Why Trying the 9/11 Terrorists in NYC is a BAD Idea

An excellent analysis of why trying Khalid Shiekh Mohammud in New York is a colossal mistake. The legal jargon is a little dense, sorry.

The writer is an attorney who lays out how the trial will inevitably play out. I think he's exactly right. We've seen this already in the trial of Zacharias Moussoui (however it's spelled), the alleged 20th hijacker. In short it will be a massive media circus, cost incredible amounts of money, give the confessed terrorists an international platform and publicity, and require that the U.S. disclose our secret intelligence gathering techniques. Not to mention setting the defense attorneys up for life financially, and ruining the reputation of the U.S. legal system.

He also speculates on the President's motivations for bringing the trials here, and concludes that it is part of a sinister left-wing plot. On that point I think he gives President Obama too much credit. A plot requires competence and planning. I'm not sure it's a plot, so much as just plain stupidity, naivete, and a fundamental misunderstanding of the world and of human nature coupled with a disdain for any policy or measure enacted by President Bush.

I never thought I'd say this, but I'd rather see them tried at the International Criminal Court. It's reputation has no where to go but up, and when the terrorists are all freed, it would help cement public opinion against international institutions, and strengthen faith in America. All the opposite outcomes of a trial in NYC.

Finally, a Harmless Jihad . . . or . . . Why Bilingual Education is Important

Thank you FailBlog.org

Amen

A great article in the UK Daily Mail today on the true motivations of a segment of the environmental movement.

Jonathon Porritt, the [UK] Government's 'green' adviser, has said that couples who have more than two children are being 'irresponsible' by creating an unbearable burden on the environment.

Curbing population growth through contraception and abortion must therefore be at the heart of policies to fight man-made global warming.

Apparently this is all because people have to accept responsibility 'for their total environmental footprint'.

That's what having children amounts to, apparently, in his mind.

The blessings of a large family and the contribution this makes to prosperity and progress don't figure at all. Instead, children are to be measured solely by their burdensome impact on the planet.

What kind of sinister and dehumanised mindset is this? It is no coincidence that the country which comes nearest to Jonathon's ideal society is Communist China, which imposed a murderously cruel policy of restricting families to one child apiece. For the desire to reduce the number of children that parents produce is innately totalitarian.

I can't say it any better.

Read the rest of it here.

Common Sense . . . Almost

I was reading about the California Woman who just gave birth to octuplets. The poor lady had 6 kids already.

It seems like the media has no shortage of advice and criticism for her. Some stories imply that any sane person would have aborted several of the babies, others wonder about a possible breach of medical ethics by the doctor who implanted 8 embryos in the first place.

I'm glad she didn't abort them, I do wonder about the doctor though. Fox news tries to at least be helpful

"Eating, sleeping and bathing are the key areas to get scheduled," he said. "The same goes for mom and dad. Parents need to make sure they're whole or else they won't be valuable to their children."

Good, so far so good, just good common sense, but then common sense seems to go right out the window:

Sophy said the expense of raising 14 children will likely be prohibitive, citing studies that estimate it costs roughly $2.5 million to raise a child to adulthood. Using that math, raising 14 children would cost roughly $35 million.

"And that's basic stuff," he said. "That doesn't include swimming lessons and things like that. It's very costly and hopefully the planning that needs to be done was done upfront."

What the heck? 2.5 million dollars? For one child? Who won't even know how to swim? I don't even have to think to know that that is patently absurd.

If your family makes $100,000 a year and spends every penny on only one child for 20 years that's still only 2 million dollars. Throw in a $100,000 college education, and another $100,000 for law school, and you're still not there.

Common sense should tell you that many people who don't earn 2.5 million dollars in their lifetime successfully raise children to adulthood. For example, the median income in the U.S. is about $50,000. that median earner will need 50 years to make 2.5 million. Obviously it doesn't cost them 2.5 million to raise one child.

The reporter makes matters worse by simply regurgitating the number and then calculating that it will take 35 million dollars to raise the 14 children in the family.

Absolutely ridiculous.

Would You Visit This Family Therapist?

I ran across this story a while ago, but all the papers are running updates on it today. A woman in San Diego is trying to pay for a Master's degree.

So far, so good. It's how she's raising the money that's unusual. In order to pay for a degree in Marriage and Family Therapy, she's auctioning off her virginity. Talk about a mental disconnect somewhere. Who is going to listen to a marriage therapist with that in her past? I can only imagine the conversation:

Husband: I work and slave, and she socks all my money away in the bank.
Wife: I'm just trying to save for Missy's college.
Husband: Missy should earn the money!
Wife: How? She's only one year away from starting school.
Therapist: hmmmm . . . . . I have an idea!

