There must be a direct connection between stress and 24 hour news nausea.
We are in the middle of an election season, it's hard not to avoid hearing about it everywhere you go. I am usually turned off by politics, but the importance and the historic significance of this year's election has drawn me to follow every up to the minute news of what's going on with the candidate's schedules for the day, what they said or what they did not say.
But I've fallen to the trap. Sometimes I spend weeknights tuned to CNN and MSNBC for hours upon hours. But I also know how much stress watching the news can cause an individual. I know from personal experience the effects of having the news on 24/7 can do in to my psyche and overall mental health. Events of 9/11 is a perfect example of this when FOXNEWS and CNN played the same clip over, and over, and over, and over again. Over the years I became a lot less enthusiastic about tuning in to the news. Thanks to modern technology I have options to still stay current with what is going on in the world through the internet and print.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Intellectually Un-Curious
By definition is someone who does not care to know about the current global issues. Nor cares about the issues of the economy and with the middle-class struggling to survive in an unstable, financially strapped nation. That's Sarah Palin. Ignorant, willfully mis-informed, can't be bothered with details and facts, intellectually uncurious. She shares the same characteristics of the current President Bush.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
J-Boogie's Dubtronic Science
The crowd was rather small. I went in and found a seat without a problem. J-boogie and his small band. Rene Flores in percussion and Aima in vocals and rhyme.
J-boogie is using serrato live DJ Software where you could use turntables or CD players in which a DJ can mix and scratch music files from a MAC or PC using the two vinyl control records.
It has gone down in price and you can easily get one for 539.00 dollars. I plan to order one online in the next few months.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
A Democratic Majority in the Senate is possible
The political climate is extremely unfavorable against conservatives that Democrats are in good position to pick up 10 seats in the Senate. That is still an if.
I'm not holding out my breath in order to avoid becoming disappointed, but the possibility is there.
So what does it mean if they did expanded their majority to 10 seats? It means they can block any republicans obstructing any kind of legislatures from the democrats. In essence they'll become filibuster proof.
It's really too early to celebrate. But the possibilities are better for liberals this time than ever before. I really do believe the pendulum in this country is swinging towards a more progressive society. But only time can tell. Is it november yet...
I'm not holding out my breath in order to avoid becoming disappointed, but the possibility is there.
So what does it mean if they did expanded their majority to 10 seats? It means they can block any republicans obstructing any kind of legislatures from the democrats. In essence they'll become filibuster proof.
It's really too early to celebrate. But the possibilities are better for liberals this time than ever before. I really do believe the pendulum in this country is swinging towards a more progressive society. But only time can tell. Is it november yet...
Sub Prime Lending Mess
I read an interesting article off the NYTIMES website. It tells a story of a small community in NYC and how it managed to build homes off an abandoned street, but unlike the predatory lending most people have fallen victim under, the organizers structured its way of doing business (news flash) --- responsibly
Anyway I just wanted to post that article here, courtesy of the New York Times.
By JIM DWYER
Published: September 26, 2008
Just about eight years ago, Patricia Worthy signed the papers for the first mortgage of her life, getting the customary dizzy spell as she looked at the line that listed, all in one place, 360 monthly payments of principal and interest.
She signed. So did 690 other families in her development, in the New Lots section of Brooklyn. All of them were buying homes for the first time; all were people of modest or moderate means. They were moving into a neighborhood that had been a forsaken stretch of abandoned buildings.
Those 691 families all took on their responsibilities at the dawn of a new era of debt, one that was not only deregulated but also seemingly deranged. Since then, across the country, the rate of defaults has soared.
Not, however, in Ms. Worthy's development.
"In my area, we have not had one foreclosure," Ms. Worthy said this week.
Her home was one of the 3,900 built under the Nehemiah housing program, which began nearly three decades ago, when acres of the Bronx and Brooklyn had fallen to ruin. Land was vacant. A group of churches and community organizers, and a developer named I. D. Robbins, came up with the idea to mass-produce single-family homes on these lots and sell them at low prices. They named their plan after a prophet of the Old Testament who rebuilt Jerusalem.
In the 27 years since the program started, fewer than 10 of the 3,900 households have defaulted on mortgages, a rate that is close to zero, said Michael Gecan, a senior organizer with the Metro Industrial Areas Foundation, one of the forces behind the program.
