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PROFESSOR OF LAW KATIE PORTER APPOINTED BY KAMALA HARRIS TO MONITOR THE BLOOD MONEY FROM THE BANK SETTLEMENT. YOU WILL GET FAIR SHAKE OUT OF THE SHITTY SETTLEMENT

Katherine Porter Named as Enforcement Monitor for California Side Deal in Foreclosure Fraud Settlement

By: David Dayen Saturday March 17, 2012 4:00 pm

Prof. Katherine Porter

California’s side deal to the foreclosure fraud settlement is a much simpler document, and one focused primarily on principal reductions. Under the agreement, three of the five banks in the settlement – Wells Fargo, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase – must engage in $12 billion in principal reductions, deeds-in-lieu or short sales in the state, and those credits cannot apply to actions like donating homes, bulldozing homes or waiving deficiency judgments.

 

The flip side to this is that this is a dollar-for-dollar credit scenario – any first lien or second lien modifications that get written down qualify for full credit in California’s side deal. This differs from the national settlement, where certain modifications get varying amounts of credit. But it does guarantee $12 billion in actual principal reductions and other actions relatively helpful to homeowners for California. At least for the most part. Like the national settlement, servicers get a bonus for first-lien principal reductions taken in the first 12 months of the start date. But they get more credit – 25% – if those write-downs come in the “Hardest Hit California Counties,” defined as the 12 counties in the state with the highest annualized foreclosure rates. For principal reductions in other counties, servicers get a 15% bonus. I think my views on the settlement are well-known, but in the context of it, California did a reasonable job in this side deal of actually targeting the (admittedly inadequate) consumer relief to actual consumer relief.

What’s more, California has an additional enforcement layer on its side deal, one that looks a bit stronger than the national settlement’s enforcement (which is actually still to be determined, Abigail Field correctly points out). Instead of the self-reviewing mechanism in the national settlement, in California, an independent monitor “shall determine the amount of Consumer Relief credit that Servicer has earned towards its obligations under the California Agreement and shall determine any bonus and determine any payment owed pursuant to the above terms,” on a quarterly basis. So California’s monitor makes the rules and determines the credit, rather than the national version, where the banks self-report and the monitor checks the work. In addition, the California monitor can take feedback and complaints from homeowners. There are penalties for failing to meet obligations under the side deal, in the form of cash payments to the AG (which actually are capped at between $200-$400 million, which seems a bit low, especially for BofA, which has the bulk of the obligation in California because of the legacy of Countrywide, which was huge here). Disputes between the monitor and the servicers will get settled in federal district court in DC.

In order for this side deal to be successful, it requires a dedicated enforcement monitor who is not likely to cut the banks a break. And state Attorney General Kamala Harris made a pretty good selection.

Ambitious programs to help struggling homeowners often have failed to live up to their hype, consumer law expert Katherine Porter said.

Now the UC Irvine law professor will be in a position to make sure Californians get everything they’ve been promised by the country’s largest banks in the recent $25-billion nationwide settlement over foreclosure abuses.

California Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris on Friday named Porter as her independent monitor of the state’s portion of the deal — as much as $18 billion worth of relief to homeowners over the next three years.

“I’m going to be checking to make sure the rules are being followed,” Porter said. “We need to restore confidence that financial institutions are doing the right thing.”

I’ve met Katie Porter one time. She writes at Credit Slips and, back in 2007, did one of the first clinical studiesof mortgage servicer misbehavior and abuse, in that case with respect to bankruptcy. She is one of the pre-eminent legal scholars in this field, and she knows every single trick that the servicers have done over the past decade. There are few other people as equipped to handle the job of the monitor than her, in my estimation. And I hope that she uses this pathway, with the evidence she will compile, to make a broader effort to blow the whistle on a broken and corrupt mortgage servicing industry. And that’s likely. Here’s an op-ed from Porterabout the settlement, from Feb. 14.

The effectiveness of the settlement is going to turn on its enforcement. What matters is what the banks do – and what the government makes them do – not the promises on paper and at press conferences [...]

