Captain Capitalism reports on real estate and mortgages

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. A fair amount of reading, but worthwhile if you're interested in the current state of the housing market. The rest of his posts are worth reading, too.

Valentine from Obama

Click.

Who likes Obama, and why?

Also at Hot Air: prominent on the wall of the newly opened Obama office in Houston is a Cuban flag, decorated or defaced with the iconic high-contrast Che-in-a-beret image. The Hillary! ad below is pathetic and sadly funny; the Obama decor, sinister, and worrisome in a more serious way. It is indicative of the emptiness of the Obama campaign that any rebel with or without a cause feels attracted to it. "We want the world, and we want it NOW!" Everything for everybody, except of course the people we're taking that stuff from, for the greater good; or we're gonna hold our breath, or raise a lot of taxes, or something. (Aside: It is universally agreed that the way to stimulate the economy is to loosen credit, or as with the current bill, just hand out cash. Why do Democrats and Socialists and such think that doing the reverse, i.e. raising taxes, making it harder to do business, will not slow down the economy? To campaign on "the economy is bad, so we must raise taxes" just makes no sense. And see No Recession by Larry Kudlow.)

Update: Make that two of those Che-in-a-beret Cuban flags and a "peace sign" flag. Why would the office of a US Democratic Party candidate have Cuban Communist Party symbols as decor? It is a puzzlement. I wonder if any readers remember that the peace sign stands, not for peace, but specifically for nuclear disarmament, and is still claimed as their logo by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. (Who also oppose nuclear power; which means they must support coal-burning, right? But I'm sure they are opposed to global warming.) History of the symbol.

Charles has a follow-up to a tendentious response by James Joyner: Outside the Beltway and Off the Rails. You wouldn't fly a hammer-and-sickle, it would be a historical curiosity. Likewise the noise some are making about Confederate flags here and there: the Confederacy has been out of business for going on a hundred and fifty years. Cuba is still currently Communist. And another followup: We Got Mail! In which letter-writers reveal that, as I suspected, there are those about who have no clue about the historical Che Guevara, but have faith in the mythical one.

Another update: Ace of Spades adds a comment. And still more on this at Lone Star Times (one, two, three, four posts so far.) Maybe it's just one flag, relocated between TV shoots.

Fausta has a (Che-flag-free) Obama roundup: Foreign millions for Obama.

And another update: Daniel Henninger in the WSJ, by way of Glenn Reynolds:

Listen closely to that Tuesday night Wisconsin speech. Unhinge yourself from the mesmerizing voice. What one hears is a message that is largely negative, illustrated with anecdotes of unremitting bleakness. Heavy with class warfare, it is a speech that could have been delivered by a Democrat in 1968, or even 1928.

Here is the edited version, stripped of the flying surfboard:

"Our road will not be easy . . . the cynics. . . where lobbyists write check after check and Exxon turns record profits . . . That's what happens when lobbyists set the agenda. . . It's a game where trade deals like Nafta ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wage at Wal-Mart . . . It's a game . . . CEO bonuses . . . while another mother goes without health care for her sick child . . . We can't keep driving a wider and wider gap between the few who are rich and the rest who struggle to keep pace . . . even if they're not rich . . ."

Here's his America: "lies awake at night wondering how he's going to pay the bills . . . she works the night shift after a full day of college and still can't afford health care for a sister who's ill . . . the senior I met who lost his pension when the company he gave his life to went bankrupt . . . the teacher who works at Dunkin' Donuts after school just to make ends meet . . . I was not born into money or status . . . I've fought to bring jobs to the jobless in the shadow of a shuttered steel plant . . . to make sure people weren't denied their rights because of what they looked like or where they came from . . . Now we carry our message to farms and factories."

[sarcasm] What an awful country we live in. Let's just tear the whole thing down and start over. Change! This "freedom" business really is not working. Let's try something else. Like taking billions away from the people of this country to give to the governments of other countries, as specified in Obama's pet legislation, the Global Poverty Bill. [/sarcasm off]

Ann Althouse posts on the Henninger article: Obama's message is just too depressing. She quotes parts of the article that I omitted, and omits the parts that I quoted.

