The Frankish Reich

You nailed it. No one cares if the National Arboretum closes. Some people care if food stamps are cut off, but they're not the people politicians care about. But eff with my Thanksgiving plans? Now we care.

Junk science.

Shutdowns are dumb. Glad this one is over. I have a couple flights scheduled this month and early next month and I don't need any disruptions. Both sides can pretend they "won" something. In reality, the Air Traffic Controllers are the most powerful force in America.

You sound like a mortgage lender, maybe even a subprime one 😀

"Haul her in" based on ... her average height and gait analysis. This is the best survey I could find re: forensic gait analysis. Not compelling evidence to say the least. I don't expect you to read it; the worst conspiracy theorist is the one with no self-awareness. https://discovery.dundee.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/19470676/royal_society_forensic_gait_analysis_primer_for_courts.pdf

The homeless have a right to vote. It looks like here they got their ballots but never cast their votes. Wow. Big story.

There's a not-so-hidden assumption here that housing prices will always go up. And over the long term I guess that's right. But what if there's a deep recession and housing prices - particularly in some markets - go down sharply as workers in those markets lose their jobs, are forced to move, and are forced to sell? 2008 is what happens.

I'm not against the concept. If the free market decides to start writing 50 year loans (Bill Pulte, what's stopping you?), then we will have 50 year loans. I don't get why the federal government has a role in this unless it is to subsidize those loans in some manner. And that's what I object to.

The theory of why a MAGA J6er would place pipe bombs near the Capitol is simple: it would likely cause chaos and delay the counting of votes - the very same counting of votes that Trump was urging Pence to delay. The theory of why a Biden supporter would do that is, well, what? To gain sympathy for Kamala? As I understand it, it is something like this would make public opinion turn against Trump (the same public opinion that had just caused him to lose the election, so why does anyone need to shift it?) by showing his supporters to be violent. Thankfully his supporters obliged by being violent the following morning.

True, we are in a period of compressed yield curves. I think more relevant is that even now a 30 year fixed rate mortgage is about 80 basis points higher than a 15.

This shows how a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. The Marx quote the esteemed "Gnostic Death Cult" uses here is Marx quoting Goethe's Faust. (Yeah, as if you've read that) In context, Marx was using that to show how quickly, how easily the French Republic allowed itself to slide back into a kind of dictatorship. It is from the same tract that included the famous line, "History repeats; the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." I have a feeling Marx would have said the same thing about Trump 1.0 vs. Trump 2.0. And he would have a point now just as he had then. The context (and it wouldn't kill you to read your Boogeyman Marx rather than "Gnostic Death Cults" stupid and ill-informed take on him): The constitution, the National Assembly, the dynastic parties, the blue and red republicans, the heroes of Africa, the thunder from the platform, the sheet lightning of the daily press, the entire literature, the political names and the intellectual reputations, the civil law and the penal code, liberté, egalité, fraternité, and the second Sunday in May, 1852 – all have vanished like a phantasmagoria before the spell of a man whom even his enemies do not make out to be a sorcerer. Universal suffrage seems to have survived only for the moment, so that with its own hand it may make its last will and testament before the eyes of all the world and declare in the name of the people itself: “All that exists deserves to perish.” [From Goethe’s Faust, Part One.] It is not enough to say, as the French do, that their nation was taken unawares. Nations and women are not forgiven the unguarded hour in which the first adventurer who came along could violate them. Such turns of speech do not solve the riddle but only formulate it differently. It remains to be explained how a nation of thirty-six millions can be surprised and delivered without resistance into captivity by three knights of industry.

Good thing you're not falling for the J6 "Gait Analysis Perp" thing.

Yeah, but then we would've been without Cody Ford dominating on the O line!

Who knows what he's thinking. The mortgage thing is apparently coming from Bill Pulte, and wouldn't Pulte Homes love it. When I see the projected payments most of them are assuming the new 50 year mortgage rate would be equivalent to the 30 year. That's ridiculous unless you are directly or indirectly subsidizing the 50 year lenders. The yield curve is a thing after all.

"Projectability" vs. actual on-field results. I think that explains Coleman vs. Franklin.

And Franklin started really slow under Sean Payton. Payton obviously didn't like something about him so he didn't see much playing time before midseason even though he was Bo Nix's favorite target at Oregon. But they brought him along and he's a definite weapon now. I don't get why he dropped so far in the draft, and I don't get why Coleman was ever considered better. But the Bills weren't the only team with that opinion.

It helped tremendously. Even so, the year before Diggs arrived we had late career John Brown with 72 catches and almost 15 yards per catch. Was John Brown at 29 really that much better than Curtis Samuel at 29? I guess he was.

I'm afraid I have to agree. Seems such a waste of Josh's talent, but at least for this year we are not becoming an effective downfield passing team.

So ... the free market can create 50 year loans. There's no law against it. If the Trump Administration throws its support behind them, what does that mean? I can't think of any way that could be effective unless they use Fannie and Freddie to prop up that new market. And as I said, that creates risk to the government (read: the taxpayer).

Kind of hard to tell the difference between Sharia law and Talmudic law, yet somehow NYC survived various Jewish mayors.

There is such a thing. And it's pretty much junk science. Oh, I have no doubt that a researcher could fit me with sensors on my shoes and create a visual depiction of my standard gait, and then put me and a bunch of other test subjects in the same shoes and then identify which one of that second group is me. But what the sample here of the accused woman? Where's Glenn Beck's "gait scientist" to explain how exactly he or she arrived at "94 to 97 percent" accuracy? Junk.

A step back: as far as I know, there is no law preventing banks from writing 50-year mortgages. I looked, and apparently they are occasionally written. So when Trump offers support for the concept, what does that mean? I think it means getting the government (in the form of Freddie and Fannie) involved in guaranteeing those mortgages. And as we have seen, there is (and probably always will be as a practical/political matter) an implicit guarantee that Fannie/Freddie bonds will not default. Government risk. Taxpayer risk. Moral hazard. Bad idea.

I've only watched the Pats in the Bills game an in yesterday's game (didn't have access to Bills-Dolphins, and it seems I didn't miss anything). I hate to say it, but I think their roster - and for sure their active roster - is better than ours, except for Allen vs. Maye. That's a pretty big exception, and it made us the clear favorites, but now Maye is emerging as a very good QB a little ahead of schedule. Crazy how that works. Last year everyone thought there was a huge gap between Jayden Daniels and Maye and Caleb. A redraft today? Maye would go first, and it's not even close.

I feel like these sentences need an asterisk. "Hoecht* is worlds more athletic." *Roided up Hoecht. We got what we paid for.