RadioActive Chief

Bank plans to cap risky mortgages

What a RADICAL concept: tightening up on mortgages to prevent bubbles, defaults, etc. Shocking! This is the way it used to be done here too, before the rigging of Fanny May by the Pelosi/Frank/Dodd team to push home purchasing whether or not the “customer” could afford it – at ANY rate. Result: claims of helping the poor, but actually resulting in the continuing housing market bust.

Mortgage lending would be “capped” to stop borrowers taking out risky loans under radical Bank of England plans to prevent a repeat of the credit crisis, a senior official has disclosed.

Charlie Bean, the Bank’s Deputy Governor, said “direct constraints” may be needed to restrict access to credit, and that homebuyers could be forced to put down sizeable deposits before being granted a mortgage by their banks or building societies. This would mean that prospective buyers would have to put down between 10 per cent and 25 per cent of a property’s purchase price as a deposit before being able to obtain a loan.

It is the first time that a senior official has indicated that the Bank may intervene directly with new rules on so-called “loan to value ratios” to stop risky lending.

No signs of sanity on this side of the pond, with more noises in Washington about MORE easy money to “stimulate” the housing market. When will they ever learn?

Copenhagen Suborbitals prepare to launch first private rocket, astronaut into space

WANT to go to space?

You could pay millions to get on board someone else’s [Russia's] spacecraft as a tourist, spend six years at uni garnering the relevant NASA qualifications [not these days, with the shuttle program having it's death rattle and no replacement in sight], or hitch-hike aboard the next alien construction fleet that passes through.

Or you could just build your own.

Yankee ingenuity? Uh…not quite…

A group of engineers in Denmark are preparing to do just that – launch a home-built rocket, along with a human passenger, more than 100km into the sky.

Dubbed HEAT1X, the rocket will be launched from a floating barge in the sea just outside the Danish border, 12 nautical miles from shore.

And it will be towed out there by a submarine built by one of the men behind the rocket project.

Home-brew submarine?…Not a narrow range of interests! At this rate soon DENMARK will have a more active native manned spaceflight program than the US!?

Good for them, shame on us.

The Majority of Muslims Do Not Want or Need a Mosque Near Ground Zero

SUMMARY:

In an August 16, 2010 column in the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, ‘Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, Al-Arabiya TV director-general and the paper’s former editor, criticized President Obama for supporting the construction of the Cordoba House mosque at Ground Zero in New York. He stated that it would be unwise to construct a mosque at that location, saying that no practicing Muslims live in the area, and that the mosque would become a focal point for both the supporters of terrorism and the champions of Islamophobia. Therefore, he argued, it would be preferable for Obama to throw his support behind issues that are of real concern for the Muslims, such as promoting Middle East peace.

For the full text of these remarks, follow the above link to the translation.

One must suppose that even NBC/MSNBC/Mayor Bloomberg would refrain from accusing al-Rashed of being prejudiced against Islam.

In light of B.O.’s quasi-endorsement of the project, his position is demonstrated to be beyond reason.

This being the case, the interesting question is what motivates his continued devotion to poking the American people in the eye on this issue (along with many other previous ones).

Who do you believe, the Sheriff or the Obama myrmidon?

Napolitano: Now with ‘enough’ border resources, time to reform

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Friday said the administration has “enough” resources to secure the border now that President Obama signed into law a $600 million border security spending bill, and she said Congress must now act on a larger overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws.

“This is what we asked for. And of course, what we asked for was what we thought would be enough,” Ms. Napolitano told reporters…

If you believe that, I have some reasonably priced tropical beachfront for you here in Moody County, South Dakota!

…Ms. Napolitano said the border is already secure enough that it should not be used by critics to “preclude discussions about immigration reform.”

SECURE ENOUGH? For who? The Mexican drug cartels? Hezbollah? Donkey Party libs looking for cheap votes? Corporate types looking for cheap labor? Or all of the above? (That last one makes too much sense.)

Meanwhile, the process of the loss of territorial sovereignty continues in Arizona:

Arizona Sheriff: Border Patrol Has Retreated from Parts of Border Because It’s ‘Too Dangerous’

Sheriff Larry Dever of Cochise County, Ariz., one of four Arizona counties contiguous with the U.S-Mexico border, said Friday that the U.S. Border Patrol has pulled back from parts of the border in his and neighboring counties because manning those areas has become too dangerous.

