† Homelessness In The Time Of Obama: The Union Rescue Mission in downtown Los Angeles plans to start charging $7 a bed “because of overwhelming demand triggered by the recession and an inability of some guests to stop their cycle of homelessness,” the Los Angeles Times reports:

From the fee, $5 a day will be used to pay for programs the mission runs, and $2 will be set aside as savings for the guest, he said. The mission will begin charging the fee next month, but several participants have already volunteered for the program.

Later this year, the shelter also plans to charge fees to the “working homeless,” who live in the shelter with their families.

† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: The Wall Street Journal spotlights a new breed of worker, white-collar moonlighters:

Moonlighting traditionally has meant juggling two hourly jobs, or an hourly job plus freelancing. But waves of furloughs, pay cuts and layoffs among professionals and managers have driven many white-collar workers to start cramming a second job into the workweek, too. Some need the added income to make up for pay cuts; others want to avert the risk of losing their income in the event of a layoff.

Some 9% of 4,500 mostly white-collar workers surveyed recently for CareerBuilder.com, a career website, have taken a second job in the past year to make ends meet; no data are available from the past for comparison. Another 19% said they intended to take a second job sometime in 2010. …

The growth of freelance websites to higher-paid, white-collar occupations is making it easier to moonlight. Accountants, lawyers, marketers and other managers and professionals seeking work on PeoplePerHour.com have more than doubled in the past year to 58,000, says founder Xenios Thrasyvoulou.

† Mortgage Loan Modification Less Than Advertised: Fewer than half a million homeowners will have successfully avoided foreclosure under the Making Home Affordable Program – far fewer than the three million households the Obama administration said would benefit from its mortgage relief program, reports The New York Times:

Data released Friday showed the dropout rate from the Making Home Affordable Program was very high: 96,000 trial modifications were canceled by lenders in July. The number of canceled trials now exceeds 616,000. …

The high number of cancellations was attributed to the rush to set up the program, which encouraged lenders to enroll borrowers first and ask questions later [emphasis, The Stiletto].

When the paperwork was eventually reviewed, many modification seekers did not qualify for permanent status, either because their debt load was not heavy enough, they did not live in the house, their documents were incomplete or they simply failed to make the trial payments. …

About 422,000 mortgage modifications overseen by the government were considered permanent as of July, up from 389,000 in June. But the pool of candidates is shrinking rapidly. Only 17,000 trial modifications were started in July, down sharply from the 150,000 enrolled in September when the program was new. …

“These borrowers are still up to their eyeballs in debt after the modification,” and many will default again, Calculated Risk, a popular financial blog, wrote after reviewing the new data.

† Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?: The Boston Globe reports that between the Obama family’s first visit to Martha’s Vineyard last year and this year’s jaunt, “the excitement … seems to have ebbed like the tide”:

One barometer of the plunge in excitement has been the sale of Obama-themed T-shirts, which designers had been banking on after the craze of last year. Clothing labeled with the president’s name sold by the thousands, helping to salvage a tough economic year for the island.

But this year’s T-shirt sales are much less brisk, merchants say.

“Last year, Obama gave you goose bumps, but I don’t think you’re going to see that this year,’’ said Alex McCluskey, co-owner of the Locker Room, who sold more than 4,000 “I vacationed with Obama’’ T-shirts last year. But so far this year, he said, his hot item is T-shirts of former President Bush asking, “Miss me yet?’’

† All The News That’s Fart To Print: The Boston Herald reports that parts of a salt-water lagoon fronting the Obamas’ Martha’s Vineyard vacation estate Blue Heron Farm have been closed for several days because of “high levels of enterococci, an indicator that the water is contaminated with fecal coliform bacteria”: 

West Tisbury health agent John Powers said Long Cove Pond and Sepiessa Point Beach on Tisbury Great Pond were closed to swimming Tuesday after both failed water-quality testing. The two beaches are public and located not too far from the Obamas’ private beach. Because the beach on Blue Heron Farm is not accessible to the public, it is not subject to water-quality tests, Powers said. …

[W]hen we asked another town official whether or not it was safe for the prez to take a dip in the pond, he was a little more informative.

“Depends on whether or not he likes to swim in poop,” joked the longtime islander, who shall remain nameless.

[Hat Tip: Nick From NY, a regular reader of this blog.]

† Obama Is Just About Every U.S. President All Rolled Into One!: American Spectator editor-in-chief R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. has good news for President Jimmy Carter in this Washington Times op-ed,:

It is becoming apparent for all to see that a man who made his name as a community organizer does not have the skills to be president of these United States. Maybe he could develop the requisite skills as a governor. Possibly he could develop such skills were he to sit in the Senate for a couple of terms. Yet there are delicate sensitivities, the ability to listen, to stick by your guns, occasionally to remain reticent. These are the fundamentals of a leader, and President Obama has demonstrated that he lacks all of them, most notably reticence. I think it is clear even to official Washington that Mr. Obama is the worst president of modern times. President Jimmy Carter is redeemed. …

Increasingly, it is clear that the Democrats brought down on the country a community organizer as president. Maybe in the future they will consider experience a qualification for the presidency. Possibly, the age of charisma is behind us. Possibly, Mr. Obama even lacks that dubious quality.

