While all the community was wringing its collective hands about Dr. Wright and his betrayal of Barack Obama, we have lost sight of the things that matter. Back in the real world:

Obama draws 2,500 to Hickory, NC. This includes a man who was laid off and who lost his health insurance when the plant that he worked for closed.

China jails 30 Tibetians for riots:

A Chinese court in Tibet sentenced 30 people to prison terms ranging from three years to life on Tuesday for what the authorities said were their roles in the deadly rioting last month, the state news media reported.

Last Wednesday the Wall Street Journal reported that the Big Banks may be under-reporting the LIBOR Rate  

The Wall Street Journal reports on another sign of how bad the credit crunch has gotten: banks fudging on what they are reporting as their short-term cost of interbank borrowing, out of fear of revealing how stressed they are.

(I'd cite the WSJ but their cite is mostly subscription only.)

Now why should you care?

The Journal mentions another consequence, that Libor-indexed borrowers are getting a better rate than they deserve. But it misses an implication that is ultimately more serious: as more and more statistics and benchmarks come into doubt, it creates uncertainty and undermines planning, which in turn is a deterrent to investment.

I don't know about anyone else but do you get the feeling that the Presidential Race resembles pro wrestling? Somehow I think the fix is in. Let's take some news from today for example. AP reports that Foreclosure filings against US homeowners soar 57 percent. http://biz.yahoo.com/...
Oil prices rise above 113 dollars a barrel for first time.
http://biz.yahoo.com/...

My wife and I got a letter in the mail yesterday from our Homeowners' Association. Due to the huge number of foreclosures in our five-year-old subdivision in southern Arizona, the HOA has not been getting paid enough to afford to hire enough landscapers to keep up with the weeds in the common areas or maintenance people to take care of the common pool, playgrounds and walls.  The Association meets next week to vote on what to do about it, which means our monthly fees will likely rise. If no action is taken, then our property values, which have already plummeted past pre-boom prices, will continue to fall.

More...

Senator McCain may have flip-flopped for obvious political reasons on the mortgage mess, actually trying to propose a plan with solutions, albeit solutions that wouldn’t help many homeowners if he actually ever even supported the plan once he (God forbid) is President.  See McCain shifts aid to some mortgage holders," Michael Cooper, New York Times, April 11, 2008, at http://www.nytimes.com/...

High executive pay and scrumptious bonuses, "golden parachutes."

Failing companies.

Oh yeah, who gets that high executive pay, those lovely bonuses, who is handed the "golden parachute"?

Almost by decree, you got to be white.  You got to be male.

A peculiar thing has happened since I joined this community.  I have been stripped of all my illusions, found my childlike beliefs in the good intent of political leaders destroyed, and been introduced to a reality that increasingly fills me with hopelessness.

Back in October of 2007, Senator Dick Durbin introduced legislation to aid homeowners in the predicted mortgage related foreclosure mess.  He proposed that bankrupcy judges be given authority to reset interest rates to avoid the coming disaster.

That far seeing effort was soundly defeated by lobbiest for the mortgage industry with the help of the Republicans.

The American economy is in recession and according to Larry Kudlow, that is a cause for celebration.  On Friday, the National Review regular and CNBC host praised three months of job losses as "an economic cleansing" and beamed that "recessions are therapeutic."   And by all indications, Kudlow's prescription of an economic enema for the American people is one shared by John McCain.

Probably not the best title for a first diary on DK (I have one on SP)  but hey, after I get the hang of this stuff I'll get better.

As of 5:16 pm (ET) on C-SPAN, the Democrats are alone in the Senate, discussing the Bill to Reform the Mortgage Industry

and the Republicans aren't there.

Missing, and Inactive.

To the Flipmobile!

Who would have guessed it.  

Just as the creators of this financial bubble had the diabolical brilliance to make the unqualified "homeowner" into a co-conspirator.  Now these victims of "predatory loans" are the poster children to receive the bailout. Here's a little secret:

The bailout to the homeowners will eventually be remitted to the investment banks that created this disaster

I just finished listening to the CEOs of Bear Stearns and J.P Morgan testifying before the Senate Financial Subcommittee.  

