The Spike In Supply Was Not In Response To Demand
A report from Golf Digest. “The headlines for golf’s health, notwithstanding Tiger Woods’ declaration that he intends to take the game up again competitively next month, have been disturbing. ‘Golf is back in the Olympics. Too bad no one plays it anymore,’ a Washington Post headline said a few weeks ago. ‘Why golf has gone the way of the three-martini lunch,’ Dow Jones’ MarketWatch declared last week.”
“‘Is the sky falling? Is this a death knell? No,’ Jay Karen, CEO of the National Golf Course Owners Association said. ‘The angle on golf tends to be so negative on this stuff because we were on a rise forever, a decades-long rise. When we’re not performing as the industry used to at a high-water mark, there is this jump to a conclusion and I don’t think it’s the right one.’”
“Yet there is no denying that the number of courses have declined substantially in recent years. Both Jeff Woolson, managing director of CBRE’s Golf and Resort Group and Karen cited the same reason, economics 101, supply exceeding demand. ‘Golf courses got overbuilt,’ Woolson said. ‘There really wasn’t any feasibility given to would this golf course be successful if we put homes here? Will they sell? Not one thought was given to the viability of the golf course.’”
“‘We can’t get around the fact that you have to look at why so many courses built in the ‘90s and into the millennium, that it’s true courses were built to sell more houses,’ Karen said. ‘That’s not a highly sustainable market for the golf industry. We do have this strange anomaly of this golf economy, that the spike in supply was not in response to demand.’”
The Real Deal on California. “The Malibu Golf Club, which went bankrupt for a second time last year, has sold in a receivership sale for $30.5 million. The 18-hole property on a 650-acre site in the Santa Monica Mountains Recreational Area, sold to Shinhan Golden Faith International Development Limited, a holding company with major shares held by M.O. Company of Beijing, according to the Panama Papers. Dick Fuld, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers, bought the $100-a-round golf club with his partners in Malibu Associates for $33 million in 2006. The partners buried themselves in debt while attempting to give the course a restoration makeover and entitling it for development.”
“Malibu Associates defaulted on a $46.7 million loan from U.S. Bank, which tried to seize the property, according to a report last year by the L.A. Business Journal. The partners filed for Chapter 11 protection last April.”
From CBS New York. “A proposal to turn part of a golf course into housing is driving a wedge between residents in Nassau County. CBS2’s Carolyn Gusoff reported The Woodmere Club – a private country club – said it needs the money as opponents fear overdevelopment. The country club has been a South Shore jewel for more than a century, but hard times are prompting the private country club to sell off nearly a third of its 33-acre golf course to generate income.”
“‘It’s beautiful here, it’s picturesque and they’re going to put up townhouses? Everybody is up in arms,’ said Woodsburgh resident Nicole Spivak.”
The Coeur d’ Alene Press in Idaho. “A more colorful chapter could be opening up in the saga of the embattled Idaho Club. The Jack Nicklaus-signature golf course and its remaining housing parcels are slated to go on the block during a Bonner County sheriff’s auction, which may seem a pretty gloomy and windswept turn of events. The golfing and housing development fell on hard times around 2008 amid the housing market collapse and the attendant cratering of the national economy. The course also lost its centerpiece clubhouse to an electrical fire.”
“Insurance proceeds from the fire did not go back to Pend Oreille Bonner Development, the Idaho Club’s developer. They went to various parties with liens or security interest in the project, according to court records that fill four banker boxes in the Bonner County Courthouse. The course and two dozen undeveloped parcels went to tax auction in 2014, although Idaho Valiant stepped in and paid $1.7 million in unpaid taxes. Valiant does not expect any new bidders to emerge during the sheriff’s auction.”
“‘It’s extremely unlikely that anyone’s going to show up and bid more than $21 million for the purchase,’ said Boise attorney Rick Stacey, counsel for Idaho Valiant. As a result, Valiant expects to make a credit bid at the auction based on the judgment that it is owed in order to acquire the development.”
“While the fairways and greens appear to be in good condition, there are small glimpses of the Idaho Club’s initial unraveling on other parts of the course — inconsistent or absent yardage markers, Porta Potties in lieu of flush toilets and a lack of other minor amenities duffers might expect to encounter at a top-shelf course. Golfers still pass by the stone ruins of the clubhouse upon leaving the 18th green.”
‘We can’t get around the fact that you have to look at why so many courses built in the ‘90s and into the millennium, that it’s true courses were built to sell more houses…We do have this strange anomaly of this golf economy, that the spike in supply was not in response to demand’
And boy did they sell houses, expensive ones, most of which were second properties. This set up a perfect pitch for accidental speculators. When I first got into the foreclosure biz, the two most expensive “communities” in Flagstaff were centered around golf courses (one of which had two complete 18 hole courses). These people stopped paying faster than anyone. The HOA fees were enormous. The office/gate things I went through were comical in retrospect, but not at the time. I’d show up, the looks on the staffs face was stressed. They had to let me in but it was also supposed to be a place full of rich people, not dead beats. I was at one so often they gave me a contractors pass so I could just wave in through security.
