A couple of years ago, the median sales price of a Los Angeles area home was $580,000. But, as Ed Rubenstein had reported on VDARE.com in 2004:

“A new study by the United Way of Los Angeles finds that 53 percent of the city’s adult population—3.8 million people—are functionally illiterate.”

Do you notice a problem, a certain contradiction between very high home prices and very low human capital? If you stop and think, you might wonder how a whole bunch of people who can’t read and write English are ever going to make enough money to pay off these humongous and humongously leveraged mortgages

But, nobody was supposed to stop and think because that would be racist.

As Glaivester pointed out, one of the truly insightful scenes in modern cinematic history, an exchange of dialogue that speaks profoundly about the human condition in the 21st Century, occurs in “Deuce Bigalow, European Gigolo,” when Deuce Bigalow (Rob Schneider) tracks down his fugitive friend T.J. Hicks (Eddie Griffin) in Amsterdam by looking for him at the Van Gogh Chicken and Waffles Joint.

TJ: How’d you find me?

Deuce: It’s the only chicken and waffles place in Holland.

TJ: So, a black man’s gotta be at a chicken and waffles place? That’s racist.

Deuce: But you are here.

TJ: Yeah, but figuring it out is racist.

Ann Coulter covering the “Diversity Recession” deserves a prize just for the title: “They Gave Your Mortgage To A Less Qualified Minority.” There’s more deep Nexis research discussing the roots of the crisis if you read the whole thing.

Under Clinton, the entire federal government put massive pressure on banks to grant more mortgages to the poor and minorities. Clinton’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Andrew Cuomo, investigated Fannie Mae for racial discrimination and proposed that 50 percent of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s portfolio be made up of loans to low- to moderate-income borrowers by the year 2001.

Instead of looking at “outdated criteria,” such as the mortgage applicant’s credit history and ability to make a down payment, banks were encouraged to consider nontraditional measures of credit-worthiness, such as having a good jump shot or having a missing child named “Caylee.”

Threatening lawsuits, Clinton’s Federal Reserve demanded that banks treat welfare payments and unemployment benefits as valid income sources to qualify for a mortgage. That isn’t a joke — it’s a fact.

When Democrats controlled both the executive and legislative branches, political correctness was given a veto over sound business practices.

In 1999, liberals were bragging about extending affirmative action to the financial sector. Los Angeles Times reporter Ron Brownstein hailed the Clinton administration’s affirmative action lending policies as one of the “hidden success stories” of the Clinton administration, saying that “black and Latino homeownership has surged to the highest level ever recorded.”

Meanwhile, economists were screaming from the rooftops that the Democrats were forcing mortgage lenders to issue loans that would fail the moment the housing market slowed and deadbeat borrowers couldn’t get out of their loans by selling their houses.

A decade later, the housing bubble burst and, as predicted, food-stamp-backed mortgages collapsed. Democrats set an affirmative action time-bomb and now it’s gone off.[AnnCoulter.com - Archived Article: They Gave Your Mortgage To A Less Qualified Minority]

Note: Links added by VDARE.com. Coulter’s title recalls a famous and successful TV ad by the late, great, Senator Jesse Helms.

What’s the deal with McCain suspending his campaign?

Greg Cochran suggests, in the mode of Robert Heinlein’s Double Star, it’s because the actor who will serve as his double on the campaign trail until McCain gets over some undisclosed medical problem hasn’t quite recovered from his appearance-altering plastic surgery yet. Of course, in Double Star the elderly politician never recovers, so the 40-something ham actor winds up living an extra 30 years of the statesman’s life for him as Prime Minister of the Solar System.

Perhaps when the surprisingly spry UN General Secretary John McCain celebrates his 100th birthday in office, historians will begin to wonder why Kevin Spacey’s film career ended so abruptly in the fall of 2008.

But here’s my favorite, from david in the comments section:

“Or he’s having second thoughts: who wants to be president of a bankrupt country that’s soon to disintegrate?

“‘I have seen the future, and I quit.’”

To be serious, though, I could imagine that McCain might have had some medical bad news and might want a few days to get second opinions and consider his options. That happened to me a dozen years ago and it doesn’t leave you in the mood for public dispay. If so, I wish him all the luck in the world.

Does anybody know what the Republican Party’s contingency plan is if a nominee has to drop out late in the race?

This from their Nativism In The News feature:

Latino Activists: Reeling Economy Fuels Nativism | Hatewatch | Southern Poverty Law Center
Nativism in the News

[CA]

Latino Activists: Reeling Economy Fuels Nativism

San Bernardino County Sun

September 21, 2008

Armando Navarro, coordinator of the National Alliance for Human Rights, expressed concern that economic turmoil will spur anti-immigrant policies akin to “Operation Wetback,” a mass deportation program enacted during the Great Depression.

Of course, Operation Wetback happened during the Eisenhower Administration, and coincided with a brief post-Korean War recession, although that’s not the whole reason for the program. The story the SPLC is linking to gets that part right:

With struggling economy, I.E. Latinos fear deportation

By Stephen Wall, San Bernardino County Sun, September 21, 2008

SAN BERNARDINO - With U.S. financial markets tanking and the economy reeling, Latino activists fear a repeat of history.During the Great Depression, one-third of the country’s Mexican population was deported or pressured to return home. Many of them were American citizens.

The recession of the early 1950s forced nearly 3 million Mexicans to be sent home as a consequence of “Operation Wetback.”

A similar economic and financial meltdown could precipitate another massive deportation and removal program, activists say.

“In times of recession and times of depression, there is an escalation and intensification of anti-immigration politics,” said Armando Navarro, coordinator of the National Alliance for Human Rights. “Immigrants become the scapegoats.”

[More]

This, by the way, is not a story of nativist activism, but of  immigrant enthusiast whining. Armando Navarro [Email] is a professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Riverside. a notorious reconquista fan and the whole story is about him complaining.