Just curious how many of you are watching them. Game of Thrones is turning out to be great, and Camelot is campy and fun, but the one that surprised me is the Borgias. I wasn’t sure I was going to like it, because I find so many of the characters lacking. I don’t like either of the sons, either the Cardinal who really should stop trying to grow facial hair or the younger commander of the Papal guard. What has made the show for me, though is Lucrezia and King Charles. The fellow playing the King, Michel Muller, is just great. For some reason, I think he steals every scene.
Tornado Strikes
I stopped watching cable news a while back- basically when KO went off the air, I shut down all cable news. I just don’t watch it any more. I used to have it on in the background like radio all day, but nowadays I just open itunes and hit shuffle. So I didn’t even know this had happened until I read the Times this morning:
Much of this southwestern Missouri city lay in ruins on Monday morning after a massive tornado, the latest storm to ravage the Midwest and South this spring, tore through the area, killing at least 89 people. Officials say they expect the death toll to climb.
The twister, which touched down at about 6 p.m. Sunday, ripped apart buildings, touched off fires, uprooted trees and tossed cars, leaving them mangled stacks of metal.
The pictures are horrifying.
If I Recall, the Moonbat Left Had Plans to Address This Crap
But the money party made sure cramdowns and other procedures to help stop this from happening died in the crib:
The nation’s biggest banks and mortgage lenders have steadily amassed real estate empires, acquiring a glut of foreclosed homes that threatens to deepen the housing slump and create a further drag on the economic recovery.
All told, they own more than 872,000 homes as a result of the groundswell in foreclosures, almost twice as many as when the financial crisis began in 2007, according to RealtyTrac, a real estate data provider. In addition, they are in the process of foreclosing on an additional one million homes and are poised to take possession of several million more in the years ahead.
Five years after the housing market started teetering, economists now worry that the rise in lender-owned homes could create another vicious circle, in which the growing inventory of distressed property further depresses home values and leads to even more distressed sales. With the spring home-selling season under way, real estate prices have been declining across the country in recent months.
“It remains a heavy weight on the banking system,” said Mark Zandi, the chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “Housing prices are falling, and they are going to fall some more.”
Over all, economists project that it would take about three years for lenders to sell their backlog of foreclosed homes. As a result, home values nationally could fall 5 percent by the end of 2011, according to Moody’s, and rise only modestly over the following year. Regions that were hardest hit by the housing collapse and recession could take even longer to recover — dealing yet another blow to a still-struggling economy.
The most shortsighted people in the world are the ones giving out 30 year loans. We’re screwed. And we can blame most of it on greed.
If I Recall, the Moonbat Left Had Plans to Address This CrapPost + Comments (68)
Things Done Changed
Remember how it was the beltway conventional wisdom that the Ryan plan was “serious” and “adult” and that it was up to the Democrats to offer a counter and yadda, yadda, yadda. Things sure have changed in a few months, haven’t they? We’ve now got the Democrat leading in a Republican district, Republicans are publishing weepy op-eds about how they just can’t support the Ryan plan, and the Politico is charging forward with a new conventional wisdom for us all:
It might be a political time bomb — that’s what GOP pollsters warned as House Republicans prepared for the April 15 vote on Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposed budget, with its plan to dramatically remake Medicare.
No matter how favorably pollsters with the Tarrance Group or other firms spun the bill in their pitch — casting it as the only path to saving the beloved health entitlement for seniors — the Ryan budget’s approval rating barely budged above the high 30s or its disapproval below 50 percent, according to a Republican operative familiar with the presentation.
The poll numbers on the plan were so toxic — nearly as bad as those of President Barack Obama’s health reform bill at the nadir of its unpopularity — that staffers with the National Republican Congressional Committee warned leadership, “You might not want to go there” in a series of tense pre-vote meetings.
But go there Republicans did, en masse and with rhetorical gusto — transforming the political landscape for 2012, giving Democrats a new shot at life and forcing the GOP to suddenly shift from offense to defense.
It’s been more than a month since Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his lieutenant, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va) boldly positioned their party as a beacon of fiscal responsibility — a move many have praised as principled, if risky. In the process, however, they raced through political red lights to pass Ryan’s controversial measure in a deceptively unified 235-193 vote, with only four GOP dissenters.
The story of how it passed so quickly — with a minimum of public hand-wringing and a frenzy of backroom machinations — is a tale of colliding principles and power politics set against the backdrop of a fickle and anxious electorate.
No one could have predicted that 4 trillion in tax cuts for the rich while gutting Medicare and doing nothing to balance the budget would have been unpopuar with the public. It’s a mystery!
DougJ is right. Thank you, Bobo! Thank you, Joe Klein! Thank you, Sully! Thank each and every one of the innumerate villager class who fluffed the Ryan plan and goaded the Republicans into believing their own bullshit.
Upper Big Branch Report
We looked at this report briefly last week (pdf). I’ve had a chance since to read it. If you’re up for it, and want to know what happened, it’s a solid piece of work.
The narrative section is framed around the testimony of friends and family of one of the miners who didn’t get out in time. That’s important because one of the questions is who knew what, when, in terms of unusually dangerous working conditions (within a mine environment, so taking into account that this work has the potential to be dangerous, always).
But, that section (first 20 or so pages) is also very personal to that (named) miner and should be read in context to do the miner and his friends and family who were willing to talk to investigators justice, so I won’t pull out quotes.
