He Quits June 28, 2005January 18, 2017 But First . . . TYP-O John Kornegay: ‘Monday you state: ‘Bin Laden – against the threat of whom the incoming President and Vice President had been warned in urgent terms by the CIA on January 7, 2005 at Blair House – was nowhere on the agenda.)’ Am I correct to assume the actual year should have been 2001?’ ☞ Yep. Fixed. Thanks. DUMB-O Gray Chang: ‘Although you can get a 1-year 3.64% adjustable-rate mortgage as quoted in Bloomberg, it’s a teaser rate that expires after one year. The Annual Percentage Rate (APR) gives a better idea of the true cost of a loan. APRs for adjustable-rate mortgages are now typically around 5.5%, the same as for fixed-rate mortgages.’ ☞ My goof, then. Obviously, the teaser rate is of less relevance. All the more reason to grab the fixed rather than the adjustable mortgage these days. (IF, THAT IS, YOU GRAB A MORTGAGE AT ALL) This from the June 16th Economist is sobering: The worldwide rise in house prices is the biggest bubble in history. Prepare for the economic pain when it pops NEVER before have real house prices risen so fast, for so long, in so many countries. Property markets have been frothing from America, Britain and Australia to France, Spain and China. Rising property prices helped to prop up the world economy after the stockmarket bubble burst in 2000. What if the housing boom now turns to bust? According to estimates by The Economist, the total value of residential property in developed economies rose by more than $30 trillion over the past five years, to over $70 trillion, an increase equivalent to 100% of those countries’ combined GDPs. Not only does this dwarf any previous house-price boom, it is larger than the global stockmarket bubble in the late 1990s (an increase over five years of 80% of GDP) or America’s stockmarket bubble in the late 1920s (55% of GDP). In other words, it looks like the biggest bubble in history. . . . And now . . . HE QUITS From the Eugene, Oregon Register-Guard: June 26, 2005 Guest Viewpoint: The party’s over for betrayed Republican By James Chaney As of today, after 25 years, I am no longer a Republican. I take this step with deep regret, and with a deep sense of betrayal. I still believe in the vast power of markets to inspire ideas, motivate solutions and eliminate waste. I still believe in international vigilance and a strong defense, because this world will always be home to people who will avidly seek to take or destroy what we have built as a nation. I still believe in the protection of individuals and businesses from the influence and expense of an over-involved government. I still believe in the hand-in-hand concepts of separation of church and state and absolute freedom to worship, in the rights of the states to govern themselves without undo federal interference, and in the host of other things that defined me as a Republican. My problem is this: I believe in principles and ideals which my party has systematically discarded in the last 10 years. My Republican Party was the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Barry Goldwater, and George H.W. Bush. It was a party of honesty and accountability. It was a party of tolerance, and practicality and honor. It was a party that faced facts and dealt with reality, and that crafted common-sense solutions to problems based on the facts as they were, not as we wished them to be, or even worse, as we made them up. It was a party that told the truth, even when the truth came hard. And now, it is none of those things. Fifty years from now, the Republican Party of this era will be judged by how we provided for the nation’s future on three core issues: how we led the world on the environment, how we minded the business of running our country in such a way that we didn’t go bankrupt, and whether we gracefully accepted our place on the world’s stage as its only superpower. Sadly, we have built the foundation for dismal failure on all three counts. And we’ve done it in such a way that we shouldn’t be surprised if neither the American people nor the world ever trusts us again. My party has repeatedly ignored, discarded and even invented science to suit its needs, most spectacularly as to global warming. We have an opportunity and the responsibility to lead the world on this issue, but instead we’ve chosen greed, shortsightedness and deliberate ignorance. We have mortgaged the country’s fiscal future in a way that no Democratic Congress or administration ever did, and to justify the tax cuts that brought us here, we’ve simply changed the rules. I matured as a Republican believing that uncontrolled deficit spending is harmful and irresponsible; I still do. But the party has yet to explain to me why it’s a good thing now, other than to say “… because we say so.” Our greatest failure, though, has been in our role as superpower. This world needs justice, democracy and compassion, and as the keystone of those things, it needs one thing above all else: truth. Republican decisions made in 2002 and 2003 have killed almost 2,000 of the most capable patriots our country has to offer – volunteers, every one. Support for those decisions was gathered through what appeared at the time to be spin and marketing, but which now turns out to have been deliberate planning and falsehood. The Blair government’s internal documentation only confirms what has been suspected for years: Americans are dying every day for Republican lies first crafted in 2002, expanded and embellished upon in 2003, and which continue to this day. This calculated deception is now burned into the legacy of the party, every bit as much as Reagan’s triumph in the Cold War, or Nixon’s disgrace over Watergate. I could go on and on – about how we have compromised our international integrity by sanctioning torture, about how we are systematically dismantling the civil liberties that it took us two centuries to define and preserve, and about how we have substituted bullying, brinksmanship and “staying on message” for real political discourse – but those three issues are enough. We’re poisoning our planet through gluttony and ignorance. We’re teetering on the brink of self-inflicted insolvency. We’re selfishly and needlessly sacrificing the best of a generation. And we’re lying about it. While it has compiled this record of failure and deception, the party which I’m leaving today has spent its time, energy and political capital trying to save Terri Schiavo, battling the threat of single-sex unions, fighting medical marijuana and physician-assisted suicide, manufacturing political crises over presidential nominees, and selling privatized Social Security to an America that isn’t buying. We fiddle while Rome burns. Enough is enough. I quit. James Chaney is a Eugene attorney who has been in private practice for more than 20 years, and who has been a registered Republican since 1980. HE DOESN’T Chris Williams: ‘Come now, surely we can all agree . . . Iraq has been a wildly successful outcome. We have thousands of troops on the second biggest oil reserves in the world and they aren’t going anywhere for a very long time – and hell, they’re there at the request of the country’s government. What better reality for a century during which the oil will run out could you possibly, in your most optimistic dreams, hope for in the pursuit of American dominance? A few thousand men die to secure for America a very good chance of dominating an entire century. Forget Iraq. Just look at that equation. We all want America to be the dominant power on this planet. Would you not think 1,500 men is small price to pay to ensure America is subordinate to no one For Very Probably An Entire Century?’ ☞ So we are there not because of the WMD or terrorism or to liberate the folks, but to secure the oil for our Hummers and dominate the world? At the cost of just a few tens of thousands of human lives? (Sorry; last I looked, Iraqi civilians were human, too.) And the Republican leadership lies about it constantly because that, too, serves our interest? And you’re very pleased with the way things are going. OK – got it. FOR THOSE WHO SIDE MORE WITH JAMES CHANEY THAN CHRIS WILLIAMS Check out the DNC’s new web site. Buy some Democracy Bonds!