Housing sales surge as buyers try to get last minute home credit

Every bit of news helps, but if it's just a one-time surge to get the credit, then it may indicate much of a change in the market.

At the same time, the Wall Street Journal shows just how bad the rest of the market really is.

The proportion of U.S. homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than the properties are worth has swelled to about 23%, threatening prospects for a sustained housing recovery....

Home prices have fallen so far that 5.3 million U.S. households are tied to mortgages that are at least 20% higher than their home's value, the First American report said. More than 520,000 of these borrowers have received a notice of default, according to First American.

This is a problem when you sell your house. If the value is less than the mortgage, then you don't make enough on the sale to actually pay off your mortgage. Read the rest of this post...

Wash Post to close bureaus in NYC, LA, Chicago

Another sign of the times. Read the rest of this post...

Teabaggers laugh at woman who lost daughter, grandkid

This is what happens when one party has its own TV network, and the other party has leaders who are afraid to fight back. Nancy Pelosi tried - she rightly labeled these boorish thugs "un-American" - but then the White House threw her under a bus. If you don't cut out a cancer, it grows. Read the rest of this post...

Reid, White House, Dems not thrilled with reconciliation option

They're concerned that health care reform could get delayed, possibly for months, if they go the reconciliation route. Well, there's a rather large reason that we're still working on health care reform at this late date. The President of the United States left it to the Republicans and Max Baucus to come up with a deal, for months, while he refused to get involved. It took the teabaggers practically derailing everything for the White House to finally start paying attention, and even then, they under efforts to get a stronger bill. And now everything is becoming a big mess.

You know what? Not our problem. President Obama promised real health care reform. If it takes a big mess to teach the White House that its governing style of sitting back and not leading, only to occasionally get involved, late, and only then in an effort to backtrack on previous promises, isn't working - then so be it. Jane Hamsher is right. It's time for these guys to lead. Read the rest of this post...

ABA's new president reportedly has ties to some of the most repressive regimes in the world

Not good. From Foreign Policy:

"Defending Liberty, Pursuing Justice" is the motto of the American Bar Association, and among the association's four stated goals, one is to "advance the rule of law." Toward this goal, the ABA is committed to "hold governments accountable under law," "assure meaningful access to justice for all persons," and "preserve the independence of the legal profession and the judiciary."

Given these pledges, it may seem odd that the association's newly appointed president has worked as both a lawyer and lobbyist for some of the world's most repressive regimes, as well as institutions and corporations connected to them. Nonetheless, it is true: Carolyn Lamm, a D.C.-based corporate attorney who was named ABA president in August, has registered as a lobbyist in the past for such authoritarian states as Libya and Zaire. A longtime partner at the prestigious international firm White & Case, Lamm has also had close ties in recent years to entities associated with the tyrannical government of Uzbekistan and its ruling family, working, for example, as the legal counsel of Zeromax, a massive Swiss-registered company widely reported to be controlled by Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbekistan's authoritarian President Islam Karimov."Defending Liberty, Pursuing Justice" is the motto of the American Bar Association, and among the association's four stated goals, one is to "advance the rule of law." Toward this goal, the ABA is committed to "hold governments accountable under law," "assure meaningful access to justice for all persons," and "preserve the independence of the legal profession and the judiciary."

Given these pledges, it may seem odd that the association's newly appointed president has worked as both a lawyer and lobbyist for some of the world's most repressive regimes, as well as institutions and corporations connected to them. Nonetheless, it is true: Carolyn Lamm, a D.C.-based corporate attorney who was named ABA president in August, has registered as a lobbyist in the past for such authoritarian states as Libya and Zaire. A longtime partner at the prestigious international firm White & Case, Lamm has also had close ties in recent years to entities associated with the tyrannical government of Uzbekistan and its ruling family, working, for example, as the legal counsel of Zeromax, a massive Swiss-registered company widely reported to be controlled by Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbekistan's authoritarian President Islam Karimov.

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I finally got my Swine Flu shot, anybody else?

