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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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 Posted: Wed Dec 15, 2010 9:22 pm Post subject: ... |
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| Probably best you don't. |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Wed Dec 15, 2010 9:30 pm Post subject: |
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| Are we being cryptic? |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Wed Dec 15, 2010 9:47 pm Post subject: ... |
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| No, this about seeing the forest for the stumps where the gnomes live, being a leper messiah, and keeping your eye on the whiffle ball. |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Wed Dec 15, 2010 9:50 pm Post subject: |
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I used to love whiffle ball - probably back when they were still made in the U.S.
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| The Wiffle ball was invented by David N. Mullany of Fairfield, Connecticut in 1953[1] when he designed a ball that curved easily for his 12-year old son. It was named when his son and his friends would refer to a strikeout as a "whiff" |
^Today's trivia.
In other news:
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| WASHINGTON � President Barack Obama, trying to improve strained relations with the corporate world, prodded America's top business executives on Wednesday to spend more money to boost U.S. hiring and the economy. |
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40677402/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/
The relations are strained, you see. L.A. schools are also looking to get more chummy with the corporate world:
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| Cash-strapped L.A. schools seeking corporate-naming sponsors for athletic fields, other facilities |
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/12/cash-strapped-la-schools-seeking-corporate-sponsors-for-athletic-fields-other-facilities.html[/quote]
One more for today:
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Record plunge in foreclosures, thanks to robo-signers
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The number of foreclosure notices filed in November plunged 21%, the biggest month-over-month drop ever recorded by RealtyTrac, the online foreclosure marketer. Filings fell 14% compared with November 2009.
The number of Americans who actually lost their homes to bank repossessions plummeted even more steeply -- to 67,428. That was off a whopping 28% from 93,236 in October. Repossessions are down a third since September. |
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The temporary freezes likely won't benefit many homeowners, he added: Most will still lose their homes.
"There will probably be a few people who will use the extra time to negotiate loan modifications or do a short sale but not in any meaningful way," said Sharga.
He predicted December will bring another decline followed by an acceleration of foreclosure activity in the first quarter of 2011. Conditions will return to what people now refer to as a "normal market" during the second quarter. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Thu Dec 16, 2010 1:40 pm Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/255320
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Two Californias
Abandoned farms, Third World living conditions, pervasive public assistance -- welcome to the once-thriving Central Valley. |
Good read. |
If you ever read VDH's stuff on the Iraq wars, you'd have a coniption fit.
| VDH wrote: |
| Hundreds of students here illegally are now terrified of being deported to Mexico. |
The DREAM Act is truly a no-brainer.
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| [This] bill would provide certain illegal and deportable alien students who graduate from US high schools, who are of good moral character, arrived in the U.S. illegally as minors, and have been in the country continuously and illegally for at least five years prior to the bill's enactment, the opportunity to earn conditional permanent residency if they complete two years in the military or two years at a four year institution of higher learning. The students would obtain temporary residency for a six year period. Within the six year period, a qualified student must have "acquired a degree from an institution of higher education in the United States or [have] completed at least 2 years, in good standing, in a program for a bachelor's degree or higher degree in the United States," or have "served in the uniformed services for at least 2 years and, if discharged, [have] received an honorable discharge."[2] Military enlistment contracts require an eight year commitment, with active duty commitments typically between four and six years, but as low as two years.[3][4] "Any alien whose permanent resident status is terminated [according to the terms of the Act] shall return to the immigration status the alien had immediately prior to receiving conditional permanent resident status under this Act." |
So this bill would make them serve their country or become educated before letting them become citizens. I see nothing wrong with admitting into our citizenry the educated or those willing to make sacrifices for the country. |
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Fat_Elvis
Joined: 17 Aug 2006
Location: In the ghetto
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| Posted: Sat Dec 18, 2010 1:12 am Post subject: |
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Nice piece by Krugman today dismantling the idea that government, and not unregulated financial markets, cause the financial crisis.
"In the world according to the G.O.P. commissioners, it�s [the financial crisis] all the fault of government do-gooders, who used various levers ... to promote loans to low-income borrowers....
It�s hard to overstate how wrongheaded all of this is. For one thing, as I�ve already noted, the housing bubble was international � and Fannie and Freddie weren�t guaranteeing mortgages in Latvia. Nor were they guaranteeing loans in commercial real estate, which also experienced a huge bubble.
Beyond that, the timing shows that private players weren�t suckered into a government-created bubble. It was the other way around. During the peak years of housing inflation, Fannie and Freddie were pushed to the sidelines; they only got into dubious lending late in the game, as they tried to regain market share....
In the end, those of us who expected the crisis to provide a teachable moment were right, but not in the way we expected. Never mind relearning the case for bank regulation; what we learned, instead, is what happens when an ideology backed by vast wealth and immense power confronts inconvenient facts. And the answer is, the facts lose. "
from here
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/opinion/17krugman.html?src=me&ref=homepage |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sat Dec 18, 2010 4:35 am Post subject: |
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| If you ever read VDH's stuff on the Iraq wars, you'd have a coniption fit. |
I know.