’sold to Shinhan Golden Faith International Development Limited, a holding company with major shares held by M.O. Company of Beijing, according to the Panama Papers’
Sold to some Chinese outfit. Hmmm, and now news organizations refer to the Panama Papers like it was an official report.
‘Dick Fuld, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers, bought the $100-a-round golf club with his partners in Malibu Associates for $33 million in 2006. The partners buried themselves in debt…’
In 2006? This guy didn’t know what was going down in 2006?
Dick Fuld
From 10/6/2008:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?281618-2/financial-market-regulation-practices-panel-2
From 4/20/2010:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?293077-4/2008-lehman-brothers-failure-panel-4
Not sorry, 9/11/2013:
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/ceo-behind-lehman-collapse-isn-t-sorry-dick-131017662.html
Sorry, 3/23/2016:
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/03/erin-callan-lehman-brothers-dick-fuld-memoir
Not accountable, 3/18/2016:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/court-rules-lehman-ex-ceo-dick-fuld-not-responsible-for-losing-employees-savings-2016-03-18
Ranch for sale, 7/8/2016:
http://money.cnn.com/video/luxury/2015/07/08/lehman-bros-estate.cnnmoney?iid=EL
Poor, poor little Richard. This is what happens when you want to take out the competitions beating heart and feed it to them.
I meet a young guy in Flagstaff once who told me about his Lehman shack loan. It was for a house in Tucson he bought new. He’d never seen it. He quit making payments and would occasionally get a letter from LB. A few years went by and he called to see what the status was. The lady he talked with told him she didn’t have any way to find his file; they were renting extra rooms to put ceiling-high piles of unread paperwork in.
Wouldn’t local tax assessor keep a tab on that place?
“Dick Fuld, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers…”
Isn’t that the guy who wants rip your heart out and eat it?
Merely another Wall Street Psychopath.
With the demise of the middle class, and younger people not able to afford to golf even if they wanted to, owning golf course property looks to be a losing proposition. I remember going to Myrtle Beach every so often and each time I was there they had built another course, (last time they had 65 of them). I kept thinking who the hell is going to be on these?
I’ve got some more comedy to report. $1 million RMB is about $150,000.00, which is a lot to spend on a license plate, especially when your car cost just 3% of that. Check out those other rides, though. All the product of legitimate business dealings, no doubt!
“After spending just 30,000 RMB on his new vehicle, a driver surnamed Liu decided to splurge on his license plate, spending 1 million RMB on one with 5 lucky number 8s, hoping it would keep him out of trouble on the road. It totally backfired on him.
On his first day behind the wheel, Liu was stopped no less than eight times by local police. You must be wondering what exactly Liu was doing to attract so much attention. Well, according to NetEase, it wasn’t Liu’s driving, but his “lucky” license plate that caused police to pull him over, with officers believing that it just had to be fake.
In China, “8″ is considered to be the luckiest number, since in Mandarin it sounds like the word for “prosperity” or “wealth” and in Cantonese it sounds like the word for “fortune.” That means license plates with a few 8s are prized as a fortuitous status symbol and can often cost drivers as much as a cheap car.”
http://shanghaiist.com/2016/06/29/lucky_license_plate_backfires.php
Beijing Olympics opened on 8/8/2008 at 8:00 local time.
4 is the unlucky number.
Wasn’t our good friend Stanley Johnson a member of the local golf club? Using borrowed money, of course.
A classic
Lending Tree Stanley Johnson Debt Up To My Eyeballs … - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV_YAeXOSiw - 201k -
It sure sux to own shares in the toxic twins.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
MoneyBeat
Court Throws Out Another Lawsuit Over Fannie and Freddie Profits
Ruling is the latest in a long series of legal setbacks for Fannie and Freddie investors.
By John Carney
Sep 9, 2016 3:47 pm ET
Investors in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac suffered yet another setback on Friday in their attempt to sue the federal government over its claim to the profits of mortgage finance giants.
A judge in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky dismissed claims brought against the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Department of Treasury over a 2012 change to Fannie and Freddie’s bailout agreements in which they agreed to send nearly all profits to the U.S. Treasury, an arrangement known as the net worth sweep.
…
PB in hiding?
Markets suddenly turned miraculously green. Has Brainard clarified the Fed’s intent to keep interest rates pinned to the floor for a protracted period into the indefinite future?
The Fed’s insider pals must be making bank on all this market-moving Fed jawboning.
Bloomberg
MarketsBrainard’s Argument for No September Hike Likely to Sway Fed
Craig Torres
September 12, 2016 — 2:07 PM PDT
Lael Brainard, governor of the U.S. Federal Reserve.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
Fed governor spells out risk-management calculus for prudence
Brainard comment is last word before FOMC meeting next week
Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard has just released a post-crisis monetary policy manifesto aimed at defusing any urgency to raise interest rates. For this month at least, the Federal Open Market Committee might agree.
