Search






Jeff's Amazon.com Wish List

Archive Calendar

November 2024
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
252627282930  

Archives

Latest "White House Insider" piece is out

Is it me, or does the dude sound a bit Carville-esque, as presented.

Anyway, for what it’s worth. A teaser:

Barack Obama ain’t ever learned that lesson. He’s been told since day one – been told life owes him something. Been told he’s special. Been told America is all wrong, that it needs to be changed up. Not just improved – hell, I would be the first to say it could be improved. No, Obama’s been told it needs to be…what did his wife say? America needs to be transformed? Right? Something like that? He never had to work to be where he is. Never had to…his grandparents spoiled the sh-t out of him. Colleges spoiled the sh-t out of him. Such a bright young man, right? What did Biden say about that? He speaks well and is “clean”? Jes-s H. Chr-st. That’s been Obama’s M.O. his whole life! The well spoken Black guy. Tellin’ him he’s smart. He deserves success. Jarrett sniffs his potential and gives him opportunity – just hands it to him. Those Chicago people, they mark him as their guy. More is given to him. A house. A campaign. The guy was fast-tracked all the way. Jack Kennedy was given a sh-tload of privilege but he also got his back broke up to sh-t in WWII. He at least knew something about sacrifice. Not Obama. Not ever. What has he sacrificed? Nothing. He’s been told what to think, what to say – and that is what is happening in the White House. Since day one. When the campaign ended in 2008 – anyone paying attention, anyone around the administration began to realize the guy can’t function without being told what to think and what to say. And as long as what is being told to him is that he is great…that this country f-cking owes him something…he’s ok with…he’s ok with it.

If it’s fiction, it’s compelling fiction.

Because it’s hard not to notice that the “insider” reinforces much of what many of us believe we see in Obama. Which makes me nervous.

— Though it’s also quite possible Obama is exactly what we’ve always thought he is — and that there really isn’t anymore there there than, well, that’s actually there.

In which case, life really does perhaps imitate art — or else what we’re getting from “Ulsterman” is the real deal.

141 Replies to “Latest "White House Insider" piece is out”

  1. Pablo says:

    The tone is off as compared to the previous stuff. Like the subject is drunk, perhaps.

    Maybe Ayers wrote this one. Whatever it is, it’s compelling indeed, especially as much of it has been confirmed elsewhere.

  2. Ernst Schreiber says:

    The tone is off as compared to the previous stuff.

    I noticed that too. Less Hal Holbrooke, more vulgar Mark Shields.

  3. Squid says:

    Some days, I think the only prayer we have for saving our Republic is for the Chicago machine and the Beltway machine to weaken each other enough that we Teatards can get the upper hand for a while. We for damn sure need to encourage such struggles on their side.

  4. Pablo says:

    Two links. You can decide whether they’re related.

  5. Golem14 says:

    “Insider”‘s half of the dialogue always gives me this mental image of Teddy Salad from Monty Python— like a Brit’s idea of the way Americans talk. The real tipoff would be if he said “goddam” all the time (with the emphasis on the first syllable, although that wouldn’t show up in print). I dunno if he represents a real person or is a composite, but I think he’s being heavily paraphrased.

  6. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I think he’s being heavily imagined myself.

  7. dicentra says:

    “Insider” doesn’t have to name names, but he could at least indicated what types of “investors” we got here: unions? Soros? What?

  8. Golem14 says:

    “Gimme anotha meatball an’ I’ll tell ya!”

  9. It’s not James Carville, it’s David Frum.

    I keed, I keed.

  10. happyfeet says:

    one thing for sure is someone has told Obama to lay low for awhile and to not be in everyone’s faces for now… Obama fatigue is very real i think even if the media disallows the phrase

  11. Ouroboros says:

    “If I answer that question you keep asking. If I give you the name of the big enchilada, then its bon voyage, Deano. Like a bullet in my head, you dig? You’re a mouse fighting a gorilla. Kennedys as dead as that crab meat, the governments alive and breathing.”

    It’s Dean Andrews, I tell you…

  12. Maybe it’s Bob Woodward channeling the ghost of Bob Casey, or something like that.

  13. dicentra says:

    OK, this thing Newt said bugs me because I don’t know if it’s true:

    To take a position that we won’t help you with insulin but we’ll pay for your kidney dialysis is both bad on a human level and bad on financial level. Kidney dialysis is one of the fastest growing centers of cost and we spend almost as much annually on kidney dialysis as the entire National Institute of Health research budget, about $27 billion a year right now. If we say to you we’re going to pay for open heart surgery but we won’t pay for Lipitor so you can avoid open heart surgery, it’s both bad (inaudible) but it’s also just bad financially.

