Zee Links and Minifeatures: April 2008 Archives

"Figures Don't Lie, But Liars Do Figure" Department

I'm not going to name names, but most people can probably figure out which company I'm talking about. A few days ago, a well known commission rebate buyer's brokerage started bragging about a its clients procuring a 1% advantage over general market in the amount they negotiate off asking price.

Boys and girls, I'd say they were palming a card, but it's really more like an entire hand. Roughly 1/3 of buyers are either completely unrepresented, or allow the listing agent to represent them. At least another quarter work with rebater brokerages where the only service really provided is opening a door and the use of a fax machine. Another very large percentage are victims of exclusive buyer's agency contracts put in front of them by friends, family members, and random agents they met at open houses, who didn't know any better than to sign it?

And you're bragging about a 1% mean advantage in negotiations over that? In the best negotiating environment for buyers since the early nineties at least?

That doesn't rise to the level of pathetic. Ladies and gentlemen, that's like cheering and making a press release bragging that you make $1 per hour, when minimum wage is considerably higher.

In this environment, I believe that a good buyer's agent should make at least 10% of a difference to the value of the property the client buys. I just closed one where the lowest appraisal I could get said I made a 35% difference, CMA of recent sales yielded a similar number, and that didn't consider the intangibles of the property and what it meant for the clients in terms of not having a reason to they're going to need to move five or ten years down the line. Considerably above average even for me, but over the last two years, my average has been right around twenty percent, and these clowns are bragging about one? Even when things were going gangbusters and all the power was in the hands of the sellers, I was averaging five to ten percent, and they're bragging about one lousy percent in an environment where buyers have all the power? That they "earn" by shoving all the work off to the listing agent?

I feel like I'm stuck in 1984, when Winston Smith reads the article thanking Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to 15 grams, when it fact it had been cut from 20. Things like this completely disgust me. The company concerned is basically counting on information overload to keep people from evaluating the facts rationally and in context, especially when that analysis shows them to be pathetic losers whose clients are barely better off than people who actively sabotage themselves?

Shame is officially dead.

Researching Raoul Wallenberg and his fate

Whatever any of this reveals, a 1979 State Department memo put the questions into perspective: "Whether or not Wallenberg was involved in espionage during World War II is a moot point at this stage in history. His obvious humanitarian acts certainly outweigh any conceivable 'spy' mission he may have been on."

Too little, too late: Obama says he's outraged by former pastor's comments

"I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle that we saw yesterday," Obama told reporters at a news conference.

Wright didn't say anything in any of his recent appearances that he hadn't been saying for a long time. Yet last month, Obama defended the same thing.

The only difference I can tell - the critical difference for politicians - is the size of the audiences that heard Wright's most recent appearances, and the widespread reactions to those appearances.

In short, Obama can't sweep Rev. Wright's behavior under the carpet any more, and having to make a choice between his traditional base and the broader base he's going to need to win the remaining primaries as well as the general election in November, he's having to choose the one with more votes. Nothing unusual for a politician. But Hope and Change Man is selling himself as something a cut above other politicians.

Obama spent twenty years in this guy's church. He was the officiating pastor at Obama's wedding. Obama took his kids to this guy's church, to listen to him spread his hate. Twenty years of action are telling me precisely where Barack Obama really stands on what Rev. Wright is saying.

Q and O has much more detail.

Instapundit:

Yes, Wright's views certainly contradict Obama's stated beliefs, policies, and values. Andrew adds: "Obama needs not just to distance himself from Wright's views; he needs to disown him at this point. Wright himself, it seems to me, has become part of what Obama is fighting against." Become? I don't see that Wright has changed. People have just noticed. And if this is what Obama is fighting against, then . . . where's the fighting against part?

Bush says no magic wand to lower fuel prices

Trying to calm anxious Americans facing $3.60 a gallon gasoline and soaring grocery bills, Bush again prodded Congress to open an Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling and allow construction of more nuclear and coal plants.