…
Comedy item number two, from right here in Tampa. Again, with the benefit of hindsight, one goal of the Obama administration has been the recreation of the pre-Great Recession status quo. It’s as if the recession was a freak accident or something, rather than an obvious and predictable consequence of truly awful policy decisions.
“When it started six years ago, the $7.6 billion federal Hardest Hit Fund was intended to help people save their homes.
Now, at least in Hillsborough County, it has morphed into a program that helps people buy homes.
Since January, only 123 struggling Hillsborough homeowners have qualified for Hardest Hit help in paying their mortgages, a Tampa Bay Times analysis found. In the same period, nearly eight times as many people — 935 — have received up to $15,000 for down payments and closing costs to buy homes, including new townhouses.
“I’m surprised to hear the ratio is that high,” said Ernest Coney, president of CDC of Tampa. Although the recession is over, he said his nonprofit housing counseling agency still sees “hundreds” of homeowners every year hoping for Hardest Hit help to avoid foreclosure even as more and more of the federal money goes to home buyers.”
http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/realestate/whos-getting-hardest-hit-fund-help-in-hillsborough-its-buyers-not/2292895
‘Since January, only 123 struggling Hillsborough homeowners have qualified for Hardest Hit help in paying their mortgages, a Tampa Bay Times analysis found. In the same period, nearly eight times as many people — 935 — have received up to $15,000 for down payments and closing costs to buy homes, including new townhouses’
Like I was saying this weekend; all this talk about supply and demand, but the governments response is always to juice demand.
white el·e·phant
noun
noun: white elephant; plural noun: white elephants
‘a possession that is useless or troublesome, especially one that is expensive to maintain or difficult to dispose of.’
I could have posted a dozen recent reports of these courses floundering, being sold off or chopped up for new development. Also upkeep/water troubles. It occurred to me there are other examples. These super luxury condos in New York and Miami; right now the focus is on the price cuts, etc. But like these golf course houses, they aren’t practical. It will take years for people to realize they are kinda useless and too expensive to maintain.
The oversupply of retirement golf course homes is just like the oversupply of Grade-A apartments. More and more builders are competing for fewer and fewer upper-middle class baby boomers, hoping to make it on high margin instead of high volume. A game a musical chairs, where it’s the customers who are the chairs.
And it’s only going to get worse. These golden retirees will have only 5 (10 if they’re lucky) years in the house before they can no longer navigate stairs or clean the house. There are very few Gen X to replace them.
Denver Business Journal subscriber paywall article reports:
Rising cost of living in metro Denver could curtail consumer activity, economist warns.
Sounds about right. All my money going to higher rent will not be spent on hotels and meals this ski season. Loveland has a microwave in their cafeteria. I paid $9 for a grilled cheese at Winter Park once, but I loaded it up with about 8 ounces of tomatoes and pickles and onions from the condiment bar…
“Roughly four in 10 adults with a social media account (39%) say that seeing other people’s purchases and vacations on social media makes them look into a similar purchase or vacation, according to a survey of more than 1,000 Americans released this summer by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. What’s more, 11% have taken a vacation or made a purchase in the last year after seeing someone’s post about their vacation or purchase.
And fully 30% of Americans say that social media has some influence on their purchasing decisions, with 5% saying that it has a significant impact, a 2014 Gallup poll found. Among millennials the numbers are even higher with roughly half saying that social media influences what they buy.”
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-your-facebook-account-can-slowly-destroy-your-finances-2016-09-12
LOLZ when I see people post pics of themselves half-drunk at some $7 a beer microbrewery. Backcountry skiing and camping and hiking are free, all it costs is the gas to get there.
It’s like the “Jones” movie all over again. When will people learn!
Seeing all the new shiny RV’s and cars on the road confirm the above.
“It’s no secret millennials are swimming in debt, particularly from student loans. But new research shows the financial challenges facing young Americans may be far worse than anticipated. In particular, overconfidence puts them in an extremely fragile financial situation. And sadly they don’t realize it.
Our ongoing longitudinal study of college students has learned that the overwhelming majority understood the recession caused financial difficulties among their parents. But at the same time, 73% of the study participants were engaging in risky behaviors like maxing out credit cards, paying bills late and taking out payday loans. Evidence since the recession suggests there continues to be denial among millennials that a downturn can affect them the same way it did their parents, especially if they’re in a protected environment.
We’ve raised an overconfident group of young adults who have experienced eight years of growth in the economy. This generation rarely has been warned how a downward move in the economy can impact them, and many parents have been quick to bail their children out. A past survey of 2,000 Americans found 59% of parents were providing financial support to their adult children. That comes at a cost: Among those surveyed, 26% had taken on additional debt in order to help their adult children and 7% delayed retirement.
