At 5 p.m. they chose Abraham Lincoln as their candidate for the U.S. Senate, running against Democrat Stephen A. Douglas.
At 8 p.m. Lincoln delivered this address to his Republican colleagues in the Hall of Representatives. The title comes from a sentence in the speech's introduction, "A house divided against itself cannot stand," which paraphrases a statement by Jesus in the New Testament.
Even Lincoln's friends believed the speech was too radical for the occasion.
His law partner, William H. Herndon, thought that Lincoln was morally courageous but politically incorrect.
Herndon said Lincoln told him he was looking for a universally known figure of speech that would rouse people to the peril of the times.
Another lawyer, Leonard Swett, said the speech defeated Lincoln in the Senate campaign. In 1866 he wrote to Herndon complaining, "Nothing could have been more unfortunate or inappropriate; it was saying first the wrong thing, yet he saw it was an abstract truth, but standing by the speech would ultimately find him in the right place."
Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention.
If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.
We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation.
Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented.
In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other.
Good Old Abe Lincoln. Smart bastard.
And, as usual, what is old is new again.
So what is this "house divided" crap? Well, it's us.
It's the U.S. Government & private industry, becoming intermingled at a startling rate.
So what's the big deal? The auto industry is imploding on itself. Everyone, government & auto makers alike want it to survive. Right?
Well, not really. Government doesn't want to lose the jobs. Specifically, the Dem's don't want to lose the Union votes. You lose the jobs, you lose the votes.
So they are shoveling money to the auto makers as fast as possible.
But strangely, the auto makers just aren't doing their part fast enough.
The entities being bailed out are still failing. Only vacuous idiots thought there would truly be another outcome.
GM & Chrysler face bankruptcy. Soon. Sooner than that.
Why? They are getting BILLIONS thrown at them. The leadership (auto & Union, alike) has to want to keep their perk-laden jobs, G5's & bimbo junket's, right?
Do you see why this is a House Divided?
The government wants survival.
Survival requires sacrifice.
Sacrifice is exactly what both sides do not want.
Sacrifice means plant closures, cuts & lost jobs. And neither the government, not the auto maker top brass, nor the union rank & file or leaders want that.
No one can possibly get what they want out of the auto bailout. The cure is exactly the poison that is killing the beast.
Bailout Nation U.S.A. can do nothing but fail. It is a House Divided. It will fall.
OK, on to truly terrible news....
Jobless rate bolts to 8.5 percent, 663,000 jobs lost
WASHINGTON -- The nation's unemployment rate jumped to 8.5 percent in March, the highest since late 1983, as a wide swath of employers eliminated 663,000 jobs.
It's fresh evidence of the toll the recession has inflicted on America's workers, and economists say there's no relief in sight.
If part-time and discouraged workers are factored in, the unemployment rate would have been 15.6 percent in March, the highest on records dating to 1994, according to Labor Department data released Friday.
The average work week in March dropped to 33.2 hours, a new record low. Since the recession began in December 2007, the economy has lost a net total of 5.1 million jobs, with almost two-thirds of the losses occurring in the last five months.
"It's an ugly report and April is going to be equally as bad," predicted Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com.
First, it bears mentioning again, that all jobless rates are wildly understated. There are all sorts of exclusions that reduce the number of "unemployed" persons in this country.
You can see it here, stated quite literally: The real unemployment figures are easily double what we are told.
We already know that Bend's stated 12.6% is actually 16.1%. And that 16.1% is already massaged as well, so the real rate is closer to 25%.
It's safe to say that the real unemployment rate in Bend is just about double what The Bully reports. Possibly more.
Even that 8.5% rate for the US is bogus. It was 8.9% in Feb. It is impossible to really know, because this is Kool-Aid bailout Nation, and it seems Job 1 is assuaging the population with lies, money & big boobs.
But despite all this lying, within the paradigm of the lies, you can see things are getting grim.
Worst Jobs Recession since the Great DepressionThis is a chart from Last Month!
Things are still going from Bad to Worse. The markets are discounting the idea that this "recession" will be worse than others recently, but that things will soon turn.
Wrong.
There has been a fundamental shift in almost everything in our government & our "free" economy.
They are slowly evolving into some sort of unified blob, taking the worst of both, and making a monster.