But that's not all. She has bids of more than 2.5 million British pounds! I have no idea what to make of that. But I do know where she got the idea - according to the article, her older sister paid for grad school by working for 3 weeks as a prostitute in Nevada.

Nice. What a great example for her sister.

The "Right" to Win

Good article by Thomas Sowell today.

He points out that the losing side in recent elections act as though they have a "right" to win. Also talks about the protests against the church by gay marriage activists.

I recommend the whole article, but here are some highlights:

Americans have long had the right to put their candidates and their ideas to a vote. Now there seems to be a sense that your rights have been trampled on if you don’t win . . .

. . . Hillary Clinton’s supporters were not merely disappointed, but outraged, when she lost the Democrats’ nomination to Barack Obama. Some took it as a sign that, while racial barriers had come down, the “glass ceiling” holding down women was still in place. Apparently, if you don’t win, somebody has put up a barrier or a ceiling . . .

. . . In Oakland, California, a mob gathered outside a Mormon temple in such numbers that officials shut down a nearby freeway exit for more than three hours.

In their midst was a San Francisco Supervisor who said “The Mormon church has had to rely on our tolerance in the past, to be able to express their beliefs.” He added, “This is a huge mistake for them. It looks like they’ve forgotten some lessons.”

Apparently Mormons don’t have the same rights as other Americans, at least not if they don’t vote the way gay activists want them to vote.

“No justice, no peace!” was a slogan that found resonance [in the 1960s]. Like so many slogans, it sounds good if you don’t stop and think — and awful if you do. Almost by definition, everybody thinks their cause is just. Does that mean that nobody has to obey the rules? That is called anarchy.

Gay Protestors' Violent Assault on Michigan Christians

It's not just California that gay and lesbian protesters are engaging in violent and destructive activities. Gay protesters interrupted an Evangelical Christian church service in Lansing on Sunday. This hasn't gotten any national press, and only small, dismissive local coverage. There weren't even any gay issues on the ballot in MI to provoke them.

http://www.rightmichigan.com/story/2008/11/10/13335/904

This is one of the biggest churches in Lansing. They have thousands of people at meetings, and their own security force. What's to prevent gay protesters from doing the same, or worse, to our (much smaller) LDS meetings? I worry that this could become a regular tactic, especially in California. I hope someone is coming up with a plan to counter this type of thing. The easiest is probably also the simplest: introduce yourself to anyone you don't know at church and offer to sit with them, find out where they're from, in a word - fellowship. (oh, and make sure they aren't wearing pink underwear or something).

Can you imagine the reaction the media would have if just ONE conservative protester had infiltrated a mosque and yelled offensive slogans, or thrown bacon around? The media would, literally, make a Federal case about it - complete with Congressional resolutions, calls for stronger hate-crimes legislation and Presidential addresses condemning the incident.

Here, in a nutshell is what happened if you don't want to follow the link above:

"The [protesters] were a part of a liberal organization known as Bash Back Lansing and their collection of radical blogs, including one of the state's most widely read "mainstream" progressive blogs (none which will receive a link on this website) called on "queers and trannies" from across the state and the region to converge on Lansing for what they refer to as an 'action.'

Prayer had just finished when men and women stood up in pockets across the congregation, on the main floor and in the balcony. "Jesus was gay," they shouted among other profanities and blasphemies as they rushed the stage. Some forced their way through rows of women and kids to try to hang a profane banner from the balcony while others began tossing fliers into the air. Two women made their way to the pulpit and began to kiss.

Their other props? . . . from another . . . liberal blogs:

'(A) video camera, a megaphone, noise makers, condoms, glitter by the bucket load, confetti, pink fabric . . .'

The video camera they put to good use as they attempted to provoke a violent reaction . . . The "open minded" and "tolerant" liberals ran down the aisles and across the pews, hoping against hope to catch a "right winger" on tape daring to push back (none did). And just in case their camera missed the target, they had a reporter in tow.

An hour after police and security had collected and removed who they thought were the last of the [protesters], a volunteer security person discovered two more, hiding together, in a public restroom. While their compatriots engaged in openly violent protest in front of everyone these two snuck away to potentially stage their own protest of sorts, and only by the grace of God did one of the hundreds of kids at the church not happen upon that particular restroom in those moments. Precisely how long they'd been there and precisely what they'd been up to we don't know."