The success of the settlement rests on attorneys general making sure that the banks’ careless and callous practices have been replaced with the ability to respond efficiently and fairly to troubled homeowners. Four years of nagging from the federal government has not led the mortgage servicers to make the needed changes. Paperwork still gets lost; consumers still are unable to get a straight answer on eligibility for programs; and foreclosure rescue scams still flourish because desperate homeowners have nowhere else to turn on the eve of losing their homes. The settlement recognizes the problem of the banks’ mindset. It requires an independent outside monitor to report on the banks’ compliance and imposes substantial financial penalties if the banks do not deliver the relief promised in the settlement. The government needs to stay focused on this deal and make sure those tools are deployed. The trick of consumer law is not getting a favorable rule enacted. It is getting that favorable rule to actually produce the desired results on the ground.

Anyway, good choice. This was one of the 9 ways I described to make housing policy better in and around the foreclosure fraud settlement. I hope we can check it off in the positive column.

UPDATE: As it happens, Porter will be on FDL’s Book Salon next week, March 25, talking about her new bookBroke, which is about bankruptcy. Masaccio is hosting.

 5 Comments

TAGS: FORECLOSURE FRAUD, CALIFORNIA, GLOBAL SETTLEMENT, SERVICERS, PRINCIPAL REDUCTIONS, FORECLOSURE MONITOR, ENFORCEMENT, KATHERINE PORTER

FDL Book Salon Welcomes Ari Berman, Herding Donkeys: The Fight To Rebuild The Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics (updated)

By: Dave Weigel Saturday March 17, 2012 1:59 pm

Welcome Ari Berman (HerdingDonkeys), and Host David Weigel (Slate)

[As a courtesy to our guests, please keep comments to the book and be respectful of dissenting opinions. Please take other conversations to a previous thread. - bev]

Herding Donkeys: The Fight To Rebuild The Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics

Welcome to a parallel universe. A casual onlooker might mistake it for our own. The same people run their Congress and their Democratic National Committee. The same election results toss out half the Republicans in 2006 and the rest in 2008. But in our universe, those events were recorded as the triumphs of smart folks like Rahm Emanuel and David Plouffe, winning despite the ruinous work of the DNC. In Herding Donkeys, Ari Berman reports from a place where Howard Dean deserves the credit.

It’s a strong case. Berman reported this book, stunningly, by hanging out and getting sources comfortable until they admitted things. He opens on election night 2008, walking alongside of Dean, and hears President-Elect Barack Obama tell the DNC chairman that “I wouldn’t have won without you.” Now, think about how many election night wraps actually gave credit to Dean.

There was far more coverage of Dean’s “disastrous” election to run the DNC, back in 2005. I remember watching a Daily Show episode at the time where the embedded fauxporter hung around, talked to some losers, and decided that the Dean election was automatically hilarious. A college Republican got national media to show up for a “Dean scream” contest.

Berman tells that story, and every other story of the Dean tenure, from the inside. There’s fascinating kremlinology about how party structures work (term to be interpreted loosely) at the top, and how stories like “Dean’s blowing it” become Washington wisdom — self-interested parties feed them to reporters, who gamely adopt the narratives. Rahm Emanuel flits in and out of the story, pronouncing the Fifty-State strategy and everything Dean does as “fucking bullshit.” Dean tells Berman that the conflict is actually good; because Beltway reporters really only spin their heads around to look at brawls and car crashes, constantly fighting for his theories meant that they got covered. It’s one of many astute lessons here on how politics and media actually work.

Washington isn’t wanting for books like that, though. Herding Donkeys really works because of the time Berman puts in with Democratic Party foot soldiers. I like the details that come out of a visit to the Polk County, North Carolina Democratic Party, when Berman sees how local chair Margaret Johnson decorates it: “grey donkey details on the walls; a blue flag of a donkey atop the state; a porcelain donkey with a straw hat on, next to a picture of Bill Clinton.” We learn what blogs and books motivated the great Democratic comeback of 2006-2008. It’s going to be familiar to readers of this blog, but it’s never been drawn out in one story before.

The takeaway: This is one of the best books you can read about how politics actually work right now. Let’s get the discussion started.

 

Obama-mentum

Obama-mentum

By CHARLES M. BLOW

The Republican Party has a big problem. Huge!

Their likely nominee isn’t much liked by the base of the party. Yet even as he loses primaries in the most conservative parts of the country, he continues to stack up delegates. He is Mitt of the Indomitable Math. He’s like the Terminator cyborg in “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,” who informs the hero John Connor that “Judgment Day is inevitable.” Romney, the Republican establishment and even Team Obama believe his nomination is inevitable.

