No one was killed on Los Angeles County roads this New Year's Eve, according to California Highway Patrol statistics. Last year, one person was killed during the same time period, between 6:01 p.m. Dec. 31 to 6 a.m. Jan. 1. Statewide, deaths were down from 11 last year to 7 this year, according to CHP.
Although deaths were down, driving under the influence arrests were up across the state and in Los Angeles County. Statewide, CHP made 108 DUI arrests this year compared to 88 last year. In Los Angeles County, 527 DUI arrests were made this year, up from 438 last year.
As on every New Year’s Eve, local law enforcement will be out in force tonight with roadblocks and patrols targeting impaired driving. And the familiar sight of flashing blue lights on the last night of the year appears to have had some effect.
"It seems in the last few years that people who may have driven drunk have figured out that law enforcement is out in large numbers," said Sgt. Dean Allen, post commander for the Georgia State Patrol’s Gainesville post. "There’s a few who still get out there, but most of them know not to do it."
There are no figures immediately available for DUI arrests in Hall County on New Year’s Eve, but data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration suggest that nationally, alcohol-related traffic fatalities on New Year’s Eve are down.
President Barack Obama drew a direct link Saturday between an al Qaeda group and a foiled attempt to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner on Christmas Day.
In his Saturday morning radio address, Mr. Obama went further than he has in previous statements on the attack to connect the extremist group with the Dec. 25 attack. He pledged to work with officials in other nations to combat terrorism, including Yemen, where officials believe Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian accused of trying to destroy Northwest Flight 253, was schooled in terrorist techniques.
"We know that he traveled to Yemen, a country grappling with crushing poverty and deadly insurgencies. It appears that he joined an affiliate of al Qaeda, and that this group -- Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula -- trained him, equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America," Mr. Obama said in his address, a copy of which was released by the White House. He delivered the radio address from Hawaii, where he is vacationing this week.
"This is not the first time this group has targeted us. In recent years, they have bombed Yemeni government facilities and Western hotels, restaurants and embassies -- including our embassy in 2008, killing one American. So, as president, I've made it a priority to strengthen our partnership with the Yemeni government-training and equipping their security forces, sharing intelligence and working with them to strike al Qaeda terrorists," he said.
Even before Christmas, the U.S. has been aiding Yemen battled militants and had already planned to substantially increase spending on counterterrorism operations there this year. Two missile strikes last month, before the botched attack, were aimed at leaders of the al Qaeda branch and a radical cleric U.S. officials believe is connected to the plot.
On Dec. 29, the president ordered a sweeping inquiry to determine how information in U.S. possession before the attack was not assembled into a full picture of the plot. Such a picture would have resulted in Mr. Abdulmutallab being detained for questioning before he boarded a jet with explosives concealed in his clothing, Mr. Obama has said.
The president is currently reading through hundreds of pages of reports submitted by heads of a half-dozen intelligence and other agencies in response to a Dec. 31 deadline he set for them to complete a preliminary review of their roles in the case.
On Tuesday Mr. Obama will convene agency chiefs in the White House Situation Room to discuss next steps in the investigation.
Meanwhile, Congress plans multiple hearings in what promises to be a politically-charged effort to determine who's to blame for intelligence failures.
The text of the president's address is here (via Memeorandum), but I've just listened to the video. I simply cannot believe this man. He claims he'll do "whatever it takes" to defeat our enemies, but then at 2:35 minutes he asserts that the war in Iraq " had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks." Then, at 4:22 minutes, he puffs, let us not succumb to "partisanship and division."
Yeah. Right. Mr. Take-a-Shot-at-My-Predecessor's-Foreign-Policy is urging folks to "renew that timeless American spirit of resolve and confidence and optimism."
What a f***ing joke.
No wonder Americans feel less safe under the Democrats and would be happy waterboarding our diabolical foes who want nothing less the a million 9/11s.
One should wonder not if Obama is defending the American people (he’s not), but rather…when Al Queda gets a good detonator and succeeds in killing Americans, what will Obama’s excuse be? He can’t blame Bush. He can’t say he was taking the threat seriously (he’s not). He can’t blame Republicans who barely have a minority in Congress. He can’t blame American imperialism as he’s practiced the opposite. So, if all those tried and true excuses and conspiracy theories of the past don’t sell….does that mean HE screwed up, and something (anything) that the Bush Admin did to prevent terror attacks was correct? That’s a question that-if answered in the affirmative, collapses the far left nutroots house of conspiracy theory lies.
