Not a Muslim (Not that there's anything wrong with that!)

Cheers to Ali Eteraz for your recent post that included the YouTube video about the ludicrous smear campaigns against Barack Obama. I've included the clip below for easy viewing.

It's really amazing how low some people would stoop to damage the standing/reputation of someone else. What's even more troubling is that it is considered a smear campaign, or an "attack" to refer to someone as being a Muslim. Senator McCarthy would be proud.

Burning Blue Matrimonial!

OMG, so I just had a funny idea...

After posting "Pathetic Horizons", some very nice people shared their opinions as comments. Anonymous Kate (bet you didn't think you'd land a new nickname today, did ya?) gave me a great idea! I'm going to post MY OWN MATRIMONIAL classified ad as I believe my parents would have done (not that they would have ever dared!) for me before I got married. I'll set the time frame for one year prior to my engagement, which ought to be amusing...

Divorced parents with moderate Orthodox Christian beliefs looking for suitable wife for their son. He's a 27 year-old software professional, religiously agnostic, usually sober during daylight hours, calls his parents at least once per month, does NOTHING on Sundays except watch football, plays pool really well, and believes blue jeans are appropriate for all social occasions. Candidates should be versed in professional sports, appreciative of fine beer (bonus points if you have your own collection or brew your own stock), share a genuine distaste for boy-bands and pop-music, look great in a cocktail dress, be loyal, patient, and not become frustrated with his inability to communicate very well. Tattoos/Piercings OK. Photo & list of favorite pubs required. Vegetarians need not apply.

OK, maybe that's not how THEY would write it, but that's the best I can do off-the-cuff. What about you? What kind of advertisement would your parents have written for you before you got married? (Bonus points if they actually wrote one.)

Pathetic Horizons

Flipping through a recent edition of Islamic Horizons, I came across the Matrimonials section. Being happily married already with no perverse intentions of seeking additional spouses, I thought that I'd satisfy my curiosity by reading some of the submissions.

After all, I'm an American convert who grew up here, attended public school, did the whole American dating thing through high-school, college, and beyond, and actually met my (then) future wife without being set-up by anyone. Well, I suppose that you could say God set us up, but I'll leave predestination for another post.

I thought to myself "this ought to be amusing" with preconceptions of awkward and goofy statements that are often made in classified dating advertisements in the local free newspapers. As it turned out, I was disappointed. Not just disappointed, but appalled and embarrassed at being associated on some level with the submitters.

First of all, most of the matrimonials were written by the parents of their adult children, not by the seekers themselves. This was the disappointing part. Shouldn't the person who is interested in marriage be the one soliciting the correspondence? Shouldn't they at least write the breif description of who they are and what they're looking for?

Next came the appalling and embarrassing part. Virtually every solicitation indicated that the "applicant" must be a doctor. This was not only the most commonly specified trait, but it was often the primary requisite. Here, take a look at some of this month's entries:

"U.S.-citizen Pakistani parents invite correspondence for their daughter, 24, from U.S. citizens with MD or JD degree. She adheres to Islamic values and practices and is completing a law degree from an Ivy League school."

So, based on that, you need to be 1) Pakistani (they didn't say this, but wouldn't specify their heritage unless they felt it was important...note that they talk about themselves before talking about their daughter!), 2) a U.S. Citizen, 3) an MD or JD, 4) appreciative of "Islamic values" (like elitism?), and 5) should have gone to a name-drop worthy school (mentioning that their daughter is there is a subtle hint that Michigan State isn't going to cut it!).

"Hyderabadi Muslim parents invite correspondence for U.S.-born daughter, 26, wears hijab, resident physician, from a practicing U.S. citizen MD, DO, or professional."

More of the same here, although they do lower the bar a bit to include "professional". Professional what? Professional golfer? I guess that means they don't want any gas station attendants writing in.

"Sunni Muslim parents invite correspondence from a medical doctor (30-40) for their U.S.-born/raised physician daughter, pretty, religious, who is in private practice."

Be a doctor, and don't you dare send us a letter if you're one of those heretical Shia!!

"Sunni Muslim parents of tall, charming, U.S. born/educated medical graduate seek match from a medical doctor. Serious inquiries only. Mail photo and resume."

