Is The Housing Crash Over?

Well certainly not everywhere - Florida and Vegas still have a long ways to go - but this chart does suggest that home prices are finally getting back to where you'd expect them to be based on long-term averages.

Basically we're back to 1998 levels. So it's as if the entire real estate bubble in the 2000s never happened. Well except that it did - leaving some people winners and many losers.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:20 PM | Comments (588)
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I've never been more proud of this nation's immigrants.

PJMedia has another film, which I've added. Check back there for more. Second clip via @texasbryanp

more...

Posted by: Ace at 05:46 PM | Comments (109)
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from @baseballcrank

Posted by: Ace at 05:29 PM | Comments (107)
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Read the article for context. This will get you started:

Eltahawy, a former Reuters correspondent, has been a recent favorite of CNN and MSNBC’s weekend morning shows to discuss Egypt, and she often smears together the Islamist “right wing” and the American right wing, as she did on Melissa Harris-Perry just 11 days ago.

Enjoy the video. I promise, you're gonna love this gal. more...

Posted by: Ace at 03:46 PM | Comments (502)
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Thick as thieves.

Tim Geithner, the US Treasury secretary, acted to shield CitigroupÂ’s bondholders and management from accountability at the height of the financial crisis while taxpayers were left on the hook, a former US bank regulator has alleged.

...

Ms Bair claims that Mr Geithner was relentless in his advocacy for Citi, both in its attempts to buy faltering lenders and when it came to applying restrictions tied to its various rescue packages by the government. “Tim seemed to view his job as protecting Citigroup from me, when he should have been worried about protecting the taxpayers from Citi,” Ms Bair wrote of Mr Geithner, who she nicknamed the “bail-outer in chief” of the 2008 crisis.

Oh, and Dinnertime Open Thread. Enjoy this flashback -- How Carter Creamed Reagan (In The Media's Pollsters' Telling).

Posted by: Ace at 02:04 PM | Comments (323)
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!!!

I should put on Hardball. This should be awk-ward!, as the homosexuals say.

If American democracy is to work -- if we are to prevent the blood from clotting in the body politic -- presidential elections must be real contests over real ideas and real records, informed by real facts.

This campaign hasn't really been any of those things.

Presidents do not deserve to be reelected by default. If they did, why would anyone expect that a second term to be any better or wiser?

And elected leaders need to be held to account -- pinned up against the wall, so to speak -- if citizens aren't to become utterly disillusioned with the idea that we live in a system of democratic self-government.

...

Unless I missed it, the president has yet to give a detailed answer to why he has failed to meet or even come close to his promises about reducing the unemployment rate. Saying that the task was harder than he initially thought isn't (or shouldn't be) a convincing explanation.

He hasn't given a detailed answer as to why he and his top advisers, led by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, failed to focus sufficiently on reviving the housing market, rather than just bailing out banks.

He hasn't explained why his own administration is now saying that at least 6 million Americans, most of them in the middle class, will indeed face a tax increase (penalty) in 2014 if they do not buy health insurance -- a new estimate substantially higher than earlier ones.

He hasn't explained whether he shares any blame for the failure of budget talks on a grand compromise. And if the art of presidential leadership is to cajole your foes into doing deals they don't want to do, what are we to make of his famous charming effectiveness?

...

He hasn't said how, even with a Simpson-Bowles-style budget deal, the country is going to seriously grapple with long-term unfunded liabilities in the tens of trillions.

I could go on.

He did go on. I had to cut some of the left-wingy stuff.

Fineman spins through a plethora of possible explanations for this until, in his last attempt to explain it, he dares to mention...

MEDIA. Obama was such a cool and uplifting story to so many in the media in 2008 that they essentially ceded ground to him that they have yet to reclaim.

Yeah, maybe. Perhaps we should look into this one. In a column all about "Why the Media Never Calls Obama to Account," perhaps it is worth scrutinizing the media whose failures these are.

Instead of suggesting, in the the first three guesses, that it's Romney's fault to one degree or another.

Romney wasn't the candidate in 2008, and yet the media did the same thing -- per Fineman's own confession of failure.

Posted by: Ace at 01:05 PM | Comments (218)
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A commenter just recommended this.

I thought he was just a communist subversive subverting me with his communism, but apparently he's not.

Eh. Maybe I'll see it.

The thing is, after The Avengers, I'm not sure I care about superhero movies anymore. I'd been waiting for that since Iron Man, and now I got it, so, donezo.

