I'm of two minds on the whole thing

I really don't know how to feel about President Obama's proposal for the housing industry and the otherwise-doomed-to-foreclose. On the one hand, I definitely understand that if the foreclosures continue, they will do nothing but drag down the prices for the rest of us, resulting in a continuing spiral of underwater mortgages and more foreclosures. I understand that helping out my proverbial neighbor is probably a good thing for me in the long run. I really do. I get it.

But.

What about people like Matt and I? We didn't buy more than we could afford. We carefully considered our budget and stayed within it. We pay our mortgage payment on time every month without an inordinate amount of struggle. We didn't buy a house that was obviously overpriced or inflated. If anything, it was a bit of a fixer upper with some room to go in its ultimate value. We've made some improvements - most of them DIY projects and nothing too extravagant for the neighborhood.

Despite all this, however, housing prices in nearby King and Pierce counties dropped 18% last year. We're lucky in that we're a little bit insulated from this drop by living in Thurston County, but the disease is going to spread at some point. And Matt's job means that we don't have the luxury of staying in this house for five or ten years until all this mess is just a dim memory. We're going to be moving in two or three years.

As of right now, I have no idea what our house is worth. I know that according to the county it's valuation dropped last year, but not by enough to put us "underwater." But I don't know how much longer that will last.

Is anyone going to be bailing me out if I can't get what I owe out of this house in a few years?

I doubt it.

A disturbing milestone for the military

Army suicides resulted in more deaths in January than did combat. Thanks to unremitting deployments, mental health care that is improving but still woefully lacking, and a quagmire of a war that - despite the rhetoric of the Bush administration - will never be won in a conventional sense, the US military is now killing itself faster than the insurgents can. It is a horrifying commentary on this war and more proof - if more is needed - that the status quo in Iraq is no longer tenable and that the draw down in troop levels cannot begin soon enough.