“And you frankly have Border Patrolmen–and I know this from talking to Border Patrol agents—who will not allow their agents to work on the border because it is too dangerous,” Dever told CNSNews.com in a videotaped interview. “Now what kind of message is that for crying out loud?”

What kind of message? One that has to include the fact that Napolitano has her head deeply implanted in a location where the sun never shines.

From that media stronghold of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (VRWC) – the NY Times:

Defying Others, Germany Finds Economic Success

QUESTION: How to grow your economy? Germany seems to have figured something out:

Germany has sparred with its European partners over how to respond to the financial crisis, argued with the United States over the benefits of stimulus versus austerity, and defiantly pursued its own vision of how to keep its economy strong.

Statistics released Friday buttress Germany’s view that it had the formula right all along. The government on Friday announced quarter-on-quarter economic growth of 2.2 percent, Germany’s best performance since reunification 20 years ago — and equivalent to a nearly 9 percent annual rate if growth were that robust all year.

The strong growth figures will also bolster the conviction here that German workers and companies in recent years made the short-term sacrifices necessary for long-term success that Germany’s European partners did not. And it will reinforce the widespread conviction among policy makers that they handled the financial crisis and the painful recession that followed it far better than the United States, which, they never hesitate to remind, brought the world into this crisis.

ANSWER: In short, to help the economy, go in the opposite direction to Obamanomics.

Election 2010: South Dakota Governor

Support for Republican Dennis Daugaard has jumped to its highest level yet in South Dakota’s gubernatorial race.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in the state finds Daugaard, the current lieutenant governor, leading Heidepriem by better than two-to-one, 59% to 27%. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate, and 10% are undecided.

Last month, Daugaard led Heidepriem 52% to 35%.
Daugaard in the lead is no big surprise…this margin…and the change since last month show that the Donkey Party candidate is failing to get any traction.

Meanwhile, Rasmussen also notes that GOP challenger Kristi Noem is running strongly against incumbent Stephanie Herseth:

Election 2010: South Dakota House of Representatives

Republican Kristi Noem again passes the 50% mark of support this month against incumbent Democrat Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin in the race for South Dakota’s only House seat.

The latest Rasmussen Reports statewide telephone survey of Likely Voters shows Noem picking up 51% support against Herseth-Sandlin, who receives 42% of the vote. Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate in the race, and five percent (5%) are undecided.

One supposes that Stephanie won’t be bringing in House Squeeker Pelosi, or the Great Pretender himself to turn things around.

On a lighter note:

Having observed in passing the references in the MSM to “Paul the Octopus” predicting the World Cup outcome, this item from an e-mail correspondent caught my attention for some reason. (Maybe because it makes more sense that what’s coming out of Congress and the White House these days!)

Let’s say you are swimming in the ocean and you see some 8-legged cephalopods. You say to your friend, “Hey, I saw a group of octopuses” and your friend says, “Hey, you’re an ignorant slob. You saw a group of octopi.” So, is it octopuses or octopi?

Well, octopus first showed up in the English language in the mid 1700’s. It was given the standard English plural, octopuses. There was a movement afoot at the time to make English less irregular by making it more like Latin, which is nice and even and predictable. So, these grammarians took a bunch of the Latin-based words in English that end in “us” like octopus, and gave them classical Latin plural endings. Enter octopi, the “correct” plural of octopus. There’s one problem. Octopus isn’t Latin. It’s in fact, ultimately from Greek. That’s OK. Some smarter grammarians figured this out and gave octopus the Greek ending it needed, and hence we have octopodes, which is pretty rare and appears only in British English. They all forgot one thing. Whenever a word from a foreign language enters English, it becomes an English word and it’s inflected just like other English words. So, octopuses was just fine.

So what does this mean for you? If you say octopuses, you can continue to do so without fearing that you are an ignorant slob. If you say octopi you can continue to do so. But, realize you have no grounds to tell the people who say octopuses that they are ignorant slobs. And if you say octopodes, you’d better be prepared to deliver this spiel at a moment’s notice, and with a British accent.

(From “Ask the Editor”, Merriam-Webster.com)

So, where does “Octopussy” fit into this scheme of things? Must be a problem for 007 to solve!