    Is it a fact that people fail to take Lipitor because it’s not subsidized? Can you show that those people are at a substantially higher risk of being operated on? Now that Medicare D is in place, have any savings on the “big” things been shown because of spendings on the little things?

    Also, he’s saying that there’s something bad “on the human level” with paying for dialysis but not insulin. As if it were the job of the gubmint to be humane rather than, oh, I don’t know, just? Prudent?

    And then this:

    Well, it depends on what you’re subsidizing. The idea of having economic incentives for manufacturing goes back to Alexander Hamilton’s first report of manufacturing which I believe was 1791.

    Nice jab at Glenn’s brand-name, Newt. But merely citing Hamilton justifies action now? Why? You can find plenty of bad ideas in play during the Constitutional convention and afterwards. Being a history buff doesn’t spare you having to justify an idea.

    We have always had a bias in favor of investing in the future. We built the transcontinental railroads that way. The Erie Canal was built that way. We’ve always believed that having a strong infrastructure and having a strong energy system are net advantages because they’ve made us richer and more powerful than any country in the world. But what I object to is subsidizing things that don’t work and things that aren’t creating a better future. And the problem with the modern welfare state is it actually encourages people to the wrong behaviors, encourages them not to work, encourages them not to study.

    Nifty shift from “yes, I do believe in picking winners and losers even though I don’t want to admit it” to “Look! Welfare Slackers!” Oh, he’s a rhetorically slick one, he is. No wonder he’s been fooling so many people: he hides his big-gubmint assumptions in “conservative” language so well that Obama’s handlers must be kicking themselves they didn’t hire Newt.

  14. happyfeet says:

    he’s still better than Obama or Romney I think

    but he needs to tell us what he wants to do as president and stop yammering about Alexander Hamilton’s stupid manufacturing reports

  15. newrouter says:

    We have always had a bias in favor of investing in the future. We built the transcontinental railroads that way

    crédit mobilier spits the ghost of james j. hill

  16. geoffb says:

    Hill was different.

    How to Build a Railroad

    Most business historians have assumed that the transcontinental railroads would never have been built without government subsidies. The free market would have failed to provide the adequate capital, or so the theory asserts. The evidence for this theory is that the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads, which were completed in the years after the War Between the States, received per-mile subsidies from the federal government in the form of low-interest loans as well as massive land grants. But there need not be cause and effect here: the subsidies were not needed to cause the transcontinental railroads to be built. We know this because, just as many roads and canals were privately financed in the early nineteenth century, a market entrepreneur built his own transcontinental railroad. James J. Hill built the Great Northern Railroad “without any government aid, even the right of way, through hundreds of miles of public lands, being paid for in cash,” as Hill himself stated.[2]

    Quite naturally, Hill strongly opposed government favors to his competitors: “The government should not furnish capital to these companies, in addition to their enormous land subsidies, to enable them to conduct their business in competition with enterprises that have received no aid from the public treasury,” he wrote.[3] This may sound quaint by today’s standards, but it was still a hotly debated issue in the late nineteenth century.

    James J. Hill was hardly a “baron” or aristocrat. His father died when he was fourteen, so he dropped out of school to work in a grocery store for four dollars a month to help support his widowed mother. As a young adult he worked in the farming, shipping, steamship, fur-trading, and railroad industries. He learned the ways of business in these settings, saved his money, and eventually became an investor and manager of his own enterprises.[4] (It was much easier to accomplish such things in the days before income taxation.)

  17. bergerbilder says:

    You-you-you… learn that life ain’t always gonna cut your way. You can lose. And it hurts – fu–ing literally hurts. That’s life. Life don’t owe you nothin’ and sometimes it might just kick your ass in the dirt.
    Barack Obama ain’t ever learned that lesson.

    I’ve been blessed with the task of raising 7 teenagers. As I’ve told my wife (who agrees!), Obama is just a spoiled teenager who never had to grow up.

  18. bergerbilder says:

    Oh, I don’t know if it has been discussed here before, but I find the hew AMC series “Hell on Wheels” pretty interesting so far (about 4 episodes in). If you’re not familiar with it, the backdrop is the building of the Union Pacific railroad. The protagonist is an ex-rebel slaveholder looking vengeance upon them what kilt and sullied his wife.