Nice and tolerant, aren't they? This picture is from the protesters' own website - draw your own conclusions:

Global Warming Alert! II

In my previous post I listed several cold weather events which were all no doubt just amazing coincidences, and not any evidence against global warming.

After all, a few incidents do not a climate make. But what if it was more like a whole year of data, and not just from one or two places, but from say the entire continental United States.

BEHOLD:



But, one year does not a climate make. There has to be some kind of trend. Okay, how about 10 years. Surely over ten years, CO2 and temperature would increase together, right?



Ok, so the global average temperature hasn't increased in 10 years, it's decreased. We're talking about a long-term trend here. let's look at the last 600 years. Surely man hasn't been impacting global climate any longer than that:



The correct temperature line, the darker one, shows that it was much warmer 600 years ago than it is today. This is obvious from history. Grapes grew in England during the 12-15th centuries. the Vikings colonized Greenland. They only left because of global cooling. If Greenland is warming today, it isn't the first time.

What's my point?

Global warming advocate always pick their time frame very carefully.

It's usually from the 1940s to 2000. (leaving out the warmer 1930s and the cooler 2000-2008) That temperature graph show an increase. As I've shown above though, pick a different time and you get a different result. You start to see the forest, not just the trees.

Are some areas warming? - YES. Are some areas cooling? - YES. Is the climate changing? - YES. Has the climate ALWAYS changed? - YES. Is today's climate ideal? - no one knows, but it certainly isn't unprecedented, unusual or out of control.

A good resource to counter all the hype is found here.

The "Work Spouse"

I remember hearing, and telling jokes about someone having a "work spouse." All in good fun, right?

Apparently CNN believes that the phenomenon is real enough and serious enough to warrant an advice column on managing the "work spouse" relationship. Because, after all, no human interaction is so straightforward and uncomplicated that it can't be micromanaged to death if enough psychologists put their minds to it.

Don't know if you have a "work spouse?" You're not alone. Many people have one (or more) work spouses, and don't know it. Luckily, CNN has a quick and easy seven point test you can take to see if you have a "work spouse."

(I can imagine the rationalizations for a positive test result: "it can happen to anyone." "It's no one's fault, really." "When working together in close quarters, work spouses happen." "Don't feel stigmatized, work spouses cut across all racial and economic lines." "We just need to raise awareness . . ." blah, blah, blah)

If you discover that you have, inadvertently, acquired a work spouse - don't panic, you can manage your condition. CNN knows what to do:

Keep the lines of communication open. Make sure that other co-workers are not feeling shut out by the perception that you and your work spouse are an exclusive clique of two. If you are working on a project together that also involves the team, be sure to reach out to everyone for feedback and suggestions.

In other words, be promiscuous in your work relationships, exclusivity leads to jealousy, "Make 'work love' not 'work war'" in that giant corporate commune that is the office.

Avoid crossing boundaries. It's great to have a support system and a close confidante, but be sure to set boundaries for how much to share with your office mate. More importantly, honor those boundaries. If the relationship becomes antagonistic or is too close for comfort, let your work spouse know you need a little space.

Avoid crossing boundaries!?!? You mean like thinking of co-workers as your "spouse?" That kind of boundary? And if the relationship is destructive, by all means take "a little space" don't end it. You can make it work, 'work divorce' is not the answer!

Lighten the mood. If your life at home and at work is filled with complications, bringing a co-worker into the middle of those issues may not be beneficial for you. You should aim to keep the mood light and happy with your work spouse. You'll look forward to enjoying gossip, taking breaks and being able to relax with a friend without any concerns or complications.

Relaxing with a friend without any concerns or complications is the purview of a REAL spouse. if you are more relaxed at work than at home, then you need to seriously re-evaluate your life.

I kept hoping to see some evidence of humor in the article, but I didn't. That fact both scares and saddens me.

The Milk of Human Stupidity

PETA is usually good for a laugh, but lately they've been good for little more than a nauseous shudder. Their latest crusade? to convince Ben and Jerry's to use human beast milk in their ice cream.

The fact that human adults consume huge quantities of dairy products made from milk that was meant for a baby cow just doesn't make sense," says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. "Everyone knows that 'the breast is best,' so Ben & Jerry's could do consumers and cows a big favor by making the switch to breast milk.

uh.... Why?