And an important post from Neo-neocon, about hope and false hope: Obama: too young at heart.

Yes, there is such a thing as false hope, and it can be as dangerous as a cancer patient’s refusal to undergo a difficult chemotherapy that offers decent odds of survival in favor of a course of laetrile that offers nothing but empty promises. And yet, hope springs eternal—false and otherwise.

My goodness, this post is going on much too long. But one more update, a sidenote on Che Guevara: It seems he was a Galway man! Or a grandson of Galway, at any rate. (Via a commenter at The Jawa Report.)

Oh, what the heck, one more: In Focus: The Sickly Deification of Obama.

Hillary! the rock star

Another awful campaign ad. Go to Hot Air to see it and rejoice in the comments. Look for the shot of Hillary! with the guitar on her back. Note the sadness and feeling of abandonment shown by those who had counted on her, who had built an enterprise of which she was an important part, whom she kicked aside in her ambition to rise ever higher. Like the Christmas presents ad, this is actually from the Clinton campaign, but it reads like parody. Hillary!, there's something about her campaign; they look like people, but all their ears are made of tin.

Update: Oh dear, another offense against music by Hillary!'s supporters. This one appears to be a volunteer effort.

Mark Steyn speaks at CPAC

Video at Townhall. Part 1 is the speech, Part 2 the Q & A. Worth the time (about 40 minutes altogether).

Boat for sale

Saddam Hussein's "backup" yacht. 82 meters overall, cruises at 18 knots, tanks hold 56,512 gallons of diesel fuel. Hardly used. More at the NY Post and Luxist. A couple more photos and specs at Superyacht Times. Asking price reported to be $34,450,000. Though, really, if you have to ask…

Drew Carey on the plight of the middle class

Video is called "Living Large," at Reason TV. Discussion at Hit & Run. Among the questions left unanswered in the video is how much of this seeming prosperity is based on credit abuse.

Rolling down a hill in a giant inflatable ball

That ball had better be inflated, not just inflatable. "Zorb is the sport of rolling down a hill inside a giant inflatable ball and where New Zealand, once again leads the world in stupid things to do while you're on a vacation." Now available in the USA near Dollywood, Pigeon Forge, TN. Mentioned because of the question that arose while watching the current Toyota Sequoia commercial, "What in the world are those people doing?"

Much more, of course, at Wikipedia. Here's a video from National Geographic.

Songs for parents

Update: These video links don't last. New links for Dad's Pachelbel and The Mom Song.

A Dad sings about bedtime, to to the tune of Pachelbel's Canon. From Wittingshire. Sweet.

And a Mom who is also a comedian, Anita Renfroe, fits a whole day's Mom-talk into two minutes and fifty-five seconds, to the tune of the William Tell Overture: The Mom Song. Mombastic.

My old link for the Mom Song had the lyrics in the dropdown, and I thought a better performance. Renfroe's makeup is better in this official one. Lyrics can be found at Main St. USA.

It's a poll of teenagers

Mark Steyn in The Corner:

Fictional Heroes

If I lived in contemporary Britain, where polygamists are entitled to claim multiple welfare benefits per spouse and where The Three Little Pigs is ruled ineligible for a government award lest it offend Muslims, I'd be inclined to believe Richard the Lionheart, the Duke of Wellington and Sir Winston Churchill never existed. And so it seems:

LONDON (AFP) - Britons are losing their grip on reality, according to a poll out Monday which showed that nearly a quarter think Winston Churchill was a myth while the majority reckon Sherlock Holmes was real. The survey found that 47 percent thought the 12th century English king Richard the Lionheart was a myth.

It's a poll of teenagers. Oddly, the Yahoo-AFP story linked by Steyn does not say that. It says "UKTV Gold television surveyed 3,000 people." It makes a difference. French or EU psyops? We don't check every single story to find out if it's been distorted this way. We can't. But someone, presumably the stringer at AFP, decided to leave that little detail out. Bad journalism, bad! No donut for AFP today!

