My Thinking Corner

So I’m not going to write about the never ending heat wave that has been the past month in South Carolina.  Instead I’ll ask the following, how in the hell do people find their way to this blog by searching “my wife naked”?  I don’t get it.  If I plug those terms into google and hit search I get a host of sites that aren’t even remotely safe for work.  I won’t even discuss what I find when I do an image search.

In other news, the Bad Astronomy Blogger put together some great example, with links, of instances where the Bush administration has undermined science and public safety for the sake of politics.  This is something that I feel just isn’t getting enough attention and in the long run may be as damaging to out country as the botched occupation of Iraq.

2 weeks ago Retired Major General John Batiste penned an editorial on Iraq and submitted it to both the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.  Gen. Batiste is the former commanding general of the 1st infantry division and led that division through the first several years of the war.  He would seem ideally suited to speak about our efforts in Iraq.  Neither the Washington Post nor the Wall Street Journal elected to publish his words. 

So yesterday his editorial was posted in Think Progress.  Here are some of the highlights:

Read More…

Yesterday I posted about Pat Schroeder, the moron who decided to go public with her views that all conservatives are idiots.  Today I’m going to post about someone else who advances the theme that all conservatives are idiots.  He does it far more successfully because he himself is a conservative.

I first came across the following opus from Philip Atkinson via a link in a comment thread of Balloon Juice (sorry cant find it) and dismissed it as satire.  After all no one could possibly be advocating what he is advocating.  Upon further review, it looks like Mr. Atkinson’s writing was sincere after all.  It was penned for a group called Family Security Matters, which appears to be a holding tank for meatheads on the right. 

They’ve been busy scrubbing their articles in the time since this was printed and it’s disappeared from the google cache.  Fortunately Digby saved it for posterity sake.  So please take a minute to read it there or you can read it below, where I’ve reposted it.  While you’re reading, in addition to the many questions that should come to mind, I’d like you to ask yourself the following:  Why the hell would any American want to live in Iraq after we nuke it?  If Bush is Caesar then who gets to be Brutus?  Does this make Jeb Bush Octavian or Jenna Bush?  Anyway, give it a read.

Read More…

Pat Schroeder is the President of the American Association of Publishers.  One would think, that one of her primary jobs is to encourage reading amongst all Americans.  More reading, more books sold, more money for publishers, it’s not a complicated formula.  Sadly this formula is beyond the grasp of Ms. Schroeder, who said the following in response to the news that Liberals read more books on average than Conservatives.

“The Karl Roves of the world have built a generation that just wants a couple slogans: ‘No, don’t raise my taxes, no new taxes,’” Pat Schroeder, president of the American Association of Publishers, said in a recent interview. “It’s pretty hard to write a book saying, ‘No new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes’ on every page.”

She said liberals tend to be policy wonks who “can’t say anything in less than paragraphs. We really want the whole picture, want to peel the onion.”

Prior to her current job, Ms. Schroeder was a Colorado Democrat and one of Congress’ most liberal House members.  This quote would seem to indicate exactly why she is a FORMER member of the House of Representatives.  She is demonstrating exactly the same kind of thinking that she is accusing Republicans of and furthers the conservative narrative of Democrats as out of touch limousine liberals. 

Way to go Dumbass.  Not only does your quote not fly for your current job, it would have hurt you in your prior job. 

From CNNMoney:

179,599 foreclosure filings, which include default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions, were reported nationwide for a 9 percent rise over the previous month and a 93 percent jump compared with July, 2006.
This past winter, RealtyTrac had forecast a 33 percent increase in U.S. foreclosures for the year but now it’s raised its outlook. “It’s trending to close to 2 million now, 60 percent more than last year,” said Rick Sharga, RealtyTrac’s vice president for marketing.

Moody’s Economy.com is even more pessimistic with its forecast of some 2.5 million defaults for the year.

Ignore this at your peril.  2 – 2.5 million people being foreclosed on is a lot of people.  Some of these foreclosures will no doubt be on investment properties but most will not.  Something tells me those people being foreclosed on aren’t going to be jamming the aisles come Christmas time, looking for the latest Tickle-Me-Elmo or Furbie. 

Read More…

Like many other birthday’s, I forgot to celebrate this blog’s birthday, August 16th.  On that day last year, I started writing here and I’ve been spewing loads of BS ever since.  Pay no attention to the fact that the archives stretch back to June of 2005.  Those posts were liberated from my old blog.  So what have I learned and accomplished in a year? 

I’ve added 203 different posts and received nearly 20K unique visitors.  Neither are very impressive when compared to the big, or even medium sized, fish in the blogging sea but I don’t care.  I started this site as a place to rant and it’s served that purpose admirably. 

I’ve learned that one way to generate a lot of hits is to make fun of peoples favorite song.

