"Colder than a..."
[Photo credit: NYT]
No doubt you're all familiar with the old line that answers the question "How cold is it outside?" The reply, "Colder than a ...," a jab at the stereo-typical Halloween witch. It seems it may be time for a much needed update of the tired, old jokes about cold to reflect a much colder place; the deep pit of indifference that holds the heart of a banker and that of his legal team.
The photo above comes from a photo slide-show within an editorial in this morning's New York Times. The photos were given to the author by a former employee of the law firm of Steven J. Baum, the largest group of foreclosure attorneys in the state of New York, representing "virtually all the giant mortgage lenders, including Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo,NYT columnist Joe Nocera explains.
Describing what the photos depict, Nocera continues:
"Let me describe a few of the photos. In one, two Baum employees are dressed like homeless people. One is holding a bottle of liquor. The other has a sign around her neck that reads: “3rd party squatter. I lost my home and I was never served.” My source said that “I was never served” is meant to mock “the typical excuse” of the homeowner trying to evade a foreclosure proceeding."
"A second picture shows a coffin with a picture of a woman whose eyes have been cut out. A sign on the coffin reads: “Rest in Peace. Crazy Susie.” The reference is to Susan Chana Lask, a lawyer who had filed a class-action suit against Steven J. Baum — and had posted a YouTube video denouncing the firm’s foreclosure practices. “She was a thorn in their side,” said my source."
"A third photograph shows a corner of Baum’s office decorated to look like a row of foreclosed homes. Another shows a sign that reads, “Baum Estates” — needless to say, it’s also full of foreclosed houses. Most of the other pictures show either mock homeless camps or mock foreclosure signs — or both. My source told me that not every Baum department used the party to make fun of the troubled homeowners they made their living suing. But some clearly did. The adjective she’d used when she sent them to me — “appalling” — struck me as exactly right."
I hope you'll click through and read the rest at the NYT, there's a more in-depth description of the history of cruel indifference towards homeowners seeking to work out repayment or obtain a modification to save their homes, the proverbial "hand slap" in the way of a fine not large enough to make the firm blink as they sign the check for "operating in a parallel mortgage universe, unrelated to the real universe,” according to one New York State Supreme Court judge.
Also note that the photos are from the firm's Halloween party last year, before Occupy Wall Street. I wonder how they plan to dress this year for their macabre celebration?
.. they really are every bit as heartless as they are portrayed to be ..
scum of the earth .. parasites .. bloodsucking leeches ..
(with apologies to real scum, parasites & leeches who do, after all, belong here like the rest of us)
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
heartless, soulless
getting divorced, losing their jobs, beating their spouses and children, or committing suicide?
But I guess they don't believe in Karma.
I honestly don't know how some people sleep at night.
"Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying..."-------Roger Waters, "Comfortably Numb"
It's a biological fact. The brains on creatures like this just don't work the same way as the rest of humanity.
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
Coming soon to a lamppost near you.
.
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
Cold, Cold, Cold
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
Are we really going to be so prudish as to shy away from saying "witch's tit" in a story that demonstrates such unadulterated malice? We're talking about a fight for the survival of the people of the industrialised world against vicious, blood-sucking corporate hawks - there is no room to pull back and be shy about something as silly as saying 'tit'.
Seems awfully old-maidish when you're talking about this kind of horror.
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
I know I'm not telling you anything you don't know but I'm going to say it anyway. You know our society is profoundly sick when the human body is disgusting, must be hidden and can't be spoken about, but celebrating war with all it's death, physical and mental dismemberment, ruined families is ok. Showing a boob on television is "SHOCKING" but driving people into starvation and then mocking and blaming them is ok.
She was suggesting that this is the new level of coldness
How is that suggested by primly avoiding the word "tit"?
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
Rather than sigh about a gratuitous use of the word "tit" she's filling in the end of the sentence with "...a Baum Party"
""How cold is it outside?" The reply, "Colder than a ...," a jab at the stereo-typical Halloween witch"
That's simply dodging the three letter word. There's no reason not to finish the phrase, it could easily be said and the point that there's something even colder still be made, but an ellipses is left to simply skate past it in case it offends. It's just silly. We're grown-ups dealing with the most callous cruelty, and shying away from a word for a nipple isn't going to help.