What jumped out at me, as someone who knows nothing about mining, is how often the witnesses use the word “air”. “Air”, here, has specific technical meanings in mining. They move it from place to place, they measure it, they know how it changes when traveling over or displaced by water, so it’s unremarkable that they would use the word all the time. This is what they do for a living. But they also use the ordinary meaning that’s familiar to all of us. The fact that they need “enough air” and are constantly aware of that comes through very powerfully, and that’s what makes the narrative of the events difficult and sad to read.
The events are presented from the view of the people in the mine. That sole persepective wasn’t the preference of the investigators, or the state of West Virginia. Management and others were subpoenaed, and chose not to speak:
The Fifth Amendment prohibits the government from requiring a person to be a witness against himself involuntarily or to furnish evidence against himself. The following individuals, when they were subpoenaed by the State of West Virginia, through their attorneys invoked their Fifth Amendment rights and declined to be interviewed by investigators
I pulled the following section out because it goes to the specific disincentives to safety the company put in place that contributed, over time, to increasing the risk of a disaster.
Intimidation of workers. There is ample evidence through testimony that miners were discouraged from stopping production for safety reasons. Workers said that those who questioned safety conditions were told to get on with production.
In another instance, Tailgate 22 foreman Brian “Hammer” Collins described what happened when he stopped his crew from running coal because he found inadequate ventilation when he did his pre-shift exam. Collins didn’t allow any work to start on his section until the ventilation problems were resolved – a process that took about an hour. When he came to work the next day, he said Performance Coal Vice President Jason Whitehead suspended him for three days for “poor work performance.” Collins stood his ground. “I am hard-headed…I said, ‘No, if I ain’t got the air in my last open break I cannot load coal”.
Enhanced Employment Agreements. The company also used “enhanced employment agreements” to discourage workers from complaining about safety concerns or working conditions. Under terms of the agreements, the company offered pay increases, bonuses and guaranteed employment in exchange for employees’ agreeing to work for a three-year period. However, by accepting the company’s terms, the miners became “at will” workers. If they left voluntarily or if their employment was terminated “for lack of performance as determined by management, unacceptable conduct … or a serious safety infraction,” the miners had to return the “enhanced pay” and all of the bonuses received under the contract. They also could not work at any competitor’s coal mine within a 90-mile radius of the mine where they had worked.
The enhanced pay is subject to statutory deductions and withholdings, including state and federal income taxes, and Social Security and Medicare. Even if an employee banked 100 percent of the enhanced pay, he would not have enough to buy out his contract because the net take-home pay from the bonus would always be less than the gross amount of the enhanced pay he is obligated to pay back. The miner would have to delve into personal savings to make up the difference or face being sued and having to pay a financial penalty. In effect, the enhanced employment agreement effectively handcuffs the employee.
Another Poll Shows Hochul Ahead
PPP has Kathy Hochul ahead by a 6 points (MOE 2.9%) over Republican Jane Corwin in tomorrow’s special election in NY-26. Tea Partier by day Jack Davis is down to 13%.
This poll, and Saturday’s Siena survey show that Davis and Corwin are splitting conservative votes. A good part of the reason is the many self-inflicted wounds that have given Corwin a 52-34 unfavorable-favorable rating (almost the mirror opposite of Hochul). As Buffalopundit put it, “Corwin has run a campaign that is only competent at incompetence”.
Polling for special elections is tough, so it would be foolish to assume that Hochul will win this race based on a couple of polls. Even so, here’s another poll with brutal crosstabs [pdf] for Republicans. Barack Obama is more popular than John Boehner in a 90% white district where 66% of respondents identify themselves as moderate to very conservative. A small plurality of respondents think that Republicans are doing a worse job in the House than Democrats, and they’re not sure whether Obama or the Republicans in Congress are best suited to run the country (it’s at 44-45).
It’s Not “Our System” That’s Broken
James Joyner makes a pretty restrained version of a point I’m sure we’ll be seeing from other pundits once they’ve passed through the five stages of mourning Mitch Daniels’ candidacy:
It’s long been cliché that the process drives out all the good candidates and that anyone who would willingly subject himself and his family to their process has proven he shouldn’t be president. Neither are quite true. We continue to get outstanding people to run for high office every cycle. But it’s surely true that we run off a large number of people who would otherwise like to serve and be good at it.
[…] Maybe we’ll come to the point, as our European cousins did long ago, where we stop expecting our political leaders to also serve as spiritual leaders. While personal foibles naturally color our judgment of a candidate’s character and fitness for office, and some conduct is sufficiently odious to be a disqualifier, the notion that every detail of their life –from longago bumps in their marriage to what kind of mustard they like–is our business is counterproductive.
I agree that this stuff is counterproductive, but I also have to note that Democrats have nominated, and the public has elected, a guy who had a whole host of issues with philandering, and a black man with a funny name who admitted to drug use in his youth. The former was a was hounded and impeached by Republicans over lying about his sexual history, and the latter’s name and race had the 27 percenters convinced that he ran for office on a fake birth certificate. So I don’t think it’s “the process” that needs to be examined here, but rather what Republicans will accept from their candidates. I doubt that Daniels was going to be a great campaigner or the eventual nominee, but we’ll never know because he knew he couldn’t pass his party’s purity test.