Oh, Please Obammy! Save Me!
By Johnny Roosh
At President Obama’s El Grande Stimuloso Tour Del Mundo New New Deal Road Show Socialist Party Recruitment Tour Town Hall meeting in Florida this week, a downtrodden Henrietta Hughes stepped to the microphone and asked for an extra helping of Hopey Changey© from the Messiah.
“I have an urgent need, unemployment and homelessness, a very small vehicle for my family and I to live in,” she said. “The housing authority has two years’ waiting lists, and we need something more than the vehicle and the parks to go to. We need our own kitchen and our own bathroom. Please help.”
Now, why didn’t she ask for help getting a fricken job? Why does she expect the government to skip to giving her the fish instead of helping her to catch one?
Who could be giving people the idea that that is how America works?
…I don’t even have my own bathroom – I have to share it with Mrs. Roosh – and Henrietta just got…three? Plus a study, a library, a jacuzzi, a three-car garage, and a big-screen telly-vision.
Supplied by Obammy’s handlers?
Nope.
A Democrat breaking rank and actually giving his/her own money?
Nope.
Chene Thompson, the wife of state Rep. Nicholas Thompson, R-Fort Myers, is letting Henrietta Hughes and her son stay in a house she owns in nearby La Belle rent free until they get back on their feet.
“You don’t have to be a politician to put forth a stimulus package,” Chene Thompson said during a joint interview with Hughes Thursday on CNN’s “American Morning.” “This is our own little mini-stimulus package for a person who was a stranger and now is a friend.
What? The guvment isn’t coming to the rescue?
Republicans…one voter at a time!
Now if someone could help find her a job…
February 12th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Chene Thompson is a racist. I can prove it.
The word ‘Republican’ starts with the letter ‘R’. So does the word ‘racism’.
Nixon was famous for his ‘Southern Strategy’. Florida is the furthest south of the contiguous 48. Coincidence? No.
Ms. Thompson only offers Henriette a ‘mini-stimulus’, thereby sending the message that a regular stimulus is too good for a black person.
And don’t even get me started on the wink-wink-nudge-nudge coded racism that drips from Thompson’s condescending little speech. It’s cleverly hidden in the spaces between her words but it is so obvious only a racist could miss it. Which means it does not work as code. I’m still working on that part of my theory.
February 12th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Roosh,
Unemployment is nearing 8%, it’s 12% plus for African Americans –
Tell me, do YOU know of or have a job to offer her?
And, aren’t you assuming she’s not looking, aren’t you assuming she’s not getting help already, by asking your questions?
Sneering condescension is no prettier from the left than from the right.
Terry, with all intended respect, the Republican party HAS benefited in the South, and lost elsewhere, in general, since Nixon – whether you like it or not, race is the defining issue of the past 40 years.
February 12th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Seems a bit inaccurate to wonder why this homeless woman isn’t asking for help getting a frickin job when her first priority in asking for help was related to unemployment.
And while it was an absolutely wonderful gesture on the part of Mrs. Thompson to help this family, I am cynical enough to wonder if she would have been so forthcoming had this not been a national photo op involving the President. She just figured out now that there is a homeless / unemployement problem? Being nice to one person singled out in a highly public venue instead of dealing with many people who are part of a large problem is usually how people define tokenism.
The house was offered because it is outside Thompson’s district…. why were the Thompsons living outside that district, if being a resident is -apparently – a requirement?
If you are waiting to persuade people to become republicans one voter at a time in this manner, you are going to have a long wait to get very many. Even to get this one, if Henrietta’s comment about praying for Obama to get elected is an indicator.
But it WAS a very very nice gesture on the part of the Thompsons.
February 12th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
race is the defining issue of the past 40 years.
Maybe for you racists it is. For me it is the political decline of the working and middle classes.
February 12th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Heard on this morning’s news, here, not Florida – Minnesota ranks the worst out of states profiled for mortgages for blacks. African americans with higher incomes were denied mortgages, and were directed into subprime mortgages despite seeming to qualify for regular mortgages, wihle whites who were less qualified got the better mortgages. There was additional documentation of discrimination based on the racial demographics of the neighborhoods where homes were being bought as well.
That would seem an objective measurement that racisim is still a problem.
Right here.
But I’m eagerly waiting to see JRoosh use that as an opportunity to recruit Republicans.
February 12th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
I’d have to see the details of the study before I put that much weight on the racism issue.
