage of powerful Democrats who are quick to accuse the Clintons of defining loyalty as a one-way street, with little regard for the sacrifices they have made for a couple whose own political needs seem to their critics always to come first.

I got a laugh out of this item about what a Gore-Lieberman administration might have looked like, as the author muses on the changes in Lieberman since those days:

Mr. Lieberman strayed so far from the Democratic fold on Iraq that his own party disowned him in 2006, supporting an antiwar candidate, Ned Lamont, against him in the Connecticut Senate primary. Mr. Lieberman, who ran as an Independent and kept his seat, said last week that he was considering a prime-time speaking slot at the Republican National Convention this summer. And although he disavows any interest in running for vice president again (“Been there, done that, got the T-shirt”), it is not inconceivable that he could become the first person to lose the vice presidency on both major party tickets.

McCain obviously had no chance, as far as this writer is concerned. I thought his opinions were good for several hearty chuckles:

His alienation from his Democratic colleagues was on display recently when Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of American forces in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the ambassador to Iraq, testified before Congress. Senate Democrats, including Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, competed for who could pose the toughest questions; Mr. Lieberman treated them like demigods.

You are to be forgiven if you thought you remembered complaints elsewhere in this same newspaper that the Democrats had obviously given up on fighting with Petraeus and Crocker, abandoning the argument until after Bush left office. In this man's revision of history, Hillary and Barry competed for who could ask the toughest questions. I can't stop smiling at the thought.

In the warm-up to his first question at the hearing, Mr. Lieberman said the recent escalation of American troops in Iraq had clearly worked and mocked his Democratic colleagues for refusing to see it. “It seems to me that there’s a kind of hear no progress in Iraq, see no progress in Iraq and, most of all, speak of no progress in Iraq,” he said. “Hey, let’s be honest about this. The Iraqi political leadership has achieved a lot more political reconciliation and progress since September than the American political leadership has.”

And that's a laugh-out-loud gotcha, because it is so clearly true! I'd love to see this author try to argue the claim that the current American political leadership has made great strides in political reconciliation and progress! He'd choke in the attempt! And it sure would be fun to watch.

Although Mr. Lieberman is actively campaigning for Mr. McCain, the two Democrats still competing for the nomination have largely refrained from criticizing him and declined through spokesmen to do so for this article (that may change if he steps up his attacks or appears at the Republican convention).

Mr. Lieberman has given both of them reason to fume. In 1998, he roundly (some say sanctimoniously) condemned President Bill Clinton for his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky. In a recent television interview he said of Mr. Obama, “I’d hesitate to say he’s a Marxist, but he’s got some positions that are far to the left of me and I think mainstream America.”

The ones who said 'sanctimoniously' were also those who absolved Bill because it was only about sex, of course, and naturally felt that it made no difference that Monica was an intern for whom Clinton was responsible. As for Obama, his 100% liberal voting record is also a matter of public record, and it's pretty hard not to call that left of the mainstream. And clearly he's left of Lieberman.

There is much speculation that the Democrats will run Mr. Lieberman out of their caucus (he now sits with Democrats and votes with them on most issues not related to the war) if they widen their margin in the Senate after the November elections. But Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate Democratic leader, has pledged that he would not disown Mr. Lieberman under those circumstances and said he considered him a good friend.

A member of the Senate Democratic leadership, who insisted on not being identified, said: “The bloggers want us to get rid of him. It ain’t happening.” He added: “We need every vote. He’s with us on everything but the war.”

I wouldn't hold my breath relying on Harry Reid's loyalty and friendship, let alone the unidentified member of the Senate Democratic leadership. Once they don't feel like they need every vote they will punish Joe if they can. They did try, after all, to kick him out of the Senate. Where was Harry then?

Ah, Lord, how I love liberal columnists! Frank Rich is upset at the moderators at the recent debate, as he titles his column: Shoddy! Tawdry! A Televised Train Wreck!

Of course, Obama fans were angry because of the barrage of McCarthyesque guilt-by-association charges against their candidate, portraying him as a fellow traveler of bomb-throwing, America-hating, flag-denigrating terrorists. ...

But viewers of all political persuasions were affronted by the moderators’ failure to ask about the mortgage crisis, health care, the environment, torture, education, China policy, the pending G.I. bill to aid veterans, or the war we’re losing in Afghanistan. Those minutes were devoted not just to recycling the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Bosnian sniper fire and another lame question about a possible “dream ticket” but to the unseemly number of intrusive commercials and network promos that prompted the jeering at the end. The trashiest ads often bumped directly into an ABC announcer’s periodic recitations of quotations from the Constitution. Such defacing of American values is to be expected, I guess, from a network whose debate moderators refuse to wear flag pins.

