Thursday, November 20, 2008

It Started 389 Years Ago...

I love watching our history unfold.  My emotions create an enigmatic thought:  Everything has changed...but nothing has changed yet?!



Link to original page: http://www.wallstats.com/blog/389-years-ago/

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Sunday, November 16, 2008

Saluting a Female General

"With rock piles and signposts, mark the way home, my dear people.  It is the same road by which you left.  Will you ever decide to be faithful?  I will make sure that someday things will be different, as different as a woman protecting a man." -- Jeremiah 31:21-22

I realize that I am taking some liberties with the text; but, perhaps the prophecies of old still have some life in them?  Perhaps one day the world will be truly different...if we are willing to walk the way home.



By Jamie McIntyre
CNN Senior Pentagon Correspondent

In our Behind the Scenes series, CNN correspondents share their experiences in covering news and analyze the stories behind the events. CNN Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre reflects on the historic promotion of Gen. Ann Dunwoody, the first woman to achieve Army's highest rank.

(CNN) -- Watching Army Chief of Staff George Casey swear in his newest fellow four star -- the first woman to achieve the Army's highest rank -- it was hard not to feel something truly historic was happening before your eyes.

The cavernous Pentagon auditorium was packed with a constellation of multistarred senior officers, mostly men. The mood was festive. There were broad smiles everywhere.

It was both a sign of how far women have come in the U.S. military and a reminder that women are still not full equals to their brothers-in-arms.

"It's taken a long time, probably longer than it should have," Casey admitted in his congratulatory remarks.

Gen. Ann Dunwoody was beaming as Casey and her husband pinned the four stars on each of her shoulders, stars that carry with them the heavy burden of a "historic first."

"I didn't appreciate the enormity of the events until tidal waves of cards, letters, and e-mails started coming my way," Dunwoody said.

"And I've heard from men and women, from every branch of service...from moms and dads who see this promotion as a beacon of hope for their own daughters."

One such letter came from Master Sgt. Michael Bergener, who served with Dunwoody at Fort Bragg.

"Now, you get to pin on our nation's highest military rank, and I get to tell my 5- and 7-year-old daughters that they really can be anything that they want to be, even a general in the United States Army."

Well, almost anything.

Technically, women are still barred by Congress from serving in direct ground combat -- a distinction that seems increasingly disconnected from the reality of modern warfare.

Still, I couldn't help think how much attitudes had changed from when I first reported on the women in combat debate in 1993.

Bill Clinton was president, and Defense Secretary Les Aspin had ordered an end to the ban on women flying combat aircraft.

The military saluted smartly and began trumpeting the breakthrough, even as some senior officers harbored deep reservations.

I remember questioning the Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Tony McPeak, who made no secret of his personal opposition to allowing women in the cockpits of his fighter jets, about how he felt.

"I'm comfortable with it, and there's always the small chance I was wrong," McPeak said.

It sounded like self-deprecating humor, but anyone who knew Tony McPeak knew he really did think there was only a small chance he was wrong.

At the time -- in the early '90s, after Desert Storm -- the prevailing thought was summed up by Kate O'Beirne, a former member of the Presidential Commission on Women in Combat.

"I do not believe the American public is ready to see America's daughters and sisters being paraded in downtown Baghdad as POWs. And we know that our pilots run that risk," she said at the time.

That's no longer a theoretical question. The fact is American women have been fighting and dying alongside men in both Iraq and Afghanistan -- two wars with no front lines.

So far, 115 women have laid down their lives for their country in those wars.

But the reason it took so long for a woman to earn four stars is because most full generals prove their mettle in combat.

Dunwoody, though she served the Airborne, rose through the ranks of the Army Materiel Command.

"History will no doubt take note of her achievement in breaking through this final brass ceiling to pin on a fourth star," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said at Dunwoody's promotion ceremony, "But she would rather be known and remembered first and foremost as a U.S. Army soldier."

Dunwoody has a proud military history. A Dunwoody has fought in every American war since the Revolution.

Her great-grandfather, Brig. Gen. Henry Harrison Chase Dunwoody, was the chief signal officer in Cuba from 1898 to 1901.

Her father, Hal Dunwoody, is a veteran of three wars -- World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

But it is the younger generation of Dunwoodys who are a living testament to the strides woman have made. Her sister Sue was the third female helicopter pilot in the Army, and her niece Jenny is an Air Force A-10 pilot who recently returned from flying combat missions in Afghanistan.

"If anyone is worried about the next generation of warriors, fear not," says Dunwoody. "The bench is loaded with talented sailors, airmen, soldiers, and Marines. And while I know I may be the first woman to achieve this honor, I know with certainty I won't be the last."
 
Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/11/14/btsc.female.general/index.html
 
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Friday, November 14, 2008

FDIC, Treasury clash on anti-foreclosure plan

Look, someone in the Bush administration is trying to do the right thing; but, turn out the lights because the party is over!  W...Worst President Ever!



Released by Reuters on Fri Nov 14, 2008 3:15pm EST
By Karey Wutkowski and Patrick Rucker

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top U.S. banking regulator unveiled a plan on Friday to prevent about 1.5 million foreclosures, breaking ranks with the Bush administration by demanding bailout funds be diverted from banks to consumers.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp said the plan would modify millions of delinquent mortgages and the government would reward participating lenders by sharing the cost of defaults on restructured loans.

The dispute over housing policy during the administration's final weeks spilled into the public as a U.S. Treasury official and the White House on Friday renewed their opposition to using money from the $700 billion bailout fund to support such a program.

Treasury Interim Assistant Secretary Neel Kashkari told a U.S. House of Representatives committee the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), which the Treasury controls, was designed for investing.

"The FDIC proposal at the end of the day is a spending proposal," he said.

Kashkari said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson thinks the FDIC proposal "is a very interesting idea" and urged Congress to consider drafting legislation to create such a program.

The White House said it is carefully reviewing the FDIC plan, but that it has to think about its potential cost.

The FDIC said its plan would cost the government about $24.4 billion, which could be paid from the TARP. Most of the money from an initial disbursement in that program has been injected as capital into banks.

FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair, who spent weeks unsuccessfully lobbying Bush administration officials for the plan, issued the proposal two days after Paulson publicly dismissed the idea.

Leading Democratic lawmakers have rallied behind Bair, a Republican, and have even pushed for her to have a place in Democratic president-elect Barack Obama's administration.

Senate Banking Chairman Chris Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, said on Wednesday that he hopes Paulson works with Bair to get the program up and running as soon as possible to address the worst housing crash since the Great Depression.

The FDIC pushed forward with its plan, posting it on the agency's Web site on Friday morning (http://www.fdic.gov/consumers/loans/loanmod/index.html).

"Although foreclosures are costly to lenders, borrowers and communities, the pace of loan modifications continues to be extremely slow," the FDIC said. "It is imperative to provide incentives to achieve a sufficient scale in loan modifications to stem the reductions in housing prices and rising foreclosures."

The FDIC, which insures most U.S. bank deposits, said it plans to overcome the problem of reaching borrowers, which has dogged previous efforts, by offering mortgage servicers $1,000 to cover expenses for each loan modified. It said the plan could modify about 2.2 million mortgage loans and promised to share up to 50 percent of losses incurred if a borrower defaults on a loan that has been restructured.

Eligible borrowers would include those who have missed at least two monthly payments on loans for homes they live in. Lenders would be expected to lower those borrowers' monthly payments to about 31 percent of the borrowers' monthly income.

The plan is modeled on the FDIC's program to modify distressed mortgages at failed lender IndyMac Bancorp Inc, which the agency seized in July.

COMPETING PLANS

Kashkari said on Friday that it was "aggressively" looking at ways to use TARP to reduce skyrocketing home foreclosures.

The federal government has laid out a number of plans in recent months to try to help distressed homeowners, the latest of which came earlier this week. On Monday, the federal overseer of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac said the companies' struggling borrowers can apply to have their mortgage payments lowered to 38 percent of their income.

An FDIC official, however, said on Friday that plan and others have not gone far enough, and that $24 billion in federal money should be dedicated to having a stronger effect on foreclosures.

"I think more needs to be done now," said Mike Krimminger, special policy adviser to the FDIC, to CNBC. "That's a substantial amount of money, but I think trying to get an impact on the overall market justifies the spending of that money. I think investing in the housing market, investing in the stability for our communities, and stability for our mortgages is crucial if we're going to avoid the greater economic impact."

Consumer advocates cheered Bair's proposal.

"It is clear that existing loan modification efforts have not worked," said John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, in a statement. "The administration needs to get behind a meaningful proposal to address home foreclosures."

Linda Lowell, a mortgage market veteran and founder of consulting firm OffStreet Research, said Bair has been talking about stabilizing borrowers for more than a year and clearly intends to get her plan through.

"She more than a lot of people has gotten it sooner, that if they don't find a way that is reasonable and productive to stop the foreclosures, they continue to build the pressure on home prices" and the overall economy, Lowell said.

(Reporting by Karey Wutkowski and Patrick Rucker, additional reporting by Al Yoon in New York, Editing by Tom Hals)

Link to Article: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE4AD5AU20081114?sp=true

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Why can't the Big 3 simply understand this...



Found on CNN's iReport, posted by David from Washington DC

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

CNN's Hugh Riminton interviews former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who is asking all Americans to get behind Obama. I would be humbled and amazed to have such an endorsement offered and such true words spoken about me by such an American...