Foreclosure Hurts Kids Too

Today’s Contemporary Americana!

USA Today in AOL

I linked to this story because if I hear one more conservative blather about the people falling into foreclosure ‘deserving it’ because of their stupidity or sloth, I swear I will send someone to the hospital.

Here’s one story from the article:

Melody Morrow, a sales rep for a semiconductor company, never thought foreclosure would strike her middle-class family. But as her employer struggled financially, Morrow, a divorced mother of three, says she had to absorb repeated pay cuts. Eventually, she couldn’t pay her homeowners insurance. Then she put her home up for sale. She hasn’t found a buyer, and now it’s entering foreclosure.

“I’m trying so hard right now not to cry,” says Morrow, 43. “My daughters are going through a lot. They’re feeling the stress of everything. They ask questions out of frustration, like, ‘Mom, why did you get us into this situation?’ I just say, ‘God, what lesson do you want me to learn from this?’

“The girls are scared of what will happen. They don’t want to leave their school and go to an apartment. There’s a lot of guilt. I have days I cry and sob and say, ‘Why is this happening?’ and they see that.”

and another

Ramona Garcia, 38, of Corona, Calif., says she did everything she could to ease the effects of her foreclosure on her young children, Sophia, 4, and Isabella, 5. Garcia and her husband, Dominic, both real estate agents, saw their business crash as the local housing market toppled.

The family struggled to pay their mortgage and moved to a rental after losing their home to foreclosure in November. In March, Ramona began selling jewelry as a sales rep for a company that she says gave her flexible hours so she could lend her girls some sense of security during a wrenching time for the family. Dominic, 41, found a job as a site-acquisition rep for cellphone companies .

Honest people who had good jobs and worked hard. And got screwed by an economic downturn that asshole Phil Gramm says is all in our heads and we’re just a bunch of whiners.

Personally, I’d like to kick Phil Gramm’s ass and then frogmarch him through my little town so he can see the faces of people who are struggling just to keep their families heads’ above water - the ‘whiners’ he’s talking about.

“So Who’s The U-Boat Commander?”

This photo released by Ashley Campasino via the York Daily Record, shows a red Mazda Miata at the bottom of the Campasino family swimming pool in Stewartstown, Pa. on June 30, 2008. Kim Taylor thought she had set the emergency brake. But her wayward red convertible nonetheless rolled downhill, crashed through a fence and plunged into her neighbors’ in-ground pool. The car was removed from the pool the same day. Shown in the picture are from left, Kim Taylor, her husband, Bob and their daughter Alex.

(AP Photo/Courtesy Ashley Campasino via York Daily Record)

Extra points if you can remember the movie the post title came from without Googling it!

Hedges: FISA Isn’t Aimed at ‘Terrorists,’ It’s Aimed at You

Alternet by LA Times

Hedges gets it.

The law, passed under the guise of national security, ostensibly targets people outside the country. There is no question, however, that it will ensnare many communications between Americans and those overseas. Those communications can be stored indefinitely and disseminated, not just to the U.S. government but to other governments.

This law will cripple the work of those of us who as reporters communicate regularly with people overseas, especially those in the Middle East. It will intimidate dissidents, human rights activists and courageous officials who seek to expose the lies of our government or governments allied with ours. It will hang like the sword of Damocles over all who dare to defy the official versions of events. It leaves open the possibility of retribution and invites the potential for abuse by those whose concern is not with national security but with the consolidation of their own power.

As I have written before ad nauseum, ALL of these post 9-11 measures have NOT been enacted to ‘keep us safe from the terrorists.’ They have been designed to drag this once free country into the maw of totalitarianism.

But most Americans, seriously, are too dense to understand this. Too brainwashed, too invested in the Matrix, too afraid to think for themselves.

Even the right wingers who go on and on about the ‘gubmint’ interfering in their lives in a myriad of ways have no problem metaphorically spread-eagleing themselves on command to that same ‘gubmint’ every time it demands fawning obsequiousness to ‘protect them.

I haven’t met a conservative yet that didn’t have this giant blind spot in their logic/thinking. I think perhaps its because so many of them are, at core, authoritarians.

If We Were Like. . .

Ann Coulter

Michael Savage

Michelle Malkin

Michael Reagan

Rush Limbaugh

or countless other small-time radio hate-clones

We would comment on this obit - Tony Snow dead at 53

coming off of this obit - Jesse Helms dead at 86

we could say something truly snarky and tasteless like

Well, it’s been a good week for VIPs arriving in Hell. One arrived earlier this week for the Julius Streicher Wing and then one today for the Joseph Goebbels Wing.

But we play nice on our side of the political fence, don’t we?