For the last time, this crisis was NOT caused by "irresponsible homeowners!"
- President Obama got it wrong this week when, in speaking to an audience in Phoenix about his vision for housing in America and his advocacy for the end of Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac. The biggest area of fail? the President's repeated reliance upon the right-wing mantra of "irresponsible homeowners" "homes they knew they couldn't afford". Set aside that FNMA was the central reason that mortgage capital began flowing to regular working folks again after the Great Depression serving as a guarantor for regular people home loans and worked quite well until it was allowed (along with Freddie Mac) to become a derivatives casino a few years before the Great Recession. No matter how well intentioned, the President, by embracing and relying upon the cultural myth of "irresponsible homeowners" as if it was truth (as he too often does; see his far-too-many lectures about all those irresponsible Black unwed fathers despite the evidence showing that Black unmarried fathers are the most responsible of all groups when it comes to their kids) merely continues to advocate for letting completely off the hook the folks who were really responsible. Because while there has been scant evidence (despite a whole lot of folks searching for it since the crash) of scads of "irresponsible" people "buying homes they couldn't afford", there is a mountain of evidence that it was the financial markets that were, in fact, "irresponsible", acting with irrational exuberance for a reason having nothing to do with borrowers: providing more and more MBS paper to the investment markets. Obviously, the President did not get the memo from his own head of the Fed, Ben Bernacke, who admitted in 2007 that the catastrophic bursting of the housing bubble in the Great Recession was driven in large part by the market's insatiable hunger for mortgage backed securities to trade and the resultant expansion of risky lending practices to feed those markets. Given this undeniable and well-known truth about what really happened, true housing advocates should decry the President's remarks for relying upon a right-wing 'article of faith' about "irresponsible homeowners." Sadly, President Obama's policy speech comes as just the latest disappointment to many committed to the cause of decent, safe, sanitary, and affordable housing for all, renter or homeowner alike.
- The President cancelled a scheduled meeting with Vladimir Putin this week after Russia granted a "1-year temporary asylum" to Edward Snowden (whatever that means; Snowden either is legitimately a refugee/asylee or he isn't and if he is, as the Russians have apparently concluded, under what authority does Russia limit his asylum to only 1 year? I thought that's what the entire "non-refoulment" prohibition in the Convention and Protocol on the Rights of Refugees was for). It seems that with the Russian government's legalization of virulent homophobia as a "family value", the rise of government-excused anti-semitism, and its plans to release white collar criminals from the Gulag in the name of economic stimulus (Russia was one of the few places that actually appears to believe that crime is crime where white collar crime was involved, a lesson that the US could benefit from) it seems as if the United States has lots of good reasons to keep talking with Russia that far outweigh any "panties in a knot" emotional benefit the United States might gain from refusing to talk with Vladimir Putin over the comparatively-unimportant issue of what happens legally to Edward Snowden.
- It's August, and thus, back-to-school season has officially begun. Despite America's parents being armed with a huge list of "educational necessities"(like calculators that do calculus, so their cherubs don't have to learn how) that their kids' schools have sent home just trying to be helpful, parents aren't buying—or not as much as usual. Retailers, who may live for back-to-school season almost as much as they do for Black Friday—report a slow start to this annual spending frenzy.
- There are a lot of opinions floating around about billionaire Jeff Bezos' acquisition of the Washington Post this week—but few as brilliantly stated as this one in the New Yorker by Andy Borowitz. If Andy ever gets tired of the New Yorker, the Onion has a masthead waiting for him.