No kidding, he actually wrote that, when it is Obama who originally said he refused to wear a flag pin for reasons he then specified, but later claimed he never said that, a switcheroo of Hillaryian proportions. Now Rich appears to think that refusing to wear flag pins is disrespectful when the perps are commentators from the wrong network.

Not the least of the reasons that the Beltway has gotten so much wrong this year is that it believes that 2008 is still 1988. It sees the country in its own image — static — instead of as a dynamic society whose culture and demographics are changing by the day.

In this one-size-fits-all analysis, Mr. Obama must be the new Dukakis, sure to be rejected by white guys easily manipulated by Lee Atwater-style campaigns exploiting race and class. But some voters who lived through 1988 have changed, and quite a few others are dead.

Some 3000+ of them in downtown New York City on one day. If McCain wins, this will be a large part of the reason why. But Rich, of course, is a foam-at-the-mouth liberal, so he continues flailing away like a not very bright bull in the china-shop:

The video of Mrs. Clinton knocking back drinks in an Indiana bar drowned out the scratchy audio of Mr. Obama’s wispy words in San Francisco. Her campaign didn’t seem to recognize that among the many consequences of the Bush backlash is a revulsion against such play acting. Americans belatedly learned the hard way that the brush-clearing cowboy of the Crawford “ranch” (it’s a country house, not a working ranch) was in reality an entitled Andover-Yale-Harvard oil brat whose arrogance has left us where we are now. Voters don’t want a rerun from a Wellesley-Yale alumna who served on the board of Wal-Mart.

Much like he did with the flag pin remark, what he's done here is bring up Obama's service on the board of an organization which associates him with both the Reverend Wright as well as his Weather Underground friend.

Not a friend? Well, Obama's coming-out party in his first run for state elective office as an Illinois senator was hosted at his home, which curiously enough is also not a working cow-ranch, which we all presumed Bush's spread to be.

I think it's the brush-clearing bit that really upsets the people like Rich, because "nobody they know" does anything like that. I spent quite a lot of time clearing and burning the brush on my 17 acres in California, and have a nice chainsaw scar to show for one misadventure, so this once again illustrates the elite disconnect with ordinary folks. Although I have to confess to never watching a NASCAR race.

Rich, of course, is a liberal bloviator who thinks he knows a lot more about economics than McCain, because...well, just because.

Rich, of course, believes that corporations pay taxes. The other thing he knows about corporations is that they are, well, bad. Especially BIG corporations.

Taxing them hard, 35% or even more, brings money into the federal treasury that otherwise would have to be collected from, well, the noncorporate taxpayers. You know, the little guys.

Higher economic theory than that, Rich don't go and don't know. He doesn't understand that corporations must of necessity be profit-making in order to stay in business, employing workers for that purpose, and so the taxes they pay are merely another operating cost, like salaries and pensions and materials and utilities, which all go into the sales price of the ultimate product. Thus we can rather easily see that the corporation is merely collecting the tax from the buyer by including it in the sales price.

Now, increasing a product's sales price typically leads to it being less-competitive on the open market, since noncorporate consumers tend to buy the lower-priced competitive product.

If corporations are all burdened by the same taxes, of course, then that would not be a factor...but we're in a world economy now. And our domestic corporations are trying to compete with foreign corporations who are taxed at much lower rates. And they cannot.

The result is that domestic corporations lose money and go out of business, leaving unemployed workers behind...and maybe even failed pension plans, as well. Or else the corporations move overseas, where the taxes are lower...uh huh, they "move offshore", which also loses domestic jobs.

Funny how Liberals like Rich hate the big corporations...right up until the time that they decide to leave and move offshore, at which point that's recognized as a bad thing for the United States.

"My job got outsourced to a corporation which wanted to move offshore in order to make more money," is the complaint. No, the corporation moved into a lower tax environment in order to be able to compete and stay in business.

Since corporations don’t pay taxes, why should there be a corporate tax at all? Good question. The answer is that the government finds it hugely convenient for the corporations to be doing the job of tax collection for them. It's much easier to tax a corporation a million dollars than it is to collect a dollar from a million taxpayers.

In the meantime, though, Michigan and Pennsylvania and other rust-belt states have found their high-paying manufacturing jobs moved offshore. John McCain told them the unpalatable truth: most of those jobs will never be coming back.