  19. happyfeet says:

    god bless you

    that is many

  20. happyfeet says:

    Hell on Wheels had very very bad and enigmatic marketing during the walking dead – i remember we all puzzled over it… but mostly we were kinda inclined to give it a shot

  21. happyfeet says:

    but I don’t think any of us ever did

  22. leigh says:

    The protagonist is an ex-rebel slaveholder looking vengeance upon them what kilt and sullied his wife.

    That has the makings of a country song.

    And, bless your heart! That is a lot of young’uns.

  23. newrouter says:

    newt on greta

    “it is a badge of honor to be attacked by pelosi”

  24. happyfeet says:

    that’s lowering the badge of honor bar quite a bit

  25. bergerbilder says:

    Thanks. Not a task we necessarily sought, but accepted and executed nonetheless. Our lives are richer, if not our savings.

  26. happyfeet says:

    all of england is but a filty anti-human socialist pissoir and those kids were right to try and burn it down I think

    their most notable export being candids of pippa middleton’s whore ass

    this in response to some tripe by one Theodore Dalrymple I found at that Hot Air place

  27. happyfeet says:

    speaking of… where is the good Mr. Whistle?

    he seemed kind of offended at one point by my sympathy with the rioters there

    This is one of those agree to disagree matters I think.

  28. newrouter says:

    nah getting hit by a cum slut hoochie is a plus. go big italian tits.

  29. happyfeet says:

    you really just need one of the seven to hit it big Mr. bilder

    not the worst odds, really

  30. newrouter says:

    “If you’re not familiar with it, the backdrop is the building of the Union Pacific railroad. The protagonist is an ex-rebel slaveholder looking vengeance upon them what kilt and sullied his wife.”

    yea don’t looked too deeply into gov’t scandal credit moblier. we need more solyndra

  31. Ernst Schreiber says:

    some tripe by one Theodore Dalrymple

    Fucking idiot

  32. happyfeet says:

    I’ll pause here while you fetch Mr. Dalrymple’s slippers

    and do be a love and grab the brandy snifter on your way back

  33. happyfeet says:

    *snifters* I mean

    and also DO please ask the help if they fancy the hearing of a bit of Kipling

    Mr. Dalrymple is in something of a mood tonight

  34. bergerbilder says:

    One graduated in 2010 with a BS in chem engineering. It took him over a year to find a full time job. You keep hearing that there are plenty of jobs in this economy for people with skills. Just more MSM bullshit to help prop up SCOAMF.

    (BTW, we are very proud of him. He overcame a lot of hurdles.)

  35. newrouter says:

    “Mr. Dalrymple”

    dealt with crazy folks no?

  36. newrouter says:

    “One graduated in 2010 with a BS in chem engineering. It took him over a year to find a full time job”

    i feel your pain – bill clinton

  37. happyfeet says:

    my guess is if he’d been willing to go overseas he would have found work straightaway… but some things are worth waiting for

  38. leigh says:

    Dalrymple is a psychiatrist who is now retired, but worked in the prison system for many years. He has some good insights about the yobs across the pond.

    Dalrymple is a pseudonym, but I’m too lazy to google it. Andrew or Anthony something.

  39. happyfeet says:

    but congratulations all the same … my parents can claim no such achievement

  40. newrouter says:

    “that there are plenty of jobs in this economy for people with skills.”

    a bullshit in science ain’t “skills”

  41. newrouter says:

    “a bullshit in science ain’t “skills””

    try to build something with a chem e degree?

  42. happyfeet says:

    The good Mr. Dalrymple is maundering on about the riots many many moons after the fact… riots that were as righteous as any riots you’re ever likely come across whilst the planning of a Royal Wedding is afoot

    I say

  43. happyfeet says:

    Mr. newrouter I believe the good Mr. Schreiber retrieved an extra snifter…

    do please join us

  44. leigh says:

    He’s old. I cut him some slack.

    It’s like your grandpa telling you about his adventures as a Fuller Brush man back in the day.

  45. Pablo says:

    LA is about due for a nice, righteous riot. Been nearly 20 years now.

  46. dicentra says:

    I hope you all enjoy Mark Steyn’s 1998 encomium to Newt Gingrich as much as I did.