"I firmly believe that, you know, if there was a magic wand to wave, I'd be waving it, of course," he said during a news conference. "I've repeatedly submitted proposals to help address these problems, yet time after time Congress chose to block them."

Carnival of Personal Finance

Carnival of Real Estate Investing

Hurray! Indiana's Voter ID law upheld!

Every time someone votes who is not entitled to, it effectively disenfranchises someone who is entitled to. Even if you don't drive, a state ID is cheap (some states will even give them free if your income is below a certain level), and you have all the time you could possibly need to get one.

Grasping at Straws: The NY Times on McCain

[R]egarding the non-violation of FEC rules: the article itself states that the FEC didn't even begin not-adopting this new non-rule until December - and the travel in question took place from August through February. Not in any conceivable universe would McCain ever to have been held to have violated in August a rule that didn't exist before December. And presumably if the FEC had had enough members to pass this rule in December, the McCain campaign would have then stopped doing whatever it is that the Times is so indignant about.

And WHY does the commission not have enough members to conduct business as usual? The Times is unusually reticent on that point. That's because the reason the FEC doesn't have enough members is that Barack Obama has blocked President Bush's nominee from being confirmed.

Instapundit on criminalizing policy differences.

Maybe this is what Obama means by "change"

Obama seems pretty much "brought to you by the Ministry of Truth", aka the mass media.

Convenient Memory Holes upon Demand! Whiffleball Questions! Pretending Major Inconsistencies Don't Exist! Ignoring Inconvenient Associates! How far can the media go into the tank for Hope and Change Man!

"Deadbeat Dads" Who Are Actually Moms

Embryonic stem cells coaxed into key heart cells

Professor Bainbridge on our severely brain damaged ethanol subsidy.

Quick Humor: The Secret Diaries of Cat and Dog.

I wrote a quick article over at Mortgage Cicerone (a site intended for loan folks) following up on Zillow Mortgage, but those outside California who may be considering it probably want to read it also. I like Drew over at Zillow, and would really have liked to be able to say some more positive things. I am also open to changing my opinion should they improve their product.

Not that there was much doubt. I could have written this article right after their election: Zimbabwe police raid opposition, election offices

Riot police and intelligence officers ransacked opposition party headquarters and the offices of independent election monitors Friday, hauling away material documenting President Robert Mugabe's apparent electoral defeat.

Just because it's never happened here doesn't mean it can't: Local triathlete killed in shark attack

Right here in San Diego County.

Predators in the water haven't been conditioned to be afraid of humans.

Carnival of Personal Finance

I am adamantly against a draft. But if we have to have one, according to certain people on the left who claim the underprivileged are paying an inordinately large share of the burdens of Iraq and Afghanistan, then Jules Crittendon has the form it should take correct. (He's incorrect about Heinlein, by the way)

I agree with him that the fight from the left in favor of the draft is a fight to get middle America to join the war protests. Glory days of Vietnam protests and all that, as opposed to the few score who turn out for their protests currently.

But a draft is wrong. Dictatorships need conscript armies - free countries where the citizens have a reason to defend them will attract volunteers. The best measure of a state's worth is how many people volunteer to defend it when that defense is necessary. At this point in time, the United States appears to have plenty of those volunteers, bless them. Yes, we've had a draft in the past. But right now, more than enough people are volunteering, so that our military can afford to be quite picky. Don't believe me? Ask recruiters. Ask people who were rejected by the military. The mass media loves to make a big story about the military accepting more people who failed to complete high school. But the percentage of people in the military who have completed high school is higher than the general population. The percentage of people with college degrees is also higher, and advanced degrees as well. And I happen to believe that the average moral IQ inside the military is enormously higher than such places as Berkeley

Mashaal offers truce if Israel withdraws from 1967 lands

The leader of Hamas says his Palestinian militant group is offering Israel a 10-year truce if it withdraws from all lands it seized in the 1967 war.