The Obama administration’s $75 billion program to protect homeowners from foreclosure has been widely pronounced a disappointment, and some economists and real estate experts now contend it has done more harm than good.
Since President Obama announced the program in February, it has lowered mortgage payments on a trial basis for hundreds of thousands of people but has largely failed to provide permanent relief. Critics increasingly argue that the program, Making Home Affordable, has raised false hopes among people who simply cannot afford their homes.
As a result, desperate homeowners have sent payments to banks in often-futile efforts to keep their homes, which some see as wasting dollars they could have saved in preparation for moving to cheaper rental residences. Some borrowers have seen their credit tarnished while falsely assuming that loan modifications involved no negative reports to credit agencies.
Some experts argue the program has impeded economic recovery by delaying a wrenching yet cleansing process through which borrowers give up unaffordable homes and banks fully reckon with their disastrous bets on real estate, enabling money to flow more freely through the financial system.
“The choice we appear to be making is trying to modify our way out of this, which has the effect of lengthening the crisis,” said Kevin Katari, managing member of Watershed Asset Management, a San Francisco-based hedge fund. “We have simply slowed the foreclosure pipeline, with people staying in houses they are ultimately not going to be able to afford anyway.”
Mr. Katari contends that banks have been using temporary loan modifications under the Obama plan as justification to avoid an honest accounting of the mortgage losses still on their books. Only after banks are forced to acknowledge losses and the real estate market absorbs a now pent-up surge of foreclosed properties will housing prices drop to levels at which enough Americans can afford to buy, he argues.
“Then the carpenters can go back to work,” Mr. Katari said. “The roofers can go back to work, and we start building housing again. If this drips out over the next few years, that whole sector of the economy isn’t going to recover.”
The Treasury Department publicly maintains that its program is on track. “The program is meeting its intended goal of providing immediate relief to homeowners across the country,” a department spokeswoman, Meg Reilly, wrote in an e-mail message.
But behind the scenes, Treasury officials appear to have concluded that growing numbers of delinquent borrowers simply lack enough income to afford their homes and must be eased out.
That sounds about right to me. But the administration's got an additional plan, "Foreclosure Alternatives Program." This is supposed to help banks eat their losses. But everybody hurts, so it doesn't help putting lipstick on this pig.
Anyway, while it's not something I've been blogging about, it's not as if I ignore this stuff. As Ace commenter Kreiz noted at the comments, these challenges "aren't unusual." Well, that's for sure, but then again. See these stories:
If there was anybody who should have avoided the mortgage catastrophe, it was I. As an economics reporter for The New York Times, I have been the paper’s chief eyes and ears on the Federal Reserve for the past six years. I watched Alan Greenspan and his successor, Ben S. Bernanke, at close range. I wrote several early-warning articles in 2004 about the spike in go-go mortgages. Before that, I had a hand in covering the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the Russia meltdown in 1998 and the dot-com collapse in 2000. I know a lot about the curveballs that the economy can throw at us.
But in 2004, I joined millions of otherwise-sane Americans in what we now know was a catastrophic binge on overpriced real estate and reckless mortgages. Nobody duped or hypnotized me. Like so many others — borrowers, lenders and the Wall Street dealmakers behind them — I just thought I could beat the odds. We all had our reasons. The brokers and dealmakers were scoring huge commissions. Ordinary homebuyers were stretching to get into first houses, or bigger houses, or better neighborhoods. Some were greedy, some were desperate and some were deceived.
Then there's this story, which puts a different light on well-meaning folks who got little to eager to cash in on the equity boom. See, "American Dream 2: Default, Then Rent":
Schoolteacher Shana Richey misses the playroom she decorated with Glamour Girl decals for her daughters. Fireman Jay Fernandez misses the custom putting green he installed in his backyard.
But ever since they quit paying their mortgages and walked away from their homes, they've discovered that giving up on the American dream has its benefits.
Both now live on the 3100 block of Club Rancho Drive in Palmdale, where a terrible housing market lets them rent luxurious homes -- one with a pool for the kids, the other with a golf-course view -- for a fraction of their former monthly payments.
