February 2012
Jeff Miller asked for my thoughts on a Glenn...
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The tortoise, the hare, and Mitt Romney
Mitt Romney’s victory in the Republican nomination contest is about as inevitable as the tortoise’s victory in his race with the hare. Specifically, it wouldn’t be inevitable if his opponents weren’t utter screw-ups.
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Santorum wins keep the Republican Circular Firing...
This is just fantastic.
Science and individualism
Testing a theory scientifically requires gathering as many data points as possible. While any one point may be an outlier or an error, a robust collection of data has enormous predictive power. We base theories on data, not on anecdotes.
This is why I’m very skeptical if any political theory centered around individualism or individual rights. Both of those are fine things—but they...
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Slot machines are depressing
You can sit down and plug quarters into a box for an hour or an evening. Lights blink and some corny animation does its best to distract you from the reality that the game is rigged, that the machine will always catch you in the end. You know this, of course—though maybe you hope that tonight one miserable quarter will change everything. And maybe you can cash out your miserable life for a...
dwineman asked: There's a 2009 law (Pub.L. 111-22, Helping Families Save Their Homes Act, sec. 404; I'd link but Tumblr won't let me) that requires mortgage servicers to notify the borrower when a mortgage is transferred. Doesn't that solve the problem of getting a foreclosure notice out of the blue from someone you've never heard of?
The New York Attorney General is suing over MERS →
thecallus:
squashed:
This is exciting and very relevant to what I do. But … I guess it’s pretty boring to everybody else.
This lawsuit might as well be a one-act play entitled “Why Barney Frank Is Retiring”. Alternate titles include “Why Chris Dodd and Barney Frank Should Never Have Been Trusted With FinReg” and “Because County Registrars Have THEIR Shit Together?”
I wonder how much money...
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The New York Attorney General is suing over MERS →
This is exciting and very relevant to what I do. But … I guess it’s pretty boring to everybody else.
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On poverty: Wrapping it up
Alsson seems to have come around—at least partially—on systemic poverty. For those interested, his full post his here. Alsson quibbles with my characterization of poverty as a social disease—and insists that poverty is “an economic condition, period.” Nevertheless, he seems to acknowledge that poverty is a condition that extends beyond an individual’s financial...
No, seriously, poverty is about more than just a...
Alsson responded to my previous post on poverty and its systemic causes. While I appreicate Alsson’s willingness to dialog, I’m not sure he’s spent enough time grappling with poverty issues to really understand the scope and causes of the problem.
I see where you’re coming from — poverty as “social disease.” I disagree.
I’m poor if, because of a lack of money, I can’t...
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Poverty (and the systemic causes thereof)
Poverty is the sustained inability to meet basic needs or participate meaningfully in mainstream society due to a lack of money, a lack of social power, or both.1 Poverty is a social disease. It afflicts communities. It afflicts families. It can afflict individuals.
Like cancer, it is near-impossible to trace all of poverty’s various causes. But, like cancer, we’ve got some pretty...
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Truth be told, I don't care for Romney
Alsson disapproved of my commentary on Mitt Romney’s comments about how he disapproved of the very poor.. He writes:
You don’t like Romney. You don’t like Republicans. That’s where you begin, and that’s why your point is so poorly made.
You’re certainly right that I don’t like Romney. And I don’t like the way the Republican party has manifested itself...
Gingrich/Trump 2012?
Donald Trump is America’s gift to performance art. It would be like those nice gay penguins got back together for a reunion tour.
Is the prospect of a Gingrich/Trump ticket as hilarious as I think it is, or do I just need to get some sleep?
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“I’m in this race because I care about Americans. I’m not concerned about the...”
– Mitt Romney The full quote, for context:
I’m in this race because I care about Americans. I’m not concerned about the very poor — we have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich — they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of...
January 2012
“Fraud related to the mortgage market crash occurred at each end. The two ends...”
– US Politics | AMERICAblog News: Taibbi on Schneiderman’s task force—plus a primer on mortgage fraud (via robot-heart-politics)
There was also fraud in the middle—where unscrupulous mortgage brokers made false representations to both their borrower-clients and to the lenders. And where the...
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It looks like Romney will romp to victory in...
While Gingrich had an early lead, Romney’s ad blitz seems to have taken a toll. Gingrich responds to negative ads about as well as vampires respond to sunlight. And Florida is pretty fertile ground both for displaced Northeastern Republicans and people who are old enough to remember why they dislike Gingrich.
But Newt still has one thing going for him. He has a (slim) national lead. And,...
I have a home internet connection now.
After a week and a half without it, it’s like a great void is filled. Except … now I don’t know what to do with myself. Except go on the internet to announce that I have an internet connection. And press refresh on a variety of pages, just in case anything has happened in the last five minutes.
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So I've been reading the National Review ...
If it’s showing up anyway, I might as well read it.
The National Review makes the Democrat look like Gingrich Fanboys. They absolutely eviscerate Gingrich. It’s pretty hilarious.
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RNC Research: Three Years As President And It... →
Today, President Obama Will Travel To Michigan To Announce A Plan Focusing On The Costs Of Higher Education.
Hey Republican National Committee. It’s me again. Because I’ve long bemoaned Tumblr’s failure to harbor a decent crop of conservatives. I have such high hopes … but this last post was a bit discouraging.
Here’s what I gathered from the post.
College...
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If you *had* to choose one of the (major)...
Paul? Romney? Santorum? Gingrich? (Assume whomever you choose wins the general.)
And why?
“[T]he only way out of … deadlock is an electoral rout of the GOP, since...”
– Andrew Sullivan
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RNC Research: SOTU Just More Words: Wall Street →
rncresearch:
Obama said he would not go back to the days when Wall Street was allowed to play by its own set of rules or allow financial institutions to make risky bets with customers’ deposits… unless they happen to be your “Wall Street guy” who bundled over $500,000 for your campaign.
