So, this happened
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And in Texas, they act on that belief
And best comment award goes to …
A singer I've never heard of calls for the cancelation of people I HAVE heard of
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Out of ammunition, Joshua chamberlain and the 20th Maine charge with bayonets down little round top.
Someone named Mazy Gay wants a new American flag
R&B singer Macy Gray said America must create a new flag, arguing that the current American flag has been “hijacked” as it fails to represent all Americans, according to a MarketWatch op-ed Friday.
“President Biden, Madame Harris and members of Congress: the American flag has been hijacked as a code for a specific belief. God bless those believers, they can have it. Like the Confederate [flag], it is tattered, dated, divisive, and incorrect,” Gray wrote in her op-ed. “It no longer represents democracy and freedom. It no longer represents ALL of us.”
“It’s not fair to be forced to honor it,” she said. “It’s time for a new flag.”
Maine’s farmers, fishermen, and college professors owned no slaves, but died to free them anyway.
Someone dishonors the flag merely by her existence
PSAKING BACK. It turns out that plenty of people have heard of her, even though I’ve been blissfully ignorant of her existence. She has a net worth of between $12 and $32 million, depending on who you talk to. Imagine what she’d be worth if she hadn’t been held back by systemic racism. For that matter, imagine what she’d have if she lived in a socialist paradise.
You will own nothing, and you will be happy
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America Should Become a Nation of Renters
And Wall Street will be our landlord. Oh, goody.
Rising real-estate prices are stoking fears that homeownership, long considered a core component of the American dream, is slipping out of reach for low- and moderate-income Americans. That may be so — but a nation of renters is not something to fear. In fact, it’s the opposite.
The numbers paint a stark picture. After peaking at 69% in 2004, the homeownership rate fell every year until 2016, when it was 64.3% — its lowest level since the Census Bureau started keeping track in 1984. The rate rebounded in Donald Trump’s presidency, hitting 66% in 2020, but that trend is likely to be arrested by a housing market that is desperately short on supply and seeing month-over-month price increases greater than they were in the frenzied market of 2006.
This process is painful, but it’s not all bad. Slowly but surely, most Americans’ single biggest asset — their home — is becoming more liquid. Call it the liquefaction of the U.S. housing market.
Even in the best markets, single-family homes have historically been an extremely illiquid asset. Appraisals have to be made on an individual basis, and mispriced homes can sit on the market for months waiting for a potential buyer — only for that buyer’s financing to fall through.
Liquid assets, like publicly traded stocks and corporate bonds, earn what’s known as a liquidity premium: Their market price is many times the dividend or coupon that investors get from holding them. The more liquid an asset, the higher that premium goes. On the flip side, those same high-flying stocks and bonds can see their prices collapse when investors get spooked and withdraw their cash from the market.
Houses have typically traded with very little liquidity premium. That meant a relatively low purchase price compared to what it would cost to rent — the equivalent of the dividend from housing investment — and stable prices over time.
These two factors made houses a good investment for moderate-income families who often lacked the cash and the risk tolerance for market investments. As investments went, single-family homes were cheap and slowly grew in value in both good times and bad.
In the early 21st century, automated appraisals and mortgage underwriting began to change that. Combined with the repackaging of subprime loans into presumably safer CDOs, they created a far more liquid market for housing. In response, housing prices soared — and became more sensitive to the vagaries of the markets. When investors pulled out of CDOs, buyer financing dried up and the whole housing market crashed.
It may have seemed at the time like a failed experiment. But financialization had changed the housing market forever. Houses are now more prone to be priced high relative to rents, and to see their prices fluctuate with the market. The very features that made home buying an affordable and stable investment are coming to an end.
But the illiquidity that made houses a safe investment also made America less dynamic and mobile. In coastal markets with strong demand for housing, market forces would normally have led to the replacement of single-family homes with duplexes and apartments. But existing homeowners are reluctant to agree to development with unknowable effects on the value of their most precious investments. The result is less development — and sky-high rents for any residents not lucky enough to own their own home.
As institutional investors increasingly enter the housing market, however, the incentives begin to shift. Large investors can expand or redevelop their properties themselves, because they benefit from a greater number of overall tenants, even if rents themselves dip.
Meanwhile, the increased availability of rental properties could benefit homeowners in declining areas of the country. They frequently cannot move to more prosperous areas because they can’t sell their homes for nearly enough to buy a new place somewhere else. In an economy with more rentals, however, they could afford to try a new place for a few years without the commitment of a mortgage or down payment.
A nation of renters could lead to a world where location decisions are driven far more by personal preferences and life-cycle demands. Younger workers might prefer the excitement of the city. A couple just starting a family could reunite with their parents or siblings in a small town.
The U.S. is not quite there yet, and not just because too many people are chasing too few apartments. To see the U.S. as a nation of renters requires a revision of the American dream of homeownership. This country was always more about new frontiers than comfortable settlements, anyway.