† Never Mind Marxism. Will An Obama Administration Be Totalitarian?: Part II: Washington attorney Ray Hartwell makes the case in this Washington Times op-ed that it’s not President Barack Hussein’s incompetence that’s at issue, it’s his administration’s unparalleled skill in “pursu[ing] a razzle-dazzle offense so swift and relentless that the president and his regime have only begun to digest the spoils of their victories”:

[T]he president and his administration have come up with an approach that works very well for them. They meet behind closed doors with allies and favored constituents and craft massive, thousand-page bills whose sheer density effectively conceals many provisions that could not pass if exposed to the light of day. Rammed quickly through Congress on purely partisan votes, they become law before any public analysis is done of their contents. Discussion and disclosure, potentially so messy and inconvenient, are avoided almost entirely.

Although completely at odds with candidate Obama's promises about transparency, this hide-the-ball strategy has succeeded for Mr. Obama, who cares more about results than about campaign pledges. Indeed, for this administration, deception of the public about the content and effect of legislation - e.g., the repeated false claims that health care "reform" would save billions - has been very effective. Mr. Obama uses this tool skillfully, manipulating the ever-willing mainstream media, which have been complicit to the point of deliberately coordinating their stories and their attacks on the administration's critics (as the Journolist diaries make crystal-clear).

Where legislation seems uncertain of passage, our president's many appointees have stepped into the breech. Thus, although its comprehensive energy legislation is stalled for now, the Gulf oil spill provided the administration with an opportunity to shut down offshore drilling - albeit through orders twice found to be illegal by federal courts and still in litigation. Whatever the ultimate outcome, the president has succeeded in crippling a major industry he and his supporters don't like. And the several hundred thousand jobs killed in the process? Well, let's just say the victims weren't among the constituencies valued by our president. …

Mr. Obama is audacious and aggressive, willing to bend rules and twist arms to get things done, if not through Congress, then through czars and other worms in the woodwork or an activist judiciary. His administration is empowering and enriching a Washington ruling elite whose members will respect neither the liberty nor the property of American citizens. Incompetence would be preferable.

† Now Is Not The Time To Talk About Race: Claiming he was passed over for a promotion at a Tyson-owned chicken plant because he is black, John Hithon sued. In his complaint, he alleged that the white plant manager, Tom Hatley, called him “boy” on more than one occasion.

Over the course of the next 14 years, U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert R. Armstrong Jr. overruled a jury verdict awarding Hithon and another plaintiff  $250,000 each in compensatory damages and $1.5 million in punitive on the grounds that there wasn't enough evidence that they lost the promotions because they were black; a panel of the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal ruled that "[w]hile the use of 'boy' when modified by a racial classification like 'black' or 'white' is evidence of discriminatory intent ... the use of 'boy' alone is not evidence of discrimination"; the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the opinion in an unsigned ruling, finding fault with the appellate court’s reasoning; Armstrong again vacated a second jury award to Hithon of $35,000 back pay, $300,000 in compensatory damages for his mental anguish, and $1 million in punitives, though he let the verdict stand .

Both sides appealed to the Eleventh Circuit, and a new panel of judges reaffirmed the appellate court’s prior ruling that use of the term “boy” wasn’t enough to establish racial discrimination. The Fulton County Daily Report notes that the Eleventh Circuit “rarely grants a rehearing, and another opportunity at the Supreme Court is even less likely, so [the] decision may mark the end of the case.”

† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, Look Before You Leap: Part II): NE Attorney General Jon Bruning agreed to a permanent federal injunction against enforcement of a new state law requiring a pre-abortion screening to determine whether a woman is at risk for mental or physical problems arising from the procedure. "We will not squander the state's resources on a case that has very little probability of winning," spokesperson Shannon Kingery said.

† Updates To Previous Posts (fourth item, Say It Aint So Roger, Andy, Jason …): Legendary baseball pitcher  and seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens has been indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly lying to Congress about using steroids, reports The Associated Press:

Clemens was vehement when he testified before a congressional committee in 2008: "Let me be clear. I have never taken steroids or HGH."

The six-count indictment alleges that Clemens obstructed a congressional inquiry with 15 different statements made under oath, including denials that he had ever used steroids or human growth hormone. …

Clemens had been prominently mentioned in the Mitchell Report, Major League Baseball's own accounting of its steroid problem, and he went to Capitol Hill on his own to clear his name. …

"I never took HGH or Steroids. And I did not lie to Congress," Clemens said on Twitter. "I look forward to challenging the Governments accusations, and hope people will keep an open mind until trial. I appreciate all the support I have been getting. I am happy to finally have my day in court."

Clemens reportedly turned down a plea offer by federal prosecutors. If convicted on the charges, Clemens could be sentenced to as much as 30 years in prison and fined $1.5 million.