Khaled Mashaal says he made the offer to former President Carter in talks on Saturday.

And this is supposed to be some kind of breakthrough? Some sort of willingness to coexist with Israel? Notice the wording: not peace, but truce. In other words, a break in the fighting with full intention of resuming later.

See Hudna:

A particularly famous early hudna was the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah between Muhammad and the Quraysh tribe, ending with Muhammad marching on Mecca along with 10000 men, two years after the hudna was signed, and taking over the Quraysh.

According to Umdat as-Salik, a medieval summary of Shafi'i jurisprudence, hudnas with a non-Muslim enemy should be limited to 10 years: "if Muslims are weak, a truce may be made for ten years if necessary, for the Prophet made a truce with the Quraysh for that long, as is related by Abu Dawud"

But because Muhammad got strong in two years, he broke the truce. This is precisely what Hamas is asking for: space and time to get strong enough to fight on more even terms.

This isn't any kind of a breakthrough. It's grandstanding while trying to lure your enemies to sleep while you arm.

an alternate source

HUDNA - Arabic word often translated as "cease-fire.- Historically used as a tactic aimed at allowing the party declaring the hudna to regroup while tricking an enemy into lowering its guard. When the hudna expires, the party that declared it is stronger and the enemy weaker. The term comes from the story of the Muslim conquest of Mecca. Instead of a rapid victory, Muhammad made a ten-year treaty with the Kuraysh tribe. In 628 AD, after only two years of the ten-year treaty, Muhammad and his forces concluded that the Kuraysh were too weak to resist. The Muslims broke the treaty and took over all of Mecca without opposition.

If Mr. Carter's supposed christian beliefs are correct, I imagine some part of the management heirarchy will want to take this up with him upon arrival in the afterlife.

Hot Air says it's even worse than I have outlined.

Call that precipated polygamist raid may have been a hoax

Don't get me wrong. That cult needs to get investigated and shut down if they were doing what they were accused of, and law enforcement is claiming they have plenty of evidence.

But it's just as easy to "drop a dime" on some innocent party. Say one of your neighbors calls in something false about you? You're going to have your life ruined, and face many thousands of dollars in legal expenses.

Say some well meaning law enforcement officer who happens to be mistaken asks some associate to phone in an anonymous tip?

Transparency is a good thing. But you have to know who the accuser is, as well as the accused.

End of an era:Ollie Johnson, last of Walt Disney's "nine old men," who helped make all of the old Disney animation the thing of beauty it was and still is, has died.

Supreme Court rejects lethal injection challenge

Here's the line that really chaps my hide

forty-two people were executed last year out of more than 3,300 people on death rows across the country.

About 1 of 78 people on death row was executed last year.

In other words, they're much more likely to die of natural causes while on death row than to be executed.

Is there anybody who thinks that the death penalty is useful under such circumstances? Let's either make the process a lot quicker, to the point of making it more likely that those on death row will be executed rather than dying of natural causes, or stop sentencing people to death. The current situation isn't good for anything except billable hours for lawyers at taxpayer expense.

I'm not saying make it unconstitutional. It's not. Nor do I favor abolishing it. There will always be a few criminals where the crime is so heinous, it's worth fighting the people who make executing murderers so difficult. If I had my druthers, I'd give the criminals three to six months to raise all relevant legal points, and the execution proceeds upon the final resolution of that one appeal. But let's just stop sentencing garden variety murderers to death, and instead simply put them away forever with no possibility of getting out. It has just gotten too expensive to get those inmates off the state dole by executing them. For what we pay for the lawyers and court costs of each death row case, we could house several inmates for life.

Orin Kerr and Paul Cassell over at the Volokh Conspiracy have some good information on the decisions themselves.

Michael Barone reviews a book by a man who helped plan the invasion of Iraq. If what Mr. Feith says is true, it's pretty damning to the State Department and CIA.

