American Home Mortgage Investment Corp. shares plunged 90 percent after the lender said it doesn’t have cash to fund new loans, stranding thousands of home buyers and putting the company on the brink of failure.

Investment banks cut off credit lines, leaving American Home without money yesterday for $300 million of mortgages it had already promised, the Melville, New York-based company said in a statement today. It anticipates that $450 million to $500 million of loans probably won’t get funded today, and the lender may have to sell off its assets.

“They can’t function without access to capital,” said Bose George, an analyst with KBW Inc. in New York. “The company either has to file for bankruptcy or go through some type of rescue or restructuring, and either way will leave almost nothing for the common shareholders.”

American Home caters to borrowers whose credit scores fall just short of standards for top-rated mortgages. The announcement provides fresh evidence that defaults may be spreading from subprime borrowers with the worst credit scores to homeowners with more reliable payment records. The biggest U.S. mortgage lender, Countrywide Financial Corp., said last week late payments rose among some of its most creditworthy clients.

More at Bloomberg

(Source)

This from someone involved in a questionable land deal. Lisa, thank you!, for reminding us we should always take the high road, and never pre-judge. We appreciate it!

Giuliani’s plan for fixing America’s uninsured problem is to offer tax credits… to families, (with just a touch of “trickle down” thrown in for good measure). First off, what about the rest of us, Rudy? Should we continue keeping our fingers crossed and hope we don’t get sick? Secondly, would someone please tell me how offering tax credits to any group can’t be called “social”? Does Rudy believe tax dollars are pulled out of some magical elephant’s butt? The government operates on a finite amount of funds. If Rudy gives all these tax credits to “families”, then who the hell ultimately pays for it? I’ll tell you who. The rest of us - THE UNINSURED!

I’d like to note also that it appears Giuliani has his very own ‘Rove’ to help in his bid for king president. In his latest campaign, Rudy used two ‘S’ words… Socialized (as in socialized medicine) and Squeal (as in those no-good, squealing Democratic babies). A tactic bound to leave him looking like a squeaky-clean American, and his democratic opposition looking like “dirty, low-down commies”. Rudy should be told that trick only works on the stupidest of America’s stupid… and that Republicans have the votes of that twenty’something-percent already in the bag.

Giuliani offers health care plan

Calls for tax credits for private care rather than ’socialized medicine’

Republican presidential hopeful, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, poses for a photo during a surprise campaign stop at R.M. Heath Supermarket in Moultonborough, N.H., Monday.

ROCHESTER, N.H. - Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani on Tuesday offered a consumer-oriented solution to the nation’s health care woes that relies on giving individuals tax credits to purchase private insurance.

Critical to Giuliani’s plan is a $15,000 tax deduction for families to buy private health insurance, instead of getting insurance through employers. Any leftover funds could be rolled over year-to-year for medical expenses.
[...]

“Government cannot take care of you. You’ve got to take care of yourself,” he said. “As more of us do that, the cheaper it will become and the higher in quality it becomes.”
[...]

Giuliani used his appearance to continue criticizing the Democratic candidates, contending that their plans amount to socialized medicine.

“We’ve got to solve our health care problem with American principles, not the principles of socialism,” he said. “I know Democrats will say this is unfair, I know they’ll squeal… But I’m a realist. I face reality, which is: if you take more people and have government cover it, it’s called socialized medicine.”

Source: MSNBC.com

Also in this article:

This from someone that has free doctor visits for life, and probably has more money than God. Hey, I’m against frivolous lawsuits of any kind myself. All they do is joke up the system, thus slowing it down to a snails crawl. But I have a feeling that, in Rudy’s mind, just compensation for being maimed for life by a doctor would amount to free coffee for a month at the plaintiff’s closest Starbucks.

People, we REALLY need to run Lobbyists out of D.C.!

One party…..

WASHINGTON, July 31 - Under pressure from President Bush, Democratic leaders in Congress are scrambling to pass legislation this week to expand the government’s electronic wiretapping powers.

Democratic leaders have expressed a new willingness to work with the White House to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to make it easier for the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on some purely foreign telephone calls and e-mail. Such a step now requires court approval.

It would be the first change in the law since the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants became public in December 2005.

In the past few days, Mr. Bush and Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence, have publicly called on Congress to make the change before its August recess, which could begin this weekend. Democrats appear to be worried that if they block such legislation, the White House will depict them as being weak on terrorism.

More at the NYTimes

Opposition to a massive military sale to Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern allies from the United States picked up more steam Tuesday, when a Republican House member joined leading Democrats to block the deal in proposed legislation.

Reps. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) and Mike Ferguson (R-N.J.) gathered with members of the Democratic leadership as well as House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) at a Tuesday press conference to condemn the deal.

“Fundamentally, they have not been an ally of the United States,” said Weiner, referring to Saudi Arabia.

Weiner and others are hoping to attract more support for their position by reaching across the aisle.

“There is significant Republican concern,” said Ferguson, the lone GOP member of the group. The New Jersey Republican said that he has had several conversations with members from his own party, who are concerned but holding back for now.

More at The Hill

Ok, doesn’t ANYONE in congress know about the programs they speak of? If not, isn’t that a crime in itself?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration’s top intelligence official has acknowledged that a controversial domestic surveillance program was only one part of a much broader spying effort, The Washington Post reported in its Wednesday edition.

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell wrote in a letter that other aspects of the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program remain classified, the Post said.

“That is the only aspect of the NSA activities that can be discussed publicly because it is the only aspect of those various activities whose existence has been officially acknowledged,” McConnell wrote, according to the Post.