Millennials recently were asked if they could come up with $2,000 if an unforeseen need arose in the next month—36% responded they probably or certainly couldn’t come up with the funds in that time.”
http://blogs.wsj.com/experts/2016/09/11/the-financial-overconfidence-that-threatens-millennials/
Related article to the Denver Post piece on divorce after 50 I posted yesterday:
“Baby Boomer women–now in their 50s and 60s–are doing worse financially than older women in the 1990s. My new research with Annamaria Lusardi of the George Washington University explains why, using national representative survey data from the Health and Retirement Study and the National Financial Capability Study. We track changes in older women’s work plans and debt burdens, along with the links to financial literacy and debt stressors.
One reason they’re in worse shape is that older women today hold more debt than their peers did in the past. Boomers bought more expensive houses during the real-estate run-up, and, at the same time, took on larger mortgages with smaller down payments. The result has been that more women are reaching their 60s in debt, and the amount of their debt has also soared.”
http://blogs.wsj.com/experts/2016/09/11/why-boomer-women-are-worse-off-financially-than-their-predecessors/
Maybe they should snow sell that over-indebtet hiuse that they stole from their ex-husband.
Unpossible. Watching Sex And The City and reading Salon and Huffington Post, your betters have assured that each and every one is a special snowflake who deserves to “have it all.”
Dad of a friend I grew up with became a widower in his early 50s. He owns about million in rental properties (this is alot in the Midwest) and a pole barn full of muscle cars.
So many broke women his age trying to move in with him and make him clean up their financial trainwreck lives, LOLZ.
Rental housing might be ok, but Muscle Cars? Is there some CO2-free method to achieve the same result?
He can only drive one at a time. And if he lives in the snowbelt, they probably don’t get driven at all during the Winter.
“One reason they’re in worse shape is that older women today hold more debt than their peers did in the past. Boomers bought more expensive houses during the real-estate run-up, and, at the same time, took on larger mortgages with smaller down payments. The result has been that more women are reaching their 60s in debt, and the amount of their debt has also soared.”
Paying 250% premiums for what is always a depreciating asset, in this case a house, is a horrific financial proposition but tens of millions of suckers did it anyways.
A house is always a liability that empties your wallet every day you own it.
Boomers are the most worthless generation in human history. Utterly feckless and self-absorbed. The sooner they shuffle off this mortal coil the better off we’ll all be.
Aw, leave us alone. Remind me which generation was responsible for the A-Bomb.
w-o-r-t-h-l-e-s-s
Remember, no “smaller government”
No “less regulation”
And no “lower taxes”
Graham consistently polled dead last among GOP presidential primary candidates. Why is that? Because he is a looser:
“After long and arduous negotiations, Israel and the Obama administration have agreed on a landmark military aid package that would increase U.S. aid to Israel over the next 10 years. But the White House is reluctant to sign the deal because officials are upset one leading lawmaker won’t go along: Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.).
Graham, the chairman of the Senate appropriations subcommittee that oversees the foreign affairs budget, has already marked up a bill that would give Israel $3.4 billion next year, more than the number the White House negotiated.
The administration hasn’t complained to Graham directly; it told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about its problem, and he talked to Graham about it in a phone call last month.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/us-israel-deal-held-up-over-dispute-with-lindsey-graham/2016/09/11/74644cc0-76bb-11e6-b786-19d0cb1ed06c_story.html?utm_term=.16b28b816a4d
I just saw this Washington Post headline:
‘Jeff Bezos just unveiled his new rocket and it’s a monster’
Ahem…
Ben Jones, Washington Post and The Hill dot com consistently have ads for Lockheed, Raytheon, etc. Do not bite the hand that feeds…
Yeah, because when reading the newspaper I might want to pick up a jet fighter. It’s like those ads for railroads telling us how efficient they are. When was the last time the viewing/listening public bought space on a railroad?
Targeted (no pun intended) at members and staff on the Hill, and their government contractor donor base.
Government contractors cost taxpayers over $500,000,000,000 a year in case you forgot.
Oh, the stories I could tell were it not for those confidentiality agreements…
Yesterday’s 9/11 Memorial optics were quite symbolic.
The scene of the crime, a joint production of the Bushes and Sauds, all cleaned up in the warm Indian summer sunlight. A Potemkin Village false front on the streets of New York, home to the criminal cartel known as Wall Street.
Washington as personified by the sick, deviant, corrupt, neocon establishment hag, unconscious and flaccid, being dragged to her black van and shoved in. On display was certain amount of suppressed contempt by the handlers.
All played out. It’s over.
It’s not “Indian Summer” though. Not yet.
Poetic license.
When I lived up in New England, summer ended and Indian Summer started informally right after Labor Day.
Indian Summer, by the Dream Academy. 1980s gold.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_O3pKrzOiM
That it happened there and on that date was bizarre. One gets that feeling of watching a huge ship rolling over, its barnacle encrusted bottom exposed to the sun. All across DC, over-paid defense consultants sat with mouths hanging open. Policy wonks suddenly had the hair on their necks stand up and immediately thought of their enormous mortgage. Globalist “elites” played the video again and again, hoping to see a different outcome. As she is dumped into the van like a sack of potatoes, the entirety of the world order realized they had bet it all on a frail woman who couldn’t make her legs work.
