I’m writing for tomorrow, day 52. This is the only article, because I found very little content that I have not already covered. However, I had the Christmas dinner mess to keep me occupied.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 2:45 (average 4:40). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From NY Times: …They are, roughly speaking, the home equity loans of subprime auto. In these loans, which can last as long as two years or as little as a month, borrowers turn over the title of their cars in exchange for cash — typically a percentage of the cars’ estimated resale values…
…More than 1.1 million households in the United States used auto title loans in 2013, according to a survey by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation — the first time the agency has included the loans in its annual survey.
Title loans are an increasingly prevalent form of high-cost, short-term credit in subprime finance, as regulators in a number of states crack down on payday loans.
For many borrowers, title loans, also sometimes known as motor-vehicle equity lines of credit or title pawns, are having ruinous financial consequences, causing owners to lose their vehicles and plunging them further into debt.
A review by The New York Times of more than three dozen loan agreements found that after factoring in various fees, the effective interest rates ranged from nearly 80 percent to over 500 percent. While some loans come with terms of 30 days, many borrowers, unable to pay the full loan and interest payments, say that they are forced to renew the loans at the end of each month, incurring a new round of fees.
Click through for an in depth exposé of how super-rich Republican vulture capitalists, having been driven in disgrace from the sub-prime housing market, are now preying on gullible poor and middle class borrowers through title equity loans.
From SPLC: It has been quite the year at Hatewatch. We’ve identified those who hide in anonymity while financing the racist right. We’ve kept you abreast of events that have plotted the course of the antigovernment movement as it tries to make headway into the mainstream. And we’ve documented in detail the fallacies spread far and wide by major anti-LGBT leaders, especially as they move to advance their agenda abroad.
Before we take a break, we thought we’d give you something of a year in review—the posts on Hatewatch in 2014 that were the most pivotal in understanding the future of the radical right. But don’t worry, Hatewatch will return on Jan. 1, 2015 with more impactful coverage and analysis.
Click through for their year in review, because the SPLC does such fine work. They are an excellent resource.
From Crooks and Liars: Politico writer Jennifer Epstein is quite concerned about how often the President and First Lady attend church.
“The president’s Christian faith is not connected to or dependent upon anyone else’s beliefs about him, any particular policy issue, any moment in the news cycle or anything else,” DuBois said. “The president’s faith existed long before the While House and will continue after he closes the door to the White House for the last time.”
Critics say that wouldn’t be readily apparent from watching his public comings and goings. After disavowing his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and leaving Wright’s Chicago church during the 2008 campaign, Obama was widely expected to seek out a church in Washington that he’d attend with some frequency. Instead, he’s attended Sunday services only occasionally, visiting a patchwork of congregations 19 times in all since taking office, according to a POLITICO analysis of White House pool reports.
Evidently Epstein and her employer have failed to discern the difference between religion and faith.
I can really identify with this, because I have attended church zero times in the same time period. Is the true Christians the Republicans who attend church several times a week, but practices racism, intolerance and greed, or the people who try to reflect what Jesus taught, whether or not they reject organized churches?
Cartoon:
A federal judge in Oklahoma City on Monday said that the state can resume executing prisoners this winter, rejecting the argument by some medical experts that using the same sedative involved in the bungled execution of Clayton D. Lockett in April amounted to an illegal experiment on human subjects.
Antonin Scalia: Torturing convicts is a no-go, but torturing suspects is A-OK.