A different kind of smoke

A cross-cultural version of "Smoke on the Water," with samisens. Found along with much else of interest at Sippican Cottage: Essays From the Swamp.

In case you weren't feeling paranoid enough already

Patrick Nielsen Hayden links to this:

You might as well just go stand by the stairs. Do you have stairs in your house?

Nice use of the word "reprobate"

Here. And in the comments.

Just too damn many people, that's all

This grew too big to be a Gleaning. More on Deep Greens, and how they would like to radically reduce the world's population, starting with everybody else.

Dave Lindorff: Global Warming Will Save America from the Right...Eventually. There used to be hundreds of comments on this. Lindorff now claims that it is satire, of the "Modest Proposal" variety. It's not uncommon for lefties to make death threats and voice death wishes, and when called on it claim that they are kidding. (For example, the wishful thinking movie "Death of a President." It takes a lot of effort and money to make a movie.) Here it is in the Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel, an over-the-moonbat "non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication." In context with the other stories in the C&S, it fits right in. I'm still waiting for the prices of waterfront property to start declining. That's when we'll know if there's anything to this.

Compare and contrast: Ask Ethan: Is it ethical to force people to be green?

Ethan's five-point plan:

1. A ban on all motorised transport
2. A ban on all petro-chemical, poison-spraying agriculture
3. A ban on all space heating
4. Restrictions on health care
5. Reducing the number of children born

I constantly remind my children that they are a terrible drain on the planet. Sometimes they cry. I think it’s good that they share Gaia’s pain.… Ultimately, the world’s population must be reduced - by 5.9 billion. But the 100 million left, devoid of cars, planes, heaters and fertilisers will be a much smaller burden on the planet. What a happy place it will be!

All the details at the link. By way of Alien Corn.

Further compare and contrast: Ethan is satire. Paul Watson is serious. (Isn't he? He sounds serious.)

So long, Fred

That was disappointing. It seems indecent for a candidate to be fundraising full-tilt one week and out the next. I want my nickel back!

Maybe it's time to reconsider Christopher Walken's candidacy.

Note on windfall profits

The next time I hear someone talking about the evils of price-gouging, or how such-and-such industry should be subjected to a windfall profits tax, I hope I can remember this story from Jim Reed's The Funny Side of Fishing:

Customer: "How much is that fly rod in the window?"
Store clerk: "$150."
Customer: "Wow! The discount store at the edge of town sells that same rod for $75."
Store clerk: "Why don't you buy it there?"
Customer: "Because they're out of them."
Store clerk: "Oh, when we are out of the rods we sell them for $50."

Supply and demand. That's all.

Gleanings

Quickly, now, quickly.

Andrea Harris: England continues to sink. Not post-glacial rebound, here; cultural deterioration.

From the Yemen Times: There must be violence against women. Otherwise, they would be going to the police and the courts all the time. What?!

Paul Graham: How To Do What You Love.
Compare and contrast:
Marty Nemko: Do What You Love and You'll Starve.

Fred Thompson: "I don’t think that it’s the primary responsibility of the federal government to tell you what to eat.… With that, or whether you're talking about education, there's some things the federal government can't do." This reasoning could be extended to the drug war.

New solar cycle coming, looks like cooler days ahead. NASA: Long Range Solar Forecast: Solar Cycle 25 peaking around 2022 could be one of the weakest in centuries.

Aerosols an important factor being left out of climate models. How many more factors are left out? Could Earth's interior heat be one of them? H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe knew that there were volcanoes in Antarctica.

To end with something blessedly funny, Megan McArdle links to Dr. Boli's Celebrated Magazine. Thanks Jane!

Aand one more of the funny, and possibly practical: edible googly eyes.

Socialist spammers

Just got an ebay phishing spam with the usual "click here to resolve this problem" link. This time the link goes back to "www.partido-socialista.pt": the Socialist Party of Portugal! This is the dominant party over there, so it's probably a rogue user, or a sign of a hacked system, rather than a systematic effort at sharing the wealth by stealth, but then you never know with socialists. If the ends justify the means, no means is too mean.