There may be other issues connected tangentially to race that would cause blacks in MN to be offered lower quality mortgages than whites. If you’ve ever bought a house you know that income is only a small part of the picture.
February 12th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Ugh, yet another odious grapenut going on about those lazy poor people, always asking for a handout. Here’s a newsflash, Johnny Doosh, maybe you don’t know enough about the situation to come to smug conclusions about people who aren’t doing as well as you.
February 12th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Terry – be careful whom you all a racist. I don’t think I’ve EVER not ONCE said something quite so ugly to you. If you’d like to substantiate your comment, I’ll gladly respond. Otherwise, you might want to apologize for the incivility.
As far as what you’ve said is YOUR defining issue, without doubt, that’s the defining reality, but race HAS been used as a defining issue for 40 years – as broadly evidenced by the shift in political home for the parties. Every other issue cuts across geographical lines evenly enough, only race doesn’t.
February 12th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
you said ‘the’ defining issue, not ‘a’ defining issue peev.
Given Angry Clown’s habit of calling people racist on SITD on the sole basis that they vote GOP I thought it was part of the generally accepted discourse here.
February 12th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Terry, the study “Communities in Crisis: Race and Mortgage Lending in the Twin Cities” was performed by the Institute on Race and Poverty, U of MN.
You can read it online if you are interested. They use multiple measurements to arrive at their conclusions, and have some interesting insights into a variety of related topics including law enforcement, where banks have branches, etc.
February 12th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Addendum Terry, anyone else who might find it of interest.
The Institute on Race and Poverty is part of the U of MN Law school; the study I mentioned can be read there (or through a link on the MPR website).
There is also an interesting study on the Institute’s website critical of the performance of Magnet Schools – FYI, since that was a topic here a while back, if it continues to be of interest to anyone.
February 12th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
I haven’t time to look at the study this AM, Dog Gone. I am generally suspicious of race hustlers and their studies.
Often sociologists use statistical data because they find it difficult to deal with individuals. Using groups allows you to, say, point to statistical data that ‘proves’ a community is racist without having to identify any actual racists or racist acts. It can be a way of imposing group guilt without individual guilt. This allows each of the members of the group to believe that they are innocent while others are guilty.
But I digress. . .
February 12th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Sorry, dog gone, I digressed too much & lost my train of thought
Anyhow. I do not deny that there is discrimination in housing, but I suspect it has more to do with rentals than with mortgages. It is easier for a property manager to indulge their bigotry than a mortgage officer for the simple reason that mortgage lenders keep better records.
This may be why researchers look at mortgage lenders rather than rental agents. The data is relatively easily available to a grad student from a computer terminal.
February 12th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Wow, a U of M study concluding that Minnesota is racist? Notify the Star Tribune stat! It’s inconceivable! And banks not having branches in predominately minority neighborhoods? It MUST be racism. Big grocery chains don’t put their stores there either, those capitalist bastards.
February 12th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
maybe you don’t know enough about the situation to come to smug conclusions about people
Gee Clownie, you’ve never found that an impediment.
February 12th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Here’s a newsflash, Johnny Doosh, maybe you don’t know enough about the situation to come to smug conclusions about people who aren’t doing as well as you.
I don’t know about John R. But I graduated from West High School in Minneapolis in the mid-seventies and lived between Franklin & Lake until I was in my twenties. I worked at Control Data’s Northside facility until I was in my mid-twenties. Those who know that school, that neighborhood and that facility will understand.
February 12th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
I would also urge caution in quickly accepting the results of a Law School study on this topic. The necessary controls to determine whether the rejections were a result of racism or should be explained by poverty factors, employment types, etc are tricky. It’s often a difficult issue to get good controlled studies in the social sciences for these kind of topics, and there are frequent failures.
I couldn’t find the article Dog referenced on the site. Was the study accepted for publication and did it pass peer review for something other than a law review? (Not that my opinion of most social science studies is high, but I’m curious if this passed even that tiny hurdle.)
February 12th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Peevee, you’re a liberal; ergo you are a racist. QED
Nothin’ personal, just the facts.
February 12th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
Miss Peev the Racist:
“If you’d like to substantiate your comment, I’ll gladly respond.”
lol!
How did ANYONE read that without laughing?
February 12th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
I put my internet skills to work for me on this story about mortgage lending in the Twin Cities.
I’l have to see if these links make past the three-headed dog that Mitch uses to keep spam out of his comments.
