b) they won't tell us what awesome fun thing they have planned for us

Good call on opting out. Surprise Awesome Fun almost never is.

Thanks! I feel like it's the right decision, but I also feel like Not a Team Player, so I'll take all the validation I can get. They're just making announcements about leaving now.

Jesus fuck. I think I finally understand what's going on here. Cheney clearly has somehow perfected a way to transfer GWB's brain into a new candidate:

In Israel yesterday, NBC’s Lauren Appelbaum reports, Lieberman once again intervened when McCain made an incorrect reference about the Jewish holiday Purim -- by calling the holiday "their version of Halloween here."

when McCain made an incorrect reference about the Jewish holiday Purim -- by calling the holiday "their version of Halloween here."

...what? WHAT?

Is he senile? Or just ignorant?

"their version of Halloween here."

...

Aims and I were talking about the housing thing on the drive home last night.

Now, this is a simplistic view of things and I totally get how people got suckered into a "great deal" that ended up being a "suckapalooza". This Is Not A Judgement.

But I recalled that, back before it all went to hell, somebody (one of our friends, I don't recall which one) was talking up the prospect of buying a home with an ARM and something in me went "What? No."

Just based on the "Adjustable" part. Because who's adjusting it? Me? No...somebody else. And I'm all paranoid and cynical and thought "No...I like to know what I will be paying and stick with that. I don't want somebody yoinking me out of the blue with 'Turns out George, our Investment Guy, was hungover one day and made some spectacularly poor choices and so we need more money and so we're adjusting your rate to Infinity Plus Two. Sorry.'"

Again, though, that's more of a native fear of arbitrary change and a distrust of people who aren't me than, you know...savvy or smarts. Because, as I said to Aimee, it's also entirely possible that a smooooove salesman could have talked me into signing by pooh-poohing the aformentioned Paranoia and Cynicism and dazzling me with all sorts of confusing jargon and "math" and flow-charts and a laser-light show. *I* sure as hell don't know what I'm doing and buying a car freaks me out when they pull out multi-page forms with tiny type.

Which inevitably leads me to a muddled pointless confusing conclusion, but, hey, I'm bored and there's the Internet and I got time...

Thanks for listening!

Where the air is clear, and there are many, many cows.

Hmm, I didn't think those two things went together.

*I* sure as hell don't know what I'm doing and buying a car freaks me out when they pull out multi-page forms with tiny type.

Yeah, that's my feeling. It's their job to dazzle you with paperwork*, and I'm sympathetic to people who, god knows, may not even have basic math skills and who end up making bad decisions.

(*More accurately, the whole bank/housing/immense scary sums of money/predict the housing market/predict your financial situation in 15 years thing is confusing and complicated enough that we hire people who understand it to deal with it. Unfortunately, it's in their best interest to get us to sign up.)

In other news, there's a school in Ohio which is making huge changes in grading and dealing with F's to try to bring up their graduation rates. Some excerpts, with my reactions:

If a student fails to turn in an assignment on time or does poorly on a test, the district gives an "Incomplete" mark. Then, the student is given intervention services and a deadline to make up the work. If a student takes a test, and does try but still earns an F, that F is equal to at least a 50 percent, not a zero.

Okay, I see what they're doing. I know the arguments against it, but they're trying to convince the students that it's worth it to keep trying.

Hanlon says if a student is failing, it is the responsibility of the school district to find out where the breakdown is and get the student help.

Uh. Back up the truck a little, okay? I guess I get a little touchy about the word "responsibility". I have a lot of responsibilities when it comes to my students -- to prepare, to work with them, to try my best to help them succeed -- but at some point it's their responsibility, isn't it?

Oh, never mind. It says "school district" not "teacher," so I guess I'm okay with that. Go for it, school district!

I've always felt like I'm pretty well insulated from being scammed by dint of being so suspicious and untrusting. Which is not to say that I don't make bad money decisions based on other things.

But. I'm pretty well educated, I like to consider myself fairly intelligent, and going into the whole homebuying thing I spent enormous amounts of time researching and reading and investigating and whatnot. And I still had to take a lot on faith, to trust what people better versed in this were telling me. At the closing I was totally out of my league, and had lots of questions to which the answers tended to boil down to "that's just how it works."

When you don't understand something, you go to experts. In the real estate world, though, most of the experts (brokers, agents, etc.) are people who have a stated or unstated stake in things. Commissions on non-standard loans were much higher for brokers than for traditional loans - I wonder how many people knew and understood that? Your agent is technically your advocate - but their stake rises with your purchase price. I heard people pooh-pooh the idea of having an attorney, or getting an inspection, over and over.

Finally, I'll say this. In terms of people being too credulous about how much they could afford, about how much prices would rise: the idea of homeownership as the best, possibly only, route to long-term financial gain has been practically a mantra in this country for as long as I can remember. It's been fed to us with our Cheerios. And as for "how could you possibly imagine you could ever afford that?" I can't imagine that I could ever afford what I did buy, with payments I can manage, with a totally standard 30-yr fixed. The numbers are just too big.

So. I happen to be a news junkie with an interest in and some understanding of economics. I have to think my general ability to understand the risks, the process, the reality of what I was signing up for was far above the norm.

Which isn't to say some buyers weren't being idiots, weren't trying to pull a fast one, weren't focusing on castles in the sky. But a lot of people simply got in over their heads, and had an enormous industry of so-called experts, suddenly insulated from any of the risks that had previously served as a brake, pushing them that direction.