Monday, August 18, 2008

politics (because it's that time again...)

*sigh* Obama might not be my first choice, but so far, he hasn't been THIS hypocritical.

Please ignore the lady they interviewed, she obviously wasn't smart enough to refinance her mortgage before the interest rates became flexible. (Banks are not your friends, people, they want your money!)



Asshole.

And yes, it is hypocritical to tell people to stop whining when you missed the most votes in the Senate out of all the Senators, including several key energy bills. (ignore the plea for money, just watch the video. I'm pissed they won't let me embed it.) Get to work, my ass...

7 comments:

Unknown said...

A house in La Jolla and Coronado? Aren't they like 5 minutes apart?

Janet said...

TWO houses in Coronado!

Faith said...

How is it hypocritical? Because he has money, and knows how to make money, and owns several homes? What?

Look, just because he can afford several multimillion dollar estates/homes/whatever, that doesn't make him a hypocrite.

Maybe he rents one of those two homes in Coronado. Maybe they use it as a vacation place, and have two condos next door to each other, so they can have family and friends join them while they're there.

My father owns a condo in Laguna Beach, which is about a 20 minute drive from his house in San Juan Capistrano. He likes the beach, and wanted a place he and my step mom could go to on weekends that had easy access to the sand and surf, and was generally more relaxing than the house in SJC is. I don't see the problem with that, but maybe that makes him a hypocrite in some way?

People who can't afford to buy homes did just that...they walked into situations that were dangerous with their eyes closed, and didn't open them until the rates started climbing. When I first got a loan for my home purchase 5 years ago, it made my monthly rate cheaper if I got a 5/1 ARM loan. Which meant it would be a fixed rate for 5 years, and then after that, I'd be taking my chances with an adjustable rate that could go as high as 8% if I didn't refi. When we started the project on the house, I refinanced and got a 30 year fixed for 6.25%, which makes our payments affordable and stationary for 30 YEARS.

The fact that the woman in the video's interest rate was in the teens tells me that maybe her credit rating wasn't all that fabulous when she bought the house in the first place. If I had a shitty credit rating, I'd keep renting until I got it into a good place. But people MUST own homes, right? Cha. And it's the mortgage company's fault for giving them the money to do it? And the GOVERNMENT'S responsibility to bail them out of the mess they knowingly got themselves into? I just don't understand that logic. Never have and probly never will.

Janet said...

He does have family that lives in one of his houses in CA, they forgot to pay taxes on it, that was all over the news.

We did the same, Faith, we bought our house with an adjustable rate after 2 years, and then we refinanced. We now have a fixed rate for the next 30 years. We have a balloon payment in 15, so we'll probably refinance sometime before then as well, again with a fixed rate.

I'm not saying that these people need to be bailed out, or even the banks. Far from it.

And McCain? Well, he knows how to marry money, that's for sure.

I'm not happy with either candidate right now, especially after Obama's vote on FISA.

Faith said...

"He does have family that lives in one of his houses in CA, they forgot to pay taxes on it, that was all over the news." I must watch the wrong news channel, because I never heard about that. ::shrugs:: Not that it matters. My taxes are paid for through my mortgage. If that situation changed, I can't say I'd know how to handle it. Maybe that was something that occurred there. Or maybe they thought someone else was handling the payment and they were wrong. Again, without specifics, I can't see that as anything other than more negative propaganda being spread.

Your post change explaining why you called him a hypocrite makes more sense to me now, though. Although, to be fair, it was his top financial advisor that was quoted for saying Americans need to stop whining, and he was fired/stepped down due to that comment.

I actually agree, as my blog posts and comments about the mortgage crisis kind of reflect. I think that a little responsibility needs to be taken...some owning up to their mistakes, on behalf of the fools that willingly walked into financial situations that they could not handle. I think it's shitty of them to blame the government or the loan companies for taking advantage of them somehow when it really is on them to be the ones to watch their financial step and take care of themselves. I could be wrong about that, though...I'm willing to admit it. I'd like to hear more about how the "...people who advise McCain...are partly responsible for creating the conditions where these people were able to get sub-prime mortgages" as Chimpo mentioned in the comments on my post. I don't know how to find that info, though. So I'm hoping he, or someone else, will help me.

Anonymous said...

I don't see how he is a hypocrite or (your words) an asshole. Why is it his fault that someone was spending too much per month on their home? It took me and my wife working full time, after teaching for over 10 years and moving on to the real world, before we could afford a house. And then it seemed that all the houses we wanted we couldn't afford. However, we used our resolve and waited another two years before we found a house that we liked and could afford. Too many people fall into the "Keeping up with the Jones'" syndrome today.

The McCains have all these homes, yeah. But they can afford them. If I could afford multiple homes, I'd buy them. Real estate is a great investment. My uncle has a summer home in Rocky Mountain National Park - does that make him a hypocrite and an asshole? He also is a veteran and used the GI Bill to pay for his education. He has worked hard his whole life and is now enjoying the fruits of that work. I don't begrudge him two nice homes with a lot of "toys" - home entertainment center, season tickets to the Rockies, Avalanche and Nuggets, and a lot of other cool "toys". But I know when he and his wife were first married they lived in some very average or below average houses because that is what they could afford.

The woman in the video obviously overextended her finances. Blaming someone else for not being prudent is in vogue now, but it is naive.

Catherine VandeVelde said...

I wish someone would bail me out of my student loans. :)