May, 2011 archive
Erasing History 0
See Glomarization for details.
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0
It’s doing quite nicely, thank you.
Foreclosures are continuing apace, while shoddy bankster behavior contributes to reduced unemployment amongst lawyers and court personnel:
And the foreclosure crisis continues to weigh heavily on the fragile economy.
“Right now, it’s the second-biggest drag on the economy after the surge in oil prices,” said Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi.
Already some 5 million homes have been lost to foreclosure; estimates of future foreclosures range widely. Zandi, who has followed the mortgage mess since the housing market began to crack in 2006, figures foreclosures will strike another three million homes in the next three or four years.
Much more at the link.
H/T Karen for the link.
Twits on Twitter 0
Keeping the privileged from hiding their dirty linen in the UK.
I have to say that twits might have actually found a positive use for twitting.
Spill Here, Spill Now, CSI Pennsylvania Dept. 0
Even as Governor Corbett continues giving Pennsylvania away to the gas companies, the gas companies give back–in kind:
The researchers sampled sampled the water from 68 wells in northeastern Pennsylvania and New York, and found methane in 85 percent of the wells.
When they fingerprinted the methane itself — comparing the chemistry of the methane in the water wells with that of the gas from natural gas wells in the region — “the signatures matched,” said Robert B. Jackson, Nicholas Professor of Global Environmental Change at Duke, one of the study’s authors.
If any of you watched the CSI episode in which a homeowner’s tap water burst into flames–that part at least was not fiction. It has happened, just not quite so spectacularly.
The President on 60 Minutes 0
As burned out as I am on 60 Minutes (Out! Damned clock!), my friend (not yet burned out on 60 Minutes) and I watched last night’s show.
She was telling me this morning that she thought that some of the questions were insulting in how they pried into purely personal matters (her adjectives were much more numerous and colorful), even as the President comported himself with dignity, calm, and courtesy.
Here’s the whole thing.
Aside:
Bushies are having a lot of trouble dealing with this.
Among other things, now comes the claim that President Bush enabled President Obama to have Osama bin Laden killed.
I guess that, in a way, Mr. Bush did–by leaving bin Laden at large.
As they did during Bushie Presidency, Bushies have turned to dealing with a reality they find distasteful by using fantastickal thinking.
Via Balloon Juice.
Life under the Regency, Have Cake, Eat It Too Dept. 2
(Link fixed, I think. H/T to Cassandra M. for letting me know. Here’s an alternative link, which is even better because of the picture of the Regent doing a George Bush flyover of the damage.)
Amusing how these Republican governors decry guvmint spending until they wants them some for their own.
The Voter Fraud Fraud 0
Facing South reports on continuing Republican efforts to make it difficult for persons to vote. From the introduction:
But the new voting bills share some important features: They all work to restrict the franchise and shrink the electorate — in most cases, in ways that would decrease Democratic votes.
Lots of details at the link.
Personal Spaces 0
Atrios, over at Eschaton, frequently remarks how zoning and development practices militate against friendly, welcoming, walkable public spaces–parks, boulevards, shopping districts, and the like.
I live in just such an area.
Where I live was developed around a golf course over the course of two decades or so. (I live in one of several comparatively modest townhouse condo complexes scattered about the space.)
From the deepest depths, it takes over five minutes to drive to the entrance. It take 30-45 minutes to walk to the nearest bus stop, here in the largest city in Virginia. A round-trip drive to the nearest grocery store, less than half a mile from the entrance, to pick up that one item you need to finish a recipe, takes half an hour.
You can tell which areas developed first: The newer the houses, the bigger and uglier–and less welcoming looking–the design.
Lauren Sandler and Carlin Flora, in a piece analyzing the American Dream (marriage, suburbs, kids, cars), see parallels in the architecture of McMansions to the loss of public space that Atrios so frequently notes. They cite Andres Duany, coauthor of Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream. A nugget:
Parallels 0
Chan Akya, writing at the Asia Times, sees parallels in the West’s treatment of Pakistan and treatment of banksters. In both cases, miscreants have been rewarded and allowed to continue their miscreance. A short selection from a long article:
The same vein of (il)logic has applied in the global financial system since 2008; namely that between the parental figures in governments (in Europe and the US) and central banks there was a great attempt at inflating the financial positions of banks so that they could return to profitability and thereby resume a useful role in society. This has come to naught as none of the rescued banks have bothered to start lending more to governments and people in their home countries; instead they are using all their newfound capital and liquidity to purchase junk securities and speculate in commodity markets.
Think through this logic in moral terms. When you have socially destructive errant behavior, the worst thing possible may well be to bail out certain culprits in the obscene hope that their ways can be changed. If you wanted to stop drug pushers in the neighborhood, it would be a good idea to remove demand – ie cure the addicted folks – rather than attempt to buy the drug pushers out. The latter course of action would only result in the perverse situation of more people taking up drug-running in the hopes of either making money or being bought out.
Follow the link and pay close attention to the dates he finds notable.
Torturous Reasoning, Reprise 0
Steve Chapman in the Chicago Tribune:
That’s the sort of logic deployed by defenders of the Bush administration’s torture program.
Follow the link to see the take-down.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Recreation, the courteous way:
(snip)
Police were checking firing ranges along Route 9 as a possible source of the gunshot.
The state of Delaware has a public firing range in that area; my younger son and I have used it. (I believe that everyone should know how to handle a gun, just as strongly as I believe that persons who worship their guns are creepy and dangerous.)
None of the individual ranges face the river except for the shotgun range, and it’s too far from the river for shot to carry.
Classy 0
No doubt this was the reasoned action of a thoughtful person.
Also, pigs, wings.
Wonder how large the settlement will be?
Movable Feast 0
Lilacs come earlier (emphasis added):
To answer the question in bold, in the immortal words of a character (who can remind me who it was? I forget–a gremlin maybe?) from a Warner Brothers cartoon, “It ain’t Wendell Wilkie!”
Parking Wars 0
They should have been banksters. They have the right instincts:
The cars, police spokesman Lt. Ray Evers said, were taken by eight crooked tow-truck drivers who sold the vehicles to a Hunting Park scrap yard for a small sum, usually between $300 and $500.
On the Other Hand, Sometimes There Is No Other Hand 0
On of the dumber aspects of our current jounanimalism is the belief that for every “yes,” there is a “but”–that for every truth there is an equal and opposite truth.
I saw a particularly egregious example of this earlier this week in a column that otherwise appeared to be a quite sane; it discussed President Obama’s release of his birth certificate (which of course followed the release of his birth certificate in 2008). You can read the whole thing at the link; here’s the bit that set me thinking:
Of course, before you go off and believe in some conspiracy theory that nearly half of all Republicans are nuts, it’s important to note that more than half of all Democrats might be nuts, too.
About a third of Americans, again, suspect that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or failed to stop them so the U.S. could go to war in the Middle East.
And a majority of Democrats think President Bush may have known about the attacks in advance: 35 percent said he did know and another 26 percent weren’t sure but were, you know, keeping an open mind to the idea the president willingly let Americans die to benefit his Halliburton buddies.
He is unable to address the loonies on the right without positing equal and opposite loonies on the left.
But, despite his attempt to find a “but” for his “yes,” those loonies aren’t there, not as he has characterized them.
And here’s The Rest of The Story: