Day: September 6, 2008

So You Think That Anbar Was Saved By The Surge?

The possibility of sectarian strife grows daily.

The U.S. military handover of the Sunni Anbar province was hailed as a milestone, but the underlying sectarian conflict in Iraq could erase those gains.Iraqi national security adviser Muwaffaq al-Rubaie and U.S. President George Bush praised the handover as evidence the U.S. “surge” had led to sharp reductions in ethno-sectarian conflict, generating the conditions for improvements in the Iraqi political and security infrastructure.

Tribal leaders in Sunni Awakening Councils in Anbar province, however, warned the region “could be turned into another battlefield of sectarian forces,” Egypt’s al-Ahram Weekly reported Friday.

For his part, Abdul Salam al-Ani, an Anbar provincial councilman and member of the Sunni Islamic Party, blamed the Awakening Council with interfering in political affairs, and many view that position as an indication of fears the Sunni tribal leaders will gain political influence in the coming elections.

McCain’s Trivialization

The sad truth in John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate is that it betrays his repeated promise to put the needs of his country before the needs of his election campaign. That McCain would ask Americans to entrust their future to the health and acuity of a 72-year-old president and to an utter neophyte in national and international affairs completely trivializes the challenges this country faces. Were it not so tragic it would be worthy of “Saturday Night Live.”
Barack Obama’s criteria for his running mate included not only a shared vision, but also someone who would help him govern the nation and be a good president in case something happened to him. That is wise leadership.
In choosing Palin, McCain has sacrificed good governance to the litmus test of ideology. His choice indicates either that he thinks he is invincible or that leading America in the 21st century can really be done by almost anyone – or both. It is an insult to all of us, and I hope that sober reflection on the disparity between these two views of governance will lead Americans to make the wiser choice in November.
This is an article written by Douglas Johnstone and published in the Salt Lake Tribune. Will someone please tell Tina Fey to do something with her hair.

Homeowners Dig Deeper Hole

The WSJ is reporting:

The rate of U.S. home mortgages overdue or in foreclosure rose again in the second quarter as housing markets weakened, particularly in California and Florida, and more borrowers defaulted on so-called prime loans.

Among mortgages on one- to four-family homes, 9.16% were at least a month overdue or in the foreclosure process in the second quarter, according to the latest survey by the Mortgage Bankers Association, a trade group. That is up from 6.52% a year earlier and is the highest level since the MBA began such surveys 39 years ago.

foreclosure crisis, generally considered the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s, began in late 2006 with a surge in defaults on subprime loans, those to people with weak credit records. As falling real-estate prices have left more people owing more than the current value of their homes, defaults have gradually spread to include more prime loans. Among the most troubled prime loans are option adjustable-rate mortgages, which let borrowers start out with very low monthly payments and pose much bigger ones after a few years.

For prime loans, 5.35% of loans were past due or in foreclosure in the latest quarter. For subprime, the rate was about 30%.

In the latest quarter, 2.75% of all loans were in the foreclosure process, up from 1.40% a year earlier.