The first one, with Stallone, is an interesting disaster. It's interesting in this way: Half the script attempts to be serious and has some fine, quasi-serious lines. I'm a fan of (I'm not kidding) Stallone's soliliquy on "The Law" -- he offers a kind of affecting speech about how Judges are alone, entirely alone, with only "The Law" as a friend. And one day they will be turned out from society to wander the wilderness, with only The Law as a companion.

Then, on the other hand, you have idiotic Funny Action Movie Quips!!! with Stallone and Rob Schneider.

It's just a very schizophrenic attempt to slam two completely different tones together. It just doesn't work. It never does. The light (often stupid) humor undermines the attempt at actual drama and audience investment, and the attempts at drama make the stupid jokes seem even more stupid and out of place.

When the Big Budget Tentpole Action Movie went into its decadent phase (88-95 or so, when they stopped making the almost completely), they did this a lot, constantly undermining their own efforts with distancing irony.

They just kept doing it. It's like when Disney sneaks in adult-ish jokes into cartoons -- they're thinking, "Well, we have to give the adults here something."

Their idea seemed to be, then, "We have to give people who hate Action Movies something. Like jokes spoofing how absurd this all is."

Um. Yeah, they're not in the audience. Don't worry too much about them. There are no broad, trailer-friendly "funny quips" in The Shining to placate those in the audience who hate Steven King ghost stories.

Posted by: Ace at 12:38 PM | Comments (166)
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Let me just emphasize Reason One with my own statement of it:

Obama wishes to convince people that the attack was entirely unpredictable and flowed from a Black Swan event, the YouTube video. If this was an entirely unforeseeable event, then he can maybe be forgiven for having no greater security in the consulate than door-locks.

On the other hand, if this was a very predictable event -- such as the date being September 11th, right there on the day planner, printed up years ago and regularly scheduled every late summer -- then his bumbling is inexcusable.

It's not so complicated. He can either claim "Unforeseeable events were not foreseen" or he can claim "No one in my administration owns, leases, or has access to, a calender."

He's going with the first one.

Bumps In The Road: A pointed cartoon by Ramirez.

Thanks to logprof and JJ Sefton.

Posted by: Ace at 12:08 PM | Comments (193)
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He sees Obama with an edge, but a tiny one, around 1 point.

I'm kind of making up these numbers because Cost never really adds them up to provide a net-net. But when you tally up the various Bad Assumptions the media is making, it looks like a net Obama false advantage of 3-4 points (or more).

You should read the whole thing, but I'll summarize Cost's points, just to have something to write.

1. Obama is only even with Romney with Independents, and many Independents remain undecided. The only way, then, Obama can have a healthy lead is if he is getting much more out of his base than Romney is out of his own, a historically dubious proposition.

He does not mention the old rule -- which actually isn't a very strong rule -- that remaining undecideds will break for the challenger. It should be noted that this rule really isn't one, which is why I don't think he mentions it.

That said: In this election, if the constant media fawning over Obama, and his overexposure, haven't convinced you to support him, I just don't think you're going to wind up voting for him.

2. Currently the polls show the Democratic base being more unified than the Republican base -- that is, there are more Republican defectors, away from Romney, than Democratic defectors, away from Obama.

Cost doesn't even question this based on common sense (that is, given that Obama is presiding over a Depression at least partly of his making). He just looks at historical party unity numbers-- in previous elections, the Republicans were more solid for the Republican candidate that the Democrats were for their own. Ergo, he finds the current situation indicated by polls -- that Obama is more popular with Democrats than Romney is with Republicans -- either wrong as of the moment or possibly correct at the moment but unlikely to persist.

Obama's Problems Multiply as GOP Frets Over Obama. I fret myself. I feel like I'm on tenterhooks. I want Romney to break big so I can relax.

I think a lot of us have this bubbling frustration and anxiety, and we wind up blaming Romney for not just winning this already.

That said, Obama's got some problems. But the Palace Guard Media is keeping them Top Secret.

As far as Libya is concerned, the White House story that the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens was entirely the result of anger over an anti-Muslim video has completely fallen apart. While the administration now concedes the attack was an act of terrorism, the public still does not know exactly what happened in Benghazi that night, nor does it know what security precautions, if any, the State Department took to protect U.S. interests there.