No spin can work this time. The magic of cell phone cameras had caught the event from multiple angles. No waving off by the New York Times or Washington Post. It’s undeniable, even to the Cheeto-smeared face on talk radio. It was more evident than Dukakis on the tank. The inevitable is impossible. This person will more likely be in a hospice than the White House.
“Globalist “elites” played the video again and again, hoping to see a different outcome.”
And all they got was a piece of metal dropping out of her pants leg, LMAO.
What struck me was the barely suppressed contempt with which the handlers treated her, yanking her forward into to that black hearse of a van. I got the feeling that they would have let her drop to the ground if they could have.
Shouldn’t surprise me, though. Her nasty treatment of her Secret Service detail is fairly well known.
Nigel Farage said this today:
“People have simply had enough of being sneered at by out-of-touch, professional, career political elites.”
You know what else I’m sick of? Being told nothing will ever change or get better. We’re stuck with these “elites” and we’ll never beat them so just live with it. All these people you see everyday: they are too stupid to bring around change and you are stupid if you think they can or will. We’ll always be ruled by a Clinton or a Bush with an occasional globalist stooge who is really good at killing people.
Well F- that! It’s globalism that’s stupid. It’s these central bankers and wall street that are stupid. Policing the world is a GD disaster, and yes it can be changed. Look at Brexit. The “elites” and their owned media said it was impossible and racist and threw the library at its supporters and got Da Meddle Fanger back. Will it work, will they be sold out? I don’t know, but I do know when Da Meddle Fanger is appropriate.
And a YUUUUGE AMEN to that! That’s the line we always hear from the sophisticated degraded cynics. “Nothing can be done about”. Just accept it. Here’s some vaseline for your buttocks.
Yep, F that indeed. Here’s a giant wad of green goo, right back at ‘em.
Now the media is saying “Trump’s health is also poor!”
http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/12/media/mccain-gold-standard/index.html
I don’t recall any pics of him being helped climbing stairs, zoning out when heckled or his limp form being dragged into a limo/hearse thingie.
This is one of my fave Trump videos, when he had to get into the Hyatt by the back door due to the protests in Burlingame.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z8FKlH55T8
He does land a bit heavily on his feet, pauses for a moment and then moves right along. I’d like to see Hillary do that.
The guy’s energy appears to be boundless. I’ve never seen anyone campaign like that. He takes a licking and keeps on ticking. They’ve thrown just about everything they can at him and he doesn’t stop. If I’d taken even half the blows that Trump has, I’d be curled up in a corner in a fetal position.
Truth is, most people who natter about him are just jealous, really. Including the propagandia.
“People have simply had enough of being sneered at by out-of-touch, professional, career political elites.”
I’m trying to reconsile Farage’s claim with the fact that 95% of the electorate bent over for those self-same out-of-touch, professional, career political elites by casting votes for Obama, McCain, and Romney in 2008 and 2012, and Hillary will almost certainly be elected in 2016 even if she’s practically embalmed by then.
You can’t fix stupid.
So up above it was the boomers. Now it’s the electorate. Must’ve been a bad trading day.
PBear been runoff? On suicide watch?
Must scroll down further.
‘Jeff Bezos just unveiled his new rocket and it’s a monster’
We’ll see how long it takes to go from the drawing board to a reliable launch vehicle. Especially when you consider that they have yet to launch anything into orbit.
‘Jeff Bezos just unveiled his new rocket and it’s a monster’
That’s not what his wife said.
You’ve had your Washington Post, now let’s have your Washington Times.
WT website leads with article titled “Crucial Mosul campaign looms with Obama set to leave behind unfinished war on terror” which is redundant, and erroneous, because the war on terror has no ending.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/sep/11/mosul-campaign-crucial-in-isis-fight-with-obama-se/
Also note that WT website has a sub-section titled “Threat Assessment” that at any time contains a minimum of three articles. And on days when there is no imminent threat, they’ll create one for you.
No “smaller government” or “less regulation” or “lower taxes” happening here.
After reviewing the alarmist, warmongering article titles on World Net Daily (no smaller government, less regulation, or lower taxes there) I cruise on over to William Kristol’s (net worth $200 million) Weekly Standard for this narrative published on 9/24/2001:
“Thus, the United States has announced that it considers terrorist attacks on its citizens and property an act of war, not a crime. The United States has announced that it will prosecute this war unilaterally if need be. The United States has announced that its targets are not simply the men directly responsible for mass murders in New York City and Arlington, Virginia—but any group or government that has supported or sustained them, and any group or government inclined to support or sustain others like them in the future. Each of these announcements represents a striking and hugely consequential departure from past policy and practice. And the entire exercise has been effected without ordinary public debate. Not because debate was suppressed or obscured by the emotion of the moment. But because debate was unnecessary. We are all thinking the same things, and reaching the same conclusions, and all by ourselves, individually, at lightning speed. Imagine: American politics is operating with supranormal efficiency and effectiveness at the moment.
