There's a boatload of media coverage this morning on Barack Obama's daughter's soccer game in Chicago. Bo-ring! and yet, at the same time, kind of makes him look human instead of like a robot created by Kodos and Kang.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post and other papers have been circling the story of Obama's discount mortgage loan, a deal which many people think could become a major scandal...
The LA Times, via the WaPo, breaks it down for us commonfolk:
"The freshman Democratic senator received a discount. He locked in an interest rate of 5.625 percent on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, below the average for such loans at the time in Chicago. The loan was unusually large, known in banker lingo as a 'super super jumbo.' Obama paid no origination fee or discount points, as some consumers do to reduce their interest rates. Compared with average terms offered at the time in Chicago, Obama's rate could have saved him more than $300 per month."
Sources inside the bank say the loan was entirely proper and Andrew Sullivan, conservative blogger and Obama supporter, has noted that unless the Washington Post somehow obtained Obama's FICO score (which is not mentioned in any news story), it must be assumed that it was good enough to qualify him for the discount. After all, he says
BF, do you have anything against Obama? It sure looks like it as yesterday by early PM this piece of "news"from yesterday AM's Washington Post had been generally found to be nothing more than a molehill. By keeping on talking about it are you trying to turn it into a mountain? Fortunately you do not have the creds of something like the Drudge report!
Usually I couldn't give rat's a** about what Scanner Brian thinks BUT I think in this case the mortgage loan could be easily looked into to see if the Senator received a sweetheart deal. It's a rather simple process. Federal regulations require banks to keep records on mortgage loan rates it has offered at certain times and what the specific qualifications were. A federal auditor would obtain such these records and compare them to Senator Obama's mortgage loan file as well other mortgage loan files with similar characteristics as the Obama loan. This methodology is employed on a regular basis to ensure that banks are not "overcharging" some applicants while "undercharging" others. Such an audit could be finished in less than a week. And how do I know this? I have over a decade of experience helping to enforce banking laws.
OH lord, what a terribly/lazily framed headline.