More arms for Africa

Last night, 60 Minutes had a horrifying segment, "War Against Women," on massive numbers of rapes in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Anderson Cooper gave no background at all. If, as he said, the rapes are a weapon of war; then why are these people fighting? Seems there's gold in the hills: here is a report from Human Rights Watch, The Curse of Gold. I have not read the whole thing; but from a quick skim, it looks like people have been fighting over this gold for over a hundred years.

Seeing the presence of large numbers of blue-helmeted UN "peacekeepers," at the beginning of the piece, made me suspicious right away, since we know that wherever the UN peacekeepers go, sex crimes follow. Haiti, Liberia, Kosovo, Congo, Congo. Human Rights Watch says the crimes in the DRC are also gold- and arms-related. Another news article: UN troops traded guns for gold with militias, says report. And a letter from HRW to the UN.

There is a big peace conference going on right now: Congo-Kinshasa: Aid Tops Agenda As Kivus Conference Gets Under Way. How bitter is it that this is an occasion for the elites to demand even more from these people who seem to have nothing left but pain:

An original list of 300 delegates grew to more than 800, with an additional 500 attending as observers. As a result, the US$2 million budgeted for the conference will not suffice, according to organisers.

"Delegates will receive a per diem of $135 but they haven't got it yet because I think there is a liquidity problem," said a member of the organising committee.

Prime Minister Antoine Gizenga has called on all DRC citizens to contribute the equivalent of a dollar to meet the shortfall.

"It is going to cost a lot of money but peace has a price which we have to pay," National Assembly speaker Vital Kamerhe said.

"The blood of our brothers and our army is priceless," he added.

The blood, and honor, of their women, on the other hand, is meaningless, and not worth mentioning. I don't know what can be done about this mess. But one thing struck me as I watched the report: the only ones with arms were the soldiers and "peacekeepers." Maybe the real humanitarian thing for some NGO to do here would be to provide pistols to the ordinary people. Some teeth for the prey, so to speak. Of course it will not happen.

Update: Zimbabwe: Mugabe troops use rape as weapon. Thanks to Theo Spark. And see: Gleanings from June 7, 2008.

Offsets, I got yer offsets right here

Carbon offsets: FTC Carbon Offset Investigation Previews Cap and Trade’s Imminent Failure.

Al Gore gets his carbon credits here. He owns the company. You or I would have to shop for ours. But why bother, when we can get all the free offsets we want.

Offsets for cheaters.

Horse offsets.

Business Week [bold is mine]:

A growing number of organizations, corporations, cities, and individuals are seeking to protect the climate—or at least claim bragging rights for protecting the climate. Rather than take the arduous step of significantly cutting their own emissions of carbon dioxide, many in the ranks of the environmentally concerned are paying to have someone else curtail air pollution or develop "renewable" energy sources (see BusinessWeek.com, 2/1/07, "Ethanol: Too Much Hype—and Corn "). Carbon offsets, as the most common variety of these deals is known, have become one of the most widely promoted products marketed to checkbook environmentalists.

Done carefully, offsets can have a positive effect and raise ecological awareness. But a close look at several transactions—including those involving the Oscar presenters, Vail Resorts, and the Seattle power company—reveals that some deals amount to little more than feel-good hype. When traced to their source, these dubious offsets often encourage climate protection that would have happened regardless of the buying and selling of paper certificates. One danger of largely symbolic deals is that they may divert attention and resources from more expensive and effective measures.

Remember the Pet Rock™? Some people will buy anything.

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds.

Update: More on this from Morgan Freeberg at the House of Eratosthenes. Do read the comments!

Another update: Michelle Malkin has the story on offsets for the jet-set environmentalists at Davos: Enviro-nitwits fly to Davos, seek absolution from Al Gore.

Happy birthday to Ann Althouse

I think it was this post that led me to choose the template you see before you. And it was certainly this one that brought in my biggest traffic surge evar.