Nor should President Bush, as he embarks on the Good War of a new century, have serious cause to fear that he will fail the standards established in the last. They are the wrong standards, in any case: This is nothing close to Pearl Harbor when you get right down to it. We are not the unarmed and inexperienced America of 1941; we are a global colossus. We are stunned and mourning, but we are not for a moment afraid of defeat. We do not need to hear, as White House counselor Karen Hughes bizarrely reassured us last Tuesday, that “your government continues to function”—for who among us worried that the government was broken? We do not need to hear from Bush himself that “my resolve is steady and strong”; we expect and demand as much. We really don’t need to hear anything but the news, in fact. Rooseveltian eloquence would be almost frivolous at this point. Where America might be led, she has already arrived on her own.”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-united-state-of-america/article/2004267
William Kristol is a war criminal.
>>William Kristol is a war criminal.
Very true.
war criminals are always on the losing side. Winning the war is just and right, losing the war is very bad.
Take your pick as you can not change the humanness of humanity.
‘we are a global colossus’
That got beat by goat herders and kiosk merchants who didn’t possess a single aircraft. These neocons live in a fantasy world.
‘In trying to explain her support for the Iraq war – which everyone but the most unrepentant neocon acknowledges was and is a disaster – Hillary Clinton averred that she has “learned the lessons” of that war and that we must ensure “it never happens again.” Yet in the next breath she likens Vladimir Putin to Hitler, accuses Donald Trump of being a Kremlin pawn, and threatens to take “military action” against Russia for supposedly hacking into the Democratic National Committee’s email system. Debbie Wasserman Schultz must be avenged – yes, even at the cost of World War III!’
‘Rather than learning the lessons of our post-9/11 adventurism, the Democrats want to strike out in a new direction: forget the Islamic terrorists, some of whom Mrs. Clinton armed and enabled in Libya and Syria. We have a new enemy – Putin’s Russia.’
‘Fifteen years ago, the neocons told us that the only way to deal with the threat of Islamic terrorism was to invade the Middle East, subjugate it, and install a MacArthur Regency over the entire region. The invasion of Iraq, they assured us, would inspire democratic pro-Western revolutions throughout the world, the “swamp” of the Middle East would be cleansed, and the terrorist creatures who inhabited it would be deprived of a nurturing environment.’
‘Exactly the opposite has occurred. Even more fearsome creatures have emerged from that swamp, which is far from drained, in the form of ISIS, al Nusra, and whatever others are even now germinating like a swarm of Biblical locusts. We are less safe here in the “homeland” – as we’ve come to call the continental United States, to differentiate it from our overseas empire – than we were on September 12, 2001. Terrorist attacks have occurred not only here but also all across Europe – so many that we have become inured to them, we expect them, they are the New Normal.’
Only happens here lp.org
TRiUMPh!
No more wars, please. Is that too much to ask?
Oh, dear…
http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/12/james-woolsey-cia-director-under-bill-clinton-joins-trump-campaign/
Very very doubtful that these establishment types who are from the war longing community are going to want no more war.
You people are so naive if you think Trump means the democide by the U.S. military will stop. Not even under Jimmy Carter. He and Brzezinski started the funding of al quada in the late 70s.
“Not even under Jimmy Carter. He and Brzezinski started the funding of al quada in the late 70s.”
Yes, yes they did. In Afghanistan. A petri dish in which both the CIA and the KGB began the weaponization of Islam.
Yes, yes they did. In Afghanistan. A petri dish in which both the CIA and the KGB began the weaponization of Islam.
Wasn’t there an old, Captain Kirk era, Star Trek episode about something very similar?
Could be, Colorado. So many of the episodes were taken from chapters of history, society. Although I’m not familiar with that one. I’ve been watching the episodes in syndication lately, so maybe I’ll run into it.
It’s the episode where the Klingons and the Feds are backing competing tribes on a planet, providing their “guys” with better weapons.
After a quick search I found the episode. It’s called “A Private Little War”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Private_Little_War
Thanks, Colorado!
I did a brief read on this 1970s Afghanistan CIA KGB situation a while back. Can’t remember where I read it, it might have been a piece by Raimondo. (Ben, would you happen to know if he wrote anything about it?)
Anyway, the gist, as I recall, was that the CIA and the KGB backed different warring tribes, and part of the “backing” was for each to get its pet tribes juiced up about “their” version of Islam and fighting each other over who was more right about the religion. The psy-ops was pretty brutal, as I recall, involving techniques that used drugs, hypnosis, even torture. And of course financing for the tribes to fight each other. And the heroin trade. It was the beginning of the weaponization of Islam.
Eventually, of course, the “experiment” escaped the petri dish and spread elsewhere.