Yeah, then all of your country can be as prosperous as New Mexico, Hialeah or El Paso.
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| So this bill would make them serve their country or become educated before letting them become citizens. I see nothing wrong with admitting into our citizenry the educated or those willing to make sacrifices for the country. |
Not exactly. It is a sneak amnesty. What does an amnesty say to legal immigrants who have waited in line, paid thousands of dollars, gotten the health checks/criminal record checks, dealt with the bureaucracy etc?
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/255010/e-dream-heather-mac-donald
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Its educational and character trappings are so minimal as to be pretextual.
Every illegal alien who applies for what is known as �conditional legal status� is immunized from any fear of deportation for ten years. The threshold for qualifying for conditional legal status is extraordinarily lax. An illegal alien can have a criminal record and still qualify, as long as the time served for an aggregate of three non-felony offenses is under 90 days. (The current version of the bill, S. 3992, is a masterpiece of legalistic obfuscation on this count.) In Los Angeles (and undoubtedly elsewhere), jail overcrowding (significantly due to illegal-alien criminals) is such that prosecutors and courts routinely plea-bargain felonies down to misdemeanors and sentence property crimes and even some violent offenses to time served in jail while awaiting a plea bargain. Thus, one can have quite a history of offenses without crossing the DREAM Act threshold for criminal ineligibility. Drunk drivers and drug dealers could also qualify for conditional legal status, so long as they have routinely pled down.
Even if a judge has previously ordered an alien deported on criminal grounds and the alien ignored the deportation order, he may still qualify for conditional legal status if he received the deportation order before he was 16.
The education requirements in a bill purportedly about rewarding educational achievement are also ridiculously minimal. High school drop-outs qualify for conditional legal status, so long as they have obtained a no-brainer GED at some point.
Once granted conditional legal status, an alien is shielded from any enforcement proceedings for ten years, gaining the right to drive, work, and travel internationally, as if he had entered the country legally.
To convert conditional legal status to permanent legal status, the illegal alien needs at most to have completed two years worth of college credits over ten years. He need not have earned a bachelor�s degree, nor have maintained a high GPA. He could have spent five years in remedial classes and the next five accumulating a year�s worth of credits in Chicano/a studies. But even that minimal educational standard is waivable. If the illegal alien shows �compelling circumstances� for not accumulating two years worth of credits or if removal would cause �extremely unusual hardship� to the alien or his family, he can still be granted permanent legal status.
The DREAM Act is not about creating an incentive for, or rewarding, high educational achievement. It is about trying to extend an amnesty to as many illegal aliens as possible, who will then have the ability to legalize their family members. |
John Derbyshire describes it as Democratic Reinforcements Entering America from Mexico. Pat Buchanan rightly describes it as an attempt to turn the United States into a one party country, like California is a one party state. Mass immigration is a strategy to undermine and ultimately destroy historic America. Kuros, you are historic America, with your appreciation for the constitution, rule of law and the history behind it all. When are you going to catch on? |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sat Dec 18, 2010 9:13 am Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
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| So this bill would make them serve their country or become educated before letting them become citizens. I see nothing wrong with admitting into our citizenry the educated or those willing to make sacrifices for the country. |
Not exactly. It is a sneak amnesty. What does an amnesty say to legal immigrants who have waited in line, paid thousands of dollars, gotten the health checks/criminal record checks, dealt with the bureaucracy etc? |
The immigrants who have been properly admitted live within the light. They are given social security numbers very soon after entry, and may work (subject to the terms of their admission). They fearlessly confide in their new neighbors and may rely on police protection. Those immigrants who have entered without inspection (aka illegals) hide in the shadows, paranoid and afraid of being discovered at every turn. This should not be hard for ESLers in Korea to understand. Most ESLers who work illegally, though, have been admitted to Korea pursuant to inspection, but they hold tourist visas, and thus aren't able to work legally. The many immigrants who have entered without inspection are even more insecure, subjected to a fine, and what's worse, being removed, possibly without notice. Immigrants who have not been legally admitted are hardly the welfare queens those on the right paint them to be (but then again neither ever were the welfare queens themselves).
| mises wrote: |
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To convert conditional legal status to permanent legal status, the illegal alien needs at most to have completed two years worth of college credits over ten years. He need not have earned a bachelor�s degree, nor have maintained a high GPA. He could have spent five years in remedial classes and the next five accumulating a year�s worth of credits in Chicano/a studies. But even that minimal educational standard is waivable. If the illegal alien shows �compelling circumstances� for not accumulating two years worth of credits or if removal would cause �extremely unusual hardship� to the alien or his family, he can still be granted permanent legal status.
The DREAM Act is not about creating an incentive for, or rewarding, high educational achievement. It is about trying to extend an amnesty to as many illegal aliens as possible, who will then have the ability to legalize their family members. |
John Derbyshire describes it as Democratic Reinforcements Entering America from Mexico. Pat Buchanan rightly describes it as an attempt to turn the United States into a one party country, like California is a one party state. Mass immigration is a strategy to undermine and ultimately destroy historic America. |
First of all, the two-year college requirement is reasonable. It is unlikely these shadow children will have access to student loans, thus they will be unable to complete much more than two years without running out of money. They'll need to work. But it is also unlikely that having finished two years of college they'll suddenly abandon the effort.