I just can't call it H1N1. But at least I finally was able to get a shot yesterday. I have asthma, and up until the last doctor visit, it was a pretty serious case. With the help of my way-cheaper-in-France drugs, it's now doing quite well for the first time. And folks with asthma are on the priority list as the flu goes after your lungs, and if your lungs are compromised to start with, you can be in serious trouble if you get this particular flu. The shot itself was uneventful, other than being rather painful (I'm told they had to use a wider needle to get into the muscle). Anybody else get the shot? Any side effects? Anybody actually get this flu yet? Curious to hear your stories in the comments. I don't know anyone who's had it - finally met someone at the conference in Barcelona who had had it a month ago. Read the rest of this post...

The Fed asks 9 banks to set up timetable for paying back TARP funds

Boomberg:

The Federal Reserve asked nine of the U.S. banks that were part of this year’s stress tests to submit plans for repaying the government’s capital injections, a person familiar with the situation said.

The central bank this month asked Bank of America Corp. and eight other banks to give plans including a timetable, said the person, speaking on condition of anonymity. The firms may have the option to repay Troubled Asset Relief Program funds soon if they’ve been able to raise common equity and would continue to exceed capital buffers set in the stress tests, the person said.

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Palin's Xena moment

Andrew Sullivan writes about Sarah Palin's book, and her claim, yet again, that she went into labor, yet continued to give a speech in Dallas.

Take one story that every mother will relate to: the drama of her delivery of her fifth child, Trig. She tells us that at eight months pregnant with a child she knew had Down’s syndrome and would need special care at birth, she got on a plane from Alaska to Dallas, Texas, to attend an energy conference. Most airlines won’t allow this but Alaska Airlines did. Palin then tells us that at 4am on her first night in Dallas, “a strange sensation low in my belly woke me and I sat up straight in bed”. In an interview she gave with the Anchorage Daily News just after Trig’s birth, she confirmed that she had amniotic fluid leaking at that point.

So she was a mother eight months pregnant with a special-needs child thousands of miles from home. She wakes up in the middle of the night with contractions and amniotic leakage and she tells her husband she doesn’t want to call her doctor because it would wake her up at 1am. And she is the sitting governor of a state and her doctor is a close personal friend. Not only that, but she gives the speech as planned in the afternoon, during which she makes a rather good joke. She then tells us what happens next: “Big laughs. More contractions.”

After the speech, does she then go to a local hospital to get checked out? Nah. She gets on two separate aeroplanes all the way back to Alaska, with a stopover in Seattle, because she is determined to have the child in her home town and she just knows that the contractions and amniotic leakage are not signs of imminent delivery. She has had four previous kids so she has experience. “I still had plenty of time ... It was a calm, relatively restful flight home,” she explains of the next 15 hours.

You might imagine that an airline would have some qualms about letting a woman in some sort of labour at eight months, and pregnant with a Down’s syndrome child, get on a long transcontinental flight. What if the baby were born in mid-flight? The plane would have to be diverted. What if something happened to the baby? The airline could be liable. Palin never told the flight attendants. Couldn’t they tell, one might innocently ask. In the Anchorage Daily News story about the birth, Alaska Airlines said: “The stage of her pregnancy was not apparent by observation. She did not show any signs of distress.” Palin makes Xena, the warrior princess, seem fragile.

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Independence of financial market oversight council called into question

From Shahien Nasiripour at Huff Post:

If the White House and congressional leaders get their way, the vaunted new oversight council charged with overseeing systemic risk in the financial markets will actually be a house organ of the Treasury Department, lacking the independence required to challenge decisions by government regulators, among others.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) last week tried to fix that, by offering an amendment in the House Financial Services Committee that would give the council an independent staff and independent source of funding. But he was forced to withdraw the amendment after it became clear that he wouldn't get Chairman Barney Frank's approval, said a source familiar with the committee's deliberations....

As proposed by the Obama administration, the House bill calls for the council to be headed by the Treasury Secretary, who would pick his own staff from within the Treasury Department.