- Two little boys in New Brunswick Canada were killed this week by a 100-pound African Rock Python that apparently escaped from its cage at the pet store, wound up in the ventilation system, and dropped into the apartment where they were having a sleepover. The snake apparently confused the boys, (who had reportedly been handling animals earlier, which might have been the source of the snake's confusion), with a snack. Since the snake did not recognize the sleeping boys as the same kids who had previously played with it, it treated them like prey and crushed them, causing their death by asphyxiation. Snake experts agree that this type of killing is extremely rare. But this tragedy still contains an abject lesson: don't keep 13 to 16 feet-long 100-pound constrictor snakes (especially a breed that experts describe as "nippy" and "nasty as far as disposition") anywhere where they can get to sleeping small children, for God's sake. And if you see someone else keeping one, illegally or not, find somewhere else to have a sleepover for your kids. May Noah and Connor Barthe (not to mention the snake that was euthanized after only doing what large predator snakes do) rest in peace.
- What is it with folks committing all sorts of mayhem feeling compelled to put graphic evidence of their crimes on social media? The latest is a Florida man named Derek Medina who shot his wife, took pictures of her bloodied dead body, and posted them on Facebook noting that his friends and family would soon see him on the news because he was going to prison, . He did this all while wishing them well. (The posting, of course, promptly went viral.) This follows the heinousness role that bragging on social media played in the Steubenville rape case and with the Rehtaeh Parsons case (although admittedly that same heinousness is what is sending these jerks to prison.) But one simply has to ask: Have we truly become a society where public adulation is the new drug such that amoral rapists and murderers feel driven to post their crimes on Facebook the same as if they were posting their latest fishing vacation trophy pictures??? (BTW, may Jennifer Alonso also rest in peace.)
- Despite the good news a couple of weeks ago week about John Henry Spooner receiving life in prison for murdering 13-year old Darius Simmons in cold blood (video evidence from the murderer's own cameras recording the entire altercation proving that it was cold-blooded spiteful murder and the murderer's embrace of the crazy on the witness stand may have been the reasons), this week we are back to the same old, same old: the failure of justice to do justice where an innocent and unarmed young Black man is killed by racially-profiling police or crazy civilians for no damned good reason at all. This week, a grand jury in New York refused to indict the police officer that stormed into Ramarley Graham's home in February 2012 without a warrant. The officer's claim? He and his boys followed Mr. Graham home because he "looked suspicious" walking with friends. He then claimed that after storming into the apartment, he ultimately shot Ramarley dead because he claimed that Mr. Graham "looked like he had a gun." Sure he did. Ah, well, as I said above: same old, same old.
- The debate continues unabated within the GOP about what to do, what to do, to win future elections (other than continue their full-throttle effort to legalize voter suppression again, that is.) This week, several op-eds were written about the "hope springs eternal" wing of Republicanism and GOP pollster Sean Trende's already debunked insistence a few weeks ago that no, the GOP does not have to get behind immigration reform, since if they just find all the missing white voters the GOP will be just fine. Thus, this week the National Journal published a piece contending that Trende's argument is balderdash and that "Whites will Flee a White-Only Party". Following that, right on cue, Ross Douthat emerges to announce that once again the GOP's ills are all the Democratic Party's fault. (Seriously, one can set one's watch by him.) Hint to the GOP as it continues to figure out that it's on the losing side of moral history: when one of your key pollsters pens this as the foundation of his "Don't Worry, Be Happy!" analysis, you've got problems:
Democrats liked to mock the GOP as the 'Party of White People' after the 2012 elections But from a purely electoral perspective, that's not a terrible thing to be. Even with present population projections, there are likely to be a lot of non-Hispanic whites in this country for a very long time.
Watching this debate about the future of a party that is completely out of step with where America is today is more fun than ice cream.
- Ahh, Oprah. You poor thing. Seems as if every time you leave the country and go high-end shopping for a purse, you are reminded of the fact that your visuals just.don't.fit.the.profile (except for the racist stereotypical one and you know which one I'm talking about.) First it was the Hermes store in France in 2005, now it's a bag boutique in Switzerland. (Clearly, the shopkeep didn't get the memo about Tina Turner's wedding; BTW congratulations, Anna Mae Boch!) Being one of the most successful, well-known and wealthy Black woman on the planet still can't get you out of SWB.