Why Personal Honor Matters

Why Personal Honor Matters

New Trend In Sacramento: 'Intentional Foreclosure'

SACRAMENTO (CBS13)

Linda Caoli helps lots of families on the verge of losing their homes, including a single mom working two jobs to pay her mortgage.

"She says Linda the house across the street, same model, with more upgrades sold in foreclosure for $315,000!" explains Linda.

Her client isn't the only one thinking about ditching her house to buy the better deal across the street. A number of realtors CBS13 talked to say it's already happening.

"Can you imagine if you had a same or similar home and your mortgage was half the price?" asks Linda.

This is how it works. Bob paid $420,000 for his home. Then he notices the house across the street, with more upgrades, and is selling for $315,000.

So Bob, who has pretty good credit, decides to buy the cheaper house. He can't afford both, so then he walks away from his original home, letting it fall into foreclosure. That will hurt his credit, but he's willing to take the hit for a more affordable home.

"Is it wrong to steal when you're hungry? That's an issue that a lot of people are trying to figure out right now," says Linda.

Caoli is sympathetic, but she doesn't endorse the practice of it. Other real estate agents we talked to were far more critical, calling them cheaters. They say the banks take a huge hit when their homes foreclose, and in the end, we all end up paying the price.

I've heard of people just walking away from their mortgages when they discover they owe far more than the house is currently worth, but this one is new to me.

There's a thread at AR15.com on the topic, and here are some of the comments:

The turd here has finally circled the bowl and entered the sewage system.

--

Who cares … the people who continue to play by the rules continue to get the shit end of the stick. If you can find a way to work the system to your advantage, why the hell not?

--

I agree. Being honorable only makes you poor and sticks you paying for the costs of the less scrupulous.

--

I'm not in that situation.

But, I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't consider it if I was.

I come first. Plain and simple. If I can see a benfit in reducing my bottom line and not fucking myself over, I'm probably going for it.

There is a limit to honor. Especially when illegal aliens get breaks and I don't.

Anyone who doesn't see this is a fool.

--

A few months ago I would have said Bob was a piece of shit. Now I see him as smarter than me. The US seems to be on it's way out as the country that we all know and love. All bets are off in this new country of hope and change.

I concur with the "turd circling the bowl" comment, myself. We're a far cry now from "I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honor more."

Who is it that's going to restore our lost Constitution again?

If you haven't read it, I will again recommend James Bowman's Honor: A History, a study of the death of honor in Western culture.

4:10 of Pure Physical Coordination

4:10 of Pure Physical Coordination

I just got this by email, and I realize that it was so two years ago, but just DAMN! Turn your sound on.


Synchronized juggling. Now THAT should be an Olympic event!

Right Attitude, Bad Example

Right Attitude, Bad Example

I received an email this afternoon from a reader:

I'm just a random reader of your blog. I came across this newspaper clipping in an old album that my mother bought in a lot of antiques. Apparently the owner was a Los Angeles police officer. The clipping is from the LA Examiner, from 1935. I thought it was a great picture, and it kind of drives home how much attitudes towards guns and personal responsibility have changed.

Indeed it does. And it does more than that. James, if you're ever in Tucson, I'll be more than happy to take you to the range.

Here's the picture:


The attitude is correct, but pointing all those guns at the camera? The photographer might have had a remote trigger. I doubt seriously he had a time delay. He was probably standing right behind the viewfinder. Every bang-switch has a booger-hook on it. And at least one of the Chief's revolvers is loaded. There's no reason to believe the rest were not. He was a brave (or stupid) man.

Is it any wonder that the rate of accidental gunshot wounding and death has declined (precipitously!) since the turn of the century until now it is at the lowest rate ever recorded - despite the fact that there are more guns in private hands than at any time in history?

The principle is correct, but the photograph? Yeesh.

My how attitudes have changed.

