21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS: Hackers ‘could take over your dildo and make it go berserk’, expert warns.
Archive for 2016
March 21, 2016
CHOCOLATE RATION INCREASED: Previously Owned U.S. Home Sales Decline More Than Forecast.
Closings on existing homes, which usually take place a month or two after a contract is signed, decreased 7.1 percent to a three-month low 5.08 million annual rate after a 5.47 million pace in January, the National Association of Realtors said Monday. Sales were weaker than the most pessimistic forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists.
Faster growth in residential real estate is being hampered by a limited selection of available properties that has led to higher offering prices. While mortgage rates are attractive, affordability remains an issue for potential first-time and lower-income buyers whose participation would help broaden the market’s improvement.
“This number seems to suggest the trend may be a little weaker than we thought,” said David Sloan, senior economist at 4cast Inc. in New York. “Supply is fairly limited, so that is a restraint on sales.”
The Administration’s response to the popped real estate bubble was to blow the bubble back up, and now younger buyers are getting priced out of the market.
Unexpectedly.
WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-RUN CITIES SUCH CESSPITS OF OFFICIAL VIOLENCE? How Chicago Racked up a $662 Million Police Misconduct Bill.
They needed that money for exterminators: Rat Sightings in Chicago Are Absolutely SOARING. But hey, it’s not like Chicago has financial problems or anything.
IN THE MAIL: From F. H. Buckley, The Way Back: Restoring the Promise of America.
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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1047.
MICHAEL LEDEEN: WHY DOES OBAMA LIKE MERKEL? IT’S THE GUILT, BABY.
“RECENT EVENTS,” AKA, “THIS IS KNOWN AS BAD LUCK:” Regarding “Earth Hour,” “Fads come and go,” Tim Blair writes. “This year was a little different. For a start, some Europeans cities decided against turning off their street lights due to what one official described as ‘recent events’. Explaining that ‘Earth Hour is a good and important arrangement’, Swedish politician AnnSofie Andersson nevertheless cancelled the usual lights-out ceremony in the city of Ostersund. ‘This year we chose to keep the streets lit because of the recent events.’”
By that, Andersson means a surge in sexual assaults and other crimes blamed — with good reason — on Sweden’s new and extremely numerous Middle Eastern refugee population.
“The police think it’s a very wise move and that the municipality made a good decision,” Chief Constable Stephen Jerand said of the city’s decision.
“Keeping the lights on creates security and is in line with our common efforts to increase security under current conditions. “Under current conditions” is Euro-talk for “during all of these Islamic rapes, attacks and robberies”.
They’ve got a very different way of expressing themselves over there.
Or as they say over here since January of 2009, whenever any bad news strikes that could impact our semi-retired president’s poll numbers, “Unexpectedly.”
(Classical reference in headline.)
JOEL KOTKIN: Trumpism: America’s Berlusconi Moment.
An old joke—that in heaven, the Italians do the cooking; in hell, they run the government—feels a lot darker now that American politics are taking an Italian turn.
Since the fall of Il Duce, Italy has had a staggering 62 governments, and while American doesn’t have that problem yet, our political system is showing all the signs of decline—an inability to come to any consensus, the increased vulgarity of discourse, the utter incompetence of an impenetrable bureaucracy and the growth of extra-constitutional fascist and Mob-like “familial” —run modes of governance—with which Italians have long and unhappy familiarity. . . .
The Donald speaks not only to the their fears haunting the middle class, but also their pride: he wants them to be proud of the country’s past. Some insist the real Italian model may not Mussolini but a more contemporary figure, former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Like Trump Berlusconi was a successful entrepreneur and also a loudmouth. who appealed to Italians by denouncing “political correctness” as well as the weakness and corruption endemic to the Italian state.
If so, there’s some room for hope. Unlike Mussolini, Berlusconi never succeeded in overturning the constitutional order.
Whichever comparison is more apt, there’s little doubt that iIn the run-up to the seemingly inevitable, horribly depressing face-off with Trump, we can count on Hillary Clinton and her reliable press minions to keep raising these Italianesque models. Trump will be dressed as a fascist, or even a Nazi, for breaking with the politically correct consensus. Like Berlusconi, he will be investigated for his numerous moral lapses—both personal and business—and, by November, will be about as attractive to much of the electorate as Mitt Romney without his noblesse oblige or respectability.
