We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
60,000 pages of fed regs, and mounting. Nobody knows them, so everybody breaks them. Thus is everybody a crim so they can nail you whenever they feel like it
Just what is it that academics have to fear if they stand up for common decency, instead of letting campus barbarians run amok? At a prestigious college like Swarthmore, every student who trampled on other people’s rights could be expelled and there would be plenty of prospective students available to take their places.
National Community Reinvestment Coalition president John Taylor points
to “racial disparities in mortgage lending” in Baltimore as reason
enough for government to force banks to make more loans to blacks
“Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early twenty-first century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally average temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a rollback of the industrial age.”
Photo: It's a dumb holiday, meaningless. Drinking until midnight with a silly hat on no longer appeals to me. Never did, really. Furthermore, I am meeting my trainer at our little gym at 5 tomorrow am to get the year started on the right foot. And champagne gives me heartburn.
I’m
not convinced women who are on Tinder who say “no hookups” actually
mean that. - See more at:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/12/ninjaeconomics-on-tinder-from-the-comments.html#sthash.D8NZrvy2.dpuf
In November, “intersectional feminist” Rachel Kuo instructed the unthinking white masses on the preconditions of ordering takeaway from any “ethnic” restaurant. A list that includes being intimately acquainted with regional politics, colonial history, and issues of “labour equity and immigration policy” – all before ordering that hot tossed chicken and sticky rice. Meanwhile, the Guardian’s Osman Faruqi, a “Sydney-based writer and activist,” demanded that someone else – taxpayers on the other side of the world – should pay for his leisure activities. Specifically, by nationalising Twitter. Mr Faruqi was subsequently astonished to hear that many readers had assumed his article was a cunning satire of leftist entitlement. Apparently, this failure to appreciate his seriousness and insight merely “shows how right-wing our political debate has become.”
"The postcrisis perception, at least in the media, appears to be one of Americans being held down by Wall Street, by big companies in the private sector, and by the wealthy. Capitalism is on trial. I see it a little differently. If a lender offers me free money, I do not have to take it. And if I take it, I better understand all the terms, because there is no such thing as free money. That is just basic personal responsibility and common sense. The enablers for this crisis were varied, and it starts not with the bank but with decisions by individuals to borrow to finance a better life, and that is one very loaded decision. This crisis was such a bona fide 100-year flood that the entire world is still trying to dig out of the mud seven years later. Yet so few took responsibility for having any part in it, and the reason is simple: All these people found others to blame, and to that extent, an unhelpful narrative was created. Whether it’s the one percent or hedge funds or Wall Street, I do not think society is well served by failing to encourage every last American to look within. This crisis truly took a village, and most of the villagers themselves are not without some personal responsibility for the circumstances in which they found themselves. We should be teaching our kids to be better citizens through personal responsibility, not by the example of blame."
I found the movie tedious. In addition, it ignored obvious factors which were crucial to the story:
For starters, everybody knew there was a US housing bubble and a mortgage bubble. Dr. Burry was not the only one, but the credit default swaps was a brilliant approach to shorting what was bound to fall sooner or later.
Everybody knew that a large number of mortgages were junk. You could read about it on the internets every day.
Everybody knew that, since Clinton, banks were required to expand mortgage availability to high credit risks. This was not voluntary.
Naturally, banks did not want to keep that junk on their books. They packaged them and sold them to sophisticated willing institutional buyers around the world, same as any other asset a bank did not wish to hold. Can't blame the bankers for doing that. It's their job to sell stuff. It's common sense.
One good thing was included: the slipperiness of the debt rating agencies.
Everybody likes to find a scapegoat. Moral of the story, in my view: Bubbles happen, and always burst. Shorting bubbles makes sense. It just takes balls. Other morals: Abolish Freddie Mac And Fannie Mae - and the Fed. And the notion of "too big to fail."
I know many native New Yorkers who talk like Trump. Not the WASPy East Siders with houses in Litchfield, but the real ones without pedigrees. Charismatic, entertaining, witty, fast-talking, pumped, brash, clever, commerce-oriented, not overly intellectual. I do not mean to say that he is a type, but people who know him find him warm, caring, highly-moral and of course, engaging and provocative.
Miss
Puerto Rico Destiny Velez Suspended Indefinitely for Associating
Islamic Terrorism With Islam - See more at:
http://moonbattery.com/?p=66679#sthash.W5AlpDWd.dpuf
About twenty years ago I was in the company of right-thinking people (that is to say, people who thought differently from me), among whom was an eminent human rights lawyer of impeccably internationalist outlook. She was speaking with characteristic self-righteousness about a case in which someone’s newly discovered human rights had been infringed. It was shortly after the Rwandan genocide had taken place and, fed up by her moral complacency, I accused her of racism. How could she concern herself with this case, I demanded to know, when half a million people or more had just been slaughtered and the perpetrators were unpunished (as at that time they still were)? Was it because she was racist and did not consider that all those lost lives were important because they were black?
Christmas is about many things, but a big part of it is indulging yourself. I’m all for that. Be crass. Be an ugly American. Laugh with your mouth full. The men who built this country didn’t do it so we could feel bad about ourselves. They did it so we could all prosper. I’m done feeling bad about being the best. We rule, literally. You’re welcome.
It is easy for us Yankees to forget that New York was already a substantial, rowdy town when those Pilgrims accidentally landed in cold, damp, and God-forsaken Cape Cod in November. Of course, the Catholic Spanish were in America first. The Brits chased out the Spanish and the Dutch, and then we Brits chased out the French, and then Britain itself for foolish reasons, but it worked out pretty well anyway despite our having, over time, created a far more oppressive and burdensome State than Britain could have dreamed of. A commercial powerhouse, however.