Hmmm. Wall Street pockets the appreciation — it wouldn’t do this except for profit, ends single-family residential zoning, gains a new liquid asset to trade by the millisecond, all while liberating the Little People from the houses that are tying them down and sets them free to hit the road; The Enclosure Acts come to mind, but I’m sure the author of this piece of drivel would respond, “you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs”. As Orwell asked of Stalin’s own new world order, “where’s the omelet?” Where indeed.
Price wars are breaking out all over the range(s)
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450 Lake Avenue, a totally-renovated 1938 home, asked $5.750 million, got $5.9.
Gee. The $3.5+ houses were, if not a drag on the market pre-COVID, were at least slow sellers, with few buyers. Multiple buyers wanting the same thing were rare; not so now.
Contract on Upland
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7 Upland Drive (down near the Post Road) asking $2.695 million, has a contract after 38 days. It’s a 1932 house, somewhat dated, and in the Western Middle School district, which is not one of my favorites. But that’s what private schools and child-free homes are about, so probably not a huge deal. It does sit on 2 acres, and that’s always nice.
The listing notes that the property is not in the Calhoun Association. Is that important? Not that I know.
Better we give them 365
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thank you for your service — now go
No More Mister Nice Guy
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the terminator has arrived in the urals
“I gave them a list, if I’m not mistaken — I don’t have it in front of me — 16 specific entities; 16 defined as critical infrastructure under U.S. policy, from the energy sector to our water systems,” Biden said.
According to the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, the 16 entities include: commercial facilities, chemical, communications, critical manufacturing, dams, energy, defense industrial base, emergency services, financial, food and agriculture, government facilities, healthcare and public health, information technology, nuclear reactors, materials, and waste, transportation systems, and water and wastewater systems.
June 19th
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Congress Passes Law To Recognize Juneteenth, The Day Republicans Freed All The Democrats' Slaves
"We are so proud to show the world how not racist we are by officially recognizing the day the Republicans came charging in to free all our slaves," said Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer. "Yeah-- we Democrats did a little 'whoopsie' with that whole slavery thing, but the Republicans corrected it. Thanks, Republicans!"
During this year's Juneteenth, the nation will gather to celebrate the American political party that was founded on protecting human rights of people of all skin colors. Democrats around the country will write letters of apology and organize celebrations for the vast network of Christians, Catholics, Quakers, and Republicans who fought and died to end the scourge of slavery in America.
Congress has also approved the building of a giant elephant statue in D.C. to honor the party responsible for the freeing of slaves from Democrat plantations.
Biden has confirmed he will organize a celebration at the White House after he lays a wreath on the grave of his best friend Robert Byrd.
Who’d have thunk?
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yale unexpectedly returns rotc to campus
To explain the breadth of the data Dong reportedly turned over to the feds, a single terabyte is approximately the equivalent of 75 million pages — or nearly 19 million documents. The potential scope of such a cache of documents is breathtaking to consider. According to RedState, the data includes:
Early pathogenic studies of the virus we now know as SARS-CoV-2
Models of predicted COVID-19 spread and damage to the U.S. and the world
Financial records detailing which exact organizations and governments funded the research on SARS-CoV-2 and other biological warfare research
Names of U.S. citizens who provide intel to China
Names of Chinese spies working in the U.S. or attending U.S. universities
Financial records showing U.S. businessmen and public officials who’ve received money from the Chinese government
Details of meetings U.S. government officials had (perhaps unwittingly) with Chinese spies and members of Russia’s SVR
How the Chinese government gained access to a CIA communications system, leading to the death of dozens of Chinese people who were working with the CIA
RedState again:
Again, according to sources, Dong told DIA debriefers that at least a third of Chinese students attending US universities are PLA assets or part of the Thousand Talents Plan and that many of the students are here under pseudonyms. One reason for using pseudonyms is that many of these students are the children of high-ranking military and party leaders.
[cf]But what will confuse and perplex readers who rely on press whores like the NYT and CNN for their news and so have never even heard of its existence, there’s this, on Hunter’s computer:
In an interesting twist, Dong reportedly provided DIA with the contents of Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop (who doesn’t have it at this point?) detailing not only his excessive porn use but also information about Joe Biden’s shady business dealings in China.
Not that our press has any credibility, but it’s still interesting to see how much it’s in the tank with its co-conspirators and how it sees its role in suppressing and censoring the news to fit under the Democrat party line.
I quote from MSN, 10/20/20, discussing NPR’s and the rest of the mainstream press’s refusal to report on Hunter’s secret :
NPR Managing Editor Terrence Samuel said, “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions. And quite frankly, that’s where we ended up, this was … a politically driven event and we decided to treat it that way.”
NPR’s explanation for why they’ve ignored the Hunter Biden story could just as easily be used as a boilerplate for all other reputable outlets, and a model for proper journalism at large.
PSAKING BACK: This story is a double no-go for the Democrat operatives because it mentions both the Wu Han Lab and Hunter’s laptop. So it won’t appear in the mainstream press.