    The collected brainstorms of Newt sound like a cross between T.E. Lawrence and the numerologically obsessed Fruit of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan who claims that once a month he’s taken up into a spacecraft floating above earth to commune with the spirits of deceased African-Americans. Aside from his ‘Five Pillars’, Newt had the ‘Four Great Truths’, the ‘Nine Zones of Creativity’, the ‘Fourteen Steps to RAC’ (see Renewing American Civilisation above), the Four Can’ts, the Five Cs, the Four Tops, the Jackson Five, the McGuire Sisters, and on and on.

    The Democrats demonised Newt as an extreme right-wing crazy. They were right – apart from the ‘extreme’ and ‘right-wing’, that is. Most of the above seem more like the burblings of a frustrated self-help guru than blueprints for conservative government. … After last week’s election, Republicans have now embarked on the time-honoured ritual … of bickering over whether they did badly because they were too extreme or because they were too moderate. In Newt’s case, the answer is both. He spent the last year pre-emptively surrendering on anything of legislative consequence, but then, feeling bad at having abandoned another two or three of his ‘Fourteen Steps to RAC’, he’d go on television and snarl at everybody in sight. In so doing, he betrayed Item No. 8 of his 1997 Movement Planning Proposal:

    ‘We are FOR rather than AGAINST.
    ‘We are Inclusive rather than Exclusive . . .

    For Republicans it was the worst of all worlds: a lily-livered ninny whom everyone thinks is a ferocious right-wing bastard.

  47. leigh says:

    That’s true, Pablo. I wish I had pictures of the righteous Korean store owners on their rooftops with high-powered rifles. It was a thing of beauty.

  48. happyfeet says:

    nonono Ms. leigh…. that was back in the day… but if ever there were a place where riots are passe it’s the ever so charming union whore Villaraigosa’s LA

    Nanny Bloomberg’s NY isn’t even ripe

    my best guess would be … keep your eye on Washington D.C.

    or maybe Portland, or Milwaukee

  49. happyfeet says:

    here’s a famous picture leigh I looked it up during the london kerfuffle what has the good Mr. Dalrymple in his cups

  50. happyfeet says:

    my good dicentra… Mr. Newt is the best Team R was able to do this cycle

    one mustn’t seek bitterness lest it find one, mustn’t one?

  51. bh says:

    Took a look at the Dalrymple piece. It was perhaps the least controversial conservative take on the riots imaginable.

    As for righteousness, it’s a quandary to me that civilized societies have long accepted shooting such practitioners of righteousness in a public street in the middle of the day.

    It’s a paradox, I guess.

  52. happyfeet says:

    that doesn’t mean one can’t root for them all the same

    *clink*

  53. Ernst Schreiber says:

    if he’d been willing to go overseas he would have found work straightaway

    He did. In Africa.

    Now you’re a fucking idiot with your thumb in your ass and a big grin to pass the time of day with.

  54. Pablo says:

    It would be rather sporting to root for them whilst dropping them.

  55. happyfeet says:

    ummm… Mr. Schreiber? I was talking there about a certain young chemical engineer who braved a relatively brief period of uncertain prospects… but it all turned out well enough in the end.

  56. happyfeet says:

    even when I’m walking on a wire

  57. Ernst Schreiber says:

    My turn to look stupid then.

  58. happyfeet says:

    oh… I put that link in a different thread I think

  59. happyfeet says:

    you don’t look stupid in the least Mr. Ernst

    it’s not as if this were a battle of wits

  60. happyfeet says:

    you’re ever likely *to* come across whilst the planning of a Royal Wedding is afoot I mean

  61. leigh says:

    There should be a point system, Pablo. Sort of like “Top Shot”. If you drop one in the act of, say, swinging a tire iron at your store front window and don’t break the window in the process of dropping them: Maximum points alloted.

  62. happyfeet says:

    doesn’t it rather depend on what it is one has displayed in the store front window in question?

    What if they’ve secreted Paula Abdul’s unwashed 1986 danskins behind yon window?

    Maximum points?

    Really?

    Really?

  63. leigh says:

    Jewelry, silly.

  64. happyfeet says:

    carry on then

  65. LBascom says:

    My God, it looks like a marshmallow Peeps delivery truck crashed here.

    I’ll check back tomorrow.

  66. serr8d says:

    Well, that was a provocative read. The Washington Insider fellow comes across sounding like an escapee from one of Alex Joneses lockers. I’m wondering if it all is but a loaded crap sandwich.

