Centerfield

You sound like a guy who needs some exercise. (I don't like making those little smiley faces with punctuation marks, so just pretend I put one there.)

I keep hearing about the housing market going down and all the people who are in trouble with adjustable rate mortages on houses they can no longer sell for more than they owe on them. Maybe it's just the market I live in, but I don't know anyone who has an ARM. I can't see why, when over the last several years interest rates have been at historical lows, anyone would get an ARM when they could lock in at less than 6.5%, sometimes significantly less than that, for 30 years. Maybe someone from San Fran or DC can explain it to me.

The only reason to be in an ARM, ever since rates started going up a couple of years ago, is this: "There's a sucker born every minute." Sadly, it is as true today as it was a century ago when P.T. Barnum said it.

Yeah... ...suckers.

What do you guys think George Allen will be doing for Rosh Hashanah tonight?

Mmmm, Babylon 5. Brings back memories.

Two things I wanted to make note of:

1) Jon Stewart had some fun with Hugo Chavez and his "satan" remarks. If anyone missed it, I'm sure it's on YouTube or something;

2) In the Texas govenor's race, Rick Perry and Chris Bell are attacking Kinky Friedman as a "racist" for recent comments. There's a great response from the Kinkster's campaign: “While Rick Perry was cheerleading in college and Chris Bell was being potty trained, Kinky Friedman was picketing segregated restaurants in Austin to integrate them.” Gotta love it. This race is a Texas political blogger's dream.

By the way, ARMs were very popular in South Florida a couple years back, as housing prices are insanely out of whack with salary levels. People making $50K would buy a $300K home using ARMs and all sorts of creative financing, figuring the market would stay hot and they could just sell for a tidy profit when the initial 2-year low rate ended. Many made a lot of money. Now the market has cooled, and houses aren't moving as fast, leaving many stuck with very high payments due (and in foreclosure).

One of my neighbors has an interest only ARM. They had a budget, new house wasn't in the budget so the mortgage company said, hey if we do this you can buy this house. I think there are a ton of people in my new community like that. We've already had a couple of foreclosures. People want more than they can afford and that's the way to get it. I think the housing bubble is going to pop harder than lots of people think though I'm glad I'm here in Dallas where prices have been relatively stable.

Perry and Bell are now running ads about a joke Kinky made 26 years ago involving the n word. Burntorangereport.com brought it up and if you ask me, it smells of fear. Kinky was a stand-up comic 26 years ago and if this is all they've got on him, I think they must be in worse shape than it appears. I was going to vote for Strayhorn but I'm about 80-20 in Kinky's camp at this point just for the breath of fresh air he'd bring.

I predicted in a previous open thread that we'd see Joey Harrington starting for Miami by week 8. It seemed pretty outlandish at the time but if Culpepper can't tear Tennessee up this weekend, it's starting to look more and more like pure predictive genius. :-) (not afraid of punctuation smileys)

Sports department friends at South Florida newspapers tell me the Dolphins are close to panic stage at this point. They expected great things, and I don't think seeing a QB change is out of the realm of possibility. Of course, they do play Tennessee this week, and that is likely to cure anybody's ills.

WEP and SD have the right of it. Many folks thought that a hot housing market meant they could stack up some free money by buying on an interest-only ARM, letting rising home prices supply them with a tidy profit. This works well when interest rates are lower than the growth rate in prices. But neither interest rates or price growth rates are guaranteed, and many have outsmarted themselves.

Slamming Kinky for non-PC'ism over a quarter-century ago is stupid. He's never been PC and never will be. He was a stand-up comic and a roadhouse musician. (His band's name was Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jew-Boys. I used to listen to them in college, even caught 'em live a few times.) He may be irascible and irreverant, but his civil rights credentials are sound, and giving him a platform for highlighting them is idiotic.

Kinky needs to do more self-promoting, tout his civil rights credentials and his political views, especially on energy. It's shameful that Texas of all places is a net importer of energy. But the mainstream media refuse to give him the in-depth interviews they give other candidates.

This is a bit tangential to the Kinky discussion, but what you guys are saying about him illustrates what I find so contemptuous about the PC movement.

I went to a racially mixed high school black/white-wise. It was otherwise not very diverse, almost no jews, hispanics, asians, etc. But the white kids and the black kids would always make fun of each other - the music some of us listened to, the way we dressed, the way we talked, all of that sort of thing. But we all got along. There was very little racial tension in my school, just a lot of good-humored ribbing.

I bring this up because I think that the PC movement actually exacerbates racial tensions in many cases. It keeps people thinking about what might possibly be offensive to someone, and makes some people more sensitive to offense. I think a lot of people feel like they're walking around on egg shells whenever they're in mixed company because of it.

Now you take a guy like Kinky Friedman, who I will assume based on what you guys are saying, has great civil rights credentials, but has said the kinds of things that some group of PC mavens would deem inappropriate. Some people are willing to turn a blind eye to the actions a person takes, the kinds of actions that are a true indication of where that person's heart lies, while demagoging humorous comments that are entirely reflective of the way real people talk, and may be intended to make fun of the way real people talk. It's really the height of absurdity, and an entirely artificial absurdity besides. It would be one thing if the guy were a former klansman, but he ain't.

Nicely said, WHQ. In the end, we're judged by our actions. If you're religious, surely you don't think the God of your choice cares about anything else. And at least Kinky's PC offenses were made in the spirit of comedy and satire.

WHQ, I went to jr. high and high school WHILE they were being integrated. We had remarkably few problems after the first year of bussing, and no one really gave a hoot what color you were after that. We all hung out together, in school and out. Some of us still do. We know we don't "get it" when it comes to some aspects of white or black culture, but we also know that good will and a lack of hostile bigotry erases most of the empty ground.

> I think Babylon 5 is THE best sci-fi series of all time.

Yeah, me, too. It's got believable characters, good story, a well-put-together world.

Stargate's also pretty good.

Jon, I thought this might amuse you, after the tangent on digital movie editing last week.

In this case, show creator Phil Vischer made the edits himself under direction from NBC, so there's no lawsuit material in the copyright violation sense. Vischer said:

Overall, I think the NBC situation is a little like being invited to sing at the White House on the condition you won't sing certain songs that might offend certain foreign dignitaries. Some artists might say, "Forget it! Those songs are what I am about! I won't compromise!" Others might say, "The impact of singing at the White House is worth living with their rules. Once I'm out the door, though, I'll be singing my songs at the top of my lungs." That's sort of my attitude here.