Stuff White People Like

Stuff White People Like

Is this satire? I can't quite tell.

My Thought for the Day

Expecting Hope and Change from a Chicago politician is like expecting a good presidential candidate to emerge from the Senate. Anyone expecting either to happen is delusional.

Housing market weakness long-term: survey - Yahoo! News

Housing market weakness long-term: survey - Yahoo! News

Consumers expect housing market weakness to linger for longer than they did a few months ago, a survey showed on Friday.

The Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers Home Prices Report for June also cited a broad gulf between buyers and sellers in the housing market.

Economists broadly agree that U.S. house prices peaked sometime in 2006. According to some measures, they have fallen about 16 percent since then.

"Consumers now anticipate that the weakness in home prices will last much longer than they had anticipated a few months ago," wrote Richard Curtin, director of the survey.

"Record numbers of consumers now think there are very attractive prices on homes for sale," Curtin said. "The problem has been that record numbers of consumers have objected to selling their home at such deeply discounted prices."

Asked about prospects for home prices during the year ahead, 23 percent of homeowners reported that they anticipated declines, down from 27 percent in the May survey. In June, 19 percent said they expected home prices to rise in the next year, unchanged from May's reading.

Asked about the direction of house prices over the next five years, 13 percent of respondents said they expect prices to fall, while 55 percent said they expect prices to rise. That was down from a 2007 peak of 70 percent who said they expected house prices to rise.

Hundreds swept up in mortgage fraud arrests - Yahoo! News

Hundreds swept up in mortgage fraud arrests - Yahoo! News

Since March 1, 406 people have been arrested in the sting dubbed "Operation Malicious Mortgage" that saw 144 cases across the country. Sixty people were arrested on Wednesday alone, including in Chicago, Miami, Houston and a dozen other regions policed by the FBI.

In a separate sweep, two former Bear Stearns managers in New York were indicted Thursday, becoming the first executives to face criminal charges related to the collapse of the subprime mortgage market.

Across the country, reports of mortgage fraud have soared over the past year as the subprime mortgage market collapsed and defaults and foreclosures soared.

Banks reported nearly 53,000 cases of suspected mortgage fraud last year, up from more than 37,000 a year earlier and about 10 times the level of reports in 2001 and 2002, according to the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

The most common type of mortgage fraud was misstatement of income or assets, followed by forged documents, inflated appraisals and misrepresentation of a buyer's intent to occupy a property as a primary residence.

Over the last several months, the FBI has been investigating an estimated 1,300 mortgage fraud cases — including 19 involving subprime lending practices by U.S. financial institutions.

Another Obama buddy bites the dust

Senators Appear to Have Received Below Market Mortgages from Countrywide:

Senator Chris Dodd, a vice-Presidential hopeful Democrat from Connecticut and Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee which regulates mortgage lending, was named as having received preferential treatment from Countrywide in obtaining mortgage loans. Dodd had earlier this year called Countrywide's lending practices 'abusive.'

One week ago the allegation of a similar deal with Countrywide forced former Fannie Mae Chairman Jim Johnson to step down from his volunteer position as head of Barack Obama's vice presidential search team.

According to the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, the average foreclosure costs $77,935, while preventing a foreclosure runs only $3,300

A Look at Foreclosures Costs

Stoopid People Tricks

'Black is Beautiful' pet adoption program canceled

It's a well known fact that black coated dogs are much less likely to get adopted from a shelter for a variety of reasons. So the Williamson County Regional Animal Shelter held a sale to promote the adoption of black animals. 12 black cats and 25 black dogs adoption fees were to be cut to $25 from the normal $85.

The promotion was canceled.

Because of racism.

Configuring AVG Internet Security

Configuring AVG Internet Security

It turns out that AVG Free 8.0 just about shuts down Firefox. Any java pages either can take up to minutes to load, or simply cripple Firefox.

There are important steps to set up AVG 8.0 for Firefox.

Weeeeeeeeee!

Dog Survives Toto Impression During Tornado

Now that would be a reason for a puppy to scream out loud...

AVG Free

AVG Free - Download installation files & documentation

They are making it very hard to follow all the links to download AVG Free 8.0

So here is the link. Version 7.5 expires in June.

Certified Time Waster

Jigsaw Sudoku - Free Online Sudoku Game

Who Needs Free Speech When We Have Socialized Medicine?