"It's just a better life. It really is," says Ms. Richey. Before defaulting on her mortgage, she owed about $230,000 more than the home was worth.
People's increasing willingness to abandon their own piece of America illustrates a paradoxical change wrought by the housing bust: Even as it tarnishes the near-sacred image of home ownership, it might be clearing the way for an economic recovery.
Thanks to a rare confluence of factors -- mortgages that far exceed home values and bargain-basement rents -- a growing number of families are concluding that the new American dream home is a rental.
Some are leaving behind their homes and mortgages right away, while others are simply halting payments until the bank kicks them out. That's freeing up cash to use in other ways.
Ms. Richey's family of five used some of the money to buy season tickets to Disneyland, and plans to take a Carnival cruise to Mexico in March. Mr. Fernandez takes his girlfriend out to dinner more frequently. "We're saving lots of money," Ms. Richey says ....
Ms. Richey, the teacher, arrived in Palmdale in 1999. In 2004, she and her husband, Timothy, bought a two-story home on Caspian Drive, near Avenue O-8, with a no-down-payment loan. They took pride in the amenities they installed: a powder room with granite countertops, a backyard pool and play area, and the purple-and-turquoise fantasy playroom upstairs for their three daughters.
But the value of the house plunged to less than $200,000 in 2009. Their $430,000 mortgage, with its $3,700 monthly payment, began to look more like an unwanted burden. By May, amid troubles getting tenants for two rental properties she also owned, Ms. Richey decided the time had come to cut a deal with America's Servicing Co., a unit of Wells Fargo & Co. servicing the mortgage on the house.
After three months of wrangling, she says she finally received a modification approval. The new monthly payment: about $3,300, far more than she had hoped. A Wells Fargo spokesman confirmed the bank offered Ms. Richey a modification under the Obama administration's Making Home Affordable program, and said, "The Richeys turned down the lowest payment we could offer."
Ms. Richey and her husband had already been working on Plan B -- exploring the neighborhood's "For Rent" signs.
On one trip, they drove by the house at 3152 Club Rancho Drive. It was bigger than their house on Caspian, had a pool with three waterfalls, and boasted a cascading staircase that Ms. Richey says she could picture her daughters descending on prom night. The rent was $2,195 a month.
The situation presented Ms. Richey with a quandary now facing more than 10 million U.S. homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth.
On one hand, walking away from her home would be easy. California is one of 10 states that largely prevent mortgage lenders from going after the other assets of borrowers who default. But she also had to consider the negatives. Her credit could be tarnished for years and, perhaps most importantly, she feared her friends and neighbors might ostracize her.
"It was scary," she says, noting that people tended to keep such decisions to themselves for fear of being stigmatized. "It's still very hush-hush."
Tom Sobelman, whose family of four lives across the street from Ms. Richey, at 3127 Club Rancho Drive, sees mortgages as a moral as well as financial obligation. He's still paying the mortgage on an investment property he owns nearby, despite the fact that the rent is about $1,000 a month short of covering his costs.
I've been putting it off, but I need to post my annual New Year's Day report. Last year's is here, "American Power in 2009."
I'm feeling better this year, less economic anxiety. That's probably odd, since, things financially are going to come to a head in my home this year. I'm up for refinance, but a home that sold across the street, virtually the exact same model (brand new development in 2005), sold for more than $100,000 dollars less than the market price at time of purchase. It's a lousy market, and unless folks are in for the long haul (stable, fixed-rate mortgages), people are losing money, selling short, or walking away. My wife and I have a lousy loan. We put down $35,000 on our house when we bought it (for close to $600,000). We put at least another $15,000 into it for furnishings, window coverings, new furniture, etc. After a year, we had over $150,000 in "equity" at going market rates. But then the crash came. Our loan is adjustable, and when the mortgage resets it'll be unaffordable at our current income levels. Like many folks, our fortunes were riding on market trends, and since both my wife and I are gainfully employed at good income, we've been less worried than many. Still, I'm not looking forward to the tough decisions. I'll be talking to the lender. Whatever happens with the house, everything will be market based. I oppose mortgage bailouts, and if my lender plays hardball, well, I signed on the line and I'll live with the outcome and learn from it -- starting over somewhere else if necessary.