For the moment at least, the administration is stonewalling any further inquiries. State Department officials say they won't discuss the matter because it is under FBI investigation. But on Monday morning, CBS reported that the FBI "isn't even in Benghazi yet. They haven't secured that site, which is how journalists can wander through."

...

One might think the situation, which could well break into a full-scale scandal, might be consuming the political press. It's not. For example, one could watch all of NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday and never hear a word about Libya, with the exception of a brief critique of Romney's reaction to the attack.

Add to this the fact that median household income has fallen again, by another 1.1%.

Posted by: Ace at 11:31 AM | Comments (258)
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Politico's Roger Simon (not to be confused with PJMedia's Roger L. Simon) tried to be funny.

One of the biggest problems with online media is that it provides a potentially massive venue for people who are not funny to try to be funny.

This never works out well. Today it worked out disastrously.

When people try open-mike night, only about eight people see them, and five of them are drunk, and only one of of them is recording the performance, and precisely none at all of them will bother uploading the video of an unfunny comedy debut to the internet.

On the other hand, people who are not funny have heard that there's a beginner's mode of humor, a thing called "Snark" which is supposedly akin to comedy. And because it's merely akin to comedy, people who are not funny are tempted to try some "Snark."

Snark seems easier to people than actually being funny. All you need to do is say something that isn't true, or something you don't believe. You may or may not add some "funny" punctuation to it, such as an exclamation point.

Exclamation points make things funny. Or so people who think Snark is Humor seem to believe.

So, Roger Simon, who just seems like a big fat ball of failure to me in most respects, trotted out his own attempt at this "Snark" all the kids were into these days.

Paul Ryan has gone rogue. He is unleashed, unchained, off the hook.

“I hate to say this, but if Ryan wants to run for national office again, he’ll probably have to wash the stench of Romney off of him,” Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Republican Party of Iowa, told The New York Times on Sunday.
Continue Reading

Coming from a resident of Iowa, a state where people are polite even to soybeans, this was a powerful condemnation of the Republican nominee.

Though Ryan had already decided to distance himself from the floundering Romney campaign, he now feels totally uninhibited. Reportedly, he has been marching around his campaign bus, saying things like, “If Stench calls, take a message” and “Tell Stench I’m having finger sandwiches with Peggy Noonan and will text him later.”

Now, you may not realize that's supposed to be funny for the simple reason that it is not.

Nevertheless, this was Roger Simon's attempt at some humor. Humor often involves the postulation of things which are not true. But if something is not funny, and not identifiable as humor, then it is only a statement of things which are not true.

Which is the problem. What Roger Simon said was not true. He made it up. He thought that was okay, because he was trying some "Snark," and when you "Snark," you say things that aren't true, like "Gee that's so funny I forgot to laugh."

In this classic postulation of the untrue for humorous effect, the speaker, of course, does not think what you said was funny, and has not, in fact, been so overcome with mirth that he's "forgotten" how to laugh entirely. He is, instead, stating, in a roundabout, somewhat devious, fashion, that that thing you said was not funny.

It's complicated. It's not for everyone.

But missing that key ingredient -- identifiable humorous purpose and effect -- then all it is a lie.

And, the left-wing being generally stupid and gullible and willing to believe virtually anything which seems to advance their agenda, they began re-"reporting" Roger Simon's "report," which was in fact simply a lie.

Paul Krugman breathlessly re-"reported" this lie.

As did Tommy Christopher and other leftwing blogger types.

As did Lawrence O'Donnell, Gawker, and NewsOne.

Now, Roger Simon's piece wasn't funny, and I'm not sure what the hell an untrue thing (which also is not funny) is doing in a non-humor reportage piece. But he did tip off readers by including something which is too implausible to be true, to wit, that Ryan was planning on having "finger sandwiches with Peggy Noonan."

Yet the geniuses that would run our lives for us failed to pick up on even that, and rather than take the one minute to contact Simon (or Ryan) to find out if any of this was even remotely true, they just ran with it on television and internet "news" operations.

Is this a conspiracy, then?

Of course not. Never ascribe to conspiracy what can be easily explained by a combination of stupidity, incompetence, malice, and more stupidity, and also a lack of any sense of humor whatsoever, further compounded by a Dunning-Kruger-esque belief that one does in fact have a functioning sense of humor.

I forget what movie this was, but some character said: "Everyone thinks he has a sense of humor... but not everyone do-o-es..."

Posted by: Ace at 10:32 AM | Comments (296)
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