Any Excuse Will Do

Any Excuse Will Do

In the comments to the previous post, Sarah wrote:

I think the bipartisan Republicans are already finding themselves in the role of Lando, praying the Democrats don't alter the deal any further.

Which is all the excuse I need to put up THIS:

Brilliant!

From AR15.com.

(Edited to add) Best comment seen:

That's no moon! That's the National Debt!

How Did I Miss This?

How Did I Miss This?

I've mentioned author Orson Scott Card here before, most recently in October. Card writes mostly Science Fiction, but he also has an intermittent op-ed column called WorldWatch that I check on every now and then. Well, I missed this one, One Party Rule Forever! published in mid-February. (Granted, I was working 65-hour weeks at the time.)

Excerpt:

Obama has set himself up to rig all future American elections, not through any democratic process, but by fiat. Just like a dictator.

Remember how, when the Patriot Act was passed, we were flooded with outraged stories in the press about how Americans' rights were going to be trampled on?

None of it came true.

But now we have a genuine attack on the roots of the Constitution and the principle of counting only people who can be proven to exist when apportioning the House of Representatives. It's a naked grab for power. It's a coup d'etat.

And the so-called freedom-lovers in the Leftist media are absolutely silent about it.

If Bush had put Karl Rove in charge of the Census without so much as asking Congress for permission, the howls and screams would have been deafening. Obama does the identical thing ... and the freedom-loving Left is fine with it.

Because they don't love freedom. They just love having their views prevail, without regard to democracy or human rights.

RTWT.

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

One funny thing about Democrats--the leading ones, anyway--is that they're pretty much all rich. I mean really rich, not "rich" like you and your spouse together make $250,000 a year, so now you have to pay someone else's mortgage. - John Hinderaker, Power Line - It Gets A Bit Chilly At Night If You're One of the Little People

That's the opening line. It gets better from there.

Paul Campos, Economic Illiterate

I'm sort of tempted to ask Professor Reynolds if this seems plausible to him. Does it seem plausible to him -- a law professor who is probably paid around 200K a year by the great state of Tennessee to do whatever it is he does while performing what is technically his actual job -- that he is "working" five times "harder" (using Wingnuttia's definition of "hard work") than a guy roofing houses in San Antonio in July who makes 40K a year? - Lawyers, Guns and Money, Working Hard or Hardly Working?

Now, Paul himself is a professor of law at the University of Colorado, and by all appearances about as socialist as they come, rather than economically illiterate, but really Professor, can't you do any better than that?

Of course, he precedes this by building a virtual army of strawmen which he then hacks at with great zeal, but here's the deal:

People get paid based on one thing, primarily: how valuable their skills are to others. Of course, their individual competence weighs heavily in there, too, but there are a lot of people who can do roofing. There's a somewhat lesser pool of those with the skills required to be law professors.

I, for example, am an electrical engineer. I'm well paid for the area in which I live, but compared to similar electrical engineers in other markets I'm probably average or a bit below-average in base pay. (Tucson doesn't pay all that well, but I refuse to move to Phoenix, for example.) However, the only reason the office I work at exists at all is because of one guy - an engineer who specializes in a pretty small field, and sits pretty high up in the rankings of that field.

Our home office is in California. When this engineer became available, they hired him in a heartbeat.

But he wouldn't move to California.

That was OK with the home office. They opened a branch here in Tucson.

For one guy.

We currently have 14 people in the Tucson office. I am thankful every day for the existence of this individual.

But does he work "five times harder than a guy roofing houses in San Antonio in July who makes 40K a year?" That's not the question. Can the guy roofing houses in San Antonio do the job of this engineer?

That's the only question that counts. Because if he could, he'd be making the kind of money this engineer does.

And somehow, in Paul Campos's world, having an ability that perhaps less than 1% of the working population possesses entitles the other 99% to a much bigger chunk of his income.

