Friday various & sundry

A few things:

Mark Hemingway asks a question that frankly never occurred to me: So now paying your bills on time is racist? He's referring to a report that banks will be accused of racism by requiring credit worthiness when lending money:

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition plans to challenge the widespread practice of requiring borrowers asking for FHA-backed loans to have higher FICO scores than the minimum required by the FHA, according to a report from Ken Harney at New Times. [. . .]

The NCRC says that the higher FICO requirements disproportionately discriminate against African-American and Latino borrowers, many of whom have credit scores above the 580 threshold set by FHA but below the higher minimums set by banks.

Hemingway:

Note the median FICO score is 723. But requiring a score of 620 to get a home loan with only 3.5 percent down is racist? Huh? Wasn't giving people with poor credit huge loans with nothing down the reason we got into this whole mess in the first place?

What are we supposed to do here? Oh look, they're accusing us of being racist again for deigning to look at a person's credit history. Just give them the house in Florida and tell congress to send another cash truck to Fannie Mae.

So the meanies who make credit worthiness a requirement for borrowing large amounts of money aren't just heartless, they're raaaaacists. No matter that we've seen what lowering, or jettisoning, standards has wrought. Madness.


The global warming fraud continues:

The good people at Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow have attended the annual International Climate Change Conference for years now, and in Cancun this week they caught up with UN IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri:

When asked about the fact that there has been no statistically significant global warming for the past 15 years, Pachauri became evasive. Even Phil Jones, a climatologist at the University of East Anglia and a prominent global warming alarmist, admitted this fact in the wake of Climategate.

Maybe if they ignore the inconvenient data it will go away? Anyway, it's quite pleasant to swan around in Cancun at someone else's expense.


On second thought, don't meet me in St. Louis. Christopher Orlet, At Home in Murder City:

Sure, St. Louis's crime rates look bad on paper, but these days who reads the paper? The fact is, you have to try really hard to get murdered in St. Louis. You can't just sit in your foxhole watching television and expect someone to go out of his way to kill you. St. Louisans are much too busy for that. At the very least you have to step outside to check the mail. My point is, it's no picnic being the most dangerous city.

Heh. Read the rest.


This is the house that Michael Jordan built:

Cosy, huh? It looks more like a hotel. More photos here.

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