Using cow's milk for your ice cream is a hazard to your customer's health. Dairy products have been linked to juvenile diabetes, allergies, constipation, obesity, and prostate and ovarian cancer. . . it may play a role in anemia, allergies, and juvenile diabetes and in the long term, will set kids up for obesity and heart disease-America's number one cause of death.

So... linked by whom? and, human milk isn't dairy? and shouldn't someone warn the calves not to drink such dangerous stuff?

Animals will also benefit from the switch to breast milk. Like all mammals, cows only produce milk during and after pregnancy, so to be able to constantly milk them, cows are forcefully impregnated every nine months. After several years of living in filthy conditions and being forced to produce 10 times more milk than they would naturally, their exhausted bodies are turned into hamburgers or ground up for soup.

So... humans are mammals, and we should milk them instead? Wouldn't taking mothers' milk deprive human babies of something important? After all "the breast is best," right?

I must be missing something. PETA can't be that stupid, can they? Not to be indelicate, but I'm a father. I know about how much milk a human mother produces in a day, and it isn't 30 liters (the average for a dairy cow). I wonder how much a liter of milk would cost if PETA got its way?

Change You Can Believe In - Part I: Economics.

(Sorry, this is a little long).

I was glancing through Senator Obama's "Blueprint For Change" which outlines his policies and priorities, when I began to wonder how much spending has been promised. I decided to search to whole document and find out. All quotes are directly from Obama's Blueprint. Keep in mind that these are only the items that Obama has promised that include a specific dollar amount. I've done my best to weed out duplicate spending and to be generally fair. Let's start with a piece of Obama's plan I agree with:

Obama will reinstate pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) budget rules, so that new spending or tax cuts are paid for by spending cuts or new revenue (ie tax increases) elsewhere.

Well, it's about time! Keep this in mind. I'll come back to it later. Let's take a look at how much spending Senator Obama will need to offset.

---

First direct spending promises:

reduce a typical family’s premiums by as much as $2,500 per year (through government-funded health care)

Cost: 100 billion dollars/year (400 billion for his first term)

(Guessing conservatively, at an average of $1000 times 100 million families; this jives with Obama's own estimated cost for his health insurance plan).

$10 billion a year over the next five years to move the U.S. health care system to broad adoption of standards-based electronic health information systems.

Cost: 10 billion/year (50 billion total)

Obama will provide a $1.5 billion fund to assist states with start-up costs (of FMLA reform)

Total cost: 1.5 billion total

Create Automatic Workplace Pensions -employers who do not currently offer a retirement plan, will be required to enroll their employees in a direct-deposit IRA account that is compatible to existing direct-deposit payroll systems...His plan will match 50 percent of the first $1,000 of savings for families that earn less than $75,000.

This one is hard to price. Considering the number of families earning less than 75,000 (a large majority) the cost could be enormous. Besides, I thought social security was the answer:

“We … have an obligation to protect Social Security and ensure that it’s a safety net the American people can count on today, tomorrow and forever.
–Barack Obama, Speech in Des Moines, IA, October 27, 2007

So, we won't count that one.

Obama will invest $150 billion over ten years to deploy clean technologies

Cost: 15 billion/year (150 billion total)

Obama will create a Clean Technologies Venture Capital Fund to fill a critical gap in U.S. technology development. Obama will invest $10 billion per year into this fund for five years

Cost: 10 billion/year (50 billion total)

Obama will invest $1 billion over five years in transitional jobs and career pathway programs

Cost: .2 billion/year (1 billion total)

He will provide at least $2 billion to expand services to Iraqi refugees

cost: 2 billion total

he will double our foreign assistance to $50 billion to achieve that goal (cutting world poverty)

Total cost: 25 billion/year

Total Spending: 679.5 billion dollars.

Total ongoing yearly spending: 160.2 billion dollars.

---

Now let's look at new tax cuts:

Obama will cut income taxes by $1,000 for working families to offset the payroll tax they pay

Cost: 20 billion/year (if 20% of families are "working").

Obama will create a new “Making Work Pay” tax credit of up to $500 per person, or $1,000 per working family.

Cost: 20 billion/year (see above assumptions)

Obama will create a 10 percent universal mortgage credit to provide tax relief to homeowners who do not itemize. This credit will provide an average of $500 to 10 million homeowners

Cost: 5 billion dollars

an immediate tax cut averaging $1,400 to 7 million seniors

Cost: 9.8 billion dollars

Obama will create a new  American Opportunity Tax Credit...This $4,000 tax credit will be fully refundable...