Campos says that the "wingnuts" paint the argument in terms of "hard work" versus "lazyness" - that rich people are rich because they "work hard" and poor people are poor because they're "lazy." This is, apparently, what we believe. (Sound like anyone you know?)

No, Paul. Rich people can be rich for any number of reasons, but quite a few of them got that way by having skills that other people don't have, and using them. Poor people, the truly poor, generally are that way because of bad decision-making skills. Granted, some get there through illness or bad luck, but tell me why someone making $250k a year who is making their mortgage payment on time should have to fork over a bigger percentage of their paycheck than that $40k/yr roofer in San Antonio? Is he "poor"?

We believe that people should be rewarded according to their worth in the free market, not "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." Because who put you in charge of determining either?

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

I have a name for the bright boys and girls who got us into this- “The Harvard Short Bus.” - commenter "Thrasymachus" at Belmont Club post Then and now

Heh.

Dammit.

Rope, Trees, Some Assembly Required

Rope, Trees, Some Assembly Required

Orlando Sentinel columnist Charley Reese cut loose in the mid-80's. It's even more pertinent now, and it's making the rounds of the blogosphere, updated by someone. Here's my little assist.

545 PEOPLE

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are really against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are really against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.

You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of representatives does.

You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason.. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it.

No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.

Don't you see now the con game that is played on the people by the politicians? Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits.

The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it. The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the Speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi. She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to. Stop and think how long she has been Speaker of the House.....

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red .

If the Army & Marines are in Iraq, it's because they want them in Iraq.

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way. If they were on Social Security then they would fix it fast.

There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take it.

Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do. Change the law so that it is unlawful for quasi public companies (like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) to donate to politicians or political parties etc and unlawful for those persons/organizations to accept donations from those over which they have oversight.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.

They, and they alone, have the power..

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses … provided the voters have the interest and incentive to manage their own employees.

We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!

We should have, long ago. I think it's too late for that to ever happen now. As I've said before, Claire Wolfe was wrong. It's not too early to shoot the bastards, it's too late.

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

It's always the same, isn't it? They're going to infringe our rights just a little bit -- and all for our own good. Little itty-bitty law, passed with nobly-strained faces.

Then, once it's passed, next session of Congress, they take that law, and they tack on one itty-bitty extra sentence. Next session, they add a teeny,tiny little paragraph -- and next thing you know, the whole stinking bloody camel is up under the tent. - Lawdog, Sweet zombie Jeebus here we go again

This behavior is often associated with the original nobly strain-faced lawmakers saying "We never intended THAT!"

I don't know about you, but I'm sick and tired of it.

Oh For Fv*k's Sake

Oh For Fv*k's Sake!

Good Riddance, Yucca Mountain

Obama pulls the plug on the nuclear industry's last best hope.

And I have to learn this from SLATE?!?

"Energy independence" my aching SPHINCTER!

We Keep Losing Them

We Keep Losing Them

You entered the plane on a rickety jump ladder in the tail, walked through the fuselage filled with wooden ammo boxes and gun emplacemements, climbed around the retracted ball that was his home for forty missions, and then had to walk on a catwalk less than a foot wide between the bomb racks to get to the cockpit. All this for a man who needs a walker. - Sippican Cottage, My Father Asks for Nothing

Read it all.

(h/t PrinceWally)

After That Last Post

After That Last Post . . .

Your Moment of Zen:

Our Lawmakers and Their Ignorance

This subject came up on AR15.com just recently, and I had to share. First, Caroline McCarthy getting pwned by MSNBC talking-head Tucker Carlson:


Immortal Quote:

"Um, no, it's not."

Which brings us this masterpiece:


But how about this ballistics expert, NY Assemblywoman Patricia Eddington:


Heat-seeking bullets! Man, where can I get some of those?!?!


From the 1984 movie Runaway.

As one poster put it,

Fuck, that makes me laugh every time I see it. Until I realize that she is a real person lawmaker and isn't joking. She is that retarded.

