I thought about that briefly, until I remembered the last two times it was Germany versus the rest of Europe….You can always add another 1 unto WWII.
So, I at least would prefer that they work out their differences through negotiation.

The thing that is weird about the “No Fly List” is that it is a “punishment” for perceived “bad” behavior. If they suspect that someone might be a threat to a plane, then their are ways to “grope” them and search their luggage. Even if they were to require a “suspicious person” to arrive early to an airport to suffer this indignity, it would solve this problem.

It seems to me that the TSC is more interested in spanking people, than keeping the airlines safe.

Yeah Fatster! I am looking forward to your wide net of news, and a smattering of science!

I figured you were asked to help out because you always post the most interesting links, especially when Dday asks for help.

(I too thought that the “ster” part of your name was a part of mister. But yous a girl, jus liken me be!)

A big cheer for Fatster! Hip hip hooray!(I never understood that cheer). Fatster, you have been fabulous!

That said…Dday’s back! Yeah! I kept trying to welcome you back today, but by the time I got to the bottom of an article, you had another on up! Geeze! Are you on double espressos?
A song keeps rumbling through my head: “My boyfriend’s back, and there’s gonna be trouble…!”
Look out fraudsters, Dday’s back.

Thank you for this update. I am fascinated by Walker’s arrogant flaunting of his billionaire backed power. (Have you ever seen Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator?)

BTW, This link: “question if Walker’s campaign is violating the law with an illegal raffle” links to weather escape, not raffle.

Fatster, I have been meaning to, and had not quite found the time until now, to tell you how awesome it is that you are doing the Roundups! And what a job you are doing, …every night including weekends! But that is not the bonus. The bonus is the interesting scientific subjects you pull in. I just love them!! You add a whole nother dimension to my favorite read of the day!
And also because you are such a fab commentator, I just love that it is you that stepped up to the plate! Bravo!

Dday, it took me awhile to understand the second quote, as it got clipped in the middle of “Foreclosu…res”. It clicked the link to find the meaning:

“Foreclosures can’t happen unless all loan papers are properly recorded with the county first.”

I looked it up. Federal minimum wage in 1975 was $2.10/hr.

Why do you think Unions bankrupted California?
It was Prop 13 (the People’s Initiative to Limit Property Taxation). The State has to run its budget in real time values, but collects it’s revenues based upon 1975 values. Perhaps you believe that union employees ought to earn 1975 wages? As I remember $4.40/hr.

“Section 1. (a) The maximum amount of any ad valorem tax on real property shall not exceed one percent (1%) of the full cash value of such property. The one percent (1%) tax to be collected by the counties and apportioned according to law to the districts within the counties.
The proposition decreased property taxes by assessing property values at their 1975 value and restricted annual increases of assessed value of real property to an inflation factor, not to exceed 2% per year. It also prohibited reassessment of a new base year value except for (a) change in ownership or (b) completion of new construction.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_%281978%29

The Individual Mandate is is the biggest handout to private corporations in history. The law says we have to buy their product, AT ANY PRICE THEY ASK. No limits. Insurance companies say we have to pay them 80% of our income. WE have to pay. Wanna send your kid to college, forget it. Pay up. For this we get coverage for pre-existing conditions. Great. Does that law say they have to treat your cancer with more than aspirin? Does your kid get that kidney transplant? Or do the for profit insurance companies get to decide your level of care?
Republicans should LOVE this law. Hell, they made it up. Obama just copied them.
The Supreme court? They WORSHIP corporations. They will uphold the mandate. It is their law. That it arrived under Obama is theater.

We do not need to pay the banks back for their second liens. These loans are valueless. The banks are only keeping them on their sheets so that they can continue to get 0% interest loans from the US government. They should be evaluated based upon the actual value of their portfolios, the same as the rest of us. However if they write down these loans, they will be judged insolvent, and ineligible for priority lending from the US government. This 0% interest lending from the US government is already a huge moneymaker for these banks, such that they do not to be compensated for writing down worthless loans. Especially when the US then borrows money back from them at 3%!
(I suppose the government could just require these banks write down their seconds as a criteria for the 0% US government lending rate, (and ignore their insolvency, which is what they are doing right now anyway).

Let me explain the ridiculous nature of this “but they shouldn’t benefit from their poor borrowing mistakes!” argument.
Say you bought your house in 1995 for 200k. Ten years later the house next door sold for 500k. The guy that bought it lost his job in construction in 2008. He can no longer afford his payments and is about to loose his house. His kids play with yours, and his daughter is dating your son.

The government say’s,”Hey bank, write down that mortgage to the true value of the house, down to 200k, just like his neighbor paid in 1995!” You, the innocent neighbor that did not “over borrow” get red flag furious! “Where is my 300k hand out you wail!”, hatred seeping from your eyes. You demand your son never talk to his girlfriend again, and walk you dog over to his lawn to poop everyday.
In reality, you lost absolutely nothing. Your neighbor’s misfortune effected you NOT AT ALL. The only mistake you made was in not selling when the price was so high, and now your home value is what is was before all this happened. Well, you did not buy your house for 500k. So, shut up!