That may be, but according to some new polls, the primary season is taking a devastating toll on Romney and the Republican brand as a whole, fueling something of a surge for the president.

PEW RESEARCH CENTER

The findings of a Pew Research Center poll released Wednesday show that President Obama has steadily increased his lead over Mitt Romney in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup, which now stands at a whopping 12 points, 54 percent to 42 percent. These results echoed a Reuters/Ipsos poll released earlier this week that showed Obama leading Romney by 11 points, 52 percent to 41 percent. As Reuters pointed out, that is “nearly double the margin from February.”

Want more good news, Team Obama? How about this: the Pew poll, the Reuters/Ipsos poll and a Gallup Poll released this week all show the president’s approval rating at or near 50 percent for the first time in months.

(For a counterpoint, a New York Times/CBS News poll and a Washington Post/ABC News poll, also released this week, both found the president’s approval rating dipping lower, 41 percent and 46 percent respectively.)

Furthermore, the Pew poll found the Democratic Party has opened the widest favorability gap over the Republican Party since April of 2009.

The Pew poll also found that an increasing share of Republicans think that the ongoing Republican primary campaign is bad for the party. But another Gallup poll this week reported that most Republicans believe that all the candidates should stay in the race.

Talk about self-destructive tendencies.

What should really give Republicans sleepless nights (if the numbers hold) is the demographic groups currently supporting Obama. In the Pew poll, Obama outperforms Romney by 20 points among all women, and by 31 points among women aged 19-49.  He outperforms Romney by 28 points among young people 18-29 years old and ties him among people 65 and older. And he outperforms Romney in every region of the country and among every income group.

Now to the malaise that hovers around Mitt like flies.

As I have pointed out before, Romney continues to have hard time attracting the conservative base of the party and winning the most conservative states. He also has not done much to drum up enthusiasm for his candidacy. Of the states he won, there hasn’t been a lot of passion at the polls. According to my analysis, only five of the 13 contests that Romney has won had higher turnouts this year than in 2008. For comparison, five of the nine states Santorum has won had had higher turnouts than 2008.

This low turnout even exists at a more granular level in counties Romney wins in states that he loses. According to a press release issued Wednesday by the Republican National Committee, “Republican voters turned out in full force in Alabama and Mississippi last night, well above 2008 G.O.P. numbers.” By this count, Alabama’s turnout was up more than 11 percent.  Turnout was up, however, in only two of the four counties won by Romney in Alabama.

And that’s an improvement from some other states. Of the three counties Romney won in Georgia, turnout was down from 2008 in all of them.  Of the two counties he won in Oklahoma, turnout was down as well.

This is a fretful problem for the right. You simply can’t win a national election, certainly against an incumbent, without passionate support.

There are many months between now and Election Day, but for the Republicans there is no way to put a positive spin on these trends. If they limp into the general election with a weakened Romney, a battered brand and an elevated opponent, Judgment Day and the Terminator may take on very different meanings.

 

WOMEN SHOULD WITHHOLD SEX UNTIL THEY ARE RECOGNIZED AS A PERSON

To a Republican a woman is just a vagina for recreational sex with an empty heads. My advice to all women who think, Create your own revolution that will overturn society. WITHHOLD SEX IN MARRIAGE AND OUT OF MARRIAGE UNTIL YOU ARE RECOGNIZED AS A PERSON NOT A PRO CREATIONIST. CHANT "DENY SEX" and you will promote a new lifestyle. GAYNESS.

RUSH LIMBAUGH'S "APOLOGY" THAT RESOUNDED THROUGH THE MEDIA

As I’m sure you know already, Rush Limbaugh has issued an “apology.” Yes, that’s in quotes. It’s hard to express the word “apology” with as much insincerity as Rush Limbaugh put into his apology. As believable apologies go, it was about two notches above “I’m sorry I called that slut a slut.”