Hey Republican National Committee! It’s nice to know that you’re giving the whole Tumblr...
"Ron Paul won't actually be able to do all the...
According to some Paul supporters, this is actually a reason to support Paul. Yeah, some of his idea are out there … but it’s not like he could ever make them reality. So what’s the harm.
The harm is that the President gets to make an awful lot of agency appointments. Who would Paul pick for Secretary of State? Who would he put in charge of the critically important Department...
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A 14% tax rate?
I’m not going to ask Mitt Romney to “apologize for his success.” But … I might ask him to act a little sheepish about his remarkably low tax-rate.
Guys like Mitt Romney are the guys who leave dinner early, leave enough cash to cover their tab, but skimp on the tip. It’s legal. But it’s not something to be proud of.
So...
Iowa: Santorum New Hampshire: Romney South Carolina: Gingrich
This sort of thing makes me so happy.
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"Some people shouldn't own houses"
This is one of the greatest lies to come out of the foreclosure crisis. It claims not only that under some circumstances homeownership doesn’t make sense,1 but that a certain class of person is somehow unfit for homeownership. Bipartisan efforts to push broader homeownership—and the stabalization of neighborhoods that comes with it—now face bipartisan ridicule.2
The problem is...
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Dumb Metaphor Friday: "Growing the pie"
The conservative criticism of redistribution is a claim that conservatives would rather expand the (economic) pie than ensure that it is divided evenly among everybody. The theory is that everybody then even the guy destined to have a smaller piece comes out ahead, even if the pieces aren’t the same size. This argument is apparently very persuasive to people who think pies expand (perhaps...
“If the court makes a fundamentally wrong decision, the president can in fact...”
– Newt Gingrich
False. And stupid. And slightly scary.
(via greaterthanlapsed)
Andrew Jackson took this approach—so it’s been tried. It resulted in the Trail of Tears.
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“The rushed and arbitrary deadline insisted on by Congressional Republicans...”
– Barack Obama, nailing shut the coffin of the Keystone XL pipeline.
“If I sound biased, that’s because I am. Biased toward the actual record, not the...”
– Andrew Sullivan (via prettayprettaygood)
baileyeverywhere asked: I agree with you re: communication and middle ground, but I'd also like to point out the Friendzone Fiona meme as one indication of the really damaging conversation around this topic and a reason why many woman are more up in arms than seems immediately sensible/necessary,
On the "friendzone"
golden-notebook:
I know it’s been said a million times, but if you’re giving all your ~* friendship *~ to women in expectation of some tail, maybe you should make it clear, with more than puppy dog looks and some Ben & Jerry’s, that you’re down to fuck. Because women aren’t fucking mind readers. If a guy never in our entire friendship expresses a desire to see my bathing suit areas, then I...
Companies say qualified workers aren't out there... →
Laura Clawson at Daily Kos, as reblogged by cartonplanet, writes about how a smaller percentage of working-age men are working today than in past decades and how mens wages are down across a variety of demographics. Clawson concludes,
If it’s a skills gap, wouldn’t we expect to see some group of people doing better, in the aggregate, than in the past?
Um … Clawson? Women are people...
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Political donations and political influence
Lazy political commentators tend to write stories that go something like this:
Politician A received more money from Company B than any other source.
Politician A supported legislation that helps Company B in some way.
Ergo Politician A is in the pocket of Company B.
There are a few problems. The first problem is that the money generally came from employees of Company B. When Mitt Romney...
zombiecuddle asked: Just FYI you are my favorite right-wing tumblr.
sh33pdog asked: Hey you seem to be right what I was looking for on tumblr for my conservative politics fix, Im kind of new to tumblr so I was wondering if you knew of any right handed politics pages from Canada/ about Canada. - Thanks
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The Republican Primary is a long way from over
If Mitt Romney manages to convincingly win the South Carolina Primary, he’s pretty well wrapped up the nomination. Florida should be friendlier territory for Romney. And after four consecutive losses, the other candidates (excluding Ron Paul) will have to see the writing on the wall.
The latest poll gives Romney a slight lead in South Carolina over Gingrich. But … there’s a lot...
Lost in a cluttered dashboard:
A while back, an image floated across my dashboard. I think it was an ad for a church in Boston that had words in the background along the lines of “genderqueer,” “questioning,” “LGBT,” “transgender,” and so on. The text in the front said, “Jesus welcomed everybody. So do we.”
At the time, I thought it was remarkably clever and thought,...
craigslist, Comcast, and Capitalism
I’m moving—which means I’m doing a bit more buying and selling than usual. Some of this involves selling large objects on craigslist. Like most craigslist transactions, it’s pretty straightforward. Something is listed at a price. Maybe some negotiation occurs. Sale commences or doesn’t. Everybody is happy and nobody is cheated.1
I’m also doing things like...
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Is The Obama Admin Trying To Box In Scalia On The... →
mohandasgandhi:
In its amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court Friday, the Justice Department cited no fewer than 10 times the 2005 Gonzalez v. Raich case, in which Scalia (and Justice Anthony Kennedy) broke with the court’s conservative wing to hand down what scholars viewed as one of the broadest declarations of federal power under the Commerce Clause: a 6-3 ruling decreeing that Congress...
Is Mitt Romney unstoppable?
politico:
With Mitt Romney winning the NH Primary, David Mark asks in the Arena: How much closer does this bring Romney to being the Republican nominee? Can any of his rivals realistically stop him in South Carolina, Florida or beyond? And which of them is the most likely to drop out?
Share your thoughts, Tumblr.
Romney’s candidacy has inspired the level of enthusiastic support usually...