I’ve learned that sometimes people come to a blog looking to kill time.  Sometimes they come looking for someone new to read or for intelligent commentary.  And, sometimes people come looking for a picture of a microwave.

Anyway, it’s been a fun experiment.

It’s been an interesting news day today. 

There’s the report from the Center for American Progress which states that foreign policy experts feel that America is in greater danger, the surge is not succeeding, we’re losing the war on terror and the Bush Administration is now the 4th largest threat to National Security.  Kick ass news all around

In the New York Times there’s an interesting op-ed from some infantrymen and NCOs of the 82nd airborne division. 

As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day.

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.

Despite being a bunch of fucking traitors, their article is worth a read.

Joseph Lieberman offered his thoughts on Syria today in the Opinion Journal.  Apparently the US government needs to start putting together plans to fuck them up.  Also, Syria should consider closing their airports to bad guys out of the goodness of their hearts.  Remember as you read the piece (of crap), that Lieberman wholeheartedly supports Bush’s foreign policy which includes no negotiations whatsoever with Syria. 

Read More…

A couple of stories in economic news caught my attention this morning.

From The Raw Story:

Anxious customers of Countrywide Bank jammed its phone lines, branches and website after the nation’s largest mortgage lender — which owns the bank — announced it was facing problems from a credit meltdown…

“The rush to withdraw money — by depositors that included a former Los Angeles Kings star hockey player and an executive of a rival home-loan company — came a day after fears arose that Countrywide Financial could file for bankruptcy protection because of a worsening credit crunch stemming from the sub-prime mortgage meltdown,”

Of course Banks do fold and this scene alone isn’t all that Earth shattering.  However combined with this story in the New York Times on Wal-Mart and Home Depot, it paints a picture of sagging consumer confidence.

‘The two companies, the nation’s largest retailers and bellwethers for consumer spending, reported earnings disappointments for the second quarter and predicted an even bumpier year ahead…“It’s a red flag,” said Jay Bryson, global economist at Wachovia. “If consumer spending starts to weaken, the overall outlook for economic growth will diminish.’

This could just represent a hiccup in the economy.  It could just reflect the isolated problems of one bank and two retailers.  However, I’m concerned that it’s more than that.  Wages have been largely stagnant over the past 5 - 6 years.  However, the housing market was booming, allowing homeowners to cash in on the growing equity in their homes.  The housing boom was in part fueled by questionable lending practices by sub-prime lenders.  Now those lenders are folding.

My concern has been, what’s to stop that credit crunch from jumping to consumer lending i.e. credit cards?  You have the same questionable lending practices but on a larger scale.  I assumed it was a matter of time and Wal-Mart’s recent results would seem to confirm that.  That the nations largest retailer, which caters to people in the middle and lower income brackets, can talk about being impacted by the paycheck cycle is at least cause for concern.  I’m not panicing (or shortselling) yet but I’ll most definitely be watching for the next batch of earnings announcements from major retailers.

Hat Tip to Done With Mirrors

I’m doing it for me.

 This too

From today’s Wall Street Journal:

“The Wall Street Journal has identified 34 New Orleans homes whose owners have faced foreclosure suits from subprime-lending units of Fortress Investment Group LLC. Mr. Edwards has about $16 million invested in Fortress funds, according to a campaign aide who confirmed a more general Federal Election Commission report. Mr. Edwards worked for Fortress, a publicly held private-equity fund, from late 2005 through 2006.”

In general, I don’t believe in harassing people, even politicians, about the misdeeds of every single company in their portfolio.  A balanced portfolio will include a lot of companies.  Inevitably, some of them will turn out to be crooked.  That said, $16 million is a lot of money and he worked for this company.

“At the time in late 2005 when Mr. Edwards went to work for Fortress, it already had a stake in one subprime lender that subsequently foreclosed on some Katrina victims, Green Tree Servicing LLC. While he was there, Fortress acquired a second, Nationstar Mortgage LLC. Fortress paid Mr. Edwards $479,512 in 2006 for part-time work, a Federal Election Commission report in May showed.

After leaving the firm, he kept about half of his net worth in Fortress funds. And Fortress employees have collectively made up the largest class of political contributors to Mr. Edwards. Workers there put up more than $150,000 toward his presidential run in the first six months of the year.”

Some distinction should be made here between Fortress Investment Group, which is an investment vehicle, and the mortgage companies in question.  Even when John Edwards was doing work for Fortress (lobbying?) he wouldn’t have any input in their investment decisions.  There’s nothing criminal going on here, just a whole lot of stupid.

Why is it stupid?  John Edwards has been pushing the whole “2 Americas” idea in his campaign.  As part of that theme he has been making a big deal of mortgage companies foreclosing on people in distress.  To take that stance while being unaware of where his money is being parked is just dumb.  It makes him look unserious and conjures up images of the Limousine Liberal.