Might be different if the corporate tax rate was zero rather than 35%, since you don't collect any taxes from a corporation which has moved offshore, anyhow, zero is zero either way, but look at all the BS dimwits like Frank Rich are giving McCain for proposing a reduction to 25%.

It's a highly amusing morning, as I watch liberal after liberal now saying things about the Clintons that they never would have, before. Here's Bob Herbert:

The Democrats are doing everything they can to blow this presidential election. This is a skill that comes naturally to the party. There is no such thing as a can’t-miss year for the Democrats. They are truly gifted at finding ways to lose.

Jimmy Carter managed to win the White House in 1976 by looking pious and riding a wave of anti-Watergate revulsion. After four hapless years, he dutifully handed the keys back to the G.O.P.

Bill Clinton tried hard to lose, with sex scandals and whatnot, during the 1992 campaign. But Ross Perot wouldn’t let him. Mr. Clinton won with a piddling 43 percent of the vote. For eight years, Mr. Clinton tried to throw the presidency away (with sex scandals and whatnot), but he was never able to succeed.

Who knew that Clinton really wasn't the overwhelmingly popular president Democrats always told us that he was? Absent Perot's interference, even the patrician GHWB would have won easily.

I think that's pretty funny, I admit. One of the problems they have with Hillary is that they spent so much effort trying to gild the Clinton years that now it's difficult to disown her without admitting that those years weren't really so hot, after all.

Note Obama's careful jump over them when he argues that the poor Pennsylvanian redneck's problems go back several decades. He doesn't want to be caught calling the Clinton years good ones, you see, because that might give Hillary a boost.

Senator Obama...seems to have lost sight of the unifying message that proved so compelling early in his campaign and has stumbled into weird cultural predicaments that have caused some people to rethink his candidacy.

While some of those predicaments raise legitimate concerns (his former pastor, his comments in San Francisco) and some do not (stupid questions about wearing a flag pin), he has allowed them to fester unnecessarily.

Remember Frank Rich dissing the ABC moderators for refusing to wear a flag pin? Uh huh.

The way for a candidate to eventually change the subject is to offer policy prescriptions so creative and compelling that they generate excitement among the electorate and can’t be ignored by the press.

Voters want more from Senator Obama. He’s given a series of wonderful speeches, but he has to add more meat to those rhetorical bones. He needs to be clear about where he wants to lead this country and how he plans to do it. That’s how a candidate defines himself or herself.

The problem is that Obama is the guy who brought the knife to the gunfight here...he hasn't a clue how to manage or lead anything, because he never has. He has no meat, only rhetorical bones, as his "plan" for getting out of Iraq shows. His view of tax policy is the same as his view of a car's gas pedal...push it down harder and the car goes faster. Increase taxes and you collect more money.

Increase the capital gains tax all you want, people will still buy and sell capital instruments at the same rate as before. Increase corporate income taxes, the corporations aren't going to go anywhere. Oops...

Bad choice of words, Bob. Americans who are not members of the group who call each other "brothers" are beginning to wonder if they're not going to be left out of the new love-fest. It's a fair question, all the more so because the "brothers" complain that they have been left out of things by the white man in the past. If one side can wonder and worry, so can the other.

Obama may not be from another planet, but he is from Singapore and Hawaii, and for some parts of middle America that's far enough. Obama demonstrated on his own that he's out of touch with at least a certain class of people, but then, again, so are we all, to one group or another.

For my own part, I do not worry about Obama as a "brother", and I'd be inclined to believe that a Chicago community organizer is probably not weak-kneed, and from his own history he is clearly not a loser...but I do worry about his past associates and his 100% liberal rating. I'd prefer a moderate with respectable friends.

There was always going to be resistance in the U.S. to putting a black person or a woman of any color in the White House. To overcome that built-in resistance, three things are crucially important: new voters have to be brought into the process; the nominee must have an exciting and compelling message; and the party has to be extraordinarily unified behind its standard-bearer.

Fair enough. But, equally as fair must be the recognition that merely being black, or female, or even both, is not enough. Even more importantly, those distinguishing characteristics should not be allowed to override the selection process.

I think the question in most minds is not whether Obama is black, or male, but whether he has enough experience. Obama's problem with pointing out McCain's age is that for most people age=experience, which only magnifies Obama's lack of both. Obama's problem is not one of being black, but of being green.

Well, no, let me rephrase that: it's not his problem as much as it is his situation. He is, any way you cut it, green and inexperienced.