Again, you'd better be Sunni! This one goes over-the-top, and is worthy of noting due to the last statement: "Mail photo and resume." Did they just ask for a resume? A resume?!?! Listen, if you have to post a solicitation for your daughter in a national publication for ISNA, it is either you or your daughter who should be providing the resume. Why not conduct a job search by telling employers to send you their qualifications?

"Sunni Muslim, Urdu-speaking parents invite correspondence for their beautiful, fair, slim daughter, 5'6", 25, doctor of pharmacy, wears hijab, from a MD/MS practicing Muslim."

No Shias allowed here either. And you'd better speak Urdu! I had to include this one because of the fact that they described their daughter as "fair". Kya Matlab? Bakwas na qar, pagal!! "Fair?" Not only is class an imperative, but complexion appears to be one too. How sad.

I'll try to end this on a slightly more positive note by including the one and only apparently sane classified posting:

"Sunni Muslim parents seeking religious match for their U.S.-born daughter, 21, educated, pretty, hijab-wearing."

Finally, parents who are not prioritizing career status over religious values! There's hope out there...not much, but better than none.

Caveat Emptor

I consider myself to be liberal in terms of politics, but the recent debacle surrounding sub-prime loans during the U.S. housing bubble leaves me shaking my head in amazement and feeling like a double-breasted, blue-suited conservative. Political profiles are seldom as cut-and-dry as this-or-that.

The following article, written by Kathleen Pender appeared on page D-1 of the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday, April 22nd. Call me cold. Call me cruel. The fact is that I agree with her sentiments wholeheartedly; tax dollars should not be used to bail out the borrowers or the lenders in this fiasco.

"If mortgage brokers or lenders used inflated appraisals or made false or misleading statements, they should be prosecuted or at least forced to restructure the loans. If borrowers lied about their income or assets to get a bigger loan, they too should be prosecuted." I concur, and this would be a reasonable use of tax dollars. However, to propose that lenders and buyers get rewarded for being either sinister or gullible? That seems just as ridiculous as bailing out U.S. airliners who constantly run at a loss to provide cheap airfare and then ask the government to bail them out. If subsidized housing is what we want, that's a different discussion. This discussion is about responsibility.

---Begin Article---

Dumb: Buying a house you can't afford with no down payment and a loan whose monthly payments will explode in a few years.

Dumber: Lending money to people who can't afford a traditional mortgage, especially when they have lousy credit ratings and don't substantiate their income.

Dumbest: Bailing out dumb and dumber, especially with taxpayer money.

State and federal lawmakers, community groups and housing advocates are proposing schemes to prevent the victims of the subprime loan crisis from losing their homes. I hate to sound callous, but it's hard for me to know who the victims are in this mess.

If mortgage brokers or lenders used inflated appraisals or made false or misleading statements, they should be prosecuted or at least forced to restructure the loans. If borrowers lied about their income or assets to get a bigger loan, they too should be prosecuted.

But many people got into the subprime mess because they were willing to believe a fast-talking broker who told them they could buy a home, or a bigger home, or take more cash out of their home than they could with a conventional mortgage.

Keeping people in homes they had no business buying is wrong in many ways.

For starters, there's no easy way to bail out homeowners without bailing out the lenders and investors who were largely responsible for the subprime mess.

Many experts say we are in the early innings of the foreclosure cycle. If we bail out people today, will we be willing and able to help people who fail later in the game?

Propping up borrowers who took a gamble on a house and lost reinforces gambling.

"If people think they can take out a bad mortgage and they get bailed out, that's called moral hazard in social insurance and it's a very bad thing," says Thomas Davidoff, an assistant professor in the Haas Real Estate Group at UC Berkeley.

Bailout advocates say they want to help people who were duped, not gamblers. But even if you could separate the swindled from the speculators, there's no guarantee that people who get a bailout will keep their homes. It could be an expensive form of life support.

Nobody offered to bail out investors who bought tech stocks in 1999. Nobody bailed out Enron employees who lost their jobs and chunks of their 401(k) plans because the company was a fraud. Nobody offers to bail out credit card abusers.

But homes are different, advocates say. It's shelter, not an investment.