Neither the morality of the borrowers, not the moralities of the lenders has anything to do with the legal priority of liens. It is precisely this,”let’s blame the bad guys” debate that distracts from the conversation. Let’s call the banks “drug dealers”, and the borrowers “drug addicts”. Now, which group do you despise more? Has nothing to do with the priority of liens.
However, would we argue that the drug dealers (banks) should go to jail, and the drug addicts (home loan borrowers) should still be held liable to pay off their drug debts? Interesting question. I think that the consensus of the current conversation is that the drug dealers (bankers) should go to jail, and that the drug addicts (borrowers), should still owe money to someone. But who? Un-convicted drug dealers? The government? Perhaps they should still owe the money to the “good” citizens that due to circumstance did not over borrow,(for drugs…to keep the analogy going).

The problem with this conversation is that people HATE to think that their friend or neighbor may end up on the better side financially than them. However, people do not seem to mind nearly as much that the super wealthy became even super-er wealthy on their backs. As long as their friend does not come out better, we are all fine with the super wealthy robbing us blind.

The interesting thing about second liens is that many of them, perhaps the vast majority, put real improvements back into the property in the form of remodeled kitchens and baths. If the original mortgage holders can hold off writing down their mortgages longer than the banks holding the second liens, then they can reap the benefits to improvements to the property when they foreclose.
This changing the priority of the loans, (as in the Foreclosure Fraud Settlement), has real financial benefits to the big 5 banks. The flip side of this is many of the millions of house underwater are underwater BECAUSE of the second liens, whereas their first mortgage was purchased before the boom. Therefore it is for many the second liens which drove homeowners underwater, and also the inflation caused by the banks hyper lending that lead to all those, “reap your equity” related defaults. The lenders on second mortgages should have been well aware of their risks, and lent the money anyway. The holders of the firsts should in no way give up their priority.

Sigh…
It is a war. People become ruthless predators. Look no further than US troops peeing on Afghan dead, murdering children in their sleep. Who are the “good guys” in our wars? Does the US not have “laws” that allow for torture? Do our causes deserve righteous help or condemnation? How can we set a bar higher than our own?…sigh.

I have an answer to that.
I was recently asked to tour a prospective new home purchase with some friends. This was in an affluent suburb of Minneapolis. The house had been purchased decade ago for 450K. It was a typical 40 year old, 3 bdrm home in a “good” school district. The asking price was 840k. People were flocking to the Open House. Wages have not gone up in the last two decades, but home prices have quadrupled… not gone down despite the recession, because those who didn’t loose their jobs are clinging to their previous notions of reality. Houses are not put on the market, because no one wants to loose the value they perceived when the market was at it’s highest. Therefore the rare property that does get put out, can still find a few suckers to buy.
However, the idea that every house in a 50 year old suburb is worth close to a million dollars is RIDICULOUS! The average price of homes, should reflect the average income of the population. Until these two quantities align, house prices have not stabilized.
What should be obvious is: a few individual home owners bought low, and sold high in the boom. The home owners that bought high in the boom, should be screwed. And the home owners that bought low, and still think their homes should be valued at boom prices, WILL be in for a disappointment.
I think my friends will by the house. I told them what I believe to be true. They simply do not want to believe it. They said, “I think the house will hold it’s value”. Sigh.

“You may say, I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one…” Sigh.
Come on Dday. Half this country votes Republican, and only about 15% of those are religious fanatics. The rest, they just worship at the money trough, and have the moral depth of green algae. There are plenty of Wall Street wanna-bes. Wall street is probably just not hiring right now, because profits are down because the general population they have been raping has run low on cash.
If you need to sight amoral financial wanna-bes, look no further than the White House.
However, I wish it was true.

Well, to be fair, I think the Louisiana Purchase is the greatest theft of all time. But it all depends on your perspective. They are stealing Americans’ homes, but at least they are not slaughtering us and our food source outright.

“The GOP primary is now just a terror tactic deployed to frighten sane voters so that Obama will have no problem being reselected and then he will finish the work he’s started.”

Exactly. I believe I said this, with a lot more words, on Friday. We are being pushed purposefully to Obama by those controlling the Republican mouthpiece.

On the other hand, I sincerely hope we do not look back, as those looking back on the fall of human decency are sometimes compelled to look back, at that moment when it was clear civilization was being swept once again into repression. Do the Afghans remember a day when they were teetering on the brink of being swept into the repression of the Taliban?

I will tell you precisely why this money has been withheld from the newly poor. It is because they are newly poor, and the people in charge of the money are mean, self righteous, and jealous.
The PTB think, “Why are those people getting this free money, and I don’t get any?” (Well, because you still have your job, asshole!) So that stall the project and make it impossible for their neighbors, the new deadbeats, to get the “free money”.

When I was a young architect in Chicago, I worked for a firm designing a new public housing project. We brought the building in under budget and were set to go, but the PTB said, “why do those people get a balcony, I don’t even have a balcony!” They killed the project.
It is “keeping up with the Jones” in reverse, and it seems to be universal. People do not seem to mind someone they do not relate to being filthy rich, but they universally hate it when their neighbor does well. “Keeping the Jones down, so you can feel superior”, is closer to the mark. It is the emotion behind the new favorite term, “moral hazard”. “If we help the beggar in the corner, then everyone will quit their job to get free handouts on the corner”.
It is bullshit. It is mean. But it is human nature. Just read the conservative blogs on the subject of the foreclosure settlement. It is all they talk about. “Why should some deadbeat that didn’t bother to pay his mortgage get a $2000 benefit? What about me, I pay my mortgage, where’s my money?” Sigh.