Here is the MPR story that I believe Dog Gone is refering to: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/02/11/minority_housing_loan_study/
Here is the original UM News Release on the story: http://www1.umn.edu/urelate/newsservice/NS_details.php?release=090212_3908&page=NS
And here is what I believe is the study itself:http://www1.umn.edu/urelate/newsservice/NS_details.php?release=090212_3908&page=NS
Note that this says it is a draft and was released in Sept. last year. I could find no later copy.
Just a minute while I adjust my souper-dooper soup can wifi boster . . . there.
Comments on the MN News release:
It refers to a ‘report’ that was ‘released’ by the UMIRP, not a paper or study that was published. Neither the UM News or the MPR story refer to any publication that had or would publish this study or report, other, I suppose than the newspapers.
The only real stat the UM News story cites is “Black borrowers with incomes exceeding $157,000 faced a 25 percent denial rate, compared with an 11 percent denial rate among whites making $39,250.”
Which tells us nothing other than the numbers themselves. What kind of homes were the whites and blacks trying to buy? Where were they? How much did they cost? What was the loan-to-value ratio? What were the credit scores of the applicants? Did they factor in the annual rate of income change of the applicants (my bank did when I got my mortgage)? First home or second home?
This statistic is followed by a sentence that is odd in this context “The same pattern held true for high-income Asians and Hispanics.”
No numbers, no explanation as to why hi-income Asians or hispanics would have a hard time finding a banker who wanted to borrow them money for a home, or why they fit into the same mortgage predicament as blacks but not whites.
Then the article switches gears and talks about poor people in poor ‘segregated’ neighborhoods being given harsher loan terms than people in wealthier neighborhoods. ‘Segregated’ is a loaded term, which I’m sure the author of the story knew and used to drive his (Ryan Mathe?) agenda. In this case a segregated neighborhood means, I suppose, an area where minorities have chosen to live and not many white people have chosen to live. The news release says “Racial segregation of neighborhoods was an added factor in the Twin Cities because they are underserved by prime lending institutions, contributing to higher subprime loan rates for people of color.” That sentence is marvelously ambiguous. ‘underserved’? In what way? There were no nearby prime lending institutions? Should they have done what some shady mortgage brokers did and call people up or send them door to door wit the papers ready for the signing? Or is the greater number of sub-prime mortgages in certain neighborhoods considered roof that prime lending institutions ‘underserved’ these areas?
The news release is agenda driven and does not give you the reader the facts he needs to determine if the study or release or whatever has any validity at all.
February 12th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Henrietta Hughes is like the woman at the well. She may have burdens, but they are self-imposed shackles she has wrapped around herself. Should we have sympathy, no. Should we have empathy, yes. She’s made more than her share of bad decisions in life – no doubt. You may ask yourself how someone could get themselves in a state of total dependency, but what’s important isn’t how we increase her dependency, but how we get her weaned off of the public teat. Unfortunately, this new Messiah is an advocate custom made for the Henrietta Hughes’ of this country. The idea of charity is about to change, folks. What was once the province of conscience and compassion is soon going to be hijacked by politicians.
February 12th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
Okay, onto the MPR story: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/02/11/minority_housing_loan_study/
The story is based on the UM press release augmented by several short quotes from lending institution spokesmen and others. The highlited first paragraph of the story is
Which again does not address anything other than incomes as the qualifier for a mortgage. The original UM News released was quoted, partially quoted, or used as the basis for at least a dozen stories by media sites on the web and in every case the editor or writer seemed to think that income was the only qualifier in determining the terms of your ome mortgage. None of them mentioned any qualifying factors or raised any questions about down payment, first or second home, etc, etc. And note this odd formulation: “African Americans and other minorities seeking mortgages in the Twin Cities have some of the highest home loan rejection rates in the country.”
What does “some of the highest home loan rejection rates in the country” What does “some” mean? It can be used as an adverb or an adjective. The sentence seems to be stating a fact, but can the fact actually be demonstrated to be true or false? Regardless of the actual statistics, wouldn’t the vague, clumsy usage also indicate that in the Twin Cities blacks have some of the lowest home loan rejection rates in the country?
I could go on like this for thousands. You’ll thank me for stopping here.
February 12th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Sorry, dropped more than the usual amount of words in that last comment.
Maybe Mitch will get us a preview button for Valentines Day.
February 12th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
“Given Angry Clown’s habit of calling people racist on SITD on the sole basis that they vote GOP I thought it was part of the generally accepted discourse here. ”
Terry, to be fair…..he also calls us fascists. And Klansmen. And clearly we vote for a party that slightly less than half of the country voted for. Obviously fringe.