    But, playing along, a couple names perhaps behind the two-term Barack edifice would must be Soros and that Warren Buffet mental midget.

  67. serr8d says:

    Oh, here’s a quick and funny read from the Gutenberg; ‘feets, this is a story about an advertiser. I’ve heard you are a mogul at that sort of thing. )

    This ought to hook you…

    With one thing and another, the economy hadn’t been exactly in overdrive that year, and predictions for the Christmas season were gloomy. Early retail figures bore them out. Gift buying dribbled along feebly until Thanksgiving, despite brave speeches by the Administration. The holiday passed more in self-pity than in thankfulness among owners of gift-oriented businesses.

    Then, on Friday following Thanksgiving, the coffin ads struck.

  68. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Several points about that Dalrymple piece:

    Firstly, the Gini coefficient was cooked up by an Italian Fascist.

    Secondly

    The good Mr. Dalrymple is maundering on about the riots many many moons after the fact… riots that were as righteous as any riots you’re ever likely [to] come across whilst the planning of a Royal Wedding is afoot

    and

    that doesn’t mean one can’t root for them all the same

    *clink*

    strike me as very much as “foolish, or at least shallow, reflecting the typical materialistic assumptions of the intelligentsia.”

    Thirdly, the reason to take it seriously is that the London riots of this past August presage the #OWSie riots of July/August next. They’ll make a nice counter-point to Mitt’s acceptance speech at the GOP convention.

    Finally, it’s only a kerfuffle if it’s not your livelihood they’re burning.

  69. happyfeet says:

    no no no the ad-man amongst us is the goodly Mr. Froman

    Me I’m not at all up to the stress.

  70. happyfeet says:

    thanks for adding the [to] part it’s a graciousness that’s far too uncommon

  71. happyfeet says:

    and, no, the London riots do NOT presage that contrived Soros-funded “occupy” crap you sots across the pond reveled in so garishly

  72. happyfeet says:

    and what I heard is… one of the shops that burned… had in truth fashioned a gorgeous dress … a gorgeous dress precisely fitted for Pippa Middleton’s most gorgeous ass!

    oh the humanity

  73. sdferr says:

    One thing doesn’t ring right about the Dalrymple piece anyhow: those street punks are nothing like honest barbarians, who would sooner bury a small hatchet in the middle of the punks’ foreheads without so much as a word of explanation, than hold a pointless discussion with them. Barbarians tended to be efficient that way.

  74. happyfeet says:

    Barbarians have feeling you know. Bless their tiny chav hearts.

  75. happyfeet says:

    how did anyone think that rot was going to end I ask you

  76. Ernst Schreiber says:

    [T]he London riots do NOT presage that contrived Soros-funded “occupy” crap you sots across the pond reveled in so garishly

    The rioters and the social class to which they mainly belong … have genuine reason to feel aggrieved, but that reason is not one that they often cite. In the name of equality and redistributionism, the state has provided them with an expensive education that is nearly useless, thanks to the implementation of pedagogical theories from whose practical effects the better-off and better-educated parents are, to some extent, able to protect their children; entrapped them in de facto prisons; and driven up the cost of their labor so far by means of welfare subsidy that it is worth no one’s while to employ it. At the same time, their minds have been filled with notions of entitlement that can only breed resentment.

    That’s true of both the upper-middle/lower-upper class would-be distributers of public largesse and the lower class recipients of same.

    Who is it camped out there in Zuccotti Park again?

    And I’m in flyover country. But I can understand your confusion. Coast to coast or across the pond, it’s such a long flight, and there’s nothing to see looking out the window.

  77. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I suppose the difference sdferr is that only our modern rebarbarized barbarian feel the need to justify their looting. Natural barbarians simply take.

  78. happyfeet says:

    no… the londoner yoot were genuinely angry… the level of condescending paternalistic nanny bullshit they’ve endured is one the New World as yet aspires to

    don’t you read those websites what end in .uk?

    it’s a screaming horror it is, what they’ve done to the notion of liberty

  79. leigh says:

    No TRVE Barbarian would feel the need to come up with a justifcation fo his barbarism.

  80. sdferr says:

    Is there any pudding the Brits don’t love?

    [These street punks do have at least one commonality with the Bar-bar-barbarians: neither speak Greek.]

  81. leigh says:

    The Brits do love their pudd and a nice joint for Sunday lunch. The meat kind not the herb.

  82. happyfeet says:

    it is pudding, after all

    nom nom nom

  83. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I concede that you have a point about the difference between ginned-up anger and genuine anger. At the same time however, note that these people didn’t march on council offices and burn them down.

    We’re in for a long hot summer, and it won’t be because of the Climatic Research Unit.

  84. happyfeet says:

    you have a good point as well

    the whole affair lacked symbolism of any utility whatsoever

    me I hope they do better next time

    how wicked of me

  85. happyfeet says:

    let’s not tell Mr. Silver I said that

  86. sdferr says:

    I’d submit the justice of Billy’s blow to Taggart’s forehead, as an instance of what I suspect is coming, and much will it be to the modern Taggarts’ surprise and dismay, so used are they to lying without consequence. Billy too, was termed a barbarian, if I remember right.

  87. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I’m not following: Billy and Taggart? Must be getting late.

  88. SDN says:

    Most business historians have assumed that the transcontinental railroads would never have been built without government subsidies. The free market would have failed to provide the adequate capital, or so the theory asserts.

    There is one sense in which this is true: once something has been done once, you have moved the risk from “possibly impossible” to “possible but difficult”. That lower level of risk can provide the margin needed to get private investing involved. Other examples: space travel, internet.

  89. happyfeet says:

    things what can’t go on forever won’t

  90. sdferr says:

    Taggart is all wrong though, Claggart was his name.

  91. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Ah. Melville instead of Brookes. For a minute there, I was thinking Billy must be Bart’s first name.

  92. Ernst Schreiber says:

    It is getting late. I misspelled Brooks.

  93. geoffb says:

    And I thought “Billy“.

  94. Pablo says:

    and what I heard is… one of the shops that burned… had in truth fashioned a gorgeous dress … a gorgeous dress precisely fitted for Pippa Middleton’s most gorgeous ass!

    Was that the one run by the single mum who had every last shilling she had sunk into the place she’d sewed her fingers to the bone to build and lost it all because arson got trendy?

  95. happyfeet says:

    hard to say

  96. Danger says:

    Update on BJTex xmitted via the echo-net.

    Contact dangerdaveoc at gmail dot com if you weren’t on the address list

    Danger Out

  97. Silver Whistle says:

    no… the londoner yoot were genuinely angry… the level of condescending paternalistic nanny bullshit they’ve endured is one the New World as yet aspires to

    Angry? Maybe, maybe not. Who cares? Regardless, it wasn’t anger at the “condescending paternalistic nanny bullshit” – if anything, they complained about needing more paternalistic nannyism (I think you’ve coined an oxymoron, by the way).

  98. happyfeet says:

    there you are… yes as Mr. Ernst pointed out they didn’t lash out in a way that supports any real thesis… the contrived occupy losers over here would never have that problem

  99. happyfeet says:

    In Minneapolis, protesters are trying to block the evictions of several area owners who fell behind on their mortgages because of illness or income loss.

    One homeowner they’re trying to help is Bobby Hull, an ex-marine and a master plasterer and contractor who has lived in his home since 1968. Hull still has income and access to financial help from family members, just not enough to pay his bloated mortgage principal.

    “I can afford $800 or $900 a month; I can’t afford $1,200 to $1,500,” said Hull.

    Foreclosure in his case made no sense, said Anthony Newby of Neighborhoods Organizing for Change. His mortgage balance was $275,000 but the auction of his home only fetched $80,000, less than one-third of the amount he owed. Everybody, including the bank, would have been better off reducing his balance to an affordable level, said Newby.

    “The bank should have come up with some solution that would have kept him in the home,” he said.

    how do you live in a house for 45 years and still owe $275,000 on it?

  100. happyfeet says:

    Today’s demonstrations were just a warm-up for a major push starting in a few months, said Max Rameau, a housing activist with Take Back the Land, one of the organizations that has aligned itself with the Occupy Our Homes movement.

    “This is an important practice round for our 2012 spring offensive,” he said.

  101. McGehee says:

    how do you live in a house for 45 years and still owe $275,000 on it?

    Fourth mortgage. Maybe he sent three kids to an Ivy.

  102. McGehee says:

    …and all three have their diplomas proudly on display in their workspaces where they say, “Do you want fries with that?”

  103. Pablo says:

    This is what happens when you use your house as a credit card. But remember, it’s the bank’s fault you’re stupid.