Rush said “I chose the wrong words...” Yes, Rush, you did. And you continued to choose them for three straight days! If that’s a choice, it’s a choice of lifestyle. He also says “I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke” Well then, launching a personal attack was a curious choice. The term “prostitute” shouldn’t come up in civil discourse, unless you’re debating prostitution... or talking about David Vitter. Then Rush asks “What happened to personal responsibility and accountability?” Classic! He asks that in the middle of a screed designed for him to avoid personal responsibility and accountability for what he’s said! Rush’s “apology” repeats all the lies he’s been spewing, continues to slander the girl, misrepresents the entire debate, and aggrandizes himself. Wow—Rush is almost as good at writing fake apologies as he is in slandering people in the first place. Finally at the end, Rush says “I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices.” Great, Rush. Now apologize to everyone for your lies. And for this joke of an apology.

Chris Wallace pointed out on Sunday that the health insurance at Fox News includes birth control coverage. Frankly, I’m surprised that Fox News gives its employees health insurance at all. I guess Fox News couldn’t find employees willing to go on the air and undermine health coverage for the rest of the country—unless they got health coverage. Of course Fox News’ health insurance covers birth control—they want as few of their employees on pregnancy leave as possible. Do you think it’s easy to find that many empty-headed blondes? If the Fox news-models keep getting pregnant, they can’t be on the air as much attacking the interests of women.

For the record, Daily Kos has actually compiled a list of 53 times over three days that Rush Limbaugh smeared Sandra Fluke on his show. Yuck. I’d rather sift through my dog’s poop for three days if he swallowed a diamond ring.

I saw 60 minutes this evening while everyone was posting. They did a segment on pedophiles in Ireland's churches. The Bishop of Ireland pointed directly to the Vatican and stated that pedophila and the coverup by the Church was causing church goers in Ireland to refuse to go to church. No one wants to be as priest. All they have is empty churches. I would like one of my friends to get a video of this segment and post it right under Santorum's picture with the Caption that this is what Santorum stands for. It was the biggest put down of the Roman Catholic Church I have ever seen on a national TV broadcast viewed by millions. That video with that caption under Santorum's picture would go viral and destroy Santorum and the Vatican to boot. The Vatican and Hitler were BLOOD BROTHERS. To hell with both of them. If that sounds like blasphamy, IT IS.

GRASSLEY SCREWED YOU IN 2005 AND HE IS SCREWING YOU IN 2009.

Opening Statement of Sen. Chuck Grassley at the Bankruptcy Reform Hearing

 

Mr. Chairman, I'm pleased the bankruptcy bill is on the Judiciary Committee agenda and that we are scheduled to mark up this bill next week. The bipartisan legislation I just introduced as S. 256 is nearly identical to the 107th Congress H.R. 333 Conference Report signed by Senator Leahy, but voted down in the other body. The only difference is that I've removed the poison pill abortion amendment. All of the other compromises made at the request of our Democratic colleagues have been preserved intact in this bill.

As many of you know, we've been working on the issue of bankruptcy reform for a number of years now-since the mid 1990's. When I started working on this issue, it was considered a scandal that bankruptcies might reach 1.4 million. Guess what? In 2004, there were 1.6 million. Congress has wasted time and we still have a bankruptcy crisis on our hands.

By way of background, both Houses demonstrated overwhelming margins in favor of this bipartisan bill in 2000, but President Clinton pocket-vetoed the legislation and we simply ran out of time in the session to override the veto. In the 107th Congress, I re-introduced the bankruptcy bill and it passed the Senate overwhelmingly, with numerous changes to satisfy Democrats. We then went to conference with the House, and further concessions were made. The conference committee report language was the result of a long process of bipartisan negotiations that culminated in agreement on over four hundred pages of legislative text. Ultimately, we had a signed conference report supported by our Ranking Member.

Given that the language we are considering is the same as the 107th Congress conference report signed off on by our Democratic friends - minus the poison pill - I'm hopeful that we can all stand by the compromises we reached in good faith. We all cooperated and compromised on this legislation. It provides new consumer protections, helps children in need of child support, and makes other necessary reforms to a system that is open to abuse. There is no need to re-open this bill.

As we hear from witnesses today, I recall the broad public support for reforming our bankruptcy system. The vast majority of people believe that individuals who file for bankruptcy should be required to pay back some of their debts if they have the means to do so.

This is precisely what the bankruptcy reform legislation does.

Most people think it should be more difficult for people to file for bankruptcy. Americans have had enough; they are tired of paying for high rollers who game the current system and its loopholes to get out of paying their fair share.