Hillary never ran to Bosnia or anywhere else under sniper fire, but neither did Obama. McCain, on the other hand, has.

When Kerry was running for president, much was made of the fact that he served his country in uniform and in combat, while Bush did not, he served only in the uniform of the National Guard. Okay, that's a fair argument...so now what about Obama. He didn't serve in any uniform...was he ever even a Boy Scout? McCain, on the other hand, we all know about.

Herbert started us off down the right road. He cited Carter and Clinton and their failings, but he could have continued on down the long list...Dukakis and Gore and Kerry, etc etc etc.

What's their common characteristic, which applies to Obama today? Right. Too many unanswered questions...nobody knows what they are going to do because the average person cannot figure out how they think; we can't relate.

I was listening briefly to Wolf Blitzer this morning, trying to work up some doubt over the fact that McCain had not yet released his medical records. I think Frank Rich touched on the same subject. Blitzer's other panelist had apparently been along on McCain's famous bus rides, where he takes questions from the press until the last one falls asleep from exhaustion. "Gee, Wolf," the guy said, "he's been awfully transparent so far, I'd really be surprised if anything different happened now."

Can you imagine Obama in a bus, answering questions until the last reporter fell asleep?

Asked about his friendly relationship with the former Weather Underground anarchist William Ayers — an association that The Wall Street Journal suggests could turn into the Swift Boat of 2008 given Ayers’s statement that “I don’t regret setting bombs; I feel we didn’t do enough” — Obama defended him with a line that only the eggheads orbiting his campaign could appreciate. Ayers, he said, is “a professor of English in Chicago.”

Obama has to prove to Americans that, despite his exotic background and multicultural looks, he shares or at least respects their values and understands why they would be upset about his associations with the Rev. Wright and an ex-Weatherman.

The Swift Boaters, as some don't want to remember, asked questions of Kerry and gave him the opportunity to answer them. He did not, for whatever reason you may wish to consider.

Obama's dismissal of Ayers as a professor of English in Chicago will, indeed, come back to haunt him. Obama and Ayers and Pastor Wright are further connected through a corporate board. As if this weren't enough, Obama's state-senate run was kicked off at Ayers' house.

By a margin of 53 percent to 41 percent, those surveyed said that it is more important that their favorite candidate win, even if the race goes into the summer, than that the race end as soon as possible.

Supporting that finding, by an identical margin, these Democrats said that Clinton should remain in the race even if she suffers an upset loss in Pennsylvania on Tuesday.

In the Post-ABC poll, just 39 percent of all voters said that they now view Clinton as honest and trustworthy.

I'll be! Turns out you CAN fool some of the people all of the time. Now we know the right number.

Democrat Barack Obama, who often argues that John McCain is the same as President Bush, said Sunday that the Republican presidential candidate would be better for the country than Bush has been.

"You have a real choice in this election. Either Democrat would be better than John McCain," Obama said to cheers from a rowdy crowd in central Pennsylvania. Then he said: "And all three of us would be better than George Bush." ...

Obama's comment threatened to undercut his efforts - and those of the entire Democratic Party - to portray the GOP presidential nominee-in-waiting as nothing more than an extension of Bush's unpopular tenure.

Obama's problem with the "more Bush" line is that McCain all too clearly has not been a mindless Bush supporter for more years than Barry has been in politics. Maybe he understands that that line of attack isn't going to work and is getting ready to try something different?

I know that it's sad, actually, but I almost have to laugh in disbelief at this Slate article. I left the real estate business, in the central California foothills of the gold country, east of Sacramento, in early 2000. I was the self-employed owner of my own brokerage, I was 65, and I was tired of California's climate. Not just the summers which exceeded 100 degrees and the winters which fell below freezing, with occasional snow, although those were primary factors, but also the litigious climate which was on the increase.

We hadn't yet started doing what I'm reading about now, although the early signs were there, I have to admit. It's a good thing I left, because I would never have counseled any of my home-buyers to take these loans:

The most common subprime loans were known as "2/28" in the industry: 30 years, including a two-year teaser rate before the interest rate rose. Now these loans have reset, and we're seeing the fallout.

But prime borrowers, too, got loans that started out with low payments; if you bought or refinanced your house in the last few years, it's not unlikely that you have one. With an "option ARM" loan you have the "option" (which most borrowers happily take) of paying less than the interest; the magic of "negative amortization." The loan grows until you hit a specified point—the exact point varies with the lender; with Countrywide, it'll come after about four and a half years—when the payment resets to close to twice where it was on Day 1.

