By the end of the 3rd paragraph, the article no longer has anything to do with the headline. Such bait-n-switch writing is better left to tabloids - I subscribed to Salon years ago not just for its independence, but depth and quality of its reporting. This has the depth of a USA Today news nugget ...

These home rennovation shows make everything look quick and easy. Most homeowners discover that doing it yourself takes lots of time and effort, and rennovations are always tougher than new builds.

My advice to any first-time home owners. First, buy a house you are comfortable living in IN IT'S CURRENT CONDITION. Second, figure out if your time management skills, budget, and your own ability to learn how to demolish, hang drywall, run wiring, learn plumbing, etc. really match up with this dream of yours to make this house yours.

If you do decide to live and fix it up, there are a lot of logistical issues to work out if living in the same space you are rennovating.

This approach at least worked for us. Almost a decade ago, we bought a modest 40 year old house that was livable but had potential. Initial jobs were things like paint and replacing fixtures, then skylights, then electrical and plumbing, then moving walls and stairs (yes), and finally stripping to the studs and completely making over a kitchen. Each task involved learning 1-2 new skills. The biggest thing I've learned from all of this is a better ability to estimate how long a project will take. Not in terms of person-hours, but in terms of "if I work on it 2 Saturdays/month, when will it get done?"

Fascinating as all of this is, the entire blogosphere, especially the politico-blogosphere, needs to realize that this whole episode is a microcosm that feeds upon itself. Most of the country, even die hard political junkies, will never know nor care that any of this happened, and even the few that read about it will likely hear about it from some talking-head (or blog head) at face value.

Given this perspective, I find it somewhat scary that some people have this much time (and get paid for it!) to dig up dirt, fling it, and mischaracterize it. The politics of smear, fear, uncertainty, doubt, and selective memory know no bounds.

I will now return to being happily naive to the ways of the politico-blog-world.

They all made bad financial decisions. Now they are suffering for it. They did a poor job considering the potential risk that "diversification" was supposed to help them guard against.

Of course, the economic consequences may result in all of us suffering, but no amount of government oversight is going to fix what has already happened. And even if it did, some new creative security will always emerge.