This legislation eliminates some of the opportunities for abuse that exist under the current system. Our current system allows wealthy people to continue to abuse the system at the expense of everyone else. People with good incomes can run up massive debts and then use bankruptcy to get out of honoring them.

All of us end up paying for the unscrupulous who abuse the system. In fact, it has been estimated that every American family pays as much as $550 a year in a hidden tax as a result of the actions from these abuses. My bankruptcy reform legislation will help eliminate this hidden tax by implementing a means test to make wealthy people who can repay their debts actually honor them. I suppose we can call this a tax cut for the responsible people in America.

Bankruptcy abuse hurts our nation's small businesses. We will hear today about how small businesses have been hurt by losses due to bankruptcy. When businesses absorb these losses, they have to make up for the loss somehow through higher prices, or by laying off employees or going out of business.

The bankruptcy crisis is a jobs crisis. Making American's businesses stronger helps all of us - especially those in need of a job.

Make no mistake, misrepresentations about this legislation have been running rampant by those who oppose any meaningful bankruptcy reform. I've been in politics a long time, and I know that political criticism is never inhibited by ignorance. For instance, the statistical analysis in the U.S. Trustee's office examined over 5000 bankruptcy cases and found that under one-half listed medical debts of any sort. And those filers who did list medical debts, on average, listed under $5000 in medical debts.

So much for the myth that most bankruptcies are driven medical costs. The fact is there are abusers out there. The fact is S. 256 doesn't harm bankrupts with large medical debts.

Let's stop the abuse. Let's return to common sense. Let's enact bankruptcy reform now, before the abuse gets worse.

The reality is that the bankruptcy reform bill does not deny anyone access to bankruptcy relief; it just requires those who have the means to repay debts based on their income to do so. It's that simple. I look forward to quick Committee action and quick floor action on this bill.

COMMENT by Martin S. Friedlander, Esq.

He is one pious son of a bitch. Listen to his BS about pulling the plug on Grandma. The Democrats should pull the plug on Grassley since most bankruptcies are caused by uninsured sick people. He favors bringing guns to Washington before violence erupts.

Give him the "heave ho".

Martin S Friedlander, Esq.

THE DRACULA SIDE OF HILLARY'S COMPLEX PYSCHE.

Assassination Worries.

 

There is a hushed worry on the minds of many supporters of Senator Barack Obama, echoing in conversations from state to state, rally to rally: Will he be safe?

In Colorado, two sisters say they pray daily for his safety. In New Mexico, a daughter says she persuaded her mother to still vote for Mr. Obama, even though the mother feared that winning would put him in danger. And at a rally here, a woman expressed worries that a message of hope and change, in addition to his race, made him more vulnerable to violence.

“I’ve got the best protection in the world,” Mr. Obama, of Illinois, said in an interview, reprising a line he tells supporters who raise the issue with him. “So stop worrying.”

Yet worry they do, with the spring of 1968 seared into their memories, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated in a span of two months.

Mr. Obama was 6 at the time, and like many of his admirers, he has only read about the violence that traumatized the nation. But those recollections and images are often invoked by older voters, who watch his candidacy with fascination, as well as an uneasy air of apprehension, as Democrats inch closer to selecting their nominee.

Mr. Obama has had Secret Service agents surrounding him since May 3, the earliest a candidate has ever been provided protection. (He reluctantly gave in to the insistent urging of Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and others in Congress.) As his rallies have swelled in size, his security has increased, coming close to rivaling that given to a sitting president.

His wife, Michelle Obama, voiced concerns about his safety before he was elected to the Senate. Three years ago, she said she dreaded the day her husband received Secret Service protection, because it would mean serious threats had been made against him.

Among friends and advisers, danger is something Mr. Obama rarely mentions.

“It’s not something that I’m spending time thinking about day to day,” said Mr. Obama, who has been given the Secret Service nickname Renegade, a way for agents to quickly identify him. “I made a decision to get into this race. I think anybody who decides to run for president recognizes that there are some risks involved, just like there are risks in anything.”

Not long ago, his advisers worried that some black voters might not support his candidacy out of a fierce desire to protect him. It was a particular concern in South Carolina, but Mr. Obama said he believed the worry was also rooted in “a fear of failure.”