Remember when Daimler Benz (the beautiful fairy princess) joined with Chrysler (the frog)?
Right. You got a monster.
I'm not telling people this to scare them, or anything else. It's just a warning, the same warning I've been giving almost every single day for 2 1/2 years:
We face financial Armageddon, as a country. Prepare.
This isn't going to be like the Last Time (2001), or the time before that (1991, etc). This is The Big One.
You should need look no farther than last weeks chart of Bend's unemployment, or the chart above of lost jobs. Things are still getting worse, not better.
OK, moving on....
OK, here's a shocking revelation:
Most of the "help" (financial assistance) that banks are supposed to give struggling homeowners (with OUR MONEY), is just hollow gestures.
What a surprise.
Loan modifications rise; many don't pare payments
by The Associated Press
Friday April 03, 2009, 8:55 AM
WASHINGTON -- Though lenders are boosting their attempts to curb record-high home foreclosures, fewer than half of loan modifications made at the end of last year actually reduced borrowers' payments by more than 10 percent, data released today show.
The report, based on an analysis of nearly 35 million loans worth more than $6 trillion, was published by the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision.
It provides the most detailed and broad analysis to date of efforts to stem the foreclosure crisis, which President Barack Obama is trying to combat with a $75 billion plan to promote loan modifications.
The report helps explain why many loans are falling back into default after being modified. Many borrowers and consumer groups contend that the modifications offered by the lending industry aren't very generous, despite more than a year of public prodding from regulators.
For instance, nearly one in four loan modifications in the fourth quarter actually resulted in increased monthly payments.
That situation can happen when lenders add fees or past-due interest to a loan and spread those payments out over the 30- or 40-year period.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the report found that loans were far less likely to fall back into default if a borrower's monthly payment is reduced by a healthy amount.
Nine months after modification, about 26 percent of loans in which payments had dropped by 10 percent or more had fallen back into default. That compares with about half of loans in which the payment was unchanged or increased.
Loan mod's are simply an attempt to perpetuate past over-consumption mistakes.
You consumed too much house, you can't afford it, but our new US Government-Banking behemoth wants you to pay and pay and pay, until you are beyond tapped out.
This is serfdom. You are a slave to property. You will spend a lifetime servicing your debt.
There is an incredible re-distribution of wealth happening. And it is not to the Top 50% (Whitey), or even the Top 5% (Buster), or even the Top 1%.
It's the Top 0.0001%. It's not people who have a million bucks. It's people who make a million bucks. Per month.
These people are having the full faith & credit of the US (that's us, our kids, and grandkids, et al), printed up & deposited in their bank accounts.
They caused this. Now they are reaping the biggest financial bonanza the World has ever known.
We'll be a country of vast serfdom with an almost impossibly small number of financial Masters ruling the place.
Loan mod's are nothing but an attempt to enslave you.
OK, next....
And just more proof that nearly all the goodness of this blog is in the comments...
Trends Signal Slowing Population Growth In Bend
For years, Bend has been the fastest growing city in the state -- and one of the fastest-growing in the country.
But in the recession, that development and growth has turned into a high number of foreclosures and job losses.
Now, a series of statistics have begun to trickle out that signal many people are leaving the region to find a better life elsewhere.
I'm not sure how many people read this blog (not really important, I guess), but it's little nugg's like this that I just love.
Because it is something Bend's local media would never run.
At Bend High School, the hallways remain crowded. But, a little less so than in the past few years.
The front office says the school has about 100 fewer students than this time last year.
The trend holds true at the district level as well.
There are about 250 fewer students in the system today, than one year ago, a drop of more than 1%.
Ron Wilkinson is the superintendent of the Bend-La Pine School District. Ron Wilkinson: “Without any question, Bend is in a situation of flattened growth. And when you’ve been on this pattern of almost straight-up growth on the charts, it feels like a significant decline.”
Ron Wilkinson: “For us, it’s a matter that a lot of that construction industry is unemployed or has moved elsewhere. It’s certainly impacted the economy and the entire community.”
Ah yes. The old Flattened Growth. A classic Bendism. It now joins other classic Bend-oxymorons, "larger half", "rolling stop", and "only choice".
Flattened growth. This is Bend.
Finally, another priceless nugg from the comments (Sub req'd).