I sincerely hope that they reap exactly what they have coming to them, in spades.
"No one ever said these people were logically consistent."
- watchdog -
Can we finally just dispense with the comforting fantasy that the 1%ers are anything other than sociopathic parasites?
I did a long time ago. Not all of them but the ones in charge.
It's just business, right?
Yeah, but there's nothing very business-like mocking people who have been crushed and probably won't get back up.
If they are apt to die, then they better do it and decrease the surplus population.
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
White Trash.
Saving until the end of the article the fact that the pics were from a Baum party might be kind of "fun," but a lot of readers won't make it all the way through and end up wondering WTF the entry is about.
As long as voters go along with the "both parties are to blame" bs that the propaganda machine is cranking out nothing will change. The whole story is designed to get democrats to stay home next election instead of voting out the phony democrats and holding all politicians responsible.
There is a crapload of democrats that need to be replaced but don't ever forget which party took us over the cliff. Obama sucks, but a republican victory will make the past few years look like the good old days.
But I think there SHOULD be a Republican President. The Democrats have now started vying with the Rethugs to slash social services too. They're proving that they - with a few exceptions - don't care anymore about us than the other side does. So voting them back in will only prolong the inevitable downward slide our country is in. The corporations own this nation lock, stock, and barrel. Better that we hit the bottom as fast as possible. Then we can have the unavoidable bloody civil war we're headed towards while enough of us are still alive and kicking. When the people win (because you know we will, as well-armed as our Constitution allows us to be) we can clean house and recreate our country.
(I have this little fantasy of the people kicking out all the billionaires, who end up in Australia with nothing but a suitcase each full of whatever trinkets they could grab before they were thrown out. They can then sit around in their little seaside expat communities like the Cuban "exiles" in Miami, drinking Starbucks and bitching about the mansions they lost. A cheerful little dream, but mine own.)
Seriously, I really think it would be better to get it over with quickly. It's not like the country can go on being bled dry forever.
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
You won't survive another Republican president.
"Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits." -- Puddin'head Wilson
"democratic" president?
My point just flew over your little head, didn't it?
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
Honestly I was somewhat hoping McCain would win. Bush spent eight years blaming Clinton. Obama's statute of limitations for blaming Bush expired thirty days after being sworn in.
I knew that if a Democrat won in 2008 that he would be given a shit storm and be blamed for every bit of it. The only thing I could hope for was to get a very strong Democrat who would play hard ball. Unfortunately, that's not what we got.
If McCain had been elected they'd still be blaming Clinton today but it would be beyond silly.
The point is that Bush got away with it and we may get Bush 3.0 in 2012 because of it.
so bill clinton didn't have anything to do with nafta ... or was he one of those "phony democrats"?
and all those democrats who voted for the patriot act (all but 1 in the senate!)? for fisa? "phony democrats"?
and barack obama's perpetuation of virtually every hidous bush policy and breaking of virtually every "democratic" campaign promise? he's a phony democrat, too?
well, if all the democrats are "phony democrats", how are we supposed to vote them out of office while still voting democratic?
.
They're just BEGGING to be dragged to the guillotine, aren't they?
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
:D
me-oww!
....a bottle of Boone's Farm that the scary witch is holding tight????
Just snuggle tight honeys, you'll be fine
One holding the sign has face covered in "dirt", as if she just finished blowing some sanitation worker but was too lazy pull his pants down. Her apparent lightweight friend is "passed out", with nary a smudge of dirt or spilled wine on her blue shirt.
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
Animal Farm... pigs walking around on their hind quarters dressed up as people.
"Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits." -- Puddin'head Wilson
well digger's ass.
No e-mail addresses or phone numbers, please. We aren't the Michelle Malkins of the left.
got to piss on them.
Beyond shameful, I've seen much worse homeless people in Manhattan. You'd think they were able to be so insensitive because they never ran across the homeless, but that's just not the case.
Sick bastards.
