I've been to many closings, but only in two states. In California, you generally close at the Title Company. In New Jersey, you need to hire a lawyer. Guess which state leads the nation in foreclosures?

I'm also not sure why a couple morons jumped on me above for pointing out that there's a relationship between looser lending standards and increased home ownership. It's like in the computer business, you keep tightening the security of your network until it's completely useless.

Almost 70 percent of Americans now own a home. That's the highest ever. Yes, there are some foreclosures, but it's only 15 percent of the subprime loans and subprimes are only a fraction of all loans. And even among the 15 percent of subprimes going into foreclosure, the lender is going to make a substational recovery, although maybe not 100 percent of the loan value.

In the car business if they make the lending standards to strict, they won't sell many cars. Too loose, and they lose money through repos. The point is to balance risk and reward. The point is not, as this dumb cartoon suggests, to turn the clock back to horse and buggy days when only rich, white people could get a loan.

Democrats always lose elections because they root for recessions and for people losing their jobs in the hope that the more economic misery there is, the more likely they are to vote Democratic. Democrats always root for America to lose wars and for hurricanes to destroy shore communities for the same reason. Even if recessions come, America loses wars and hurricanes destroy towns, people don't vote for Democrats because they don't want the country run by sadists, gloomy people, whiners, and losers.

People have always flocked to Florida. Now, they have plenty of vacant houses to choose from at some of the best prices in years. Watch school enrollment continue to increase. Coastal California has the opposite problem. Prices are high and staying high so families move elsewhere. In San Francisco, school enrollment has dropped for 40 years and is now less than half what it was during the Summer of Love.

I think the worst airline names pick a meanless compass direction -- Southwest, Northwest, Eastern, Western etc. Or the are completely generic names that could be used on any product or service -- American, Continental, United, Delta.

People keep assuming that those who dress nasty will be hot looking. It's usually the opposite. I went to a nude beach one time and most of the people were over 40 and overweight. I remember liberal Berkeley didn't used to have a dress code until one student decided to attend all his classes in the nude. I worked in San Francisco and we had to send some employees home on Holloween because they would wear their S&M garb, often revealing their asses or testicles. Really, there are some people without much common sense, modesty, decency, concern for children and others etc.

How about taxing gasoline to pay for roads for cars and tax bycicles to pay for bike paths. Tax bus and train tickets to support public transporation. Then there are no cross subsidies and no complaints.

Webcelt: Wasn't that Peters point. That the bridge in Minneapolis collapsed because the state used its federal transportation dollars on constructing bike paths, light rail and museums (to say nothing of cops sniffing for gays at the airport) rather than fixing the bridge. The bicyclists ride and people died.

If I were selling the Navy, I would push the fact that they are recruiting people because very few employers are looking for people unless they want to offer minimum wage. I would also emphasize the adventure part of the job. Very few jobs allow you to leave how, travel and have new experiences. I would emphasize on the job and hands on training because many kids are tired of book learning about dead white men. I would emphasize that they offer job security, extensive benefits and a career. I would add that Navy jobs offer prestige and a sense of pride for you and your parents that is not generally available with today's Joe jobs. In short, they are offering a good, interesting and challenging jobs with good pay and benefits that also offers prestige. Should be an easy sell.

Unless, of course, you are selling to people who hate Bush.

Something to keep in mind about the Nobel Peace Prize -- Ghandi never won, but Yasser Arafat did.

Charles Schultz drew the same strip for almost 50 years. Along the way, he became very wealthy and highly praised. But like a lot of people in a similar situation, you wonder if it got boring. Doing the same strip every day, with the same characters, always G rated, living in a boring town like Santa Rosa. I would scream and I don't have ADD.

Why do you find the American flag so distasteful when people often wear the flag or colors of Mexico, Ireland, Italy, Brazil and a dozen other countries. Where do Democrats get this self-loathing that they hate the American flag?

I've found that intelligent people can have more than one opinion about a topic, often contradictory opinions. For example, one could think a giraffe had a long neck because it evolved that way (evolution), to eat leaves off tall trees (intelligent design) or because God thought they looked cool (creationism). Intelligent people can believe all three at the same time. It's less intelligent people who can only have one thought at a time.