George Pataki said, “We’re Americans, and because of our freedom we’re always going to be subject to attacks from Islamic radicals or others who just detest the freedom that we are so proud of. But you can’t live in fear,” the former governor and presidential candidate said.
Another empty globalist pronouncement.
Pataki?
Nobody paid attention to him when he was governor of NY, never mind now.
Article for phony, Cleveland dot com reports:
“Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, is expected to visit Columbus and Dayton on Thursday.
Chelsea Clinton will campaign for her mother, who was diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday. The Clinton campaign made the illness public on Sunday, after the candidate appeared to faint while leaving a Sept. 11 memorial service early, according to CNN. Hillary Clinton canceled a planned trip to California this week, but is likely to begin campaigning again on Wednesday.”
http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2016/09/chelsea_clinton_to_visit_ohio.html#incart_river_home
Will Chelsea be visiting Cleveland? If so I can provide her handlers with the itinerary of a “ruin porn” tour of the post-industrial wasteland of Northeast Ohio that her father’s NAFTA created.
Midtown corridor would be a nice example. On Chester Ave, Euclid Ave, Carnegie Ave from about the East 30s out to the Cleveland Clinic / University Hospital complex would be illustrative.
Block after block after block of vacant lots and empty industrial buildings. Cleveland RTA launched express bus lanes on Euclid Ave a few years ago between downtown and University Circle, seemingly appropriate as there isn’t alot between them that you’d want to slow down and look at, much less get off the bus and go to…
Warmist Warming Monday:
“critics have argued that advocating for a lower birth rate equals hating babies or being “anti-life”.
This anti-life charge is more interesting, but equally wrong. The premise seems to be that those who wish to lower fertility rates must be misanthropic, or fail to see the value of humans. But that gets things exactly backward: a radical concern for climate change is precisely motivated by a concern for human life – in particular, the human lives that will be affected by climate disruptions.
A valuable philosophical contribution here is the distinction between “making people happy” and “making happy people”. When I feed a hungry person, or prevent a harm from befalling someone, I improve a person’s well-being. But when I create a person whom I will then feed and prevent from harm, I make a person who will predictably be well off. In the first case, I added happiness to the world by helping an existing person; whereas in the second case, I added happiness by creating a person who will be happy. See the difference?
I, like many philosophers, believe that it’s morally better to make people happy than to make happy people. Those who exist already have needs and wants, and protecting and providing for them is motivated by respect for human life. It is not a harm to someone not to be created.
In fact, I would argue that it is more “anti-life” to prioritize creating new life over caring for, or even not harming, those who already exist.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/12/why-we-should-have-fewer-children-save-the-planet-climate-change
Adopt a shelter pet instead. Your DNA is not “special”
That’s a great sentiment, but here is the problem - if you don’t procreate and pass your values onto your children, then your values will die with you (unless you are really rich and fund a foundation or something).
The future of humankind will be shaped by those who produce the most offspring, like it or not. Their values will be promulgated.
“The idea behind Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to stem the state’s housing affordability crisis was simple: Make it easier to build houses.
If developers pledged to set aside some units in their projects for low-income residents, the governor’s proposed legislation would have eliminated some local hurdles to building, likely leading to a modest increase in construction.
Yet the proposal the governor unveiled in May represented a profound shakeup in how the development process would have worked in California. The measure challenged the primacy of local control over housing, inflamed powerful entrenched interests and was eyed warily by the very groups representing those the plan was supposed to help.
Because of the resistance, Brown’s effort became so unpopular in the state Capitol that not one of 120 lawmakers was willing to publicly stand behind it. After weeks of little action, the plan died a quiet death last month, never having received a vote in the Legislature.”
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-governor-housing-failure-20160912-snap-story.html
“Homeless residents of Pomona will be provided storage for their property and will be allowed to sleep in public spaces until shelter beds exist for all of them, following the settlement of a lawsuit challenging the city’s practice of homeless cleanups.
In the settlement reached with the pro bono law firm Public Counsel, the city agreed to build 388 lockers for the property of homeless people and to stop enforcing three laws that prohibit tents, personal property and overnight sleeping on public property.
Enforcement of the overnight sleeping ban could resume once sufficient accommodations exist, either in indoor shelters or open spaces designated for overnight stays.
Across California, laws that criminalize homeless people continue to be enacted and enforced, despite constitutional challenges that are gaining weight in the courts, according to a June study by the Berkeley Law Policy Advocacy Clinic at UC Berkeley. The authors found that all of California’s 58 largest cities have laws that target homeless people by restricting standing, sitting and sleeping in public places.”
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-pomona-homeless-settlement-20160911-snap-story.html
Hope n’ change Goldman Sachs can believe in has translated into tent Obamavilles springing up in US cities, as well as a massive increase in homelessness.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-12/tent-cities-full-homeless-people-are-booming-cities-all-over-america-poverty-spikes
“New homes being built in San Francisco today are 28 percent smaller than they were a century ago, according to a new survey by PropertyShark. New homes in the city have an average of 1,150 square feet. Only Boston (at 909 square feet) had less square footage in new-construction homes.
