Almost as fun as hiking the Appalachian Trail.
Put on clean sheets today, so you know what that means:
She loves clean sheets. Not sure what is up with that ear action, though. Meanwhile, resident EVIL is underneath the chair in my office alternating between gnawing on and guarding an everlasting treat ball. Tunch is in his bedroom. That’s right, we no longer call it the spare bedroom. He wins. I give up trying to keep him out.
Lower still, it seems:
For real estate, some economists say, an end to the seemingly endless decline in housing values might be in sight.Not immediately. At the moment, prices are still dropping. In 20 large cities, prices fell 0.8 percent in March from the previous month, according to the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Home Price Index released Tuesday. That pushed the closely watched index below its level of two years ago to a new post-bubble low, and put it 33.1 percent under its July 2006 peak.
Few analysts expect housing prices to rebound anytime soon. But quite a few are predicting that the market is close to the moment when things will stop getting worse, which will be a major improvement all by itself.
“By far the bulk of the downturn of housing prices is beyond us,” said Paul Dales of Capital Economics. He expects the market to slip 5 percent further, slightly more than he was expecting a few months ago.
“There are some amazingly favorable signs. Housing is the most undervalued it’s been in 35 years,” Mr. Dales said. “At some point, it’s going to do very well.”
Peter Muoio, senior principal of Maximus Advisors, says he thinks the market has already bottomed, although he expects it to bounce around in a narrow range for a few years rather than recovering. And James F. Smith, chief economist for the investment firm Parsec Financial and a rare housing bull, is predicting a 25 percent climb from here by mid-decade.
“There’s a lot of pent-up demand for housing and someday it will be unleashed,” Mr. Smith said, adding: “Your guess is as good as mine when it will come.”
I honestly think you would need to have your head examined to buy a house right now. No one has job security, no one is making any money, as soon as you buy there is a good chance that the value of your house will drop still, no one has any faith in the mortgage industry and for good reason- who knows who will even own your mortgage? Can you trust the fine print? But basically, a lot of people are broke as shit and have no hope for future employment, so we have wiped them out of the market. No wonder prices are plummeting.
At this point, can anyone actually claim that the point of cable news is to inform? Does anyone even pretend that is what it is all about? It’s nothing but a game, and a wicked one at that.
Greg Sargent, at his Washington Post blog Plum Line: Wisconsin Dems 6. Wisconsin Republicans 0.
... Today the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board announced that they have now approved the signatures required for recall elections against the following six GOP senators: Rob Cowles, Alberta Darling, Sheila Harsdorf, Randy Hopper, Dan Kapanke, and Luther Olsen. That means these six elections are definitely moving forward.
Meanwhile, the board has also announced that they are not prepared to approve the signatures gathered by Republicans for the recall of their three Democratic targets. Dems have alleged that the signature gathering by Republicans is fraudulent, and now the board has explicitly claimed that their reason for not approving the recall elections against Dems is that the signatures “have raised numerous factual and legal issues which need to be investigated and analyzed.”
Translation: The fraud allegations just may have something to them.
What this means: While Dems only need to net three recall elections to take back the state senate, it is now within the realm of possibility that even as twice that number of Republicans face recall elections, no Dems will. That’s a pretty sizable advantage for Dems…
Considering they haven’t created one job since taking office, and haven’t so much as advanced one plan to create jobs since they took office, and, mind you, presided over the worst economic collapse since the Depression, it’s pretty clear the Republicans are very serious about killing the economy:
In a symbolic vote to send a message to budget negotiators, the House on Tuesday defeated a measure to raise the national debt ceiling without any accompanying deficit or spending reduction provisions.The Republican-controlled House voted 318-97 on the legislation that would have raised the federal government’s debt limit by approximately $2.4 trillion.
Under rules for the vote set by the GOP leadership, the measure needed at least two-thirds support to pass, ensuring it had no chance for approval.
The vote was scheduled by Republican leaders to show that any attempt to divorce an increase in the debt ceiling from spending reduction efforts—a move initially favored by the Obama White House—cannot win congressional approval.
Democrats called the move a dangerous political stunt that could rattle financial markets.
Not sure why the markets care. If shit crashes, they’ll be made whole again by the taxpayers. Just like the last time.
Gotta love the 80 or so Democrats who voted with the nihilists.
Also, I blame Obama.
I can’t deny that I find myself fascinated by the pictures from Lady Starburst’s latest publicity stunt.
