Monthly Archives: September 2008

Palin, Muthee, and Maher

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I heard Bill Maher interviewed on Fresh Air today with Terry Gross — he has a movie coming out called Religulous, or something like that. He mentioned a video where Sarah Palin is being prayed over by an African minister named Thomas Muthee. He said Muthee was a “witch doctor” because he mentioned witches in his blessing.

Personally, I have no problem with this. She is a Christian, and Christians have a belief system that is different from non-Christians. It is no surprise to me that she would allow a visiting minister from another country to pray over her. People pray in churches. Why is this shocking?

I was disappointed in Maher. He has his opinions, but whenever I saw him on his shows he seemed pretty sincere in his opinions and he seemed to genuinely want to get to the actual views of the people on his shows, rather than to spin them one way or another. But, by calling Muthee a “witch doctor” he was spinning the truth, which is that he is a Christian minister who believes that witches exist and are evil and that the power of Jesus will counter witchcraft. This is the truth, and to him, I am sure this truth is equally as shocking as calling Muthee a witch doctor. So, why call him a witch doctor? I can only think of two possible explanations: One, he did not understand what was happening in the video, which was that Muthee was praying for protection from witchcraft. Or, two, that he is deliberately calling the guy a witch doctor because, what, he’s black? A brother can’t call anyone a witch without some white guy calling him a witch doctor. Is that it? I expected more from Maher.

Of course, Bill Maher is not the only one who finds this video “shocking.” Others have written about this in absolute horror — you only have to Google “Palin” with “Muthee” to see all kinds of links on this. “This woman could be only one septugenarian’s heartbeat away…” is the soundbite of the day.

Yet, no one is upset that Biden is a Catholic. No one mentions it. The Catholic Church still has practioners of exorcism – Pope Benedict supposedly has been a promoter. Yet, no one is getting on his case. How is that any different from a prayer to protect against witchcraft?

People believe what they believe, and all of us believe something that seems irrational to someone else.

UFBF File — $700 Billion

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What percentage of the population do you think knows what the problem really is? I am reasonably intelligent, and it is very tough to figure out why we are in a crisis, what exactly the crisis is, and how come if the crisis is so near we aren’t seeing breadlines and brokers jumping out of windows.

The problem with leverage is that it levers both ways. When one dollar of real estate, say, is propping up $100 borrowed to play the market, and that real estate is now worth 80 cents, or 70 cents, or 50 cents, you are now only allowed to borrow $80, $70, or $50. If you can’t pay back the $20, $30 or $50 difference when the lender asks for it… Margin call, and big problems! This is especially true when you have no idea how much that dollar declined to — is it only 50 cents? Could be zero! Let’s pull the plug and call all the funds!

The problems are: 1. these guys bought real estate mortgages as securities and actually believed the seller that the real estate backing them up was sound, and 2. they then borrowed tons of money against these “securities” to buy other securities, many of which had the same problem.

That, to me, is a basic understanding of the problem. The bailout is being sold as a way to stabilize the value of these bad securities — to actually put a value on them, so that instead of not knowing if the $1 in real estate is now 80, 70, 50, or 0 cents, because no one is buying them, the government will buy them at one of these numbers, thereby fixing the value, at least for the bank, and letting the bank take its hit and move on. The government thinks that $700 Million will cover it.

What happens if the gov’t does not do this? Personally, I think it will be a deflation, or depression, and it will take years to recover, as these unstable “assets” are defrayed and the level sets to their real value. Or, it could be a hyper-inflation to cover the effects of the depression.

It will be hard to borrow money. Might be hard to make money since it will be harder for companies to borrow to grow, or even to get investment money. It is hard for me to envision.

Is $700 Million enough? I don’t know. Did you know there are over 60 T-T-T-Trillion dollars of insurance written in credit default swaps? Unf-ing believable.

How the hell did this happen? Greed and stupidity. Actually, if you recounted the seven deadly sins, every since one of them were indulged in by those that were parties to this, and it is not just the banks or brokers. Those that borrowed 100% for adjustable interest-only mortgages, those that bought houses on “spec” to “flip” at some insane increase of value (the bigger sucker principal). People without jobs or prospects buying houses based on a belief in magic that they will be able to pay them back (or sell the house for some insane return in the next week or two). Real estate pros who were incented to sell as high as possible to get their 6% commissons. Mortgage brokers who were incented by big closing fees to close the deal. Home lenders like Countrywide who bought these mortgages without doing due dilligence (they call it due dilligence for a reason!). Wall street who packaged all these mortgages into “securities” and sold them to investors who, again, did not do due dilligence on these component loans.

I saw the end of the bubble years ago. I knew it would be bad, but I suspected something like the early ’90s where some people were hit bad by it, but we all lived. I had no idea that it would result in this.

Samuel Whittemore, from 1775

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I was cleaning out my office and papers over the weekend, and came across a card that I wrote about eleven years ago. I was working in the Boston area, and in the evenings I liked to explore around.

I always had a passion for the American revolution. Growing up near Philadelphia only made it easier to indulge in a subject that already suited my anti-tyranical and libertarian leanings.

One night I was walking in Arlington, Massachusetts. Arlington is one of the small towns just outside Boston, near Lexington, Concord, and other towns that collectively were the birthplace of the American Revolution.

I walked by a park, and noticed a stone monument. It read:

“Samuel Whittemore, then eighty years old, killed three British soldiers, April 19, 1775. He was shot, bayoneted, beaten, and left for dead, but recovered, and lived to be ninety-eight years of age.”

After reading, I couldn’t help but blurt out aloud: “Now that’s a Man!”

It’s these things that capture my imagination. Think about it: Here is a man, eighty years old in 1775. Eighty. 1775. What does that mean in those days? No walkers. No Meals on Wheels. Wooden teeth, if any at all. No Lipitor or Geritol. If you were sick, they bled you or gave you some other Ungodly “treatment.” No antibiotics. No ice! No knowledge of clean hands before surgery, nor of using any kind of antiseptics — “antiseptic” was not even a word. He was shot. Beaten. Bayoneted! And lived. My God. He died at ninety-eight! I want his genes!

On top of that, I had this picture in my head of an old fart with a trusty flint-lock taking aim those red-coated soldiers, muttering as he was firing “take that, you British bastards! Get the hell off of my land!” I could hear him say after the last bayonet jabbed him “it’s only a flesh wound! Come back here you cowards!”

If you put this guy in a movie, no one would believe it. What a man!

As I started this post, I decided to Google him — and what a story. Turns out he was the oldest combatant in the Revolutionary War. April 19, 1775 was the first day of the Revolution — the shot heard round the world was shot that morning in Concord.

You know, it is important to remember that this country is not here by accident, that it took a lot of guts and blood to establish the USA and keep it here. The US has had many faults and sins, but they are faults and sins against a standard no other country even advocates, let alone adheres to. When we had slavery, we also had the Declaration of Independence, which states that all men are created equal. The lofty idealism of the Declaration beat out the base cruelty of slavery. There are people and interests from across the political spectrum that take shots at the Constitution, from universities enacting speech codes to cities enacting gun control to presidents suspending habeas corpus. Despite the onslaught, the rights remain, because they are so ingrained in our collective psyche as Americans and because we are diligent about pointing out and eradicating transgressions against them. So here’s Sam Whittemore, at the dawn of our country, showing what it took to get it done and get this standard established. We need to keep that in mind.