Second of all, historically, America has always assimilated its immigrants, no matter where they have come from. This has happened even despite American prejudices and the barriers we have erected to deny these immigrants full access to citizenship or rights. This is the beauty of the American model. Buchanan's pessimism has its origins in white resentment as well as simple fear and ignorance.
Congressional policy has been to admit immediate family members. This ensures fundamental fairness, but more importantly, it aids assimilation. The #1 complaint I hear from Asian immigrants about America is that it is lonely and isolating, even a little boring. Bringing the parents to America tackles the isolation and loneliness head on, and rewards and doubles down their investment in America. Bringing in other relatives takes more time, some of the waiting periods are ridiculously long, because brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles are limited by quotas, but such immigrants are more likely to be successful in America because of family support.
| mises wrote: |
Kuros, you are historic America, with your appreciation for the constitution, rule of law and the history behind it all. When are you going to catch on? |
My reading of the current situation much better tracks the underlying objective of the immigration laws as they stand than does some of the anti-immigrant right's hobgoblins and phantoms.
America focuses its enforcement strategies on immigrants who have violated American law, not those who have entered without status. Remember, entering the US without inspection is a civil penalty and fine, punishable by a fine. In this sense, it is more like a traffic ticket or a parking citation than even a criminal misdemeanor. The words 'amnesty' and 'illegal' conjure actual criminal behavior, but entering without inspection is merely a civil violation, and thus it is measured and effective policy to require immigrants who have entered without inspection to submit to inspection and pay a fine. Immigrants who have entered without inspection who engage in criminal behavior are subject to immediate deportation.
Immediate family members may still be excluded on many of the inadmissibility grounds, even if their child is a beneficiary under the DREAM Act. One of these grounds is violation of status, another is unlawful presence.
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| Aliens who have been deported are inadmissible. After a first deportation, the person is inadmissible for five years, and after subsequent deportations, the period of inadmissibility is 20 years. A person deported because of an aggravated felony is permanently inadmissible. People who have been unlawfully present in the US for more than 180 days but less than a year are inadmissible for three years. Unlawful presence of more than a year leads to inadmissibility for ten years. |
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jaykimf
Joined: 24 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sat Dec 18, 2010 11:26 am Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
Fat Elivs, do not believe the lies of a dirty, disgusting snake like Krugman. |
When you sink to name calling like that, you don't make your case any more convincing. On the contrary, you make yourself look like someone who is incapable of articulating an intelligent criticism and who can't do any better than simplistic name calling rants. That kind of name calling makes you, rather than Krugman look bad. |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Sat Dec 18, 2010 11:34 am Post subject: ... |
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| Not exactly. It is a sneak amnesty. What does an amnesty say to legal immigrants who have waited in line, paid thousands of dollars, gotten the health checks/criminal record checks, dealt with the bureaucracy etc? |
In many ways, that's a class issue. What percentage of legal immigrants are border-crossing Mexicans? The legal Mexicans are the ones who have married, for example, or are healthcare people, for example, accommodating for a lack.
IOW, I doubt many legal immigrants give a flop about amnesty for illegals. During your time in Korea, how important were illegals to you?
On the other hand, the US needs to do something about illegals. I don't really have a horse in that race, but I'd love to see what happens to the US if they try to function without the illegals. You spent time in the UAE? They aren't illegal there, but someone has to do the 3D jobs. Think about it. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sat Dec 18, 2010 1:39 pm Post subject: Re: ... |
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IOW, I doubt many legal immigrants give a flop about amnesty for illegals.
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I live among them. They don't care all that much either way.
Kuros, it is your country and I'll defer. We do not agree. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sat Dec 18, 2010 1:40 pm Post subject: |
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| jaykimf wrote: |
| mises wrote: |
Fat Elivs, do not believe the lies of a dirty, disgusting snake like Krugman. |
When you sink to name calling like that, you don't make your case any more convincing. On the contrary, you make yourself look like someone who is incapable of articulating an intelligent criticism and who can't do any better than simplistic name calling rants. That kind of name calling makes you, rather than Krugman look bad. |
I don't care. He advocated for a housing bubble to be blown by the government and got his way. Now he is penning crap about how the government isn't at fault. He is a snake. |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Sat Dec 18, 2010 1:47 pm Post subject: ... |
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Yer, but you give a pass to all those root beer-types promising everything and everything if we let our country be run as an A&W stand.
That's damn slithery. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sat Dec 18, 2010 1:56 pm Post subject: Re: ... |
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| Nowhere Man wrote: |
Yer, but you give a pass to all those root beer-types promising everything and everything if we let our country be run as an A&W stand.
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I don't think that's true. I'm critical of everything. I try very hard not to have a home team that I protect. I posted an article by a Marxist a few pages back (Michael Hudson in Counterpunch) and praised Bernie Sanders (a socialist).
Krugman is a snake. |
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