Redneck Conspiracy

How to become homeless

NYT: Ex-homeowners forced into shelters – [The New York Times]

NYT: Ex-homeowners forced into shelters ‘These families never needed help before,’ says one advocate

CLEVELAND – The first night after she surrendered her house to foreclosure, Sheri West endured the darkness in her Hyundai sedan. She parked in her old driveway, with her flower-print dresses and hats piled in boxes on the back seat, and three cherished houseplants on the floor. She used her backyard as a restroom.

The second night, she stayed with a friend, and so it continued for more than a year: Ms. West — mother of three grown children, grandmother to six and great-grandmother to one — passed months on the couches of friends and relatives, and in the front seat of her car.

But this fall, she exhausted all options. She had once owned and overseen a group home for homeless people. Now, she succumbed to that status herself, checking in to a shelter.

“No one could have told me that in a million years: I’d wake up in a homeless shelter,” she said. “I had a house for homeless people. Now, I’m homeless.”

Growing numbers of Americans who have lost houses to foreclosure are landing in homeless shelters, according to social service groups and a recent report by a coalition of housing advocates.

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(se: It’s really sad to see this, especially for people with kids. So I do feel sorry for them, but this one was something you had to see coming.  I used to flip through the TV channels looking for something to watch, and there had to be a dozen TV shows about houses, where people were buying homes and flipping them, or buying expensive homes they couldn’t afford.

I just saw one the other day where this young couple was looking to move out their apartment, and wanted a $700,000 house in a prestige location, and nothing else. I’m sure it was an old episode, and you can probably find them in the shelter now.  The problem was that it was very easy to get a nice big expensive house for next to nothing, with small mortgage payments. Then it gets better, people would refinance their houses, and get lines of credit against their house so that they can match their great new house with great new cars and luxuries.

I fucked up my life. You guys should feel sorry for me.

So you make $60,000 a year between you and your wife, you just bought a $500,000 house, and then you get a credit line against your house so you can buy a Cadillac Escalade to do groceries in, a BMW M3 for a daily driver, and a nice convertible for the wife. Life is grand isn’t it?  Then all of a sudden interest rates go up, mortgage rates go up, gas prices go up, you get laid off, and there goes the self esteem and ego you were buying with someone else’s money.

You get rid of the cars to pay the bills, you have no choice but to keep the SUV, because it’s now worth nothing as no one wants a gas guzzler when they can’t afford it. Then as things get tight, you trade it in for a Ford Taurus and some cash, taking a loss so that you can eat.  You lose your house and live in the Taurus, and then end up in the shelter.

Could this have been avoided? Sure.  But who can resist living life like a TV Star? By day you’re a telemarketer, or an employee at The Gap, but after work, you’re a d-list celebrity, waiting for MTV to give you a show, and TMZ to camp outside your house. Too bad that reality eventually kicks in.  Better luck next time.  Unfortunately, most of these people never learn.)

Balloon Boy a hoax. We all knew it and were waiting for this!

DiManno: Balloon boy bursts dad’s bubble [thestar.com]

Famous. Infamous. The distinction doesn’t matter any more. The Heenes got what they lusted for: Worldwide TV face-time, a pathetic affirmation of their otherwise insignificant existence, star billing in manufactured melodrama. Mission accomplished. All it took was an aluminum foil balloon that resembled a humongous hangover ice-bag, a conspiracy of pretense forced on their children and the complicity of a credulous media contaminated by infotainment pressures. And cops too, they were in on the sham, albeit and allegedly somewhat belatedly, mounting what they now claim was a tit-for-tat sting in order to elicit the truth.

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Hope you get a good raping in jail fuck face!

(se: Ok.  Everyone with a half a brain knew this was a hoax.  When normal people get their dose of Reality TV stardom they could never get back to their normal dull lives.  Now this was a stupid hoax anyways, and these people are definitely nut cases.  The best part is that your son screwed it up for you.  It’s probably God’s way of punishing you for naming him Falcon.  Only hippies and Native Indians name their kids after animals.  You know what I would like to see?  I’d like to see the family have to pay back every cent that was spent by the authorities on this, and jail time for the parents.  Like 10 years jail time.  That will teach them  a valuable lesson! Bastards)

Americans vs Canadians

How Canadian and American youth are different

Young Canadians are dramatically different from young Americans, a new cross-border survey has found.

Canadians from 18 to 34 travel more, recycle more, charge more, play the lottery more, marry less, text-message less and rent more than their American counterparts, the Ipsos Reid study revealed.

Canada, eh.

“Americans come through as a little more grounded, more domestic. Canadians are more of the free-spirit type,” Samantha McAra, a 26-year-old senior research manager in Calgary with the polling company, said Friday.

“My friends and I, we’re renting, not married, have careers, like to travel. The environment thing, too. If someone doesn’t recycle, it’s sort of like you look at that person and they’re sort of judged.”

McAra wrote the questions for the survey, which asked 1,000 people on each side of the border to respond online. The traditional telephone poll wouldn’t work for a demographic in which 34 per cent of Americans and 19 per cent of Canadians only have a cellphone, she said.

GO USA!

McAra may be smack in the middle of the “emerging market group,” as she calls it, but even she was baffled by some of the 10 social networking groups on the final list, sites such as imeem.com and ning.com. But even they had six and three people registered, respectively, among those polled.

Facebook is the social networking site of choice for Canadians, at 81 per cent registered, compared to 57 per cent for Americans. In the U.S., 54 per cent are signed onto MySpace, compared with 23 per cent of young Canadians.

Companies are increasingly interested in the 18-to-34-year-old market, McAra said, because they have healthy incomes and the urge to acquire; baby boomers, on the other hand, have the incomes but not as strong a need to spend.

[Read More @ thestar.com]