"We demanded down payments," Mr. Gecan said, "and we resisted government attempts to have us waive down payments. Over the last six or eight years people kept suggesting various programs with zero down. We kept saying, 'That's ridiculous — that's how you get into mass foreclosures.' "
Through the 1990s and until the last few months, the banner of universal homeownership was flown high by Democrats and Republicans. Behind this virtuous cause was a jungle of counterintuitive arrangements, like loans with no down payment or income verification. These practices make sense only under a system in which the most valuable aspect of the loan papers themselves is that they can be bundled together and sold without any scrutiny of their actual worth. The result was a system of agreed-upon hallucinations.
With the collapse of these delusions, the Democrats have pointed to the uncaging of the financial industry by its Republican champions, like Phil Gramm, the former senator from Texas who was chairman of the Senate banking committee. Others have said that the problem arose because of the social piety of Democrats pushing for loans to uncreditworthy minority applicants.
Yet the people in the Nehemiah program, nearly all members of minority groups, have a superb record of meeting their obligations. Mr. Gecan says that's because from the very beginning of the program, the developers insisted that the buyers have a real financial stake in the houses. Another factor, Ms. Worthy said, was that the Nehemiah buyers, who were helped by two church groups, looked at what they were getting into. They were not vulnerable to the predatory lending scams that accelerated over the last decade.
"People were educated on what they could afford," Ms. Worthy said. "We weren't asked to sign blank documents. We weren't asked to say that we made $5,000 a month as opposed to the $1,000 that we might have actually made."
The rules Nehemiah applied to its buyers were precisely those that most lenders used to do business until recent years. In fact, that orthodoxy forced the Nehemiah developers to turn to alternative sources for capital. The financing came from a revolving fund set up by a coalition of churches and the Community Preservation Corporation, and with mortgages guaranteed by the State of New York. The city also provided an interest-free loan.
The congregations that banded together to build the Nehemiah houses — the South Bronx Churches and the East Brooklyn Congregations — did not align themselves with either political party, but employed tactics developed by Saul Alinsky, who is thought to have been the father of modern community organizing. They made specific, persistent demands; at times, they were criticized for following the playbook of Mr. Alinsky, who described himself as a radical.
In New York, at least, Nehemiah gave the city 3,900 homes in neighborhoods that had been mostly rubble. The people paid their bills. They changed the city. Radical indeed.
Anyway I just wanted to post that article here, courtesy of the New York Times.
By JIM DWYER
Published: September 26, 2008
Just about eight years ago, Patricia Worthy signed the papers for the first mortgage of her life, getting the customary dizzy spell as she looked at the line that listed, all in one place, 360 monthly payments of principal and interest.
She signed. So did 690 other families in her development, in the New Lots section of Brooklyn. All of them were buying homes for the first time; all were people of modest or moderate means. They were moving into a neighborhood that had been a forsaken stretch of abandoned buildings.
Those 691 families all took on their responsibilities at the dawn of a new era of debt, one that was not only deregulated but also seemingly deranged. Since then, across the country, the rate of defaults has soared.
Not, however, in Ms. Worthy's development.
"In my area, we have not had one foreclosure," Ms. Worthy said this week.
Her home was one of the 3,900 built under the Nehemiah housing program, which began nearly three decades ago, when acres of the Bronx and Brooklyn had fallen to ruin. Land was vacant. A group of churches and community organizers, and a developer named I. D. Robbins, came up with the idea to mass-produce single-family homes on these lots and sell them at low prices. They named their plan after a prophet of the Old Testament who rebuilt Jerusalem.
In the 27 years since the program started, fewer than 10 of the 3,900 households have defaulted on mortgages, a rate that is close to zero, said Michael Gecan, a senior organizer with the Metro Industrial Areas Foundation, one of the forces behind the program.
"We demanded down payments," Mr. Gecan said, "and we resisted government attempts to have us waive down payments. Over the last six or eight years people kept suggesting various programs with zero down. We kept saying, 'That's ridiculous — that's how you get into mass foreclosures.' "
Through the 1990s and until the last few months, the banner of universal homeownership was flown high by Democrats and Republicans. Behind this virtuous cause was a jungle of counterintuitive arrangements, like loans with no down payment or income verification. These practices make sense only under a system in which the most valuable aspect of the loan papers themselves is that they can be bundled together and sold without any scrutiny of their actual worth. The result was a system of agreed-upon hallucinations.