If Trump is tarnished, that’s a good thing. But ihis political demise would sadly t’s one that opens the door to another ugly Italian model, the less public but arguably more effective one followed by Hillary Clinton and much of the Democratic Party.
Clinton, notes journalist Jamelle Bouie reflects a machine model, with control of the party itself as a goal. Rather than an ideological figure, she “appeals to stalwarts and interest groups (like banks and industry) far more than voters who choose on ideology and belief.”
This approach approximates, more than anything, the structure—though not the actual violence—of the Mafia, with “families.” .These groups that represent distinct, sometimes interlocking, interests, each functioning with almost total dominion over its respective turf but able to process competing demands through a central “commission” like the New York based one founded in 1931—when organized crime, incidentally, was under assault by fascist Italy.
Under a second President Clinton, the Democrats will operate under a similar system, with Wall Street, tech oligarchs, greens, feminists, gays, African-Americans, public sector unions, universities, Latinos, urban land speculators sitting around the table and her as il capo di tutti capi.
She won’t have much patience for legal niceties, having already pledged to circumvent Congress if they won’t do her bidding.
But the press will consider that dynamic, rather than mob-like or fascistic, because she’s a Democrat.
Which is why, if you value civil liberties and good governance, you should always want a white male Republican in the White House: They get a degree of scrutiny that others do not.
EXPECT A LOT OF STORIES LIKE THIS: Mom whose son killed in crash with illegal immigrant: I back Donald Trump. “A Milford mother whose son was killed by an illegal immigrant in a 2011 crash said charges against four Guatemalans in a Framingham beating and rape last week show the need for a border wall, and show why she and so many other Americans are backing Donald Trump. . . . Charles Sisitsky, chairman of the Framingham Board of Selectmen, said the issue may be discussed at a future meeting, but said he isn’t concerned the crimes are an outgrowth of the town’s friendliness to immigrants, whose businesses he said keep the downtown thriving.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: “Cry at work if you never want to succeed,” Kyle Smith writes at the New York Post:
Crying is an absolutely spiffing way to get what you want — in the short term. But once you’ve hosted a one-person snivel party, people tend to remember it. And nobody wants to see it again. People will start finding excuses to gently steer you away from challenging situations. They’ll do your work themselves. They’ll find someone else to give the hard-deadline gotta-have-this-now project.
All of which means you’ll become devalued and marginalized. If you want to secure the promotion, snag the bonus, make it to the top, you’ll have to prove you can do the tough stuff. Women will be set back 100 years if they start believing it’s OK to cry on the job.
But hey, OK, fine, if you just want to remain on the Girl Track for the rest of your life, by all means interrupt the weekly departmental meeting to fill your empty venti cup with your hot, salty tears. But take a good look around you as you do so. In my experience, women bosses tend to be even less sympathetic than men to female issues. Why? Because women bosses know what it’s like to be women. They managed to make it anyway, and they think other women should, too. Bosses like employees who remind them of themselves.
Which dovetails nicely with this incredible vignette in a New York Times piece titled, “What Happens When Millennials Run the Workplace?”
[Chris Altchek, Mic.com’s 28-year-old CEO] recalled a companywide meeting last September that coincided with the religious holidays Yom Kippur and Eid al-Adha. An Anglo-Pakistani employee asked why management had announced a flexible time off policy for the Jewish holiday, but not for its Muslim counterpart.
“So I told her, ‘Great point, being inclusive and respectful of all religious affiliations is incredibly important to Mic,’” Mr. Altchek said.
Afterward, in front of a smaller group, he was approached by a younger, entry-level employee who said that there were two words missing from his reply. “I was a bit confused and said, ‘O.K., what were those?’” he recalled. “And she said: ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t hear an apology.’”
Mr. Altchek did not think such a comment belonged in a workplace, especially his.
“I was a little taken aback by the tone, but I told her I would address it and make sure the person who asked the question wasn’t offended by the answer,” he said. “You have to control your temper. It was in front of a bunch of people, which was probably better, because I was forced to be calm.”