Bush acknowledged the existence of a program that monitored domestic phone calls and e-mails without court oversight in December 2005. The administration has not confirmed other secret spying efforts reported by news outlets, such as one that searched millions of telephone records.

Continue reading at Boston.com

cross posted at THINK PROGRESS

In June, House investigators revealed that Vice President Dick Cheney had exempted his office from an executive order order designed to safeguard classified national security information by claiming that the Office of the Vice President is not an “entity within the executive branch.”

After Congressional Democrats called his bluff by threatening to withhold funding from his office, the White House was forced to roll back their rhetoric, claiming “that the rationale had been the view of the vice president’s lawyers, not Cheney himself.”

But in an interview with CBS News- Mark Knoller today, Cheney refused to say he was a member of the executive branch:

Mark Knoller: Are you part of the executive branch, sir?

Vice President Cheney: Well, the job of Vice President is an interesting one, because you have a foot in both the executive and the legislative branch. Obviously, I have an office in the West Wing of the White House, I am an adviser to the president, I sit as a member of the National Security Council. At the same time, under the constitution, I have legislative responsibilities. I-m actually paid by the Senate, not by the executive. […]

KNOLLER: But you are principally a part of the executive branch, are you not?

CHENEY: Well, I suppose you could argue it either way. The fact is I do work in both branches.

read more HERE

From Raw Story:

The Pentagon announced Tuesday that it will rotate 20,000 into Iraq at the end of this year but denied the troops would extend President Bush’s troop “surge” through next spring, The Associated Press reported Tuesday.

CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr reported Tuesday that a “worst case scenario” would stretch military ranks as troops leave for their 15-month rotations.

“They may have to reach down into the National Guard or Army reserve” to maintain the troop levels, Starr said.

Military commanders began to expect earlier this year that the surge would have to be extended into next year. In an article that appeared in the Washington Post in May, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, who manages day-to-day operations in Iraq, said the surge needed to last “through the beginning of next year, for sure.” Odierno noted at the time that new regulations extending tours of duty to 15 months would allow for the surge to last through spring 2008.

“bonus” the U.S. could give to Israel in return for its unequivocal support for the American-led campaign in Iraq

What support? Has Israel got troops in Iraq? Have they provided any aid to Iraq?

The United States has asked Israel to check the possibility of pumping oil from Iraq to the oil refineries in Haifa. The request came in a telegram last week from a senior Pentagon official to a top Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem.

The Prime Minister’s Office, which views the pipeline to Haifa as a “bonus” the U.S. could give to Israel in return for its unequivocal support for the American-led campaign in Iraq, had asked the Americans for the official telegram.

The new pipeline would take oil from the Kirkuk area, where some 40 percent of Iraqi oil is produced, and transport it via Mosul, and then across Jordan to Israel. The U.S. telegram included a request for a cost estimate for repairing the Mosul-Haifa pipeline that was in use prior to 1948. During the War of Independence, the Iraqis stopped the flow of oil to Haifa and the pipeline fell into disrepair over the years.

More at Haaretz

By RICHARD LARDNER and ERICA WERNER

Another “slap on the wrist” for dirty deeds done by our own side to our own soldiers. - JS

WASHINGTON - The Army censured a retired three’star general Tuesday for a “perfect storm of mistakes, misjudgments and a failure of leadership” after the 2004 friendly-fire death in Afghanistan of Army Ranger Pat Tillman.

Army Secretary Pete Geren asked a military review panel to decide whether Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger, who led Army special operation forces after the Sept. 11 attacks, should also have his rank reduced.

In a stinging rebuke, Geren said Kensinger “failed to provide proper leadership to the soldiers under his administrative control” when the Army Ranger and former pro football star was killed in 2004.

Geren said that while Kensinger was “guilty of deception” in misleading investigators, there was no intentional Pentagon cover-up of circumstances surrounding Tillman’s death - at first categorized by the military as being from enemy fire.

“He let his soldiers down,” Geren said at Pentagon news conference. “General Kensinger was the captain of that ship, and his ship ran aground.”

Geren said he has directed a review panel of four’star generals to decide whether Kensinger, a three’star, should have his rank reduced. If Kensinger is demoted to major general, his monthly retirement pay of $9,400 would be cut by about $900, according to Army officials.

“Had he performed his job properly, had he performed his duty, we wouldn’t be standing here today,” Geren said.

read more HERE

By SETH SUTEL

Goodbye to what once was a decent newspaper. - JS

NEW YORK - Rupert Murdoch is poised to win control of Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co. after the company’s board approved his $5 billion buyout offer late Tuesday, a person familiar with the matter said.

Murdoch will be clinching one of the great trophies of U.S. journalism and a newspaper that is considered required daily reading among the business and power elite.

The deal will also expand Murdoch’s already massive global media and entertainment empire News Corp., which owns the Fox broadcast network; Fox News Channel; the Twentieth Century Fox movie and TV studio; MySpace; newspapers in Australia and the U.K.; and several satellite TV broadcasters.

The boards of News Corp. and Dow Jones have both approved the deal, a person with knowledge of the matter said late Tuesday, but this person asked to remain anonymous because the deal had not been completely finalized and there was no formal announcement yet.

News Corp. had said it would only agree to move ahead if the deal had sufficient support from Dow Jones’ controlling shareholders, the Bancroft family.

The Journal reported that a key Bancroft family trust had reversed itself and decided to support the deal, meaning that votes representing about 37 percent of Dow Jones’ shareholder vote were now in favor of selling to Murdoch.

read more of the obituary HERE