With the collapse of these delusions, the Democrats have pointed to the uncaging of the financial industry by its Republican champions, like Phil Gramm, the former senator from Texas who was chairman of the Senate banking committee. Others have said that the problem arose because of the social piety of Democrats pushing for loans to uncreditworthy minority applicants.
Yet the people in the Nehemiah program, nearly all members of minority groups, have a superb record of meeting their obligations. Mr. Gecan says that's because from the very beginning of the program, the developers insisted that the buyers have a real financial stake in the houses. Another factor, Ms. Worthy said, was that the Nehemiah buyers, who were helped by two church groups, looked at what they were getting into. They were not vulnerable to the predatory lending scams that accelerated over the last decade.
"People were educated on what they could afford," Ms. Worthy said. "We weren't asked to sign blank documents. We weren't asked to say that we made $5,000 a month as opposed to the $1,000 that we might have actually made."
The rules Nehemiah applied to its buyers were precisely those that most lenders used to do business until recent years. In fact, that orthodoxy forced the Nehemiah developers to turn to alternative sources for capital. The financing came from a revolving fund set up by a coalition of churches and the Community Preservation Corporation, and with mortgages guaranteed by the State of New York. The city also provided an interest-free loan.
The congregations that banded together to build the Nehemiah houses — the South Bronx Churches and the East Brooklyn Congregations — did not align themselves with either political party, but employed tactics developed by Saul Alinsky, who is thought to have been the father of modern community organizing. They made specific, persistent demands; at times, they were criticized for following the playbook of Mr. Alinsky, who described himself as a radical.
In New York, at least, Nehemiah gave the city 3,900 homes in neighborhoods that had been mostly rubble. The people paid their bills. They changed the city. Radical indeed.
Sigh...One more debate. Is it November yet.
Political season is starting to exhaust me. But I'm excited for obvious reasons. We are watching history in progress and I'm pulling for Barack Obama because this country seriously needs a radical change for the better, it would be a seismic shift of historical proportions. I'm keeping my fingers cross...
Consumer Confidence Boner Killer
This economy is scaring the hell out of me. I hope it does not descend further into the dark abyss. I'm afraid to spend money on anything these days, everything is so unstable. If the stock market continues to plunge any lower then start worrying even more. I want Obama in the White House now, he seems the only one who has a clue and an actual plan to bail us out of this conundrum.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
EliteXC Kimbo Slice VS. Ken Shamrock
LMAO... What can I say, the fight was a joke. Shamrock is injured from practice and in the last minute was replaced by former UFC fighter Seth Petruzelli. Clearly Kimbo was the favorite coming in this fight. He's bigger and he outweighed Seth by 30 lbs. I think everyone expected Kimbo to win, EliteXC was banking on him to win, after all he is the face of that organization and they will do everything they can to hype him up even if he's not that good at a professional level.
Kimbo Slice gained noteriety by fighting in backyards, people's houses and in the streets, by definition he's a street fighter, a brawler, but when you put MMA in the equation its a whole lot different. I really think that had Kimbo had been in the UFC that he would have been crushed easily by its stable of high caliber fighters. EliteXC is no way in the same league with the UFC.
Seth Petruzelli exposed Kimbo Slice's deficiency in the octagon, a short jab to the chin and he goes down and relentlessly pounds on him, the fight is stopped in 14 seconds. Winner: Seth Petrozelli by TKO.
Kimbo Slice gained noteriety by fighting in backyards, people's houses and in the streets, by definition he's a street fighter, a brawler, but when you put MMA in the equation its a whole lot different. I really think that had Kimbo had been in the UFC that he would have been crushed easily by its stable of high caliber fighters. EliteXC is no way in the same league with the UFC.
Seth Petruzelli exposed Kimbo Slice's deficiency in the octagon, a short jab to the chin and he goes down and relentlessly pounds on him, the fight is stopped in 14 seconds. Winner: Seth Petrozelli by TKO.
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