Under Bill Clinton’s HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo, Community Reinvestment Act regulators gave banks higher ratings for home loans made in ‘credit-deprived’ areas. Banks were effectively rewarded for throwing out sound underwriting standards and writing loans to those who were at high risk of defaulting.
For years my wedding ring has done its job. It has led me not into temptation. It has reminded my husband numerous times at parties that it’s time to go home. It has been a source of relief to a dinner companion. It has been a status symbol in the maternity ward.
My house is very traditional. And I love ‘shabby chic.’ It’s a very homey-cosy vibe. We spend a lot of time in the kitchen, actually; maybe my kids will be doing their homework or that kind of thing when they get home from school. I love my kitchen.
I have this fantasy of my older days, painting or sculpting or making things. I have this fantasy of a bike trip to Chile. I have this fantasy of flying into Morocco. But right now, it’s about getting the work done and getting home to family. I have an adventure every morning, getting up.
If you’re strutting around Beverly Hills and hitting up these big industry parties every night when you’re not making movies, then it’s going to eventually consume you. But for me, I live most of my life in Boston. I do things no different from the way my buddies back home do them, except when I go to work, I go to a film set.
For whatever trauma came with service in tough circumstances, we should take what we learned – take our post-traumatic growth – and, like past generations coming home, bring our sharpened strengths to bear, bring our attitude of gratitude to bear.
I totally had OCD as a teenager. I used to have to touch all four sides of a picture frame when I got home from school and before I started to do my homework. It was time-consuming. But then I just outgrew it, though it sometimes comes back when I’m under a lot of stress.
My father built a small business from scratch with years and years of sweat equity and many, many weeks away from home. He employed about 50 people, and by the end of his working years, the business was highly successful. He became a millionaire.
The one thing that was nice about being an only child is that my friends’ parents would always ask me whether I would want any other brothers and sisters? My mom wasn’t able to have any more children, and they didn’t know that, but I would always say that I can have friends over, and whenever I get sick of them, I can just send them home.
The Violence Against Women Act has been a true bipartisan success story since it was first enacted in 1994. In my home state of Texas alone, its programs have helped hundreds of thousands of victims to break free from the terrible cycle of domestic violence.
Every American in uniform, in the White House or at home – USA! USA! USA! – we must be a force for unity in America, for a vision that includes all of us. All of us. Every man and woman, every race, every ethnicity, every faith and creed, including the Americans who are our precious Muslims. And every gender and every gender orientation.
I’ve done routes where I’ve climbed 200 feet off the ground and just been, like, ‘What am I doing?’ I then just climbed back down and went home. Discretion is the better part of valor. Some days are just not your day. That’s the big thing with free soloing: when to call it.
I don’t really look at stats or whatever. You see them on the big screen. But other than that, I don’t pay too much attention to it. I did know about my dad’s home run total. Other than that, I don’t like to know. It’s pointless. Whether you know or don’t know, you don’t want to think about it. You just want to go out and play the game.
Dogs are a really amazing eye opener for us humans because their lives are compressed into such a short period, so we can see them go from puppyhood to adolescence to strong adulthood and then into their sunset years in 10 to 12 years. It really drives home the point of how finite all our lives are.
London was the Olympics that I was most nervous about. From coming into the venue and stepping on to the mat, people were supporting with ‘Saori’ banners and waving the Japanese flag, so even though it was London, I felt much more like fighting at home that way, which was really inspiring.
Labeling people single parents, for example, when they may in fact be co-parenting – either with an unmarried other parent in the home or with an ex-spouse in a joint custody situation – stigmatizes their children as the products of ‘single parenthood’ and makes the uncounted parent invisible to society.
My humanitarian work evolved from being with my family. My mom, my dad, they really set a great example for giving back. My mom was a nurse, my dad was a school teacher. But my mom did a lot of things for geriatrics and elderly people. She would do home visits for free.
Once brave politicians and others explain the war on drugs’ true cost, the American people will scream for a cease-fire. Bring the troops home, people will urge. Treat drugs as a health problem, not as a matter for the criminal justice system.
Money is not the most important thing, but when you need it, there are few substitutes. So while I like the things money can buy, I love what money won’t buy. It bought me a house but it won’t buy me a home. It would buy me a companion but it won’t buy me a friend.
Instituting equal pay is especially important because families in our country increasingly rely on women’s wages to make ends meet. When women bring home less money each day, it means they have less for the everyday needs of their families – groceries, rent, child care, and doctors’ visits.
I’ve been experimenting more and more with LN2, liquid nitrogen. I’ve used it in battle on ‘Iron Chef America,’ but have also made some great ice creams at home for my family. Since it freezes basically on contact, you can have ice cream ready in mere minutes.
A West Virginia 10 is a California 4. Or at least that’s what legend tells us: The Legend of Dr. Feelgood. Plastic surgery has a permanent home here, which is why Nancy Pelosi loves our Botoxed beaches. Beverly Hills looks like a moving Madame Tussauds.
Plays have a celebratory nature that no other form has. Theater always meant celebration, a birthday, a reward for good grades. I felt at home in a theater. I loved being part of an audience. All the rules – the audience has to see the play on a certain date at a certain time in a certain place in a certain seat.
When you’re a fledgling youth-type adult, it appears that all people in their 40s look old enough to be in a painting hanging on the wall of a stately home in England. It’s not until you limp into your 70s that people in their 40s look too young to vote, and college cheerleaders closely resemble Yorkshire terriers.
I have a great love for nature. That must have started somewhere down back home, I think, because my family own one of the better known gardens in Soochow, so I played there, and I lived there, and so I must have absorbed something there. So I continue to have a great interest in nature.
