It seemed to me that driver impatience was at an all time high, with some people honking their horns the instant a traffic light changed to green and others taking risks passing other motorists they thought were going too slow, too slow being defined as only going 10 mph above the speed limit rather than 15.
These folks have got to get a grip.
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BeezleBub started school this past Thursday and he was glad of it. School means he gets to sleep in until 6AM rather than the usual 5AM when he's working on the farm. He's also putting in a few hours after school, but with the caveat that if his grades suffer he has to dial back the number of hours he puts in during the school week.***********
Is it that the White House it totally clueless and really doesn't get what's going on? I'd have to say yes.After their attempt to upstage the GOP debate with a speech to a joint session of Congress fell flat on its face, the spin doctors went to work and failed again. It didn't help things that Obama's “peeved foot stamping” made him look like an immature child who wasn't getting his way. He still hasn't figured out that his position does not make him a monarch that can rule by fiat and that, in the end, he has to answer to the people, be it directly or through Congress.
Michael Barone has his own take on the fiasco and Obama's repeated protocol 'mistakes'.
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Bill Whittle has new Afterburner covering the differences between beliefs and truths, how they apply to Progressives and everyone else, and how ideology cannot change the truth, only co-opt it.***********
Bogie covers the aftermath of Irene in her part of New Hampshire, including links to several videos.The WP Family has been anxiously awaiting word from friends down on the Connecticut coast line, particularly from the neighborhood where the former Official Weekend Pundit Family Long Island Sound Beach House is located. Checking out the Facebook page for that town shows damage was extensive along the shoreline and power outages were widespread. A lot of places I remember are no more or heavily damaged.
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It figures.BeezleBub and I had taken the air conditioners out last weekend as part of our preparations for Irene. After the storm passed it looked like we weren't going to need them again so we didn't put them back in. Now here we are, Labor Day Weekend, and we have temps in upper 80's with dew points in the 70's forecast for today.
So we had to put back the “big iron” A/C unit into one of the windows on the first floor to keep the interior of The Manse reasonably comfortable. BeezleBub put the unit in his bedroom back in yesterday.
I think today's weather also is a good excuse for me to head to the town beach for a swim.
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I have to agree with Scary Yankee Chick on this one: One of the dumbest ideas ever.While places that are far more tolerant of this would still get you looked at, in places where the people (and the cops) don't have much of a sense of humor (mostly blue states/cities) it's likely to get you pushed face down on the hood of a police car, handcuffed, and thrown into jail.
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Eric the Viking is right on this one: There is no plan. It looks like the President is going to vote “present”...again.Big surprise.
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When I read this in one of our local papers, I thought it must have been a joke. Turns out I was wrong.The Feds are going to sue a number of big banks for the housing bubble debacle.
At first glance this seems to be something that isn't unreasonable until you realize those same banks were caught in a Catch-22 situation.
Under the Community Reinvestment Act and follow-on lawsuits (one of them by then community organizer Barack Obama), banks were forced to give mortgages to those not really qualified to receive them. The banks did what they normally do with mortgages, bundle them and sell them, either as mortgage backed securities or other investment vehicles. The fact that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the biggest guarantors of them is not the banks' fault. They were doing what they were ordered to do.
When the housing market collapsed, and with them the MBS's, it was somehow the fault of those very same banks? Talk about a no-win situation.
One must also remember it wasn't just banks issuing mortgages, but mortgage brokers. How many of them ended up fudging income numbers and playing with financial statements to make it seem that wholly unqualified people ended up with mortgages they couldn't pay? It seems no one wants to address that issue.
If we need an example of how banks should have been allowed to handle mortgages all we need to do is look back at this post I made back in April 2009, where a bank was being punished by the Feds for only giving loans to those who could actually pay them back. If more banks had been allowed to do likewise, I doubt we would have even had a housing bubble and the following collapse.
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By way of Maggie's Farm comes this list by Ace of Spades of why California is doomed.A Requiem for CaliforniaLike I said, doomed.