There is something profoundly gratifying in watching the left suddenly figure out the media is biased. Stephanopoulos, a Clintonite, was perfectly fine as long as he was sticking it to Republicans, but now that he's asked Saint Obama a few actual questions, he's persona non-grata.

Ace of Spades has more:

But when an actual debate breaks out at a presidential debate -- one that is somewhat effective in exposing Obama's character flaws and also hints at his real political agenda (not-moderate-at-all left-liberalism), he shrieks it's all so "Rovian" and that we should talk about the "real issues."

Right. A debate on the "real issues" where both candidates say they agree with each other for two hours, except on the point of who can better execute the exact same program.

Still more from national Review Online

Hey, welcome to the big leagues, rookie. You're gonna get some questions you're not going to like. Not everybody gets to have their main opponent's bid implode when their divorce records are unsealed and compete against Alan Keyes in a general election.

Seriously, if Barack Obama can't handle questions like this from Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous, maybe the portrait of the cracking-under-pressure whiner depicted in the Saturday Night Live sketch isn't as wild an exaggeration as we thought.

George Stephanopolous weighs in

via Instapundit, Wikipedia's zealots. One more reason never to trust Wikipedia if someone's agenda is a stake.

We had a revolution over taxation without representation. The question I want to have answered is "how much representation do taxpayers have now?"

And I'm not talking about getting a lawyer for tax court.

We are a long way down the road. We are now at the point where democracy is eleven people voting to make ten people pay for something they want. Whatever happened to "If you don't play the game, you don't make the rules"?

I know I'm not the only person who favors making April 15th national elections day. Let's make it happen!

America's Riskiest Real Estate Markets

In cities like San Diego, one of five major metros where transactions rose, that's good news, assuming it's sustained. What makes transaction volume a good indicator is that it shows how easy it is for people to get loans and how much confidence there is in the market. If mortgages are available and buyers have some faith in the value of the home, they're more likely to buy.

San Diego's present conditions suggest that over the next half-year, prices may start to rise. That's because "there's usually a three- to six-month lag between when transactions go up and prices go up," says Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel, a Manhattan real estate appraisal firm.

Another good sign for the coming year? Increased credit availability.

We took into account increased Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (GSE) loan limits. The new legislation will open up credit in markets such as Sacramento and San Diego by boosting the GSE loan limit by 125% of the median price. That's a huge deal for San Diego, where 18% of the market will see improved lending conditions, based on projections by Radar Logic, a New York-based real estate research firm.

John McCain gets it, at least partially:

McCain proposes consumer tax cuts to boost economy

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain proposed a summer gas tax reduction and other tax cuts on Tuesday in a bid to reassure voters he would help them navigate an ailing economy.

It may be just to get a some votes, but it's the right thing to do whatever his reason for doing it. These would reduce the cost of consumer items, making the consumer's money go further. This effects literally everyone

Obama and Hillary are proud of their willful ignorance:

The Democratic candidates quickly denounced the Arizona senator's ideas as a continuation of the economic policies of unpopular Republican President George W. Bush.

"I don't think America can afford four more years of the failed Bush policies, and that's what he's offering," Illinois Sen. Barack Obama told a gathering of construction labor unions in Washington.

Obama and his rival for the Democratic nomination, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, have accused McCain of being economically illiterate and out of touch with ordinary Americans' pocketbook concerns.

Where do the Democrats get these people that evidently managed to get through advanced degrees in law without understanding economics? Either that or they understand just fine, but are willing to lie and say they're clueless just to get a few more votes. There are precisely three possible cases: Ignorance, Denial, and Pretending Denial.

Whichever it is, nobody rational wants someone in that condition leading the country.

Ted Kennedy wants everyone else to pay their share of estate taxes

The methods the Kennedys use are available to anyone. But they're not exactly chomping at the bit to pay anything more than the absolute minimum they can get away with. All that stuff they want the taxpayers to pay for? They want to pay for it with other people's money.