All the jokes about the Palinese Liberation Army have never seemed more true to me. It’s a cross-country bus tour with Hell’s Angels types, how much more reverse ‘60s can the whole thing get? All we need is for the motorcycle guys to stab a fan to complete the circle.
This is a few days old, but this “Meet The Press” exchange was one for the ages:
GREGORY: So, Ruth Marcus, what wins here: bold leadership on Medicare and the argument that the Democrats won’t do something courageous, or the Democrats who say, “Hey, those guys want to take away my Medicare”?
MARCUS: I regret to inform you that I think it’s the latter. And I think when you were asking Senator McConnell if Medicare was the new third rail of American politics, I think the question was wrong in a sense because it’s the old third rail of American politics.
[....]
MARCUS: This play has been run time after time. If you go back and look at the quotes from President Clinton back when he needed to win re-election, they sound a lot like the quotes from Democrats today about don’t let those Republicans take away your Medicare. The difference is that the debt is bigger, the deficit is bigger, the gap is bigger, and the situation is more dire. But I think that, sadly, the lesson of New York 26 is “mediscare” works.
(bold mine)
I’ve said this a thousand times: what’s dire here is rising medical costs, not Medicare specifically. Moving from a more efficient public model for senior health-care to a less efficient private market only exacerbates this problem.
What gets me, though, is that we’re supposed to think it’s sad that American citizens are scared by the idea that they will be deprived of access to health care. We hear all this shit along the lines of “you like it when the bully punches you in the face don’t you dirty fucking hippie” whenever anyone opposes a new war, but when Americans refuse to bend over and take it from the Beltway-corporate complex, it’s sad. Don’t they know that big Bobo will always look out for their best interests?
If you’re not scared by the idea of letting the people who brought you the Iraq War redesign your health care system, you’re not paying attention.
In the name of equanimity, here’s some good Conor Friedersdorf. When he’s good, he’s very good. And when he’s bad… ouch. Here he is, asking “Can Progressives Fix the US Postal Service?” I couldn’t tell you, myself. I don’t identify as a progressive; I think it’s a meaningless weasel word. But I do know that Conor’s post is a classic example of advocating other people’s sacrifice.
Conor is a bright guy who cares, so it’s extra depressing that he wrote a post that, as most conservative writing nowadays does, demonstrates total apathy towards the material well-being of broad classes of human beings, without owning up to that. The very idea that the well-being of millions of public sector employees matters—that, in fact, delivering a higher standard of living to broad classes of people is the very purpose of American society—goes unconsidered.
Conor says
An expensive but inflexible labor force is a significant drag on USPS, as on any organization. It is also another example of the public employee problem that threatens the future of the whole progressive project. A basic leftist goal is to persuade the American people that Ronald Reagan was wrong—that given the proper resources, government can bring about solutions and isn’t itself the problem. Various think tank fellows, Democratic strategists, and public employee unions are working to make that case. In the long run, however, strategic communication matters less than results. So long as public employees are highly paid, enjoy benefits more lavish than their private sector analogues, and work under contracts that hamstring the ability of their agencies to perform and adapt, Americans will eventually conclude that public sector investments are folly.
Since Palin and her team won’t share where the potential candidate is headed, reporters and producers have little choice but to simply stay close to Palin’s bus. This has resulted in scenes of the Palin bus tooling down the highway followed by a caravan of 10 or 15 vehicles – including a massive CNN bus – all trying to make sure they don’t lose sight of the Palin bus.It adds up to a dangerous situation, says CBS News Producer Ryan Corsaro.
“I just hope to God that one of these young producers with a camera whose bosses are making them follow Sarah Palin as a potential Republican candidate don’t get in a car crash, because this is dangerous,” he said.
Corsaro asked a member of Palin’s team if he thought it was dangerous to have reporters forced to chase her from stop to stop. “You’re the ones that are trailing us,” he replied.
Actually, they have a choice. They could stop following her and quit letting her jerk them around. Starve her of attention and she will lose it.
Second, I just love the response from the Palin team when it is pointed out their behavior could be causing a problem- “NOT MY FAULT!”
I can’t remember whether this video of young albino raccoons has already been posted and frankly I don’t care.
Behold, the cute.
Is it time to start drinking properly yet?