My name is Mike Turner and I am running for Congress in VA-10. Below is my plan for combating the current housing crisis. Please donate at Mike Turner for Congress if you want to see less talk and more action in Congress.

In May of 2006, in my capacity as the national director of housing for the largest network of nonprofit credit and housing counseling agencies nationwide, I came across a startling statistic--about $1 trillion of Adjustable Rate Mortgages would reset in 2007.  In our organization’s grant application, we predicted this would create a massive jump in the home foreclosure rate.  Many within the housing counseling sector were saying the same thing.

These warnings were ignored by the Bush Administration. They were also ignored by my Republican opponent, Congressman Frank Wolf, who proudly sits on the HUD subcommittee of the House appropriations committee!  We should not expect to hear much about the housing crisis from Mr. Wolf unless it’s to label it a "surprise" or create yet another commission to study the problem.  Absent any serious discussion of the issue by Mr. Wolf, I offer my ideas.

Paul Krugman is a gentle man, whose nature is not to be confrontational. So in today's column, rather than accuse the Bush administration of the most outrageous deceit in trying to disguise a continuation of libertarian free market ideology as "reform" he buried this exposure in the text with the title "The Dilbert Strategy"  

Another empty and confusing gesture by this administration, that means nothing but more financial disaster. The gall of these people to try to hoodwink us again. They are counting on the help of the media to swallow it whole or act like the hacks they are, and  the american people to accept it without looking at the fine print. This is a crisis that has hurt millions and destroyed many, and they want to continue their rapacity. We must fight these guys and the beaches and fight them in the hills. Paul Krugman is a great citizen and sharp eyed economist. Here is how he demolishes the pretense:

I like the New York Times. In a classic case of serendipitous synchronicity, the last few days have brought us a virtual flood of excellent opinionating. I wanted to bring it to your attention, in case you don't read it yourself.

This delightful deluge ranges over (in no particular order) the mortgage crisis, derivatives markets, financial regulations, the Bush administration, Wall Street, the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, Barney Frank, the Federal Housing Administration, Larry Kudlow, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Iraq war, Sunnis and Shiites, foreign policy, Ronald Reagan, domestic policy, tax policy, budgets, earmarks, comedy writing, the press, public speaking, acting, Dwight Eisenhower, the Justice Department, Congressional hearings, waterboarding, the Central Intelligence Agency, partisanship, foreign relations, The Wizard of Oz, March Madness, YouTube, the Harvard Law Review, conspiracy theories, ignorance, anti-intellectualism, insults, education, Sinbad, Bosnia, propoganda stunts, viral politics, the Iraq occupation, Moktada al-Sadr, Nuri al-Maliki, Abdul al-Hakim, Basra, Baghdad, Iraqi elections, international trade, Iran, and much much more.

Continued below...

The Atlanta Journal Constitution today is running a Business Feature that demonstrates precisely why we need a law requiring the execution of coporations that repeatedly visit ruin and destruction upon actual people in our country.

While I am not a lawyer, it doesn't take a Clarence Darrow to know that the corporate system in the United States has become a runaway savage that regularly visits depradation upon innocent consumers and faces little or not real punishment for its offenses.

More below the fold.

It looks like it's about to get more U-G-L-Y. Apparently, the big fancy economic speech that Hillary gave this week derailing some lenders who caused this mortgage crises was "just words". Not my words but Hillary's words. Maggie Williams, Hillary's new campaign manager was a director on the board for Delta Financial Corp. until last December after they went out of business. She was there for 7 years. But wait a minute get this: She was raking in $200,000.

http://www.swamppolitics.com/...

Much discussion has been had in recent days of recent polls suggesting significant minorities of Obama and Clinton supporters would vote for John McCain rather than the Democratic opponent of their favorite candidate.

I don't read much into such polls taken during the heat of a primary battle; I remain supremely optimistic that once our nominee is clear (and, yes, I believe that our nominee is already clear), tempers will ease, clear-heads will prevail, and everyone will coalesce behind our candidate.

Nonetheless, for those who persist in saying that they would vote for McCain in November, all I've got to say is Are You Crazy? Well, that's not really all I've got to say...this is a diary, of course.