That's all I feel like sharing about things on the financial side. It could be a rough year. The main thing for me, if we have to move, is to keep my kids enrolled in this school district. Both boys are doing well. My oldest will be 14 this month, and he's a headstrong teenager showing his independence. My youngest is 8 and doing really well in school after a couple of slower years dealing with reading impediments. We've got some special programs through his campus, and the principal, teachers, and support staff have been phenomenal. Irvine public schools are wonderful that way, so maintaining stability on that front will be a priority (my parents divorced when I was in 9th grade, and I basically missed my freshman year of high school from the emotional disruption and relocations ... I don't want my sons to go through it like I did).
The other big thing for me this year will be physical fitness (hence, the "Rocky" trailer above ... watched the movie again today, as part of Encore's "Rocky" marathon ... I should write another post on that ... maybe tomorrow). I've always been healthy and fit, although I've gained weight over the last two years and I need to lose about 20 pounds. My doctor even said so, for the first time in my life. So, I'll be getting out more. I've no excuses. I like the outdoors, and I was a skateboarder in my teens, and a bodybuilder and a cyclist in my twenties and thirties. A runner too, but I don't know if my knees are going to hold out. Hiking's cool (what've I've done in my forties), and that's probably the first thing I'll be getting back into. We also have a personal stepclimber in the downstairs office (Stairmaster 4000PT, popular at membership gyms in the 1990s), although I like to get out, so we'll see how much I use it. The main constraint will be setting aside time outside of work and caring for my boys. With the wife working full-time, exercise has to be scheduled in just like everything else. I will be writing and blogging about this, with photos of hikes - perhaps as early as next week, when my kids start back to school (I'll have another week off before my semester begins).
Other than that, as I noted in my 1 million hits milestone entry, blogging will continue. Although I'm not sure on the pace. I'm thinking about writing a book. Not sure how I'll approach it, but it's going to deal with my ideological transformation over the last 6 years, and perhaps a lot about blogging and politics. We'll see, but it's the next step in my personal development, and if I can get that done in a year or two, my blogging creds will be strengthened. Perhaps I'll even make more money at this stuff some day.
Okay, that's good for now. Thanks to all of my regular readers, many of whom I don't communicate with. Feel free to comment here, or try to comment at upcoming threads.
At Big Government, Dana Loesch reports on "The Most Underreported Stories of 2009." It's a phenomenal essay, and breathtaking in peeling back the journalistic malpractice in the country today. But while Dana discusses Fort Hood and the home-grown Islamist threat, it's clear that the administration's gotten a free ride on its disastrous foreign policy altogether. And now that Americans have come literally within threads of a catastrophic bombing, it will simply do no good to let the administration skate free on national security any longer.
A suicide bombing reportedly killed eight Americans on a CIA base in Afghanistan, making it the worst single loss of life for the CIA since 1983.. As David Martin reports, the Taliban is claiming responsibility.
**********
Perhaps this piece at the Wall Street Journal might help us restore some perspective. See, "GOP Seizes on Security as Issue":
Political furor over the attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253 has thrust national security back to the center of American politics, with Republicans and the White House scrambling to blame each other for intelligence lapses and present themselves to voters as tougher on terrorism.
Strategists in both parties believe that terrorism and, more broadly, foreign policy could emerge in the November midterm elections and in President Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign as key issues for voters who have been focused primarily on the economy.
GOP opinion leaders such as former Vice President Dick Cheney have seized on the attack to question President Barack Obama's grasp of foreign affairs. Republican Party officials have sent fund-raising appeals that take aim at Mr. Obama's response to the episode.
Republican strategists said in interviews that they saw an opportunity to regain the traditional advantages on security issues that failed them in the past two national campaigns, as the economic downturn and public opposition to President George W. Bush's policies in Iraq took primacy in voters' minds.
The White House and its allies, meanwhile, have responded by mounting a campaign to assert Mr. Obama's bona fides as a strong commander in chief while blaming Bush policies in Iraq for emboldening al Qaeda to plan attacks such as the one Christmas Day in the skies over Detroit.
Their efforts include using a White House Web site posting personally rebuking Mr. Cheney for "seven years of bellicose rhetoric" and arguing that al Qaeda during Mr. Bush's tenure "regenerated" to establish "new safe havens" in Yemen and Somalia. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the man accused in the botched effort to down Northwest Flight 253, allegedly trained in Yemen.