Should be the new motto for Canada.

Hey Canada? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!

Mark Hemingway on Canadian Human Rights Tribunal & Mark Steyn on National Review Online

...the general interpretation by the human-rights commissions is that they now have free rein to regulate the media. The slippery slope has been a toboggan ride to hell ever since.

What this means is that everyone in Canada now has fundamental freedoms, provided they’re not in conflict with whatever specious definition of “human rights” the CHRC chooses to apply. The threshold for conviction set by the Human Rights Act is incredibly low, because its highly subjective language means that “likely to cause contempt” is as good as a preponderance of evidence establishing guilt.

As a result, the Canadian Human Rights Commission is stunningly effective: In its 31 years of existence, not a single complaint brought before it has been dismissed. That's right: Everyone is guilty before God and the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

In 1999, a Christian printer was fined $5,000 for refusing to print a series of pro-pedophilia essays. He spent $40,000 in legal fees trying to defend himself.

In 2005, the Knights of Columbus of Port Coquitlam, B.C., were fined for refusing to rent their hall for a lesbian wedding.

There’s simply no point in naming all of the clergy that have been brought up on charges for preaching against homosexuality. Suffice to say it’s more than a few.

In 2002, the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission ordered the Saskatoon StarPhoenix and Hugh Owens each to pay $1,500 to three complainants for running an ad that quoted Bible verses condemning homosexuality. The decision was overturned by an appeal court . . . four years later.

In January of this year, Ezra Levant, publisher of Canadian conservative magazine The Western Standard, was brought up on charges for publishing the infamous Danish Muhammad cartoons as a matter of informing his readers what all the fuss was about.

Maybe there is hope:

This kind of nonsense on stilts is now the accepted norm in human-rights tribunals. With Steyn and Maclean’s involved, supposedly enlightened liberal Canadians — who needs free speech when we have socialized medicine?! — may not be able to dismiss the victims of the injustice this time around as merely neo-Nazis or those backward Christians. Steyn’s fame precedes him, and Maclean’s is a beloved national institution in Canada, with ample resources.

In fact, according to Andrew Coyne of Maclean’s they’re hoping to lose the case in Vancouver this week so they can bring it to a real court of law, and possibly set a precedent that could be the beginning of the end of Canadian “human rights” tribunals. Here’s hoping.

I just wooted wine for the first time

Woot Wine : One Week, One Wine (SM)

8 Skills Every Home Owner Should Master

REALTOR® Magazine-Daily News-8 Skills Every Home Owner Should Master

When the movie is better than the book

Frederica Mathewes-Green on Film Adaptations on National Review Online

Mathewes-Green calls the movie Prince Caspian much better than the book. Then proceeds to ponder other movies vs. books.

Gotta Love Florida

Bump In Pinellas Night Came From 8-Foot Gator In Kitchen

The alligator, one of many inhabiting ponds around Frosti's East Lake Woods neighborhood, busted through the porch screen, crossed about 10 feet to the open door and entered the house.

The alligator traipsed across the living room carpet, through the dining room and into the kitchen.
"The police told me it may have been interested in my cat," Frosti said

24 Hours on the 'Big Stick'

24 Hours on the 'Big Stick' P.J. O'Rourke visits USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier and explains the difference between John McCain and the two democrats.

Some say John McCain's character was formed in a North Vietnamese prison. I say those people should take a gander at what John chose to do--voluntarily. Being a carrier pilot requires aptitude, intelligence, skill, knowledge, discernment, and courage of a kind rarely found anywhere but in a poem of Homer's or a half gallon of Dewar's. I look from John McCain to what the opposition has to offer. There's Ms. Smarty-Pantsuit, the Bosnia-Under-Sniper-Fire poster gal, former prominent Washington hostess, and now the JV senator from the state that brought you Eliot Spitzer and Bear Stearns. And there's the happy-talk boy wonder, the plaster Balthazar in the Cook County political crèche, whose policy pronouncements sound like a walk through Greenwich Village in 1968: "Change, man? Got any spare change? Change?"