Now that he has won a string of primaries and caucuses in all corners of the country, and built a coalition of black and white voters, failure would seem to be less of an issue. The fears, however, remain.

Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, raised concerns in a letter in January to officials who oversee the Secret Service. While Mr. Obama was already receiving protection, Mr. Thompson said that the intense interest in the election prompted him to make sure that Mr. Obama and the other candidates were offered adequate security.

“The national and international profile of Senator Barack Obama gives rise to unique challenges that merit special concern,” Mr. Thompson wrote. “As an African-American who was witness to some of this nation’s most shameful days during the civil rights movement, I know personally that the hatred of some of our fellow citizens can lead to heinous acts of violence. We need only to look to the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and 1968 presidential candidate Robert Kennedy as examples.”

In an interview, Mr. Thompson declined to elaborate on any specific threats that had come to the attention of his committee or authorities. He said he wrote the letter to the Homeland Security Departmentwithout discussing it with Mr. Obama, whom he has endorsed.

“His candidacy is so unique to this country and so important that the last thing you would want is for him not to have the opportunity to fulfill the role of a potential presidential nominee,” Mr. Thompson said. “It’s out of an abundance of caution that I wrote the letter, rather than keep our fingers crossed and pray.”

Before Mr. Obama decided to run for president, he discussed his safety with his family. His campaign employed a team of private security guards before he was placed under Secret Service protection. Since then, he has grown fond of the agents who surround him, inviting them to watch the Super Bowl at his home in Chicago and playing basketball with them on the days he awaits the results of an election.

Mr. Obama was reticent in speaking about his security or the period in American history that is often raised — without prompting — by voters who are interviewed at campaign events. Mentions of the fate that befell President John F. Kennedyand Senator Kennedy only increased after Mr. Obama was joined on the campaign trail by Caroline Kennedy and Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

“I’m pretty familiar with the history,” Mr. Obama said. “Obviously, it was an incredible national trauma, but neither Bobby Kennedy nor Martin Luther King had Secret Service protection.”

Indeed, the assassination of Senator Kennedy in 1968 prompted Congress to authorize protection of major presidential and vice presidential candidates. In this campaign, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has had Secret Service protection from the beginning, because she is a former first lady. None of the other candidates had protection during their primary campaigns.

“Some candidates are bigger targets than others — any transition candidate or change candidate has a higher profile,” said former Senator Gary Hart, who received protection as a Democratic presidential contender in 1984 and 1988. “The evocation of the same excitement surrounding John and Robert Kennedy triggers both negatively and positively.”

The Secret Service does not discuss details of its protection, including whether Mr. Obama is receiving more protection than Mrs. Clinton.

Gerald Posner, author of books on the assassinations of President Kennedy and Dr. King, said he did not believe that Mr. Obama was under a significantly higher risk than President Bush or Mrs. Clinton. The fears are more openly discussed, he said, because he is the first black candidate to come this close to winning a major party’s presidential nomination.

“Barack scares those of us who think of the possibility of an assassination in a different way,” Mr. Posner said. “He represents so much hope and change. That is exactly what was taken away from us in the 1960s.”

Here in Dallas, those memories were raised in conversation after conversation with several of the 17,000 people who came to see Mr. Obama at a rally last week.

“Right around the corner is the John Kennedy Memorial; everyone all around me was talking about it,” said Imogene Covin, a Democratic activist from Dallas. “In the back of my mind, it’s a possibility that something might happen because he’s something to gawk at right now. But you know why I think he will be safe? He has a broad range of people behind him.”

That afternoon, Mr. Obama’s motorcade passed Dealey Plaza and the Texas Book Depository building, where the fatal shot was fired at President Kennedy in 1963. Several campaign aides looked out their windows, silently absorbing the scene.

Not so for Mr. Obama, who later said he had not realized he was passing the site. And no one in his car pointed it out.

“I’ve got to admit, that’s not what I was thinking about,” he said. “I was thinking about how I was starting to get a head cold and needed to make sure that I cleared up my nose before I got to the arena.”

Hillary gets a little "dark" when attempting to rationalize why she is still in the race for the office that she has coveted for so many years. However, Dracula should be relegated to the mountains of Transylvania in Romania. We don't want her to suck Obama's blood and play act like Bela Lugosi.

Martin S. Friedlander, Esq.