Hogwash. The government itself says owning a house is part shelter, part investment.

In calculating the housing portion of the Consumer Price Index, the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses rental costs for leased properties. For owner-occupied housing, it estimates how much homeowners would get if they rented out the house. If the monthly payment exceeds that amount, it is considered an investment, not a cost of living.

The growth in subprime loans made homeownership possible for many more people, including low-income and minority families. Bailout advocates say that door should not be slammed shut because people made mistakes.

The truth is, subprime borrowers could always get loans, but they had to pay higher rates and make a substantial down payment. If they ran into problems, and many did, the house could be sold and the loan repaid, protecting both lender and borrower.

In 2003, with interest rates at historic lows, investor demand for high-yielding subprime mortgages started heating up. To fill the pipeline, lenders started letting subprime borrowers buy or refinance with little or nothing down.

Of course, borrowing 100 percent of a home's purchase price makes for steep monthly payments. To lure or qualify them, brokers offered rates that were low for a couple of months or years, then shot up to normal subprime rates.

They added other features that kept payments abnormally low in the early years, such as interest-only or flexible-payment options.

These ticking time bombs were bound to blow up when rates and payments were adjusted. If brokers disclosed this fact, they told their clients not to worry because they could sell the house and repay the loan, assuming the home's value would go up.

If homeowners wanted to keep their homes, they could refinance the mortgage. This also assumes the value of the house would go up or the borrower's income or credit rating would vastly increase.

Some lenders stopped requiring borrowers to fully document their income.

An estimated 15 percent of subprime loans went to investors who did not plan to live in the home.

This layering of risk is what made subprime loans so toxic.

"Even if you have only two of those factors, you are in trouble," says Ken Rosen, professor of real estate and urban economics at UC Berkeley.

As competition heated up, name-brand lenders got into the subprime game. In 2006, Wells Fargo was the largest originator of subprime loans. It quickly sold most of those loans but retained servicing rights.

The explosion of what were called affordability loans contributed to the run-up in housing prices, which required ever-riskier loans in an upward spiral that came to a halt last year, when home prices stopped rising.

Late last year, lenders started reporting higher-than-expected subprime defaults. Many borrowers were defaulting in the first few months, before their loans had even reached the adjustment period.

Suddenly, investors got cautious, subprime lenders started closing the doors and subprime loans became harder to get, which exacerbated the decline in some areas.

A major fear among politicians is that rising foreclosures will drag down the value of all homes.

A new report from the Joint Economic Committee of Congress cites a study that said "a single-family home foreclosure lowers the value of homes located within one-eighth of a mile (or one city block) by an average of 0.9 percent."

The head of that committee, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has been a vocal proponent of a bailout of subprime borrowers.

"The federal government can send in an infusion of (money) to prevent foreclosure," he said earlier this month.

Many states are also considering bailout programs. Ohio, one of the states hardest hit by foreclosures, is planning to sell $100 million worth of taxable bonds to make new, 30-year fixed-rate loans at 6.75 percent to Ohio homeowners who can't afford their existing mortgage but have not yet entered foreclosure. The loan can be for up to 105 percent of the home's appraised value. To qualify, borrowers must live in the home and can't make more than 125 percent of their county's median income. They can have a slightly blemished credit rating but must go through four hours of counseling.

Rita Parise, director of programs for the Ohio Housing Finance Agency, says taxpayers won't be on the hook if the loans default. Borrowers must purchase private mortgage insurance for part of the loan. The rest will be insured by Fannie Mae.

For California, "we have proposed a $1 billion loss mitigation fund," says Bob Gnaizda, general counsel for the Greenlining Institute, an advocacy group. "Anyone who is low-to-moderate income who purchased a home that was their primary residence who was misled (about a mortgage) ought to be able to stay in their home."

And who should finance this fund? "It's up to a combination of the investment bankers and the banking industry and the state government if necessary to provide the funding or the guarantees of the funding," Gnaizda says.

"We've asked (state Treasurer) Bill Lockyer to use his persuasive power to convince the six to eight largest investment banks, all of (which) do business with the state, that they have a stake in California's growth and economy. Since they helped finance the subprime fiasco," he says, they ought to help solve it.