Also very hard to value. Potentially huge. We'll ignore this one too.

Total tax cuts per year: 54.8 billion dollars.

---

So, by Obama's own reckoning, every year (for at least 5 years)the federal government will need to come up with a minimum of 215 billion dollars additional tax revenue (54.8 billion + 160.2) if Obama is really going to offset these expenses. Of course this also assumes zero spending growth for every other government agency and program: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Military spending, interest on the debt, Education, etc . . . . or Obama could cut spending . . . (yeah, that's going to happen).

Total federal tax revenue for 2007 was 2568 billion dollars. The needed tax increase will, therefore, be 8.4% on average for every taxpaying entity in America. The reality will be much greater for some taxpayers and corporations than others given the fact that nearly 50% of taxpayers pay no income taxes, and Obama's stated preference for raising taxes only on corporations and "the rich."

This minimum increase excludes onetime spending and several ongoing programs I listed above. It also excludes many other programs, funds, grants, commissions and panels which are promised but not given a dollar value.

It also does not include the "cap and trade" carbon reduction program which amounts to an enormous tax on energy production. It also excludes the "windfall profits tax" on the oil companies. It does not include the cost to business of increasing the minimum wage or of compliance with any of the additional regulations Obama proposes.

Finally, this assumes that nothing goes over-budget - this is the government we're talking about here.

This is the minimum cost of "change you can believe in."

Current Oil and Gas Prices are Self-inflicted Wounds

For several reasons, I always enjoy finding articles that summarize everything I've been thinking on a current issue. First, it confirms what I've always thought - "I'm a smart guy." Second, it saves me the trouble of composing long blog posts - I can just cut, paste and link. Much easier.

so I'm glad I found this post on the real political and historical reasons for the current "energy crisis."

Short version: Congressional dismay about high gas prices is like me blindfolding myself and then complaining when I bump into things a lot.

Long Version:

Americans feeling the pinch at the pump should recognize that the wealthiest nation on the planet has nothing but itself to blame for the third in a series of energy crises that began when Richard Nixon was still in office.

Having largely ignored the previous two shots across the bow — the first coming in 1973 when OPEC decided to ban sales of oil to nations that supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War, and the second in 1979 after the Islamic Revolution in Iran — the U.S. seems determined to repeat the mistakes of the past.

What should make Americans on both sides of the aisle even more ashamed is that before the first energy crisis, the United States produced 11.428 million barrels of oil per day. This represented 66 percent of the 17.308 million barrels we consumed that year.

Compare that to 2007, when America produced 8.481 million barrels per day, or only 41 percent of the 20.7 million barrels consumed. Such is the result of the so-called energy policies of seven White Houses and 17 Congresses controlled by both Democrats and Republicans.

Yet, today’s politicians — mostly on the left side of the aisle, of course — have the gall to place all the blame for rising energy prices on increased demand from expanding economies like China and India.

At least those countries are participating in exploration efforts to expand their own supplies. China’s oil production has almost doubled since 1980, while India’s has grown by an astounding 375 percent. At the same time, U.S. production has declined by 22 percent. . .

Closer to home, our neighbors also ramped up oil production. To the south, Mexico has seen its crude output jump 64 percent since 1980, while Canada’s increased 85 percent.

Did I mention that our production declined by 22 percent in the same period?

Putting this in its proper perspective, if America had responded to the second energy crisis by increasing oil production only at the average rate of our North American neighbors, we’d currently be supplying ourselves with 18.86 million barrels of crude per day, or 91 percent of our usage.

It's not as if we don't have the oil available. According to an April 2006 study done for the Library of Congress:

Oil shale is prevalent in the western states of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. The resource potential of these shales is estimated to be the equivalent of 1.8 trillion barrels of oil in place. . . . In comparison, Saudi Arabia reportedly holds proved reserves of 267 billion barrels.

That doesn't include ANWR, and it doesn't include offshore drilling.

The real problem, I believe, is that liberals, and environmentalists in particular, want oil to be expensive. Read the words of Sen. Obama when ask his opinion of high oil prices:

I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment. The fact that this is such a shock to American pocketbooks is not a good thing. But if we take some steps right now to help people make the adjustment, first of all by putting more money in their pockets, but also by encouraging the market to adapt to these new circumstances more rapidly, particularly U.S. automakers.

I think most people fail to see the need for an adjustment at all. the article points out that Democrats don't have this attitude about other scarce "resources."

