| Stack of Stuff Quick Hits Page |
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April 3, 2009 |
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Story #1: German Woman Divorces Cleaning Husband
RUSH: You know, you can't win out there. You just can't win out there. In Germany: "A German woman has divorced her husband because she was fed up with him cleaning all the time. German media reported the wife got through 15 years of marriage putting up with the man's penchant for doing household chores, tidying up and rearranging the furniture. But she ran out of patience when he knocked down and rebuilt a wall at their home when it got dirty. The judge said, 'I'd never had anyone seek a divorce for this.'" You either don't clean enough or now you clean too much.
 Story #2: No New Accessory: Madonna Adoption Rejected
RUSH: Oh, no, it's just a day out there for sad news. It's a surprise move, it says here at the AP, but a judge today has rejected Madonna's request to adopt another child from Malawi. Said it would set a dangerous precedent. It's just very, very sad, very sad. Madonna's just going to have to go out and find a different kind of accessory, I guess.
Story #3: Pitchforks? Fannie and Freddie Bonuses Due
RUSH: Wall Street Journal says: "In a compensation program that has drawn angry protests from politicians, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac expect to pay about $210 million in retention bonuses to 7,600 employees over 18 months, according to a letter from the mortgage companies' regulator to Sen. Charles Grassley. The maximum retention bonus for any individual executive under the plan will total $1.5 million during the 18 months ending in early 2010, according to the letter..." So what will Barney Frank do? What will you do? What will the angry pitchfork mobs do? $165 million in bonuses at AIG caused riots, and protests at the homes of the executives. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac supposedly privately held companies. They're just front operations. They're holding companies for the United States government. Let's see, ladies and gentlemen, if indeed anybody gets all upset over $210 million in retention bonuses at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Story #4: Shoot Out at Binghamton, NY Immigration Center
RUSH: Shoot-out at an immigration center in Binghamton, New York. Hostage negotiators are being sent in by the FBI, and an evidence response team, it's called the American Civic Association. It's an immigration center. We'll keep an eye on this.
Story #5: Arlen Specter Decides to Vote Against Card Check
RUSH: Understand something about liberalism. They never stop until they get what they want, and when they get what they want, it's never enough. That's why it's a constant thing to have to oppose them. You can't join forces with them, you can't moderate them, you can't slow them down by joining them, you can't make them like you and have them change their agenda. They have to be stopped. Now, as it is right now, card check is said to be going nowhere because Arlen Specter has decided to vote against it, so they're not going to get the 60 votes they need. That's now. The same thing about cap-and-trade. Cap-and-trade said to be dead. That's now. There's always next year. There's always later this year. There's always any number of things they could do to peel off another vote if Specter won't. Look it, for how many years were they talking about gay marriage? How many years were they talking about demonizing the SUV? That started in 1995. Here it is 14 years later, and they're on the verge of doing it. They don't stop.
Story #6: Iowa Supreme Court Overturns Gay Marriage Ban
RUSH: For how many years were they talking about gay marriage? How many years were they talking about demonizing the SUV? That started in 1995. Here it is 14 years later, and they're on the verge of doing it. Liberals don't stop. It's like the Soviets. They didn't have four-year plans based on the service of term of their leader. They had forever plans, and if you had to take a year off, maybe a step back before you took two steps forward, then fine. But they had the objective, it was there, and whenever it got done was fine, as long as you're always working for it. Same thing with Hugo Chavez. Hugo Chavez is taking over the banks now. Hugo Chavez is nationalizing the oil industry. Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, we're getting, you know, an early sign of what Chavez did by watching things happen here. But they don't stop.
This is why an electoral majority needs to happen in order to defeat these people, and even after they're defeated, they try to go around it in other ways, getting judges, like unanimous decision in Iowa today, with the Supreme Court, unanimous, that a ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional. Now, I guarantee you, if we could go dig up James Madison and say, "Mr. Madison, did you intend for the Constitution to say people of the same sex could get married?" And I guarantee you he would have the reaction, "What are you talking about? Are you sure you're asking me about the Constitution?" But then the four judges, whatever the number, they're unanimous in the Iowa Supreme Court, have just said what they think the Constitution says.
Story #7: Home Loan Modifications Not Lowering Payments
RUSH: What is this? What is this? I don't believe this. You know this big effort to reduce home foreclosures? Twenty-five percent have ended up paying more on their mortgage under the re-structuring plan! Ha! I love this, absolutely -- and this is Obama, baby. It ain't Bush!
So here are the details, ladies and gentlemen, on the loan modification story. It's from the Associated Press. "Though lenders are boosting their attempts to curb record-high home foreclosures, fewer than half of loan modifications made at the end of last year actually reduced borrowers' payments by more than 10 percent, data released Friday show. The report, based on an analysis of nearly 35 million loans ... was published by the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision. It provides the most detailed and broad analysis to date of efforts to stem the foreclosure crisis...
"Among loan modifications made in the October-December quarter, about 37 percent resulted in a drop in payments of more than 10 percent, compared with about one-fourth in the first nine months of the year. ... 'The trend toward lowering payments to make home mortgages more affordable is moving in the right direction,' John Bowman, acting director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, said in a prepared statement," but "nearly one in four loan modifications in the fourth quarter actually resulted in increased monthly payments. That situation can happen when lenders add fees or past-due interest to a loan and spread those payments out over the 30- or 40-year period. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the report found that loans were far less likely to fall back into default if a borrower's monthly payment is reduced ... Nine months after modification, about 26 percent of loans in which payments had dropped by 10 percent or more had fallen back into default," contradicting the whole theory of "reduce the payment, reduce default."
Of the people whose payments went down more than 10%, 26% of them went into default. I can't help but laugh at this. "Well, why, Rush? Why are you laughing?" Because the government was going to fix it, right? The government was going to make sure you could afford your house, right? The government was going to make sure that those evil bankers had to make sure that you were going to get a lower mortgage payment, and it isn't working. And I don't want to sit here and go, "Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah," but it's hard not to, ladies and gentlemen. It's the government all of all. It's a bureaucracy ordering banks to do things that the banks otherwise wouldn't do -- and, of course, the banks, these evil guys, are trying to find a way to recuperate what they're being forced to lose by spreading out some payments over the 30- or 40-year life of your mortgage. Sigh.
Plus, the dirty little secret is -- this is a cruel thing to say, a cruel thing to say, but -- these are the beneficiaries of Barney Frank's definition of "affordable housing." Give you a house! These are people who couldn't qualify for the loan in the first place and weren't asked to. These are the people who had to show no history whatsoever in order to get a loan. Clinton, ACORN, Community Redevelopment Act. Obama forced the banks to make these loans. These people can't pay. They're losers in the first place, and even after their old buddy federal government steps in to try to help 'em out, they're still losers. It's not turning them into winners.
Story #8: Study: Tattoos are Sign of Low Self-Esteem
RUSH: But the headline says it all: "Having Tattoos ... is a Sign of Low Self-Esteem -- Covering your body in tattoos ... is a sign of low self-esteem, a new study has found." The psychologists who studied this "warn that people considering a tattoo should think extremely carefully before submitting themselves to the needle and ink," because a "study found that people who had three or more tattoos were likely to have low self esteem. ... They found that there were four main reasons why people got tattoos -- to be rebellious, to belong to a group, for aesthetic reasons and because of a strong emotional attachment." To what? I mean, it could be anything, I guess. Another person, the needle, ink? Who knows?
Story #9: Crisis: Too Many Cars and They're Not on the Road
RUSH: Now, this is a story in the Washington Post today: "Too Many Cars, and They're Not on the Road." I just... Folks, I just love this. "The sea of new cars, 57,000 of them, stretches for acres along the Port of Baltimore. They are imports just in from foreign shores and exports waiting to ship out -- Chryslers and Subarus, Fords and Hyundais, Mercedeses and Kias. But the customers who once bought them by the millions have largely vanished..." No, that's not the way to put it. It's the money that people used to have to buy them that has vanished. It is the job that people used to have to provide the money to buy the cars that has vanished. The people are still there -- and the people who have jobs?