It wasn't a personal number or email. Both were connected to the lawfirm and are publicly listed.
Still, we don't publish those here, and we have a long history of striking comments that do. If you would like to suggest that people call and e-mail the firm without giving the e-mail address and/or the phone number, that's fine. However, we can't in good conscience directly facilitate a harassment campaign.
Can't you see the humor in this?
It's just as funny as dressing up as cancer patients on Halloween, or watching a puppy drown.
If there is an Antichrist he's here folks.
First they ignore us..then they ridicule us..now they are feeding us chicken crap- sign my petition:
http://www.change.org/petitions/fda-stop-feed...
www.ickenittlepost.com
The horror!!! Banks' law firms trying to evict people from houses simply for not paying their mortgages! And then mocking people who make bogus excuses to try and con sympathetic judges into letting them stay in those homes anyway! The cruel, heartless bastards! Don't they know that everyone who doesn't pay their mortgage is completely innocent, a victim of the cruel heartless capitalists and Republicans!?! Why should not paying your mortgage mean you shouldn't be able to stay in "your" home?! Aren't banks supposed to be social welfare agencies?! What's next?!? Grocers refusing to give food to people who can't pay for it? Employers firing people who don't show up to work?!
From Nocera's column:
[emphasis added]
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
has to do something....This little funny will probably bring down this company, which is what they deserve. Political pressure is going to have state officials checking to see if they can get these guys for spitting on the sidewalk. Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of aholes.
to force my mortgage holder to produce the actual, physical, mortgage. And if they couldn't do it - I'd tell them to fuck off.
If you can't tell what the problem is then there is really no help for you.
... you're gonna dress as a wall street occupier this halloween, with a bong in one hand, a drum in the other, and a sign with a not-so-clever dig on the whole "we want a just and democratic society" meme
well, with any luck, one of your like-minded friends will come as a cop in riot gear, sporting real tear gas and a bill club!
We all know banks have done nothing wrong, have been open to ALL negotiations as directed by the terms of the bailout Dubya did, and haven't treated real Murikans like you and me as if we were total abject filth.
Thank you for posting. Your sarcasm really opened my eyes to the truth, and now I need to follow you around the internets. Tell me where do you hang? FOX 'News,' redstate, the aptly named 'Hot Air?' Do tell. I must cleave myself to your wisdom and GSOH.
me-oww!
There are also millioms of people who lost their jobs and lost their homes. There are also people who live in states where real estate was so overvalued that when the market fell 25 percent, as it did in man;y places, they had paid a hundreds of thousands of dollars for a very mediocore home that is now worth tons less than they paid for it. Banks are guilty as hell of making loans on properties for 100 to 110 percdnt of value, no money down, just to make the upfront money they made on the loans. That would work ONLY in markets where values ALWAYS rise, which has never happened in the history of housing loans. They knew this would happen, then got their bailout money and didn't work with individual homeowners who lost jobs or were hugely upside down on their houses. Enter the crap law firms who are paid by banks to acquire the properties, not to get people in a position to catch up. Now you have two groups making money off the misery of others, plus homeowners who watched the value of their homes drop like rocks because of the glut of foreclosures on the market. Add to that a bunch of assholes who think this is funny, while they work every day with desperate people and you have the above picture and Halloween festivities. Send them your application today, if, indeed you aren't presently workng in foreclosure. You sound like just the kind of person who could handle such a job.;
on misplaced "concern."
CTHULHU 2012 "Why vote for a lesser evil?"
of being accused of foreclosure fraud. http://stopforeclosurefraud.com/2011/10/28/ny...
In 2009 his firm did over 12,500 foreclosures, about 48 a day!
http://longislandbankruptcyblog.com/steven-ba...
A NY judge called his firm out for their work saying that it "undoubtedly brought on the appearance of impropriety"
http://stopforeclosurefraud.com/2011/10/28/ny...
Last year his firm processed over 12,500 foreclosures which comes out to about 48 a day! Wow.
http://longislandbankruptcyblog.com/steven-ba...
by the ny AG's office. possibly next year, they may be dressing in jailhouse stripes for halloween, and "partying" behind bars.
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