Why Obama’s Homeowner Rescue Is Bound to Fail

This is a commentary from Evan Newmark of the Wall Street Journal.  I realize that obama is trying to fix this mess that bush left us, but evan makes a lot of sense as far as this housing boondoggle goes.  Here are his thoughts on this mess, which I’m inclined to agree with.

---

Welcome to the Obama Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan — a complicated wealth redistribution scheme dressed up as a cure for the nation’s housing woes.  It is almost certainly bound to fail.  Now, there is no doubting that Obama’s heart is in the right place. With foreclosures at record highs, the American white picket fence dream is crumbling.

And the impulse of any caring President must be to do something, almost anything to keep the dream alive.  But the experience of politicians tinkering with the U.S. housing market is not a happy one. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, anyone?

Real estate is simply too complex to be manipulated by anything but the “invisible hand” of the market.        Breaking News

Commentary: Stimulus bill a sorry spectacle

Jack Cafferty says the House violated a pledge to make stimulus bill public 48 hours before vote.

NEW YORK (CNN) — What a joke. Your Congress has voted to spend almost $790 billion of your money on a stimulus package that not a single member of either chamber has read.

The 1,073-page document wasn’t posted on the government’s Web site until after 10 p.m. the day before the vote to pass it was taken. I don’t care if you’re Evelyn Wood, you can’t read almost 1,100 pages of the lawyer talk that makes up all legislation in eight or 10 hours.

The criminal part of this boondoggle is divided into two parts. The first is the Democrats promised to post the bill a full 48 hours before the vote was taken to allow members of the public to see what they were getting for their money. Both parties voted unanimously to do this … and they lied.        Breaking News

Commentary: Don’t mortgage our children’s future

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (CNN) — When a debate as important — both in terms of policy and politics — as the one currently rolling around our nation regarding the president’s “stimulus” plan takes place, emotion often takes precedence over fact.

Words are ripped out of context, motives ascribed where none may exist, political strategies implemented with limited regard for actuality. This, then, is the playing field we step onto — as it has long been.

But, as those in South Carolina have often heard me say, it is important to disagree without being disagreeable. So let’s take a clear-eyed look at Paul Begala’s recent defense of the president, which happened to refer to me by name — because what I and others have suggested is far from “doing nothing.”        Breaking News

The ‘I won’ argument isn’t enough

By Rich Lowry
Published: February 9, 2009
Buzz up!

Barack Obama, a reputed master of the persuasive art, has settled on his central argument for the stimulus bill: I won.

Barack Obama, a reputed master of the persuasive art, has settled on his central argument for the stimulus bill: I won.

That Obama is reduced to this crude appeal is a symptom of the intellectual collapse of the case for his stimulus bill, a congressional spendfest untethered from its stated goal of providing a rapid “jolt” to the economy.

As far as political arguments go, “I won” has its power — provided it’s made on behalf of an agenda ratified by the American electorate. But Obama didn’t campaign on a sprawling, nearly $1 trillion new spending plan. If he had pledged in October to double federal domestic discretionary spending in a matter of weeks — including increasing the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts by a third, spending hundreds of millions more on federal buildings and throwing tens of billions on every traditional liberal priority from job training to Pell Grants — he’d have been hard-pressed to win at all.        Full Story

Can video games fix our flaws?

Guru games aim to improve our math skills, culinary competence and more

I don’t want to sound paranoid or anything, but I’m starting to suspect that Nintendo has secretly hidden some sort of spy camera in my home.

I say this because there are two things in life that I’m especially awful at: math and cooking. And rather suspiciously, Nintendo recently launched two games that seem aimed specifically at me: “Personal Trainer: Math” and “Personal Trainer: Cooking.” “I’m telling you, it’s like they know”.  They know that I use my fingers and sometimes my toes when faced with solving particularly taxing math problems (problems like: what is 15 plus 7?)          Full Story