This happens every time there's a downturn in the housing market: mortgage companies layoff employees. It only makes sense. If they bulked up their workforce to handle the waves of refinances from the last five/ten years and now there are no (or much less) refinancing going on, what are all those employees supposed to be doing? From prior observations and experience, the answer should be looking for a new job.

Having expected it for many many years (and always feeling the fool for it), I finally saw the bubble burst last year when an acquaintance of mine, a hairdresser, informed me that she had gotten into making mortgage loans. Far as I knew, she knows nothing about the mortgage and bond markets but that hardly stopped her. End of bubble.

It sounds like the LW has one real problem and one possible problem. The possible problem is that her fiance sounds somewhat cavalier about money and his flip attitude is a hot button for the LW. Understandably so. But this is the kind of baggage fiances and newly-weds get to sort out in their journey together. Ideally, enough insight is gained into the relationship before the wedding to either resolve the issue or foresee that it will resolve in time. To me, this doesn't sound like an insurmountable problem for two adults who love each other.

My greater concern would be the in-laws (parents, grand-parents, siblings, uncles/aunts/nieces/nephews, ...) who, likely as not, are equally cavalier about money matters. Unfortunately, the LW may face many, many years ahead where her in-laws periodically and unintentionally push this hot button of hers. If the LW sabotages her dearest relationship over this now, how will her relations with the in-laws fare in time? It's a tough road to travel if you resent or can't tolerate your spouse's family; it is a drain on joy in a marriage.

Friday, September 28, 2007 05:56 AM

Jeez, the LW is dense enough to miss that she's complaining about the BEST MAN's life/involvement. Not good. Not good at all.

Even Broadsheet reported on the complexities of the case almost a year ago. To bad this update didn't include links back to Broadsheet's earlier entries on this case.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2006/11/27/rape/index.html

There's nothing to be done about the mother taking the daughter to an evangelical church. Maybe the church in question is a bastion of wing-nut elitists, maybe it is not. That doesn't really matter because he has no control over what she's going to hear on Sunday's (and Wednesdays and ...) while she's with her mom.

Sure, the daughter faces some dangers because of her mother's choices for her. That's life; we all have to survive childhood including the damage potential of our parents. Most of us do just fine.

Members of religions that preach the unerring nature of the Bible/Koran necessarily come face to face with the insurmountable conundrums that premise includes. In response, individuals take one of two paths. Either they become unquestioning (if well-intentioned) members of a community in which faith is inadvertently placed in the "enlightened" understanding of a few "leaders" who "truly" understand the Bible and its unerring nature. Or they find a different spirtual path. The latter is often preceded by the former; spirituality being a journey rather than a destination. The LW's daughter is at the very beginning of that journey.

I have to agree with Cary. There's no harm in the father accompanying his daughter to a church of her preference and there is the very real benefit it offers her peace of mind. Sure, the father may have to endure stuff he might consider an embarrassment to his intelligence. That's not a great price to pay for her peace of mind at this stage of her upbringing. Don't worry, it will pass in just a few years, at most. Some problems might emerge along the way. Some may even be related to her involvement to the church. But the odds are that they won't and the chances are greater than zero that you'll wish they were.

From my reading of the Bible, "sanctity of life" does not exist, it is a myth. There's nothing I've been able to find that explicitly makes a human life sacred in the eyes of God. Admittedly, there are Biblical passages that can be stretched to wrap around a "sanctity of life" argument but the resulting thin veil shreds into tatters when it's laid against Biblical accounts of massacres (both Isrealites and non-Isrealites) at the direction of God or God's agents. So I've been unable to find an "sanctity of life" anywhere in the Bible. When I've asked pastors or family wing-nuts to point out what I'm missing, they're uncharacteristically stumped.

I think this is an important issue. If there's no Biblical basis for the "sanctity of life" in the eyes of God, then abortion foes base their objections on sinking sand.

As further proof to myself that "sanctity of life" for people of the Book is an empty claim, I only need see where their priorities lie. The communities that rail against abortion have no equally fervent opposition to the bombing of civilians ordered by their political champions. For them, the hands of a surgeon are capable of interfering with the Will of God but the finger of a foot soldier or the airborne bombardier is not; the former being vilified and the latter romanticized within the same "sanctity of life" community.

California is rather large. Southern Californians seem to think the greater LA area is California. The rest of us Californians are certain it is NOT. Get out of Orange County and you can find some very nice areas with affordable housing, decent wages and California's weather. Unfortunately, you'll still have California taxes. Mid-western winters...California taxes...mid-western winters... hmmm.