Just two banks, Washington Mutual and Countrywide, wrote more than $300 billion worth of option ARMs in the three years from 2005 to 2007, concentrated in California. Others—IndyMac, Golden West (the creator of the option ARM, and now a part of Wachovia)—wrote many billions more.

During my career, I prided myself that my primary job was finding buyers the home that they wanted at a price they could afford. Certainly we dealt most of the time with a rising market, but I'd been through a couple of downturns which taught me that prices did not always rise. One essentially wiped me out right after I had become a millionaire on paper, so I knew first-hand what they were like.

I made a distinction between homeowners and house buyers, too. The former were people looking for a place to shelter their family, perhaps forever; the latter were not. The former looked forward to the day when they could ceremonially burn their mortgage after it had been paid off. What a quaint notion that is today!

In those days, I counseled my buyers to either (1) take out 20-year mortgages, or at least (2) pay their 30-year mortgages at the same rate as if they were 20-year mortgages. Interest savings over the life of the loan are astonishingly large. On amortized home loans, the banks collect essentially only interest during the first ten years of the loan, and equity builds slowly.

A 20-year amortized fixed-rate loan with a 20% down payment would have resulted in no crisis at all, even during a temporary downturn in home prices such as the ones which came along from time to time.

Option ARM loans were heavily marketed to upper-tier home buyers in California. It's hard to know how bad the option ARM crisis will be before it actually happens, but Moe Bedard, an advocate in Southern California who advises homeowners on foreclosure and blogs about the crisis at Loansafe.org says that the difference in the time until the rate rises is the main reason that upper-middle-class Orange County (now facing foreclosures at a rate merely twice the national average) hasn't yet been hit as badly as places like Riverside.

The solution isn't great, but it's obvious. A lender does not HAVE to reset a rate, just because he can. After all, lenders re-set the rates upward only to increase profits, but if that results in foreclosure which diminish profits then it isn't really a smart business move.

If you could let someone buy at a 2-year teaser rate while falling behind because of negative amortization, then you can give them four years just as easily. If the re-set rate gives you the legal right to double the interest rate, that doesn't mean that you must, not if it is going to cut off your nose to spite your face. Foreclosure is bad for borrowers, but it's even worse for banks.

I had a friend who was the manager of the Bank of America branch in Jackson when I first got there. I arrived in the downturn years of the early '80s, and times were tough. I used to try to convince him that he should make me a deal to sell his problem houses rather than foreclose on them, because the foreclosures always lost money for him. Always.

In the end, his hands were tied most of the time because he worked for Bank of America, and he was only a local branch manager. The Bank set policy, he didn't.

My favorite story was the time when I had cobbled together a deal in which the seller would carry back a large second mortgage in order to make the sale, but we still needed more money than the buyer's down payment, so I went to my BofA banker friend for a small first mortgage. He turned us down.

I wasn't really surprised, the money market was really tough right then, they weren't making even really good loans save in unusually good circumstances. I thanked my friend and was about to hang up when he added...but we'll give you a second mortgage for the amount you want.

I couldn't understand it. He wouldn't make a small first mortgage, ahead of a large second, but he would make a small second behind a large first? If you don't understand how mortgages work, let me just explain that the business logic here does not make sense.

I was eager to accept, of course, and make the sale, but I wanted to know why. What didn't I understand?

Ah, he explained to me with a smile, BofA had an approved mortgage program for second mortgages that was different than their firsts. He was closed out of the first mortgage market at that time, but not for seconds.

We put the deal together and everybody was happy. The home-seller was now carrying back a first instead of a second, so he was delighted. If he had to foreclose then he got the house back, plus the down payment, plus the second got wiped out. BofA was happy because they made a loan for which they had a program. And my buyer was happy because he didn't care which lender was in which position, as long as he got the loans. And I was happy because I made the deal and earned a commission.

But it taught me a lesson. Don't try to understand lenders and why they do what they do.

Ah, well. Here's an item I didn't read, written by an unfortunate woman named Sandra Tsing Loh.

I told Carol about it, laughing at how many times the poor woman had to endure "sweet chariot" jokes, but Carol said at least is has to be better than Fukuda or Phuckett.

And, actually, I couldn't resist the Tsing Loh name. I went back, finally, and read her article. She's a hugely talented, extremely amusing writer, her column is a gem. Read it for simple enjoyment, if nothing more. And there's more, too, if you get that far.