From Pine View Farm

2012 archive

Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0

Buy cheap, rent high: Bloomberg reports that foreclosures are the new tulips (emphasis added).

Haisley, a heating and air-conditioning technician, said he worked on the house before it went into default and decided to make an offer when he saw it listed at about a third the price of surrounding homes. They’ve already found tenants for the house and David said they’ll buy another foreclosure if they can find the right deal.
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Investors bought about 66,780 homes in August, the highest since the beginning of the foreclosure crisis, according to Bloomberg calculations based on National Association of Realtors data. Photographer: Matthew Staver/Bloomberg

“It’s an income stream for us, and when it’s time, we’ll sell it and make more money than we could from our 401K,” said Haisley, 49, who rents out the property for $900 a month for an annual return of more than 20 percent, excluding appreciation. “There’s nowhere for prices to go but up, so it seemed like a pretty safe bet.”

“Nowhere for prices to go but up . . . .”

When have I heard that phrase before?

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Things Left Unsaid 0

Romney-Ryan:  They can't say they want to coddle the rich, Wall Street, Big Carbon, Christian extremists, and the military while destroying women's rights, education, and the environment, so they just say

Via Bartcop.

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The Galt and the Lamers 0

Paul Ryan's disaster relief:  Copies of Atlas Shrugged.

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome BLog.

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Treat your playmates with courtesy:

A boy playing with a gun in a West Philadelphia playground resulted in another boy being taken to the hospital, police say.

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Endorsements 0

If you wonder which newspapers have endorsed which Presidential candidate, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has been maintaining a running list.

I am curious about endorsements and the reasons papers give for favoring one candidate over another. Nevertheless, I think they carry little weight, if, indeed, they ever did (perhaps they did when newspapers and wire services were the only sources of news, but, even then, each town or county often had multiple papers; folks would read the one they preferred).

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QOTD 0

Xenocrates:

I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.

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Rally for Romney in Frostbite Falls 3

Honest to Pete, you can’t make this stuff up.

Not. Nice. People.

Via Atrios.

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Those Who Ignore the Future Are Condemned To Repeat It 0

Robert I. Field reminds us that there is no reason to be surprised by Hurricane Sandy:

Back in 1994, a physicist looked far into the future and predicted that the first signs of climate change would look like this:

    “[T]he slow rise in sea level will start to affect cities like New York during big storms. One year, high waves will wash up on the roads bordering the harbor, forcing the police to close them for a day or two. As time passes, this will get to be a more common phenomenon, and the strength of the storm needed to trigger it will become less.” (See James Trefil, A Scientist in the City, Anchor Books, 1994, p.247-248)

Then, we’ll get the big wake-up call:

    “[P]erhaps during one of those hurricanes that occasionally make their way up the East Coast, a big storm surge will send water into the streets of lower Manhattan. It will be a big news item, of course, but it will take some time before people realize that there’s a problem to be dealt with.”

Read the rest to see how other portions of Trefil’s prediction are coming true.

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You Are Not Alone 0

The Orlando Sentinel’s Scott Maxwell is also longing for the end of the campaign.

Facebook isn’t safe anymore either.

In the old days, I’d roll my eyes when people rushed to post pictures of their breakfast: a freshly poured glass of orange juice with a witty cutline like: “juice. yummy.”

Now, OJ seems downright nostalgic compared with the woman bragging about how she stiffed her waitress out of a tip simply because the waitress was wearing an Obama button — and the customer wanted to teach her a lesson about wealth redistribution. (More depressing was the gleeful chorus of “likes” from those pleased about her sticking it to the minimum-wage worker who dared to have a different opinion.)

About the only persons who don’t want it to end are the punditocracy, who will have to come up with their own ideas once more, at least for a while.

In this house, we have not answered the telephone without checking the caller ID for weeks.

We check the caller ID and then don’t answer the phone.

Anyone who cares to can leave a message, which we then delete.

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Another Extra Special Bonus QOTD 0

Joe Biden:

Folks I want to remind you, this is the end of daylight savings time tonight. It’s Mitt Romney’s favorite time of the year because he gets to turn the clock back.

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The Disloyal Opposition 2

Michael Smerconish is a conservative talker and columnist who dares to think for himself and deviate from the Fox Party line. I seldom agree with him, but I do applaud his attempts to be reasonable and fair-minded.

In today’s column, he looks over President Obama’s term and the disloyal opposition. A nugget (emphasis added).

This election has always been a referendum on Barack Obama. For some, not on matters of substance. They can’t have it both ways. It’s hypocritical to distribute a vicious, false narrative about him while fancying yourself a patriot and a great American. Vilify a sitting president of the United States with fiction and innuendo, and you are neither.

I objected when George W. Bush was the subject of undeserved hyperbolic criticism, but the baseless scorn heaped upon President Obama makes Bush’s detractors look diplomatic. The president, the office, and our nation deserve better.

It’s been unrelenting. The day after Obama took office, Rush Limbaugh told Sean Hannity he wanted him to “fail.” Later, Glenn Beck called the president a “racist” with a “deep-seated hatred of white people.” Donald Trump’s birtherism took hold while words like socialist were uttered with increased frequency. And a prairie fire of falsehoods spread through the Internet suggesting, among other things, that Obama is a Muslim or refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, paving the way for Dinesh D’Souza’s fictionalized “documentary” 2016, which characterized Obama as fulfilling the anticolonial agenda of his father – a man he literally knew for just one weekend!

