Thursday, October 30, 2008

Share Your Own Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich, Obama

Yesterday in a speech on the campaign trail, Senator Obama ad-libbed this:
By the end of the week, he'll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my -- I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Use whatever cliche you want, but this could be a touchdown, a home-run, or a soft lob for McCain.

I DON'T CARE IF OBAMA SHARES HIS OWN TOYS OR SHARES HIS OWN SANDWICH WITH THE OTHER KINDERGARTENERS! JUST DON'T TAKE MY TOYS AND MY SANDWICH AND SHARE THEM WITH HIS CLASSMATES!

Nobody will accuse you of being a Communist Obama if you shared your own toys and sandwich. The problem is that you want to take other people's hard earned peanut butter and jelly and give it to people so you can be the teacher's pet or the classroom favorite. Democrats are so convinced that it's their money that they take from American citizens, that they refer to it as their money.

One thing I learned in kindergarten is share my own toys, not take from others!

Monday, October 20, 2008

The Bank Crisis for Dummies

Hi. We had a stock market crash. On October 9, 2007, the Dow Jones industrial average reached a record 14,164. Exactly one year later, October 9, 2008, the Dow closed at 8,579. The United States stock market lost 39.4%. What happened? Why is the economy in such bad condition that the U.S. Congress just voted for and the president signed into law a 700 billion dollar banking bail-out legislation?

You've heard about Republican deregulation, about Freddie and Fannie, and you've heard about failed financial policies. Everything seems so complicated. Our national leaders said we had to have this bail-out or things would become even worse than what they are. What happened and whose fault was it? Did we really need this expensive bill to be passed? Let me explain. Understanding this should impact your vote in this presidential election.

People Put Their Money, Their Savings, Into Banks

Dads and moms have jobs and they make money. They put their money into banks. When they put their money into a savings account, they are able to earn a little bit of interest on their money from the bank. This interest a bank will pay on a savings account is usually around 3%. Banks earn money by investing the money that people deposit in their savings accounts.

Banks Give People Loans to Buy a House---These Loans Are Called Mortgages

Banks can earn money by making home loans. They receive more interest on the home loan than the interest money people receive for their savings account. In order for people to get a home loan, they must qualify to have that loan. Those qualifications once were much more strict. These banks knew they were investing other people's money, so they were very careful who they would loan it to. The old standard for getting a loan was having at least a 700+ credit score, 20% down payment on the loan, five years on a job, two months of payments in the bank, and no bankruptcy in the last eight years. When those standards were enforced, people rarely defaulted on their loan and lost their homes to foreclosure.

Banks make money by the people paying back their loans at a higher interest than they are giving back to customers in savings interest. Banks also loan money to businesses in the form of business loans. The way that many small businesses operate is that they use these loans to buy inventory, paper for billing customers, and for paying their employees. They pay back the loans with the money make from their business. Everything in the United States economy was moving along fine with the kind of arrangement that I've described so far. But then something happened.

The United States Government Changed the Rules for Home Loans

Something did happen and what happened first was President Jimmy Carter in 1977. Banks would not give loans to people in certain neighborhoods---it wasn't very safe banking practice to do so. President Carter changed this by signing the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). This law made banks give loans to people who lived in those bad loan areas. The idea, of course, was that if more people owned homes in those areas, they would do a better job of taking care of the neighborhood. CRA encouraged home loans through two government sponsored enterprises: one was The Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the other was The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac). With this new law, to go unpunished by the federal government, banks had to find buyers who could qualify for loans under the old, reliable standards. They often could not find any so out of the lack of qualified buyers hatched the concept of the sub-prime mortgage.

CRA also created hundreds of unregulated housing "agencies," who would lobby banks for more money for their agencies. If they couldn't get the money, these agencies would cause great difficulties for banks with nasty lawsuits. The Reverend Al Sharpton was involved with these. One of these agencies, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) bragged that because of their influence, over one trillion dollars worth of these CRA sub-prime mortgages were written. Now Senator Barack Obama was a community organizer heavily involved in ACORN.

We're not done yet. In 1980 President Jimmy Carter signed The Deregulation and Monetary Control Act. In 1982 President Ronald Reagan signed The Alternative Mortgage Transactions Parity Act. These two laws created some modern mortage products with which we have now all become familiar: adjustable rate mortgages (ARM), balloon payment mortgages, interest only mortgages, etc. In 1986 the IRS tax code was changed to give a deduction for only the interest on a home loan. Financial advisors started encouraging customers to pay off mortgage debt only and to pay off other forms of debt with the equity in their homes. In 1993 President Bill Clinton made changes to the CRA that made it even more difficult for banks to deny loans to under qualified and gave banks points for giving out the more exotic loans.

Home loans became a major business. Many made incredible amounts of money as loan brokers. Amazing numbers of loans and bad ones, deceptive ones, were given to unqualified buyers. These mortgage brokers were just swimming in the waters created by the deregulation in the industry, that was designed by Democrats for the purpose of social architecture in poor neighborhoods.

Mainly Under Qualified Home Owners Defaulted on Millions of Home Loans

After a certain period of time, the creative loans given to under qualified buyers began to balloon and adjust to a higher rate, pricing the owners out of their own homes. The defaults on loans started as a trickle and built to a giant river of foreclosures. People were not paying back their loans to the banks. The banks were losing money.

Many of the banks were tied up into investment firms and investment organizations were strapped into banks. Many businesses needed banks for loans to operate. Corporations began to suffer the effects and the stock market began to drop. Banks and investment companies folded. Remember those people who had put their money in the bank? They were afraid, so in many cases, they ran to the banks to take out their money. People foreclosed on their houses and stopped making payments to the banks on their mortgages. Then others took their money from the banks. Many banks collapsed. The housing mortgage bubble popped and down came the U. S. economy with it.

Why Didn't Someone Warn Us About This Happening?

1999 was the first wave of sub-prime company busts. We didn't hear much about it in 2000 because that would not reflect well on Vice-President Gore's presidential run. Some warned about it. Several Republicans in the Senate gave warning, including Senator John McCain in 2005. Reforms of the mortgage industry were championed in the Senate by Senator John Sununu, who is presently losing his Senatorial race in New Hampshire to liberal Democrat and former Governor Jeanne Shaheen ironically in part because of the financial crisis. In 2003, Franklin Raines, CEO of Fannie Mae, said that they would not put effort into verifying immigration status of those applying for home loans. Yes, illegal immigrants contributed to the bank and mortgage crisis we're now in. There were many in the Senate who were given giant campaign contributions by Fannie Mae. Some of them were those in charge of government oversight of the home loan organizations. As late as July of this year, Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd, chair of the Senate Banking Committee, called Fannie and Freddie, "fundamentally strong." In 2007, the sub prime mortgages had begun to crumble again, but a number of economic factors would not allow anything to stop the destruction that has taken place.

Why the Bail-Out?

As I understand it, this financial collapse has resulted in a lack of credit available for doing business. Almost everything operates on credit now. If businesses don't have credit, they will lay off employees. The unemployment rate could double. If it doubles, even more people won't pay their mortgages placing more stress on banks. More credit will also allow the big mortgage lenders to sell some of their defaulted mortgages to other institutions. Less foreclosures will mean stabilization of housing prices which will save the equity of homeowners who did not default on their loan. Even if they did pay their mortgage, so many others didn't that their home price has plummeted.

That's my explanation. I won't say that it will work or that it is right.

So Who Is to Blame?

It is easy to see who should be blamed for the bank crisis. You just read how it happened. It isn't Wall Street, although corporations are an easy target in an environment of class warfare like we see in the election season. It isn't even the banks, who faced great pressure to go along with the new regulations. Who is to blame, more than anyone, are our elected representatives. That would make use to blame too, because we elected them. However, a lot of what they do is so that they will be more and more popular in order to win elections.

Our government changed the laws that would protect the mortgage industry and banks. It was almost entirely Democrats who did it in order to curry the favor of their special interests. They were involved for 30 years in forcing banks to give loans to people too poor or untrustworthy to pay them back. Now they're successful at putting the blame on everyone else.

The Bank Crisis for Dummies would like to thank my friend Mike Marshall, a long time banker in Michigan, for sending out an explanation of the bank crisis. It helped greatly with the writing of this post.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Obama and Infanticide, Let Alone Obama and Abortion

If anyone wants to talk about civil rights, he should talk about the most helpless individual in society, the unborn child, still in his mother's womb. If we will not speak out for these, then we should speak out for no one. But what about children successfully born, surviving child birth, alive outside of the mother's womb? If you were to kill one of these, is that murder? Obama supported and does support infanticide.

Read this article.

If your conscience will still allow you to support Obama, then you have hardened yourself in extreme fashion. Any man, I don't care who he is---republican, democrat, green party, constitution party---should not receive our vote if he even believes the position as Obama, let alone speaks out for it as Obama has done.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Thy Myth of Born Homosexuals

Bible-believing Christians don't think that anyone is born homosexual, but people in the world often talk like that's fact. It isn't. Research by scientists has not revealed biological or genetical homosexuality. Studies have shown the opposite. Science reveals that no one is born homosexual. The scientific research indicates that homosexuality is caused by environmental and temperamental factors. You can go to the Bible to counter the myth of birth homosexuality. Scripture is clear. This is all about behavior. People make choices with their lives based on something they feel.

Below are some links which will show the science of it. I can't endorse everything that they say, but I can much of it.

Is There a Gay Gene?

No. If there were, identical twins would both be homosexual. Far more often one of the twins is and one of them isn't.

"Homosexuality Is Not Hardwired," Concludes Dr. Francis S. Collins, Head Of The Human Genome Project

Here's a guy with a lot of credibility. Very brainy. Hard facts.

The Importance of Twin Studies


They studied 14,000 twins from Australia. Devastating proof against the pro-born-that-way people. The argument is over.

Is Sexual Orientation Fixed at Birth?


Lots of quotes from people with impressive credentials. Answer: No.

Here are two great articles which I believe accurately describe how people become homosexuals. Romans 1 does a good job of describing it theologically, but these show what it looks like when it is happening. They are worth reading.

Homosexuality 101: What Every Therapist, Parent, And Homosexual Should Know


and

How Might Homosexuality Develop?

Both of these articles lay out very clearly how it happens that someone becomes a homosexual, since we're not born that way.

The following articles show that the gay gene and the hypothalamus and length-of-fingers and left-handedness theories are nothing more than spoofs or urban legends. What is really happening is a propaganda war.

Media Campaign Waged


Dr. Phil Is Part of the Political Correctness Movement on This


This is another one of those areas like evolution and global warming that there is a political or philosophical point of view that dominates actual science. You can't even challenge the position or you are discredited.

I will be linking a sermon I preached on this in light of a state constitutional amendment on the definition of marriage that we will be voting on in the state of California this November.