Cascade Bancorp asks shareholder to invest $25M
By Andrew Moore / The Bulletin
Published: April 04. 2009 4:00AM PST
Cascade Bancorp, the publicly traded parent company of the Bank of the Cascades, is seeking a $25 million investment from David Bolger, its largest single shareholder, that could potentially give Bolger ownership of more than 50 percent of the company, according to a filing Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Bolger, of New Jersey, currently owns 21.33 percent of the company’s common stock, according to the company.
Bolger was the lone shareholder of Boise, Idaho-based Farmers & Merchants State Bank, which Cascade Bancorp bought in 2006.
Patty Moss has been reduced to begging!
She wants this Bolger guy, who has probably lost untold tens (hundreds?) of millions, to throw good money after bad.
Bolger will go for it, if MossCo is ejected. Could happen.
My own opinion is that he should just mentally walk away, not throw good money after bad, and try to get Moss blown out anyway.
Finally, just random nugg's to boggle the mind:
Financial Rescue Nears GDP as Pledges Top $12.8 Trillion
By Mark Pittman and Bob Ivry
March 31 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year, to stem the longest recession since the 1930s.
"Hey kids, here's why I can't send you to college! And you won't send your kids either! Bailout nation 2009!"Yet another House Divided piece:
Finding the upside of the homes market
Government trying to make mortgages easily available while preventing foreclosures
Oy. This is what got us into this mess. Increasing mortgage availability simply increases defaults. We KNOW that now. Increase mortgage availability beyond a certain point, and you simply invite foreclosures. That's what is happening now.
Home Prices: Low, But Still No Bargain
Forget low mortgage rates and the buyer's market. Real-estate prices still have a long way to fall.
Homeowners are watching anxiously for any signs of housing market stabilization. So, too, are all those who believe the market may hold the key to the economy.
And yet the most recent data makes for more gloomy reading.
The closely watched Case-Shiller index, which tracks prices across twenty major cities, shows that through January the crash was getting worse, not better.
And yet, even after these declines, homes overall still may not be that cheap relative to wages. More on that later.
The headline numbers are grim enough. January's Case-Shiller index showed a 19% slump from a year earlier.
The usual suspects fared very badly: Phoenix was down a remarkable 35%. Las Vegas fell 32% and Miami 29%.
I encourage you to go read the original story on WSJ Online, if only for the cool Flash graph, showing Home Price with respect to earnings.
That index, which was at 91 in March 1997, zoomed to 200 in May 2006. It now stands at 128 (Dec 2008).
We're starting to re-enter the range of normalcy, but we are still historically high. Without the recent bubble to muddy the waters, our current reading of 128 would troublingly high. More excerpts:
But for the market overall the picture isn't as hopeful as you'd like.
Even today, prices overall have only reverted to levels seen in late 2003. Yet by that stage the bubble was already well inflated. You would expect a crash of this scale to retrace its steps much further. To find pre-bubble prices you have to go back to about 2000 – when values overall were about a third lower than they are today.
It's true that mortgage rates, now at 4.5% to 5%, are currently very low. But relying just on that is far too simplistic. Rates were also low from 2003 through 2005 – as many pointed out, disastrously, at the time.
Is there a bullish scenario for house prices? Sure. If all the government spending to turn around the economy reignites inflation in a year or two—as some predict—house prices could begin climbing again. But if the current price deflation continues, look for house prices to keep dropping.
Over the long term, average home prices have tended to track average earnings. And by this measure the market may have much further to fall.
I looked at Case-Shiller's index back to 1987 and compared it to federal data on average earnings. The result, rebased to 100 in January 1987, can be seen here. And it's alarming. By this (admittedly very simple) measure, today's home prices are actually more expensive, in relation to average earnings, than at the peak of the 1989 property bubble.
Equally noteworthy is that when the last property bubble burst, it took about eight years before the market showed really strong signs of revival. This bubble was far, far bigger.
I'm telling you, folks, this thing is still in the early innings. And if you've got any sense at all, you know Bend is far, Far, FAR behind the curve. We're in the 2nd inning, at most.We've fallen almost 50% from our peak values. And we are still one of the most overvalued RE markets anywhere.
We'll hit $125K medians in Bend, and it will not recover peak values in any adults lifetime who lives here. EVER.
"A bra divided, I will not stand!"