Leonard Pitts, Jr., offers a parallel retrospective:

There are, after all, many words you could use to describe the period from 2008 to now. “Reconciliation” is not one of them. To the contrary, the nation has endured a four-year temper tantrum of shrillness and ferocity nearly unparalleled in history. You have to go back to the 1960s, or maybe even the 1850s, to find a time when America was this angry with itself.

Far from putting the ’60s to rest, we have seen a fresh assault on what had previously been considered the settled gains of that era. I mean, who could have predicted this election season would see debates on women’s reproductive health? Or, that we’d have to defend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965? Or that the state of Arizona would ban ethnic studies classes? Or that there would be a new attack on the right of public workers to unionize? And that’s not to mention the new onslaught of coded racial slurs. They still say Obama wasn’t born in the U.S.A. Just the other day, Mitt Romney surrogate John Sununu, honest to God, called him “lazy.”

And we know what’s behind most, if not all, of the right-wing venom. Chauncey Devega explains:

Although many of us are unwilling to admit as much in public, the hate campaign by Mitt Romney and the Tea Party GOP against the country’s first black President is predicated on the Right’s deep disdain for African-Americans and our citizenship. More generally, for the White Right, people of color are not, have never been, and are incapable of being “real Americans.”

I’m a Southern boy. I can decode the damned coded.

Devega is correct. Racism in America’s Original Sin and its stain persists deep into the polity.

Follow the link to listen to a portion of Devega’s appearance in the third hour of yesterday’s Ring of Fire show. It’s worth it.

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“The Looting of America” 0

Mike Papantonio describes Wall Street:

They don’t make anything. All they do is move money around and talk trash.

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The Voter Fraud Fraud 0

Jay Bookman tells the story of yet another American citizen denied the right to vote by Republican machinations.

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Republican Baal 0

Cartoon Panel One:  Tim Pawlenty quote:

Via Bartcop.

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Lost in Translation 0

My old staple gun did not make the move to Virginia Beach. Now, a staple gun is one of those tools that you don’t use often, but, when you need one, nothing else will quite do.

I recently ordered a new staple gun from Publisher’s Clearing House.

Shopping from PCH flyers is like shopping at an outlet mall. “Outlet” on the sign doesn’t promise bargains in the shop. If you know your stuff, you can find good deals; otherwise, otherwise.

I was pleasantly impressed when the staple gun arrived. The tool itself is quite sturdy and solid, is easily powerful enough for home use, and has some features that my old one did not have–definitely good value for the money.

The directions, though, well, can you splet “Giggle Translate.” (I edited the scan to remove the illustrations.)

Click for a larger image.
Staple Gun directions--excerpts:  1.  Handle:  Power towards arrow direction which can make the nails out.  3.  Hook:  the hook is used to fix the handle to make it out of work.  P. S.  2:  Don't using the machine in the face of people . 3:  To avoid accident, please keep the machine away from the children beyond 12s.

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QOTD 0

Bettie Page:

I never kept up with the fashions. I believed in wearing what I thought looked good on me.

Indeed.

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Extra Special Bonus QOTD 0

Congressman Bobby Scott:

Let me tell you, Hurricane Sandy made a whole lot of people part of the 47 percent who didn’t think they were part of the 47 percent.

H/T Susan for the catch.

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Lessons Learned: Be Prepared 0

Romney's Storm Tips:  Everyone in the path of the storm should head to their second or third home for safety.

Via Bartcop.

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The Voter Fraud Fraud 0

In the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Dan Simpson cites the voter fraud fraud as one of the five principle reasons he’s voting for President Obama (emphasis added).

The third reason to vote for Mr. Obama is the astonishing effort on the part of Republicans across the country to roll back the electoral franchise, seeking to hinder voting by the poor, those with limited literacy or bureaucratic skills and those who have moved often, frequently as a result of poverty or unemployment. I quote Republican Pennsylvania House leader Mike Turzai on the subject in June: “Voter ID, which is gonna allow Gov. Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.”

I have lived in many countries overseas — in Africa, Europe and the Middle East — and I have never seen politicians try to roll history backward in this way, as Republicans would take us back almost to the Civil War with 2012 versions of Southern poll taxes, literacy tests and other barriers to voting so as to improve their electoral prospects. Even the most corrupt governments normally take the public position that they want to increase participation in their elections, not decrease it by erecting barriers to voting. I keep listening for Mr. Romney to criticize these Republican efforts.

Follow the link for his other four reasons.

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Plus ca Change 2

In the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Victor R. Balest tells what happened to his father in the 1930’s when he told his bosses in the coal mine that, despite their instruction to vote Republican, he was planning to vote Democratic.

When my grandfather arrived for work the next day, much to his surprise, he was instructed by management to report to his new position in one of the worst and most dangerous jobs in the mine. He worked for several weeks in that part of the mine where water was knee-deep. My grandfather was no fool, and he understood that this was a clear demonstration of retaliation by the ownership, and this event only strengthened my grandfather’s resolve. Eventually the owner relented and put my grandfather back in the job where he had excelled. My grandfather understood that, without union or governmental protections, the plutocrats and their sycophants (otherwise euphemistically referred to as upper and middle management) will grind you into the ground if given the chance, due to a combination of greed and fear; greed because they want their large piece of the pie and all others can fight over what remains, and fear because they refused to relinquish the advantages that they have gained through cunning, wit, deceit, connivance, social and political connections and, yes, some degree of hard work.

Read the rest. It’s the motto of the One Percent once more all over again redundantly:

    All for one! (And I’m the one.)
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