For crying out loud, if you're feeling guilty that you've got a job, you're sure as hell going to feel guilty about buying a new car, are you not? "[S]o the cars continue to pile up, so many that some are now stored at nearby Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport. The backlog exists because many of the factors that contributed to the collapse of the housing bubble -- cheap credit, easy financing, excessive production, consumers buying more than they could afford -- undermined another large and vital American industry." Oh, because it's American it's the people's fault. I see. It's the American people's fault: "cheap credit, easy financing, excessive production, consumers buying more than they could afford," all of this, "undermined another large and vital American industry."
"'There was a car bubble,' Steven Rattner..." Now get this: "'There was a car bubble,'" like the housing bubble and the dotcom bubble, said Steven Rattner, the best friend of Pinch Sulzberger, by the way, "who President Obama recruited to head a Treasury Department group charged with finding solutions to the mountain of problems facing the American auto industry, said in an interview last month. 'We had this artificially high sales rate.'" Oh. So we had too many Americans buying too many cars. Too many American cars. That's the problem! "There was too much consumin' going on out there!" Too much consumin' led to too much production, and then when the consumin' stopped, the production piled up.
So, "One of the key questions the auto task force," not one member of which has the slightest idea about cars, "must answer is figuring out a sustainable number of annual auto sales." Well, now this is even better. Because now the auto task force is going to sit there and try to come up with the number of cars that ought to be produced and I presume dictate this to the manufacturers. One thing you could do is just spend a year taking actual orders with down payments, but I guess the unions won't go for that. So you gotta... Nobody pits the unions in these equations! How can you talk about overproduction of cars and not mention that you gotta keep the union working? Well, I digress.
What we have here is a Washington Post story about literally thousands of unsold cars piling up in the ports, no place for the cars to go; all this at the same time the US government is deciding to take over the automobile business. All the while, the same government's doing all it can to figure out how to tax people out of their cars and produce cars that they don't want, with the ultimate goal of forcing us into government-controlled public transportation, which would only make sense to a liberal. So now we've got crisis! We got a car crisis, and the car crisis is not just what's going on in the car companies. It's all this glut of cars, and of course it's the American people's fault because they artificially bought too many for so many years and now they're not buying enough. So it's overproduction; it's causing stress at our ports. Oh, it's just so sad!
Story #10: Population Exodus from Granholm's Michigan
RUSH: This is from the Detroit News. Headline says it all: "Leaving Michigan Behind: Eight-Year Population Exodus Staggers State.' -- Outflow of skilled, educated workers crimps Michigan's recovery. The state loses a family every 12 minutes, and the families who are leaving -- young, well-educated high-income earners -- are the people the state desperately needs to rebuild." Why are they leaving? Snerdley, where are they leaving? Jennifer Granholm. In the last two to three decades, could somebody name for me what party governed Michigan for the vast majority of the past 20, 30 years? What party governed Detroit for as long back as anybody can remember? Democrats. A teachable moment here. In this whole story there's not one mention of high taxes. There's not one mention of high taxes here. Crumbling education, crumbling infrastructure, crime, and now the government taking over General Motors -- so more Democrats running that industry.
Story #11: Heritage Has the Real Story of the G20 Summit
RUSH: By the way, before I go, folks, I have to remind you about the G20. There is all kinds of BS about the G20 in the Drive-By Media. The Heritage Foundation has the truth. The more I go there, the more I find things you will not find anywhere else. AskHeritage.org. Yes, you join. I'm a member. It's twenty-five bucks. It's amazing what's there, and it's just a website away. AskHeritage.org. Join and then check out the G20 section, if you want to find out what really happened, what really happened to our sovereignty, how really this country was carved up, Heritage Foundation has it.
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