But things looked very different a century ago. Between 1910 and 1919, the average new home built in San Francisco was almost 1,600 square feet, considerably higher than the national average of just under 1,400 square feet during the same time period.
San Francisco’s drop in size was the largest in the nation, but Miami followed closely behind with a 25 percent drop in new home size compared with a century ago. Washington, D.C. (down 14 percent) and New York City (down 11 percent) were the only two other cities to see a decrease.
That’s because over the last century the average new-construction American home has ballooned to 2,430 square feet. At the same time, family size has dwindled. “Nowadays, the average number of people in a household is 2.58, compared to 4.54 in 1910,” said PropertyShark’s Adela Muresan in the report. “This means that today the average individual living in a newly built home in the U.S. enjoys 211 percent more living space than their grandparents did.”
http://blog.sfgate.com/ontheblock/2016/09/12/san-francisco-homes-are-almost-30-percent-smaller-than-they-were-100-years-ago/
The ‘houses are bigger now’ narrative just got crushed.,/b>
You’ve had eight years to shed debt and be in a solid cash position.
So if you get caught with yer shorts down in the next crisis you gotz nobody to blame but the one in the mirror.
Golf — who the hell has that kind of time?
My Dad actually got heavily into the game. After he retired.
No one my age or younger will be retiring that young, however.
That’s exactly what keeps me from playing! I do a pitch & putt once every few years and enjoy it thoroughly, but it’s pretty darn low on the priority list and I’m not good enough to play on a full course.
“The Middle East is a vast demolition derby that has no interest in some outsider playing traffic cop, especially one who doesn’t really understand the rules of the sport. We aren’t the first to apply for the job. Pundits blame the United States for unleashing the current array of demons. In truth, one must go back to the Sunni-Shiite split 1,400 years ago. The inability to appreciate its implications was clearly demonstrated after World War I, when the British and French created phony countries like Iraq and Syria, just like some in Europe. Ironically, the West stayed silent while Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia went away, but furiously try to maintain the national fictions of the Middle East, where the desire to split into tribal and religious enclaves is so much more furiously pursued. Oil will make people and nations do desperate things.
The Middle East chapter of American history deserves to be closed. The world is riven by chaos, and the day of the West having the ability to guide events in troubled regions is long past. The renowned strategist and historian Edward Luttwak wrote an article in Foreign Affairs magazine 15 years ago that advocated that such problems never went away unless locals were allowed to work them out alone through victory or mutual exhaustion. As an example, the apparently intractable tragedy in Northern Ireland ended just so, with the help of mediators solicited from the United States. There are activists that think that this deal with Russia is just what we need. What we need is a break.”
http://www.thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/international/295364-we-dont-need-a-syria-deal-we-need-a-break-from-the-middle
It’s official
According to Bankrate.com, the median new car is unaffordable for people making the median income in every major US city.*
http://tinyurl.com/hepgcp6
*If using “old school metrics” of 20% down, 48 month loan.
Like housing, auto prices have a long way to fall my friend. A very long way to fall.
Cannot wait for car depreciation to return to the mean!
Cars are even more expensive in Europe, and what is really interesting is that most buyers over there save up and pay cash.
I think that as incomes fail to keep up with car prices we will see more low frills cars being sold. I wouldn’t be surprised to see cars sold with hand crank windows and no A/C. The level of options installed on most new cars on the lot is getting absurd. It’s also my understanding that the bulk of profits for automakers are from pickups and SUVs.
Thornton, CO Housing Prices Crater 6% yoy
http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://www.zillow.com/thornton-co/home-values/
The Oligopoly can fleece the proles far more comprehensibly if they have full visibility into their wealth, assets, earnings, and sources of revenue.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-12/jim-grant-rejects-rogoffs-curse-cash-warns-government-wants-control-your-money
Hope n’ change comes to American teenagers.
http://www.businessinsider.com/food-insecurity-american-teens-sex-work-2016-9
Hehe… a bologna sandwich or macaroni-n-cheese?
Too soon?
http://grrrgraphics.com/index.html
Fatties in uniform are evidence of falling standards. Forward!
http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/the-us-military-has-a-huge-problem-with-obesity-and-its-only-getting-worse
Seriously, America? You want to give the most important job in the land to a corrupt, sickly, serial influence peddler?
http://www.theburningplatform.com
The Comrades of Proven Worth at the PBOB are as nervous as six-year-olds at the Neverland Ranch as they contemplate how the Chinese bagholders are going to react once the Chinese housing and stock bubbles implode. Maoism and the Red Guards could be making a comeback. (I mean, outside of California).
Oops, forgot the link for the China housing bubble article.
http://wolfstreet.com/2016/09/12/pboc-stimulus-china-housing-bubble-risk-to-banks/