Why has one political party for nearly four decades viewed energy crises through the narrow prism of learning to adjust to higher prices and declining resources, as opposed to aggressively finding and producing more of what the country and the economy needs?

Such questions seem particularly relevant given how this same party views hunger in our nation and throughout the world. The answer isn’t for those that have less to make an adjustment and adapt to their impoverished condition. 'Adjust to having less' is certainly not the Left’s prescription for Americans lacking health insurance.

Democrats want government to increase the supply of food and medical care to those deemed financially incapable of providing for themselves.

Why doesn’t the same hold true for energy?

An Incredible Lack of Perspective

Bob Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television (apparent motto: "because white folks just ain't funny") either misspoke, or is deliberately saying stupid things on national television. It has to be one of those two, because I cannot accept that he really believes the following:

I believe that if Senator Obama leads this country the way he ran the primary, it will become a historic event for African-Americans, probably greater than the Emancipation Proclamation, which was signed in 1863.

The election of single man (and a wealthy, liberal, Harvard-educated, socialist man at that) is more important that the freeing of tens of millions of human beings from slavery? Maybe we should ask Mr. Johnson's great-grandparents what they think. If he's correct, my recent graduation from law school must be just as historic to white people as the Magna Charta, or at least the advent of gun racks in pickup trucks.

That kind of thing just boggles my mind. I fear this is only the beginning of Obama's cult of personality, so let me be the first to say "I, for one, welcome our socialist overlords, LONG LIVE THE DEAR LEADER!"

Now, where can I buy a picture of Comrade Stalin, err, Senator Obama for the shrine?

The "New Homeless"

CNN ran a very misleadingly-titled article today: Mom Forced to Live in Car With Dogs. What an outrageous example of elder abuse, right?... No. Kids out of control and trashed the house?... No. A fire or flood?... No.

This poor lady is a member of the "middle class homeless." At the beginning of the article I felt bad for her, but as I read, I gradually found it harder and harder to really sympathize. Let's just say she's not your stereotypical homeless person.

Barbara Harvey climbs into the back of her small Honda sport utility vehicle and snuggles with her two golden retrievers, her head nestled on a pillow propped against the driver's seat. Californian Barbara Harvey says she is forced to sleep in her car with her dogs after losing her job earlier this year.

Poor lady. But wait, she owns a Honda SUV? Oh, then I saw the dateline: "Santa Barbara, CA," so it's all relative. (a late-model Honda CRV in Santa Barbara is like a 78 Chevy Nova anywhere else, right?). She also owns (and feeds) two large dogs. Just the bare necessities for her. I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in a country where the homeless can't even afford to support two large dogs when forced to live in their SUV.

A former loan processor, the 67-year-old mother of three grown children said she never thought she'd spend her golden years sleeping in her car in a parking lot. . .

Harvey was forced into homelessness this year after being laid off. She said that three-quarters of her income went to paying rent in Santa Barbara, where the median house. . . costs more than $1 million. She lost her condo two months ago and had little savings as backup.

Gee, I wonder why she wasn't able to save anything. Must be George Bush's fault. There might be a place or two where it would be cheaper to live. Especially when you have transportation and no steady job tying you down! That just makes me feel like shouting - MOVE TO A NORMAL TOWN!! The rich can barely afford to live in Santa Barbara.

And her children must be real deadbeats, not helping their mom, huh?

Her 19-year-old daughter moved in with friends to avoid being homeless. Her other children live overseas, and she didn't want to tell them about her living status.

Even if her children offered to help, she said, she wouldn't accept it.

She wouldn't accept help from her own children? But she'll complain to CNN! Are we supposed to just ignore this and feel sorry for her anyway? At least she's an optimist when her daughter calls. (on her cell phone?)

"My daughter especially is very unhappy. Sometimes she'll cry, and she'll call and say, 'Mom, I just can't stand it that you are living in a car,' " Harvey said. "I'll say, 'You know what? This is OK for right now, because I'm safe, I'm healthy, the dogs are doing OK, and I have a job, and things will get better."

Well, as long as the dogs are OK! Things WON'T get better, not in Santa Barbara they won't. Get in your car and leave, find an affordable apartment in an affordable town, get rid of the dogs, and the cell phone and, for crying out loud, talk to your children!

The article quotes an economist blaming the California housing crisis and the dearth of affordable housing in Santa Barbara. blah, blah, blah. The real issue here is stubborn pride and a fundamental disconnect from the realities of life. Unfortunate, yes, but not unforeseeable, and certainly not irreparable.