We're hosting our KKLA Business Leaders Luncheon this Wednesday, January 27th, at the Doubletree in Anaheim. We'll be featuring Dr. John Townsend, heard weekdays on KKLA from 2-3pm, a psychologist, best-selling author, leadership coach and business expert. The cost is less than $20 for lunch, we've got lots of giveaways, and don't forget– some qualified business is going to walk out of there with $16,500 in free KKLA advertising! To register, go to kkla.com right now!
400-408 – Jerry Bowyer, economist, nationally-syndicated columnist, and CNBC contributor (bowyerbriefing.com).
• Arkadi Kuhlman (1/20/2010) Why Mortgage Modification Isn't Working: The loan adjustment success rate is just 1%. Mr. Kuhlmann is CEO of ING Direct USA.
My Summary – Since the start of the recession in 2007, more than 5M homes have been taken back by lenders, and it's estimated another 13M will be lost by 2015. To address this, Obama set up the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) in February 2009, and HAMP plans to spend $75 billion to do mortgage "modifications" for struggling homeowners. However, though 3M homeowners qualify, only 760,000 "trial" mods have been done so far, and only 31,000 permanent ones – that's a success rate of just 1%. This means 99% of eligible homeowners struggling with their mortgage payments have been unable to modify their loans.
The program is failing because Obama is suffocating banks with counterproductive accounting rules. If a bank does a mod, it must record the write-down as an expense on its books even though the bank didn't lose any money—it's still scheduled to receive the totality of the loan principal, just less interest.
For example, if a homeowner gets a mod that reduces his monthly mortgage by $400 per month for 24 months, the bank has to report that it "lost" $9,600 ($400 times 24 months). This makes banks reluctant to modify. They don't want to take the "loss," which can get very big for larger mortgages with long modified periods. So there's a huge financial disincentive to offer modification.
413-423 – Jerry Bowyer
428-437 – Caleb Kaltenbach, currently the lead pastor at Shepherd of the Hills – Woodland Hills Campus, (shepherdwoodlandhills.com), but he'll be moving to Dallas to pastor Valley View Christian Church in just three weeks. Caleb knows first hand the pain of growing up with two gay parents, both his mother and his father are gay, and he saw things as a little boy that no little boy should see. He comments on the pain same-sex marriage would bring.
443-456 – Caleb Kaltenbach
458-508 – Richard Kennedy, our KKLA Sales Manager, and host of our KKLA Business Leaders Luncheon coming up this Wednesday, January 27th, at the Doubletree in Anaheim. We'll be featuring Dr. John Townsend, heard on KKLA weekdays from 2-3pm. He'll be talking about leadership out of his most recent book entitled Leadership Beyond Reason: How Great Leaders Succeed by Harnessing The Power of Their Values, Feelings, and Intuition, and sharing his wisdom from his many years as a leadership coach. The cost is less than $20 for lunch, we've got lots of giveaways, and some qualified business is going to walk out of there with $16,500 in free advertising! Register right now at kkla.com!
512-523 – What a week! First, Scott Brown wins in Massachusetts, then the Supreme Court rejects Campaign Finance Reform and allows corporations to donate to political campaigns, and then Air America finally goes off the air. This was a bad week for liberals.
• Byron York (1/24/2010) Abdulmutallab interrogated for less than an hour; White House defends handling of terrorist case. Eric Holder did not consult anyone else (other than perhaps Obama) when he okayed Mirandizing Abdulmutallab on December 26th. Under oath on capitol hill, we now know he did not check with any of the top anti-terrorism officials. Not the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael Leiter. Not the director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair. Not the secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano. And, not head of the FBI, Robert Mueller.
(1:46) PO of course not (CBS 60 Minutes with Steve Kroft @ 3/22/2009).
(:27) PO of course not short.
(2.00) WH Spokesman Robert Gibbs on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace on January 24, 2010.
528-538 – Dr. Dave White, senior pastor of Northpark Community Church (northpark.com) in Valencia, talks about his successful strategy of reaching men.
544-554 – Dr. Dave White
558-608 – Norman Geisler, is author or co-author of over 70 books and hundreds of articles, for the past 60 years he's taught theology, philosophy, and apologetics at the college or graduate level, he's spoken or debated in some 26 countries on six continents. He's taught at some of the top seminaries in the United States, including Trinity and Dallas, and he has recently launched a new seminary down in Murietta, Veritas Evangelical Seminary, on the campus of Calvary Chapel Bible College (veritasseminary.com). Today we talk about his book Creation and the Courts: Eighty Years of Conflict in the Classroom and the Courtroom. Norm will be out to teach at Veritas in April and May, and to hear this patriarch of American apologetics, you don't need to enroll in the seminary, you can simply pay a minimal audit fee. Get more info at their website.
• Mail Online (1/24/2010) Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn't been verified.
612-623 – Richard Kennedy
628-638 – Jerry Bowyer
644-652 – Jerry Bowyer
• Financial Times (1/22/2010) White House nightmare persists.
• WSJ (1/23/2010) White House Toughens Tone: Amid Concern About Midterms, Obama Boosts Staff and Emphasizes Jobs.
• Rich Lowry (1/25/2010) The 1994 nightmare.
All the key conditions are there for a debacle:
* Is the president down in the polls? Check. Obama is far above President Harry Truman's 33 percent approval rating when Democrats lost 55 seats in 1946. But he's been trending downward. President Bill Clinton was roughly even at 45 to 46 percent approval in November 1994. By the end of the weekend, Gallup had Obama roughly even, too, at 48 to 47, his highest disapproval rating yet.
* Has the majority picked up so many seats recently that a correction seems inevitable? Check. When a party has a big tide in congressional elections, it tends to recede. The GOP pickup of 47 seats in 1966 came after Dems swept to an overwhelming 295 seats in the House in 1964. Over the last two elections, Democrats have picked up 54 seats; their total of 257 after the 2008 election is well above their roughly 220-seat average over the last 10 years.
* Are there bunches of Democrats representing conservative districts? Check. The '94 GOP sweep was possible because so many Democrats held naturally Republican ground, particularly in the South. As a result of their big gains in 2006 and '08, Democrats hold nearly 50 seats won both by Bush in 2004 and McCain in 2008, and more than 80 that were won by one of them, reports electoral maven Charlie Cook.
More disturbing than all this for Democrats has to be their erosion among independents and the middle class: They've alienated the great, broad middle of American politics.
The Rasmussen poll had Scott Brown winning independents 73 to 25 percent, even better than the 2-1 GOP edge among independents in last fall's Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races. Republicans won't match those numbers nationally in November -- but if they basically reverse Obama's 52 percent to 44 percent win among independents from 2008, they'll make major gains.
As John Judis, the brilliant political writer for the liberal New Republic points out, Obama has seen his standing among people making $30,000 to $75,000 flop upside down over the last year, from 63 to 17 approval in Pew polls to 53 to 35 percent disapproval. His standing is roughly similar among people over 65 years old and working-class whites -- key constituencies in the midterms.
• NRO Editorial (1/25/2010) The Wrong Financial Reforms.
• DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN (01/25/2010) PELOSI AND REID PLOT SECRET PLAN FOR OBAMACARE.
(1:56) Conan's last day. (Conan O'Brien last night on the Tonight Show NBC @ 1/22/2010).
• Breitbart (1/23/2010) Scientologists 'heal' Haiti quake victims using touch. Use this opportunity to possibly teach on scientology and take calls.
• Fox News (1/25/2010) British Boy, 7, Raises Tens of Thousands for Haiti