Didn’t get a chance to slot this in last week, but in light of the Warren/McHenry incident, it seems relevant. Mark Schmitt at The New Republic plots out the numbers behind what the subhead refers to as “The GOP’s brilliant generational weapon in the Medicare fight”:
Today’s 55-year-old was born in 1956. That’s not generally considered a major break in the generations. It’s smack in the middle of the Baby Boom (the peak of the boom, in fact), with almost a decade to go before the first Gen-Xers were born, dreaming of Winona Ryder. But the difference between early and later Boomers, especially in their experience of the economy, is dramatic.
A baby born in 1956 would have graduated from high school in about 1974, from college in 1978 or so. Look at almost any historical chart of the American economy, and you see two sharp breaks in the 1970s. First, in 1974, household incomes, which had been rising since World War II, flattened. Real wages started to stagnate. The poverty rate stopped falling. Health insurance coverage stopped rising. Those trends have continued ever since.
Second, a little later in the decade, around the time today’s 55-year-olds graduated from college (if they did—fewer than 30 percent have a four-year degree), inequality began its sharp rise, and the share of national income going to the bottom 40 percent began to fall. Productivity and wages, which had tended to keep pace, began to diverge, meaning that workers began seeing little of the benefits of their own productivity gains. The number of jobs in manufacturing peaked and began to drop sharply. Defined benefit pensions, which provide a secure base of income in retirement, began to give way to 401(k)s and similar schemes that depend on the worker to save and the stock market to perform. While the benefits of higher education rose, college tuitions started to rise even faster. Those trends, too, have continued.
If there was ever going to be a generational war in this country, that high school class of ’74 would be its Mason-Dixon line. It’s the moment when Bill Clinton’s promise—“if you work hard and play by the rules you’ll get ahead”—began to lose its value. Today’s seniors and near-seniors spent much of their working lives in that postwar world, with their incomes rising, investments gaining, their health increasingly secure, and their retirements predictable. Everyone 55 and younger spent his or her entire working life in an economy where all those trends had stalled or reversed. To borrow former White House economist Jared Bernstein’s phrase, it was the “You’re On Your Own” economy. Finally, those 55-year-olds are spending several of what should be their peak earning years, years when they should be salting away money in their 401(k)s and IRAs, in a period of deep recession and very slow recovery. [...] More »
I honestly have no idea what we are doing in Afghanistan any more other than pissing people off, losing troops to a lost cause, wasting billions, and creating more terrorists. We’re not bringing freedom to anyone, we’re not making ourselves any safer, and I have yet to see any long term plan articulated (mind you- we’re ten years in and still wondering what we are doing. Whack-a-mole is not a plan). Hell, we aren’t even honest enough with ourselves to demand that the Pentagon give us a possible plan for withdrawal, and I guarantee no one can tell me what we are trying to accomplish without the response turning into “blah blah Taliban blah blah they hit us first blah blah Pakistan nukes.” No one knows what the fuck we are doing, no one knows what a “win” in Afghanistan looks like, and sure as shit no one can gauge whether we are “winning.”
There’s this odd institutional paralysis where we have convinced ourselves that leaving will be worse than the disastrous status quo, but no one can really explain why, yet anyone who suggests we unass the area of operations and go home is castigated as wanting to “lose” or hating America. We’re just sort of there, meandering around, clueless and breaking shit and pissing people off, like a 60 year old burnout on acid at the Dead show campground three days after the concert. Ask them what they are doing and it will resemble our plan in Afghanistan with less bloodshed and fewer visions of rainbows. The smell will be about the same.
GTFO.
Got up at the crack of dawn to get the garden in, finally. Still have several rows left, but I’ll get it tomorrow. The onions, peppers, brussel sprouts, and most of the tomatoes are in. Another row of tomatoes and then a couple of beans and that will be it.
There are always reasons for force:
The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force.The Pentagon’s first formal cyber strategy, unclassified portions of which are expected to become public next month, represents an early attempt to grapple with a changing world in which a hacker could pose as significant a threat to U.S. nuclear reactors, subways or pipelines as a hostile country’s military.
In part, the Pentagon intends its plan as a warning to potential adversaries of the consequences of attacking the U.S. in this way. “If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks,” said a military official.
Wonder how the usuals suspects will fare in the market this morning (General Dynamics, etc.).
I bet you would, although sometimes it is hard to imagine:
A group of more than 200 Japanese pensioners is volunteering to tackle the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima power station.The “Skilled Veterans Corps”, as they call themselves, is made up of retired engineers and other professionals, all over the age of sixty.
One of the group, Yasuteru Yamada, told the BBC’s Roland Buerk that they should be facing the dangers of radiation, not the young.
That, to me, sets a rather high bar for patriotism.