But not only is the council supposed to keep watch over firms and activities that pose a risk, it's also supposed to oversee the work of other regulators in mitigating threats and supervise financial regulation as a whole, according to the bill's language. In short, it has a mandate to watch over everything that could possibly endanger the financial system - including inaction and incompetence by regulators.

The independence of the council is in question, experts say, because it will be overseen by someone whose actions it is supposed to examine and question -- the Treasury Secretary -- who will also be able to handpick the staff that is supposed to act as independent watchdogs.

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Lou Dobbs considering presidential bid in 2012

I would think a Dobbs candidacy would hurt the Republicans more than us. Some independents may fall for Dobbs' schtick, but his base will be conservative Teabaggers. It really is a race to the bottom for the GOP of late. Read the rest of this post...

More on Glenn Beck finding a Jewish last name funny

Spencer Ackerman weighs in on the story we wrote about earlier:

Now, in fairness, I’m a very short Jew, so, it’s not like this thought hasn’t occurred to me either. But my friend Ari Rabin-Havt is a perfectly tall American of Jewish heritage, and the demagogic buffoon Glenn Beck mispronounces Ari’s eeeeeeethnicky last name in order to make some juvenile jokes about Hobbits. Because real Americans have names like Beck. But maybe that’s just my deep-seated contempt for white gentile culture talking. Watch all those right-wing Jews busy attacking J Street as anti-semites say absolutely nothing about someone with power inside conservative circles.

God I’d love to meet Glenn Beck in person and give him something to cry about.

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Talking to folks in line at a Sarah Palin book signing

From our good friends at NewLeftMedia. Priceless, as usual.

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Tuesday Morning Open Thread

I'm off to Chicago today for Thanksgiving with the family. Chris is, I'm sure, planning some incredible French feast in Paris, that we'll hopefully be hearing about, and seeing pictures of, soon enough. Otherwise, it's not as slow a week as it normally would be this time of year in Washington. The health care reform effort is in serious flux at the moment.

Conservative Democrats are still more willing than the rest of Democrats to threaten to walk unless they get their way, which generally means that they will get their way. Senator Reid could still make the conservative Ds irrelevant by going the route of reconciliation. Then there's President Obama. One hopes, but doubts, that he's working behind the scenes to fight for a stronger, rather than weaker, bill. It seems that his staff wants anything passed, regardless of what. And far be it for the President to step up and show some initiative in support of doing more, rather than less. But hope springs eternal. Read the rest of this post...

Obama bringing targets to Copenhagen

Glad to see he's stepping up a bit more on this issue. As one of the leading contributors to the problem, it is only normal that other countries expect the US to show some leadership on the issue. From Obama's perspective it also can't be easy working with a substantial portion of the population and Congress that do not believe it's even an issue. That said, showing leadership is what the job is supposed to be about. That's what people vote for in elections.

The White House said today it would go to the Copenhagen climate change summit with a proposed target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions after facing international pressure to commit to stronger action on climate change.

An administration official told reporters that President Barack Obama would propose the targets before the climate meeting, which is less than three weeks away. The move removes the biggest obstacle to a political deal at Copenhagen.

America is the only major industrialised country that has yet to reveal its emissions reduction plan. The official did not give details on the stringency of the proposed cuts, but it is thought likely they would range from 14% to 20% from 2005 levels – still below those put forward by the EU and other industrialised countries.

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UK police arresting people to collect DNA for database

Seriously creepy and the racial profiling is sickening. What is happening over there?

Police officers are now routinely arresting people in order to add their DNA sample to the national police database, an inquiry will allege tomorrow.

The review of the national DNA database by the government's human genetics commission also raises the possibility that the DNA profiles of three-quarters of young black males, aged 18 to 35, are now on the database.

The human genetics commission report, Nothing to hide, nothing to fear?, says the national DNA database for England and Wales is already the largest in the world, at 5 million profiles and growing, yet has no clear statutory basis or independent oversight.

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