February 13th, 2009 at 2:01 am
I’m reading the draft of the “Communities in Crisis: Race and Mortgage Lending in the Twin Cities” report.
I am certain that none of the journalists who reported on the UM News story did bothered to do this.
What do the report’s authors mean by ‘segregated neighborhood’?
Did you know that if you live in an area with less than 30% whites you are living in a segregated area? Or if your neighborhood is 90% white you live in a segregated area? How do the researchers determine your neighborhood? Census data and zip codes.
Segregation is not what it used to be.
In the US 60% of the population is of white, European ancestry (if you consider the Irish and Finlanders as ‘white people’).
I have yet to find any indication in any source on the web that this is a peer reviewed paper. It looks like the semester project of a bunch of sociology grad students.
February 13th, 2009 at 2:08 am
Dang it, I think and write too fast.
Since a segregated community may be as much as 30% white that means that all the foreclosures in a ‘minority segregated neighborhood’ could be on houses owned by whites and this paper would still consider the foreclosures as disproportionately affecting people of color in segregated neighborhoods.
It is junk science.
February 13th, 2009 at 2:32 am
It gets worse.
The authors of the report don’t consider houses under foreclosures/threat of foreclosure in ‘segregated’ zip codes differently if they are owner occupied or owned by an absentee landlord (possibly white) and rented to a Person of Color.
February 13th, 2009 at 2:36 am
On second thought I don’t think “Communities in Crisis: Race and Mortgage Lending in the Twin Cities” is a semester project by a bunch of grad students. It is too long and Sept 24 is too early for a first draft in Fall semester. I think this is a master’s thesis or a department project. Or maybe the pet project of a thesis advisor.
February 13th, 2009 at 5:00 am
The authors of the UMIRP report don’t correlate holders of mortgages with residents. That means that the owner of a house in a poor, ‘segregated’ area may be an investor or a company in Washington state while the actual mortgage lender may be in California or God knows where. Yet the study complains that the cure for foreclosures is having local banks in the neighborhood. How many people in the neighborhood were actually looking for banks to give them a mortgage? You get the feeling that the authors of the report (all as white as me bum, by the way) desperately wanted to find a ‘person of color’ who had been denied a mortgage based on their race. They couldn’t, so instead they fumble statistics to show, essentially, that people who live in poor neighborhoods have a tendency to get worse loan rates than people who live in middle class and wealthy neighborhoods. They really want folks who choose to live in poor, transient neighborhoods to cowboy up, be responsible, and join the middle class. But they won’t. It’s like trying to shove an oyster into a parking meter (to steal a line from The League of Gentlemen).
February 13th, 2009 at 9:09 am
You wingnuts are so crazy. Some doucebag plumber with an unpronounceable name whines about taxes and you wingnuts start buying “Joe the Plumber” plush toys for the little ones.
Yet another reason nobody really pays attention to what you say.
February 13th, 2009 at 9:38 am
And yet here you are, AC.
February 13th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Nice work, Terry!
February 13th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
It’s always good to see someone eat AC’s lunch.
😉
February 13th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Dude, you couldn’t eat Angryclown’s lunch if it was fed to you through Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube.
February 13th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
angryclown meant to say:
“Dude, you wouldn’t eat Angryclown’s lunch if it was fed to you through Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube”
I assume it has something to do with what swiftee says angryclown eats for lunch, but I don’t want to know.
February 15th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
My understanding – and I admit here that I only scanned the report quickly – is that not all the information gathered is summarized here, but that in any case, the purpose in doing this report was not some kind of masters or grad thesis but rather to explore the possible failures of enforcement of existing fairness in lending laws. In that context, it is worth mentioning that several cities, Memphis, Baltimore and others, are pursuing legal action against lenders for failing to comply with the existing legislation that prohibits red-lining, and reverse red-lining, fraud, predatory lending practices, etc.
I’m not fully convinced that the objections raised by Terry are proof that these problem lending practices have not occurred here, but I do agree that there are valid questions raised.
The logical next step would be to direct those questions to the authors, not to make assumptions about the absent info. They do have a contact button on their website….
It will be interesting to see if any legal actions make it to court, based on the findings of this study or not.
February 16th, 2009 at 3:24 am
Dog Gone wrote:
I’m not fully convinced that the objections raised by Terry are proof that these problem lending practices have not occurred here
Quite a change from:
“That would seem an objective measurement that racisim is still a problem.
Right here.”
You are a babe in the woods, Dog Gone.