That employee is no longer with the company. (Mr. Altchek said she was let go for “performance-related issues.”)
As Sonny Bunch of the Washington Free Beacon tweets, “I would take great pleasure in firing this person in front of the entire staff,” adding, “I hope the girl who did this writes an open letter about the trauma she suffered on Medium.” Heh, indeed.™
NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Boring Secret To Getting Rich: Live Below Your Means. I’m lucky that the Insta-Wife is on board with this approach. A good wife is more precious than rubies, as they say.
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COOL CLOCK, AHMED. TSA in action: Is this art or a fake bomb? [photo].
WE MAY NEED TO RECONSIDER EARLY VOTING: Will massive early voting for Rubio put Trump over the top in Arizona? “Arizona is an early-voting state, and people can cast ballots up to 26 days before the actual primary. As of last Thursday, 249,000 Republicans in Maricopa County alone (where Phoenix is located) had already cast ballots. That’s already more votes than the total cast in Maricopa in the 2012 GOP primary. . . . Marco Rubio was drawing 16 percent of the vote in Arizona, according to recent polls. Anyone who voted before last Wednesday didn’t know that Rubio would no longer be in the race. Any votes for Rubio will therefore be wasted and will increase Trump’s chances of sweeping all 58 delegates.”
I love the convenience of early voting, and pretty much always vote that way myself. But things have moved awfully fast this cycle, and this isn’t the first time people cast early votes for a candidate who dropped out.
IT’S A CASE OF SUICIDE: Joel Kotkin: Farewell, Grand Old Party.
ADVICE TO RIGHT-LEANING PROFESSORS: Feign Liberalism Until You Have Tenure.
LAWPROF: Sue Protesters Blocking Access At Trump Rallies.
One of the nation’s top lawyers and legal activists, reacting to the protesters blocking highways leading to a Saturday Donald Trump presidential rally, is suggesting that the candidate’s foes be sued to stop. He’s even suggesting that Trump fund the suits.
George Washington University Professor John Banzhaf, said the class action-style of suits could shut down the violent protests.
“Using the threat of legal actions is a far better and more American way of deterring illegal protests than engaging in physical violence against them, as some Trump supporters have apparently already done,” he said.
Banzhaf, a legal activist with many successes under his belt, issued his comments after seeing the scenes of highway roadblock protests of Trump’s Arizona rally on TV.
He said “suing the bastards” can be an effective tactic.
He compared his proposal to another he was involved in, the class action lawsuits brought by people stuck in the traffic jams on New York’s George Washington Bridge caused by aides to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
Silly man. It’s different when you sue Republicans. More seriously, though, there is a lot of coordination among people and groups with sufficient assets to be worth suing here. And the discovery would be delicious.
ENDEMIC CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR: Criminal blockades are now apparently the norm at Trump rally protests.
FURTHER CONFIRMATION THAT ESPN IS JUST MSNBC WITH BETTER VIDEO: “Savior and scourge, Fidel Castro was many things to many people. One thing all can agree on: He loved his sports.”
A tyrannical socialist who loves sports — now there’s a first! Oh wait:
It’s hard to believe that 14 years ago, an earlier, saner, less bloodthirsty ESPN was publishing pieces titled “Blood on the Rings,” a profile of the savagery of Uday Hussein, which quoted his former Olympic volleyball coach stating that in Saddam’s Iraq, “Being a well-known athlete can get you killed:”
Dozens of athletes and leaders in the Iraqi sports movement have been executed, in part because they were popular with the public. Many of them were framed under the pretext of political reasons — you need only to criticize the government — but the fact is Uday cannot stand to think that someone in Iraq could be smarter or more famous than him.
Nowadays, ESPN would headline that piece, “Savior and scourge, Saddam Hussein and his rambunctious sons were many things to many people. One thing all can agree on: they certainly loved their sports.”
Related: Matt Welch’s 2008 Reason obit for Severo Nieto, the Cuban baseball historian whose books were banned by Castro because he dared write about Cuba’s rich history in sports prior the “glorious” revolution.