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Real Name: Duncan Black
Age: 38
Location: Philadelphia


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Monday, January 31, 2011
 
Happy Hour Thread

enjoy.

 
I'll Play One On This Blog

Obviously deep weeds constitutional lawyering is not my thing, but my common sense, as opposed to understanding and having deep knowledge of precedent, view is that the nonseverability issue isn't actually crazy.

 
The Rural Counties Are Sucking Us Dry

As a good liberal I certainly don't mind if some of my tax dollars are siphoned off to pay for things in other places, and contrary to the way things are often portrayed, there is a lot of rural poverty that I am happy to redistribute a bit of wealth to. But there's certainly nothing wrong with highlighting this fact (actually have no idea what the fact would be in my state), nor is there anything wrong with questioning whether the degree of regional redistribution is appropriate or communicating just why things are the way they are. More than that it is commonly believed - erroneously at least in some places - that it's those in the Big City who are taking all the state money.

 
Gallows Humor

Obviously Manning's treatment has driven him completely insane.

 
Silly Digby, We're All About Increasing Patchouli Rations

I'd say the only non-jobs/economy issue that The Professional Left was focused on before the election was DADT. Most of us have been begging them to do something.

 
Bye Bye HCR

Federal judge strikes down whole law, sez mandate is unconstitutional and cannot be severed from rest of law.

Maybe we'll return to my crazy idea to pay for it out of taxes.

 
Crazy People With Cars Who Will Probably Kill People

Jeebus.

One thing which always flabbergasts me is the degree to which people think their mad driving skills make it unpossible for them to get into an accident.

 
Lunch Thread

enjoy.

 
If Only They'd Listened To Me

Yes I've been pushing bankruptcy mortgage "cramdown" for years. Yes it would've, to a great degree, provided a fair and efficient way for dealing with this foreclosure mess. The administration claimed to support it but didn't put any muscle behind it. But, you know, fixing the economy is hard work. Especially if you don't go for the obvious solutions.

 
Complements

Back in the dark ages when I was in grad school, right about the time of the dawning of the Glorious And Bountiful Age Of The Internets, there was a lot of talk about how all this new technology would allow for long distance interaction. With plunging long distance call prices (they actually used to cost real money!), and the rise of email and the potential for videoconferencing, none of us would ever have to interact in person again. This would mean that we would all telecommute, the cities would depopulate, business air travel would become practically nonexistent, etc. Obviously things didn't quite work out that way. Someone (Ed Glaeser maybe?) wrote a basic paper pointing out if face-to-face and distance interactions are complements, rather than substitutes, then your conclusions flip, and that all the technology simply reinforces the benefits of personal interactions, whether in consumption or production.

I still don't think we're close to knowing how all of this technology is going to impact things. I know when I overhear the kids talk today they sound a bit like they're coming from another world, and not simply because I'm too old to know who this Bieber dude is.

 
Heckuva Job

Just because I'm petty and George Bush was very proud of the increase the home ownership rate under his presidency, latest census figures out today have the home ownership rate at 66.5%. It peaked at 69.2% in 2004, falling to 67.5% as Bush was about to leave office.

66.5% brings us back to 1998 levels. While this is a bad thing to some extent due to the fact that it's in part a symptom of other bad things, there really isn't any reason that everyone should feel inclined to own a home.


...CR has more.

 
You Mean They're Mooslims Too?

As Roy says, it's all Demcracy, Whiskey, Sexy! until it occurs to some of them that the likely successors are also araby muslimy types. Which is, you know, why I was a bit skeptical of all that democracy promotion talk.

 
Not Like Other Places

The view from DC is a bit different.

The rebound has given a lift to the local economy and begun to ease the pressure on many struggling homeowners, who became more vulnerable to foreclosure when the equity in their property evaporated.

Single-family home prices have soared 27 percent in the District and 26 percent in the Virginia suburbs from the low point, according to a Washington Post analysis of sales records. In the Maryland suburbs, where housing prices fell later and not nearly as far, the rebound has been more modest, 3 percent since their bottom early last year.

 
Good Morning



Sunday, January 30, 2011
 
Those Wacky Afghanis

Collapsing banking system... primitives.

Oh, wait...






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Drinking Liberally