Good luck with that. Republicans can just point to Democratic hypocrisy on any of the security threats we've faced since at least the Iraq war, and more recently leftist defeatism on Afghanistan. Dana Loesch Hat Tip: Glenn Reynolds.
The death toll varies across news reports, but scores have been killed in a suicide bombing at a Pakistan volleyball match. The Telegraph UK indicates 88 dead:
At least 88 people were killed on Friday when a suicide car bomber blew up himself and his vehicle as people gathered to watch a volleyball game in north-west Pakistan.
Police said dozens more were injured in the attack in the village of Shah Hasan Khan, in Bannu district.
“The villagers were watching the match between the two village teams when the bomber drove his double-cabin pick-up vehicle into them and blew it up,” said Habibullah Khan, the local chief of police.
Police said the attack was possibly retaliation against residents who had set up a militia to expel Taliban fighters from the area. The village is near South Waziristan, where the army last month completed a military offensive against extremists sheltering in the lawless territory.
Friday’s bombing took place after Pakistan’s security forces said they had foiled a suicide bomb plot against the country’s sensitive Wagah border crossing with India.
The plot, if carried out, would have sabotaged the first steps to improve relations between the two countries after the 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai. It was uncovered as Pakistani intelligence agents arrested 10 militants including the Taliban’s leader in Punjab, known as Khalilullah, and a 17-year-old boy who was being groomed to carry the bomb.
A suicide bomber rammed a pickup truck loaded with explosives into a playground crowded with families and children watching a volleyball game in northwest Pakistan Friday.
Police and local officials said as many as 60 people had been killed, with scores wounded, making the New Year’s Day attack one of the deadliest of more than 20 suicide bombings carried out by militants since October.
The attack underscored the Taliban’s determination to prevent citizens from forming militias to keep the insurgents at bay as military operations disrupt their strongholds in the nearby tribal belt.
Local authorities said they had little doubt that the village, Shah Hassan Khel, was chosen because residents were forming a pro-government militia. In recent weeks, the militants had been threatening death to anyone who joined.
But as the bomber prepared to strike on Friday, he did not choose the most obvious target: A meeting underway of local leaders of the new militia.
Instead, he drove his double-cabin pickup truck into the middle of a nearby playground where teams were playing volleyball and detonated explosives so powerful that they collapsed homes surrounding the field.
It's not as if folks don't realize Pakistan's at the boiling point. For a while there, in the last couple of months, I was reporting a new attack in Pakistan every day. And this is the Taliban, so it's not going to be isolated. The Waziristan region of Af-Pak will continue to be the crosshairs of Islamist radicalism. Indeed, South Asia, encompassing Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India is now replicating the foreign policy challenges of Fallujah and Sunni Triangle from roughly 2004 through 2006. Just like Iraq in 2003, now the United Nations is pulling out of Pakistan as increasing danger threatens its mission there. Where once analysts warned of a U.S. defeat in Iraq under the Bush administration, now it's the Demcrats and Obama who'll take blame for deterioriation of the region, the descent and possible collapse of Pakistan, and a perhaps an ignominious American withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Healthcare can wait. This administration is facing its highest stakes in foreign policy. We've started to move toward more efficacious counterinsurgency under the McChrystal plan, but President Obama's dithering and delay clearly has emboldened America's enemies in the theater. Dick Cheny is right.
Noteworthy is how the Taliban, by seeking to deploy teenage bombers, is now mimicking the most diabolical terrorism of al Qaeda in Iraq at the height of the insurgency. And as we saw yesterday, the bomber in the Afghan blast that killed 8 Americans had camouflaged the bomb under an Afghan army uniform.
Now that's a "top-ten" list I could get my grubby little right-wing terrorist fingers around!
Actually, I've saw so many phenomenal signs last year I probably couldn't come up with a top-ten list. But Michelle has a post from yesterday that's inspiring, "Best of 2009: Tea Party sign of the times." She's got a sign there that says, "Reduce Your Government Footprint."
And come to think of it, each new tea party brings out a new set of signs, addressing a new set of angles on the issues -- it's just a delight to behold (and scares the bejesus out of the Dems).