Some people say John McCain isn't conservative enough. But there's more to conservatism than low taxes, Jesus, and waterboarding at Gitmo. Conservatism is also a matter of honor, duty, valor, patriotism, self-discipline, responsibility, good order, respect for our national institutions, reverence for the traditions of civilization, and adherence to the political honesty upon which all principles of democracy are based. Given what screw-ups we humans are in these respects, conservatism is also a matter of sense of humor. Heard any good quips lately from Hillary or Barack?

Who would have thought that a bunch of bare footed, Bible thumping, know-nothings would take such offense?

Stix Nix Obama’s Trix - HUMAN EVENTS:

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

- Barack Hussein Obama
Would-be U.S. President

“Pennsylvanians don’t need a president who looks down on them, they need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them, who works hard for your futures, your jobs, your families.”

- Hillary Clinton
Who Can't Believe She is Losing to this Moron.

“It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking. It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans.”

-John McCain
Self-described Luckiest Man Alive

Anthropogenic Global Warming - Fact or Hoax? An editorial by James A. Peden

Anthropogenic Global Warming - Fact or Hoax? An editorial by James A. Peden

Turn on your lights night?

Earth Hour US - Earth Hour 2008

Online Photo Editing from Adobe

Adobe Photoshop Express - Made You Look.

I have a laptop I use for surfing while watching TV. All it has on it is Windows XP and Firefox. Every time I boot it up it takes about 5 minutes to check for virus updates, windows updates and other updates to installed programs. It seems like an awful lot of overhead to just want to find out who starred in the movie I'm watching on IMDB.com

There are now so many powerful tools that are online that I think I will switch the laptop over to Ubuntu. From within Firefox I can now run programs like

Adobe Photoshop Express
Picassa Photo Gallery
Google Docs (support excel, word and powerpoint like programs)
Google Calendar (now supports links to Blackberry!)
Gmail (and a bunch of other very good online email programs.)

So I could surf, email, write a letter, create a financial spreadsheet, or a presentation, look at and edit photos while throwing away anti-virus and weekly Microsoft updates.

Not to mention that the Ubuntu download includes OpenOffice which is a completely free competitor of Microsoft office and creates files that can be opened by MS Office.

The movie the UN wants banned

LiveLeak.com - Fitna the Movie: Geert Wilders' film about the Quran (English)

Provides an overview of the world's most dangerous and evil religion and how its acts of depravity relate directly to the Koran.

What makes this video so powerful is its lack of editorial. It simply compiles statements from the Koran and its followers.

[Update:] Due to death threats against LiveLeak.com they have stopped hosting the Wilders' video. You will have to search YouTube and then log in to see it.

Tracfone | Prepaid Cell Phone

Tracfone | Prepaid Cell Phone

Eric's Tracfone mobile was about to expire so I had to add another year's service to it. One year plus 400 minutes (units) of time is $100 or $8.33 per month. He doesn't use his phone much yet, so he still had over 1,000 units on his plan. When I went to purchase the extension a coupon popped up for an additional free 200 units. Then when I went to check out another offer popped up to add a second year for only $50 more.

$150 bought two years of service and 600 minutes. That is $6.25 per month, no contract, and he currently has 1,670 minutes to use up before buying anymore airtime.

That's a pretty good deal for a kids cell phone.

8:35 PM Twin Sonic Booms rattle our house hard

NASA - Welcome to NASA's STS-123 Landing Blog

Yes, the shuttle is landing. According to the landing blog, the twin sonic boom is heard at KSC two minutes later. We are about 60 miles from KSC.

Home Resales Rose 2.9% Last Month As Median Price Dropped 8.2%

Home Resales Rose 2.9% Last Month As Median Price Dropped 8.2% - WSJ.com

First time number of sales has increased since last July.

Down 24% from Feb 2007

Median home price of $195,900 dropped 8.2% from Feb 2007. Median home price was $199,700 in Jan 2008.

NAR economist Lawrence Yun was encouraged by the 2.9% sales gain. "We're not expecting a notable gain in existing-home sales until the second half of this year, but the improvement is another sign that the market is stabilizing," Mr. Yun said.

Inventories of homes decreased 3.0% at the end of February to 4.03 million available for sale, which represented a 9.6-month supply at the current sales pace.

There was a 10.2-month supply at the end of January, revised from a previously estimated 10.3 months.

Regionally, existing-home sales in February rose 2.5% in the Midwest, 11.3% in the Northeast, and 2.1% in the South. Demand fell 1.1% in the West.