  104. Slartibartfast says:

    Manic here, too. Good grief. Someone needs to get out of mom’s basement.

  105. happyfeet says:

    they’re scraping the bottom of the poster boy barrel I think

  106. Ernst Schreiber says:

    0342 hrs local standard time: Minesweeper Condor reports “Sighted submerged submarine on westerly course, speed 9 knots[,]” less than 2 miles from the entrance to Pearl Harbor. Destroyer Ward begins a search for the submarine.

  107. Slartibartfast says:

    I’m wondering how on Earth one can have a $275,000 mortgage and expect to only pay $800 a month. Someone needs to learn some math skills; that’s practically an interest-free loan over 30 years.

    And that doesn’t even account for taxes and insurance.

    If the house only fetched $80k at auction, it was probably never worth near $275k. Peak Zestimate was just over $230k; current valuation is about $150k.

    So, someone got it for 50 cents on the dollar. Imagine if banks required that you invest enough in the house that if it was foreclosed on, they’d recover their nut. Imagine that.

    BTW the tax assessor’s office still has Hull listed as owner, not that that means anything. Things can happen quicker than the local government can track. But you’d think that a house auctioned in August would have the ownership changed, at this point in time.

  108. Slartibartfast says:

    Ad just seen at Instapundit:

    Put Progressive Alan Grayson back in Congress

    Yeah, like that’s gonna happen. The guy was such a complete embarrassment that if there was a literal ejection handle, we (the district he represented) would have pulled it before he’d been seated a year.

  109. serr8d says:

    OT, but Osawatomie, helpfully defined.

  110. Pablo says:

    You know what they say about how serial killers look like anybody else? Alan Grayson looks like a serial killer.

  111. sdferr says:

    ” . . . expensive tax cuts . . . ”
    Barack Obama, Osawatomie Ks., Dec. 6, 2011

    Unseized property, an expense.

    I don’t think he hears himself, at all. Or else, he’s simply content to lie.

  112. Silver Whistle says:

    speaking of… where is the good Mr. Whistle?

    he seemed kind of offended at one point by my sympathy with the rioters there

    I save up my offendedness for the important stuff, feets.

  113. Pablo says:

    Three Pinocchios

    An administration official conceded the White House had no actual data to back up the president’s assertion…

  114. sdferr says:

    Mickey Kaus (modified), via Insty:

    3) A patriotic Charity Economy is a conveyor belt to corporatism! After all, what happens [Solyndra!] when the factory of celebrated businessman X [Solyndra!] who recognizes his patriotic obligation [Solyndra!] to employ Americans at $20 an hour [Solyndra!] is faced with competition from uncelebrated, selfish businessman Y who employs Chinese ex-peasants at $2 an hour [Solyndra!]? Businessman X is going to need trade protection [Solyndra!] and special treatment a “partnership” [Solyndra!] with government, sort of a pre-bailout bailout [Solyndra!]. Obama [Solyndra!] doesn’t seem [Solyndra!] to have a problem [Solyndra!] with this sort [Solyndra!] of cozy arrangement [Solyndra!].

  115. happyfeet says:

    that is very wise Mr. Whistle I think

  116. happyfeet says:

    it would be fun to have billions of dollars and sign the giving pledge and then leave everything to your kids

    maybe that would be a good new year’s resolution for somebody

  117. Silver Whistle says:

    that is very wise Mr. Whistle I think

    Given the price of ammo these days feets, there’s no point in cultivating a thin skin.

  118. Ernst Schreiber says:

    0610 hrs local standard time: Admiral Nagumo orders the carriers of his strike force, Akagi, Kaga, S?ry?, Hiry?, Sh?kaku, and Zuikaku to turn into the wind. The 183-plane first wave, 49 high-altitude bombers, 51 dive-bombers, 40 torpedo planes, and 43 fighters begins to take off. During their approach to Pearl, they will use the signal of a Honolulu radio station as a navigation beacon.

  119. happyfeet says:

    that reminds me I finally got bit by one of my turtles – when I was trying to separate them… the one I was trying to help bit me – kind of like in a striking motion, which is good cause if they hold on they can clamp down something fierce when you try to dislodge them… anyway it was a clean cut just like a razor blade and it bled clean… it bled a lot really

    then I googled and read they tend to get mean when they get older, but we’re not there yet.