And just remember: they know just as much about banking, running corporations, mortgage lending, . . .

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

Socrates was a philosopher. He went around pointing out errors in the way things were done. They fed him hemlock. - Anonymous

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ­­- Anonymous, found at AR15.com

Zero Oversight and Insufficient Regulation

Zero Oversight and Insufficient Regulation

Mostly Cajun has a very interesting post up on government interference regulation of his industry, the pumping of natural gas from the Gulf of Mexico up North where people use it to do stuff like, oh, heat their homes. Excerpt:

One of the things I learned was that when these engines were designed, the EPA was some sort of bad dream only found in the diseased minds of abusers of heavy drugs. That was then. This is now. Students of engine operations know there is a certain proportion of fuel to air that produces maximum power. We can’t run many of our engines there. Why? Because we’re not interested in maximum power any more. We’re interested in minimum pollution, and that ‘maximum power’ thing give a higher level of oxides of nitrogen.

That’s okay, though. We learned how to operate there, and we tested our engines regularly to see that they met the goal, and if one was acting up and emissions went up, we dutifully took it off line and fixed it. Life loped along. So they changed the rules. Where we could hit a “twenty” on the spotted owl-killing scale, they dropped the number to five. Okay, you guys on the pipeline, tighten up your acts. So the engineers twiddled and tightened things even more. And goals were met. But the baby seals were still crying from their big, soulful eyes, so the number was changed again.

You know, it's getting VERY hard to meet the numbers. And our people tell the rulemakers. And the rulemakers say “Meet the numbers or face fines.” And our people say, "We can't meet these numbers. We'll have to shut down horsepower." And the rulemakers say "Meet the numbers." And that's where we're heading.

The policy-makers apparently think that we'll keep lights on and homes heated by means of windmills and unicorn farts. I'm telling you that we folk who work in a real world have real and immutable laws to work with, things like Ohm's Law and Boyles' Law, and these laws and others like them say that you can't move gas from the well to the end user without horsepower. There are other laws too, and those laws, despite the attitude of the current administration, say that when it gets to the point that it costs more to do a thing, then you stop doing it, and that's where a lot of industries, mine included, are headed.

Read the whole post. Pay particular attention to the last two lines.

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

I get the feeling we are in the Invasion of the Body Snatchers and there are only a few of us screaming to the wind wandering around left not yet absorbed. - Victor Davis Hanson, Recessional

Read it ALL.

Quote of the Day - SciFi Edition

Quote of the Day - SciFi Edition

From S.M. Stirling's The Sky People:

As Marc watched, four Gigantosaurs caught a titanosaur calf - a three-year-old weighing a mere thirty tons or so - as it bent its head to drink from one of the streams that veined the plain. The great jaws gaped as the six-ton carnivore reared back, its thick, supple neck curved into an S-shape, then slammed forward.

Even at half a mile distance, the scream of the calf was ear-hurtingly loud, as if God had gotten his toe stuck in a closing door. A stampede went out from the spot like the ripple of a stone thrown into a pond as the plant eaters fled; the armored ones backed into circles, lashing the air with their knobby tail-clubs. The calf and the Gigantosaur went over into the stream in a whipping cloud of spray and flying mud; the others gathered around, dipping their heads to strike like nightmare four-story birds.

After a moment, the flurry of motion died down, and they set their great eagle-claw feet on the calf's carcass as they worried loose chunks the size of Volkswagens and threw their heads upright to unhinge their jaws and bolt the great gobbets down, rammed backward by the peristaltic motion of their thick tongues. Now and then they would stop to make half-completed strikes and hissing roars at their pack-mates, for all the world like newly elected senators divvying up pork.

It's now official. I'll read anything S.M. Stirling writes.

Addendum:

The only difference I ever found between the Democratic leadership and the Republican leadership is that one of them is skinning you from the ankle up and the other, from the ear down. - Huey P. Long

Just thought I'd throw that one in.