On a national level, the Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America said this month that it will make $1 billion in low-cost fixed-rate loans available to refinance "the victims of predatory lenders."

The money is coming from funds that Bank of America and Citigroup had previously committed to the nonprofit group to make low-cost loans to first-time home buyers.

"We are defining predatory as a loan that will increase to around 10 percent or more," says Bruce Marks, the group's chief executive.

The rescue loans will be at the same rate (5.5 percent) and terms as the home-buyer loans, but "the (underwriting) standards on the refinance are different," Marks says.

"We don't look at credit ratings. We look at character lending. Let's say someone got a subprime loan, the teaser rate was 6 percent, but it's going to reset at 12 percent. If they are making payments on time, not increasing their debt, not borrowing on credit cards, if they can show us they could be making payments that are more than what they are making today," they could get a rescue loan.

"You can't blame the victims for this," Marks says. "This was an orchestrated scheme (by lenders and investment banks). This was not about homeownership. This was about temporary occupancy. They were using the house as bait to fleece and steal money out of hardworking people."

He adds, "I'm not one to say everyone should be a homeowner. The fact is, the people are in the homes, they had their assets stolen from them, the loans were set up to fail."

Last week, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac jumped into the bailout game. Both said they would buy or insure tens of billions of dollars worth of refinanced subprime loans over the next few years. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are implicitly, though not explicitly, backed by the federal government. Mortgage experts say the increased risk will pose little threat to taxpayers because the newly refinanced loans represent a small part of the agencies' total portfolios.

Everyone would prefer a private-sector solution to the subprime problem than a government bailout. The problem is that most subprime loans have been sliced and diced and sold into mortgage-backed securities. Locating the owners -- many of whom could be offshore -- and persuading them to cut deals with struggling borrowers would be hard. But it would not be impossible.

What governments can do is prevent another subprime disaster by enforcing good underwriting guidelines and requiring clear, plain-English disclosures of the risks of exotic mortgages.

What's more, society could stop demonizing renters.

Owning a home has many advantages, but it's not for everyone. Our glorification of homeownership as the American dream has turned tenants into second-class citizens.

With or without bailouts, the subprime crisis is going to hurt many people. But it could have a silver lining. If it brings down home prices, more families could afford homes with realistic mortgages. And if it reminds everyone that buying a home is a risky proposition, so much the better.

Think of it as a forest fire. Painful, but in the long run necessary.

Net Worth runs Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. E-mail Kathleen Pender at kpender@sfchronicle.com.

Bushcronium

I cannot take credit for writing this (actually, I haven't written anything in a long, long, time!), but I found it amusing and thought that I'd pass it along. :)

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A major research institution has just announced the discovery of the densest element yet known to science.

The new element has been named "Bushcronium". Bushcronium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 311. These particles are held together by dark forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.

The symbol for Bushcronium is "W."

Bushcronium's mass actually increases over time, as morons randomly interact with various elements in the atmosphere and become assistant deputy neutrons in a Bushcronium molecule, forming isodopes.

This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to believe that Bushcronium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as "Critical Morass."

When catalyzed with money, Bushcronium activates Foxnewsium, an element that radiates orders of magnitude more energy, albeit as incoherent noise, since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.

Hail to the King

My appreciation of DJs has really increased over the past few years as I've become more familiar with the sounds and beats of the dancefloors, thanks to Internet radio stations like XTC Radio London, Samurai, and Digitally Imported. I've come to know and appreciate some great artists like Sharam, DJ Dan, Nick Warren, Mat Zo, and Mili Sefic, as well as some producers like Terry Grant, Holden & Thomson, and others.

However, my hands-down favorite thus far has been Brett King. Every time I listen to one of his mixes (you can download them for free from his website), it just hits home all the way with my personal tastes. Call him progressive house, or what ever label you choose. Point is, he rocks.

Although it no longer appears on his website, his musical influences include RadioHead, Portishead, Tool, Massive Attack, and benchmark DJs Sasha, John Digweed and Steve Lawler. Translation: He digs bass, deep rythms, and avante-garde sounds. Love it!!!

Keep Rockin' Brett!

Keith Olbermann Rocks

He is by far one of the best, if not the best, editorialist on television today.