  120. sdferr says:

    Sh?kaku

    Sunk, June 19, 1944, by torpedoes from USS Cavalla, commanded by Herman Kossler, my one-time next door neighbor.

  121. Silver Whistle says:

    Three cheers for Lt Cdr Kossler.

  122. motionview says:

    Ok, time to really start going through Newt’s dissertation line by line. Oh, we absolutely need to spend this kind of effort, the man might become president (well, at least the Republican nominee). Totally just due diligence on our part. What’s that you say, what about this president’s history, or at least college transcripts? Not needed anymore of course, that’s old news and coded language for a racial attack. We have his record in office now. Errrrr. Well, really Bush’s or the TEA Partier’s economy of course, but we still don’t need to go back and look at those closed chapter, we have Obama’s record, a record of, ah, of having a vision. Of a Transformed America, divided along class lines. Equality.
    HEY! Look at that Republican clown show, don’t you giggle a little just saying “Newt”? Help us People’s Ridicule Brigade, you’re our only hope!

    -The August Voice of the New York Times

  123. bh says:

    The Pearl Harbor comments are great, fellas. Cheers.

  124. Ernst Schreiber says:

    0630 hrs local standard time: Antares, towing a 500 steel barge sights suspicious object 1500 yards to the starboard quarter. Antares signals Ward

  125. sdferr says:

    And three too for Cavalla: she lives on the eastern tip of Pelican Island, near Galveston, Tx.

  126. Ernst Schreiber says:

    0645 hrs local standard time: Destroyer Ward locates and procedes to attack midget submarine previously sighted by Antares.

  127. Ernst Schreiber says:

    0653 hrs local standard time: Ward sends coded message to 14th Naval HQ reporting: “We have attacked, fired upon, and dropped depth charges upon submarine operating in defensive sea area.”

  128. geoffb says:

    From Pablo’s link above. My bolding.

    An administration official responded that Bush only faced a traditional recession (though one affected by the Sept. 11 attacks), compared to the Great Recession. He also asserted that there is evidence that higher income disparity can affect economic growth.

    Whine and hubris in one compact phrase. Efficient wordsmithing lying.

  129. Ernst Schreiber says:

    0702 hrs local standard time: Opana Mobile Radar Station, in operation for less than a month, detects a large formation of aircraft heading for Oahu. The sighting is reported to the Fort Shafter information center.

  130. Ernst Schreiber says:

    0715 hrs local standard time: Code clerks at 14th Naval HQ decode message sent by Ward and forward the message through channels.

  131. Ernst Schreiber says:

    0720 hrs local standard time: Expecting the arrival of a flight of B-17s on their way to Midway from California, the duty officer at the radio-network operations center at Fort Shafter, informs the operators of the Opana Radar Station to disregard the formation they spotted.

  132. […] If It’s Too Good To Be True…. Posted on December 7, 2011 9:30 am by Bill Quick Latest “White House Insider” piece is out If it’s fiction, it’s compelling […]

  133. Ernst Schreiber says:

    0733 hrs local standard time: From a Tokyo-to-Washington message, intercepted and decoded by U.S. Naval Intelligence code breakers, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Gen. George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, learn that Japanese negotiators in Washington have been told to break off talks. Believing this may mean war, Marshall sends a warning to Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short, commander of U.S. Army forces in Hawaii.

    Because atmospheric static blacks out communications with Hawaii, Marshall’s message goes via commercial telegraph.

  134. happyfeet says:

    our job… is keep our boot on the neck of British Petroleum

    BSEE director James Watson says the second round of violations is based on “additional regulatory violations by BP.”*

  135. happyfeet says:

    is *to* keep our boot on the neck I mean

    bad pasting skills

  136. Ernst Schreiber says:

    0740 hrs local standard time: Planes of the first wave approach Oahu’s Kakuku Point.

  137. Ernst Schreiber says:

    0748 hrs local standard time: Lt. Fuchida signals strike force: TO RA, TO RA, TO RA indicating surprise attack achieved.

  138. Ernst Schreiber says:

    0749 hrs local standard time: Bomb explosions and planes heard and sighted attacking Ford Island hangars.

  139. Mike LaRoche says:

    Update on BJTex xmitted via the echo-net.

    Contact dangerdaveoc at gmail dot com if you weren’t on the address list

    Danger Out
    Just checked my e-mail and saw your message in my inbox. Going to go give it a read right now!

  140. Mike LaRoche says:

    Oops, blockquote fail.

Comments are closed.