On it's way to being the most perfected yet bankrupt and unlivable state in the nation.
CA Legislature Passes The Dream Act. Now illegal aliens get in-state tuition and financial aid.
CA Assembly Trying To Kill Parents' “Date Night”. So you'll need a babysitter AND a backup babysitter.
CA Law To Require Hotels To Use Fitted Sheets, Long Handled Mops. (I've got nothing to add to this – ed.)
New CA Law Would Ban Styrofoam From The State. (Again, I've got nothing to add to this – ed.)
A Final Word from VDH: Strangers In A Familiar Land. ...A contemporary culture that cannot finish a forty-year-old planned three-lane freeway from Sacramento to Bakersfield has no business borrowing tens of billions to attempt a new high-speed rail corridor.
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From the same Ace of Spades post comes this list of five laws Texas Governor Rick Perry has signed into law.1. It will be legal in Texas to shoot feral hogs from helicopters.Isn't the dichotomy interesting?
2. The government will no longer fine you for catching fish with your hands.
3. It's OK to bring your gun to work.
4. I can drive 85.
5. Want to have a beer and see a naked lady? Pay the government five bucks.
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Let's add more fuel to the fire, shall we?A voter initiative in California called the “Foreclosure Modification Act” has been approved by the California Attorney General, allowing the petitioners to start gathering the 800,000 voter signatures they need to get the initiative on the 2012 ballot.
This initiative would make home ownership a fundamental right, prohibit lenders from foreclosing on any Californian's personal home, require lenders to 'assist' borrowers not making payments, automatically reduce mortgage principal and interest on properties whose value decline, refinance at minimal cost on demand, and force local municipalities to provide back property tax assistance to homeowners.
I have a feeling the morons who put this initiative together have no understanding of the consequences should it pass. The first thing that comes to mind: Lenders would stop lending. As Charlie wrote in his post:
What lender would ever agree to loan a homeowner in California money to buy a home, if it’s quite likely that the loan amount could be reduced through no fault of their own? What interest rate do you suppose a lender would have to charge to make up for the potential to have their assets reduced in value by a third party? With the ability to foreclose taken away, why would any home owner pay any of their loan back? This is so stuck on stupid, that it just might pass.And if it looks like it will pass, I'd expect banks to start foreclosures immediately and stop working with borrowers trying to refinance. I'd also expect an exodus of banks from California to safer economic climes, like Texas.
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Spoken like the truly economically clueless Leftist mobster she is:Maxine Waters advocates taxing banks out of business.
Apparently she thinks banks are in business for her and her fellow Leftists' convenience. Never mind that they have to at least break even to stay in business. What' she's advocating will only ensure a repeat of the banking meltdown her friend Barney Frank helped create, only it would be worse this time.
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Do we need any more examples of what kind of people a lot of the public sector union people are showing themselves to be? As Brother Bob Smith, director of Messmer Prep School said about the union protesters, “Stop acting like children.”The unions don't like Messmer Prep School because it's not a public, i.e, union school, and it's quite successful. 85% of the students go on to college. And from what I've seen in the video, most of the students are black.
As one commenter stated:
This video is prime example of why I loathe teacher's unions. I guess they would prefer black kids go to shitty schools in the ghetto and not learn a damn thing so they can be dependent on welfare their whole lives just to preserve the interests of the union.Indeed.
(H/T Maggie's Farm)
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Even some of Obama's staunchest supporters in the media are abandoning him, Maureen Dowd being one of them, wondering whether his presidency will be a Carteresque One and Done. She no longer has any illusions about Obama, particularly about his speeches.Obama is still suffering from the Speech Illusion, the idea that he can come down from the mountain, read from a Teleprompter, cast a magic spell with his words and climb back up the mountain, while we scurry around and do what he proclaimed.The One Term Wonder, indeed.
The days of spinning illusions in a Greek temple in a football stadium are done. The One is dancing on the edge of one term.