I doubt I would be blogging at all if not for the (former) requirement that one have a Blogger ID to comment at Althouse. With the ID came the offer of blog space, and one thing just followed the other, as things sometimes do.

So—Happy birthday, Professor Althouse, and best wishes for many more to come.

Here's a cake, swiped from someone [Janet Margul?] on GEnie so long ago that I no longer have any idea, in the old ascii boxology style:

                 ()     ()     ()    ()    ()
                 ||     ||     ||    ||    ||
                 ||_____||_____||____||____||
               (|VvVvVvVvVvVvVvVvVvVvVvVvVvVv|)
               (|\@/\@/\@/\@/\@/\@/\@/\@/\@/\|)
                |  *   *  *  *  *  *  *  * * |
          ______|____________________________|______
         (((((((((((((((((((((3))))))))))))))))))))))
         (((((((((((((((((((((3))))))))))))))))))))))
          |                                        |
          |                                        |
          |\@/\@/\@/\@/\@/\@/\@/\@/\@/\@/\@/\@/\@/\|
          ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now that's a bunch of tasty bits. Or bytes. Bites of bits.

Update a few minutes later: I see that Blake has a good birthday post at BitMaelstrom—and also that he has the good(?) taste to be another Thorne Smith fan. So there's a movie of Night Life of the Gods? To think I never knew! I'll have to order a copy. Nostalgia Family Video has it on VHS. So wishing Althouse a happy birthday turns into a happy unbirthday for me! Lots of win to go around.

So what will Bill Gates do, now that he's retiring from Microsoft?

First Friday has the video.

Snow today in Baghdad

"[…] to see snow falling in Baghdad, the scene was very joyful, and I felt peace coming."

Energy policy: who let the loons out?

I would like to know how much time was spent in the House and Senate debating the plan to ban incandescent bulbs. High silliness, this. But it doesn't approach the silliness level of California's proposal that all thermostats in new or renovated buildings be controlled remotely by the power company.

Lancing the Lancet

Neil Munro and Carl M. Cannon in the National Journal: Data Bomb.

Three weeks before the 2006 midterm elections gave Democrats control of Congress, a shocking study reported on the number of Iraqis who had died in the ongoing war. It bolstered criticism of President Bush and heightened the waves of dread -- here and around the world -- about the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Published by The Lancet, a venerable British medical journal, the study [PDF] used previously accepted methods for calculating death rates to estimate the number of "excess" Iraqi deaths after the 2003 invasion at 426,369 to 793,663; the study said the most likely figure was near the middle of that range: 654,965. Almost 92 percent of the dead, the study asserted, were killed by bullets, bombs, or U.S. air strikes. This stunning toll was more than 10 times the number of deaths estimated by the Iraqi or U.S. governments, or by any human-rights group.

In December 2005, Bush had used a figure of 30,000 civilian deaths in Iraq. Iraq's health ministry calculated that, based on death certificates, 50,000 Iraqis had died in the war through June 2006. A cautiously compiled database of media reports by a London-based anti-war group called Iraq Body Count confirmed at least 45,000 war dead during the same time period. These were all horrific numbers -- but the death count in The Lancet's study differed by an order of magnitude.

Glenn Reynolds says, "This is a big deal story; it'll be interesting to see if it gets the attention it deserves." He mentions additional coverage at PJ Media and Bizzyblog. Neo-neocon has a thoughtful post with good comments, including this from Synova,

[…] it didn’t pass the smell test. You know, that step your math teacher tells you to do right after you’ve plugged in all the numbers in your equation and got the answer out? You’re supposed to ask yourself, does it make *sense* that my answer is that the car travels 1485 miles an hour?

who also has a post on the subject.

Speaking of bombs: Lancet. Lancet study. Lancet Iraq study. Lancet Iraq deaths study. Lancet Iraq mortality study.

Update: George Soros's hand in this is revealed. Thanks to GR.
Another update: More on Soros's involvement from TigerHawk.