Ladies and Gentlemen: Estate tax is essentially voluntary, and it's an issue we're all going to have to deal with sooner or later. By refusing to deal with it, you are volunteering to have up to 55% of your estate go to the federal government alone, instead of your heirs.

It's not news, it's Scrappleface! Dems Slam Bush for Latest Unilateral Move:

This is a dachshund's dachshund. Not only does he love to play fetch, he's got his pet human sufficiently conditioned to - well, watch the video. Look at that tail and those ears - That is one happy dog!

I do think it's a poor second choice to human interaction. But it gives the dog something to do when the family is out.

Arab Liberals Discuss Fifth Anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom

HT: Don Surber

Kumbayah, my lord, Kumbayah: Private Papers on the supposed damage George W. Bush has done to our reputation overseas and how the opposition expects to restore it.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air dissects Obama's "bitter" gaffe. Don't believe him? H Ross Perot "You people". Jesse Jackson "Hymietown".

Obama regularly lets his true self show when he doesn't have a script. This is only the most damaging of many such problem pronouncements.

After 26 Years, 2 Lawyers Reveal Killer's Secret - and an Inmate Hopes to Go Free

Let me get this straight. Two public employees knew for a fact that someone else was guilty of the crime for which this man was convicted, and he sat in prison for 26 years so that a convicted murderer's confidentiality could be respected? In fact that he's still there and may be there for the rest of his life? That only the real murderer's death "enabled" those with the evidence to come forward?

If that's not proof our legal system needs an overhaul, nothing is. The state of Illinois owes this man his life back. Since that doesn't appear to be on the list of possibilities, though, let's start with his immediate freedom and more money than he can ever spend in his remaining years.

This is precisely the sort of legal hair splitting in favor of obvious injustice that causes the legal profession to be viewed with such disdain. This is more a thousand times more of a gross miscarriage of justice than anything that could possibly have happened to the guilty party. How often is a second person ever tried for a crime and convicted?

Scapegoat 1 or scapegoat 2? In this case it's scapegoat 2: Democrat blames weak economy on Iraq war

Particularly when the real culprit was excesses, negligence and deception in the financial markets? You know, Obama and Hillary's super donors and contribution bundlers? You don't have to wonder what they're getting for their campaign contributions.

Absolutely sick: Teens beat girl brutally and film it -- to post on YouTube

Gang of eight brutalizes one girl who dared post criticism on her MySpace page?

Try them as adults. Put them away. They're not fit for civilized society. Sue the parents, collectively.

Economy: 1996 vs 2008

Compare and contrast media treatment, also.

Compare and Contrast with classic "Big Lie" technique. Hint: There's not much contrast.

Q and O hauls out the big guns to deal with global warming: A scientist, using actual numbers. (video) to illustrate the disconnect between warming politics and the actual science.

Carnival of Personal Finance

Carnival of Real Estate

Fare thee well, Charlton Heston. You will be missed.

You've got to admire a man who would picket a movie theater showing his own movie because that theater discriminated against blacks. That's speaking truth to power. Great Actor, yes. But Great Man, as well. Never hesitated to do what he saw as right because it was controversial or unpopular. It cost him personally, more than once. He never regretted it.

Here's a video of him giving the Keynote speech at the NRA in 1988.

We shall not see his like again.

March traffic count was significantly up on the visits, but way down on the page views. 80,961 human visits, 306,910 human page views, plus a little over 150,000 due to bots and spiders. Nonetheless, the visits is the highest I've had since the hosting change. Thank you all for stopping by.

An April Fools Day column with a double edged bite from Jonah Goldberg of NRO and Frank J of IMAO: Oh, the poor politicians!

Private Papers on how anti-nuclear laws are preventing people from getting cancer diagnoses and treatment.