Anecdotally speaking ...

We're heading out in a few minutes, over to an attorney's office to close on our mortgage. We're refinancing to get a lower rate. It's not that I have a big mortgage, less than half the value of the house, it was just a consolidation of the small building loans I got over the years (when interest was cheap) that were ARMs (but I never held them long enough for the interest rates to change) into a fixed rate mortgage when we saw the writing on the wall. I pay less mortgage than most pay in rent. With this refi, we'll save $200/month. Good for us.

That said, I noticed, this time, that all the associated parties (bank, title company, etc) did a lot more thorough background on us than they have in the past. 7 years ago, they were disappointed I didn't want to take 150% of the value out of the house and barely did more than verify my signature. This time, even for as little as we've borrowed, we were subjected to the equivalent of a credit cavity search. It's not that we're taking any more money, just refinancing the little balance we have left.

Just anecdotally, then versus now, I'd say the banks are taking greater care in whom they give a mortgage to.

Blogging flurries today

We had a pretty good snowstorm yesterday and last night. Just an average one, foot-and-a-half or so, nothing like the Right Coast got. The power was out but obviously is on now. The sun's out now and so is the landline and cable TV, and the intertubes connection is intermittent.

I'll do what I can as long as I can do it. It's sure a relief to know that weather has nothing to do with climate.

Creating jobs ...

For Americans. Oh ... wait ...

Perhaps if we purged the tax code of the numerous incentives to move jobs overseas (the latest was in the recent tax cut deal), it would be more likely to translate into jobs within shorter commuting distance than India:

...

It's so nice that the 1.4 million jobs created by American business didn't go to Americans. Good thing they got all them tax cuts so now they have "certainty". The only thing we can be certain about is that their bottom line will be better this year. Any certainty middle class Americans have is that they'll get screwed just as badly in 2011 as they did in 2010, maybe worse.

Gays target DADT's last bastion

Don Davis

Coming off perhaps their biggest victory yet with the repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy, the leading gay and lesbian civil rights organizations are now planning to take on the last U.S. institution to follow this outdated policy: The Republican Party itself.

David Brock of Media Matters, who served as a key leader of the campaign to repeal DADT in the armed forces, admitted that “this may well the most daunting task faced by the LGBT community, since the uber-macho culture of the GOP makes the United States Marine Corps look like a Sunday afternoon tea party.”

Sir! Steep for two minutes! Aye-aye Sir! Stir, two! Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Not surprisingly, John McCain immediately registered his objections, stating on the Senate floor that the GOP “simply cannot afford such a radical change, particularly in the middle of the War Against Obama.” McCain later told Bill O’Reilly: “Just imagine how it would feel to suddenly wake up one morning and discover that the Chamber of Commerce lobbyist you’re in bed with … is actually gay!”

More.

Update:

"A pup in a valley of alpha males..."

The London Review Of Books does Dubya. Scathingly. A 'recommended read' by a reviewer who probably actually likes real books.

Team DP has indeed created ‘a space into which the writing subject constantly disappears’; one learns almost nothing about George W. Bush from this book. The names of hundreds of other people are mentioned, almost always in praise – it is, in its way, the world’s longest prize acceptance speech – but none of them, outside of the Bush family, has any life as a character. Each new person is introduced with a single sentence, noting one or more of the following: 1) Texan origins; 2) college athletic achievements; 3) military service; 4) deep religious faith. The sentence ends with three personal characteristics: ‘honest, ethical and forthright’; ‘a brilliant mind, disarming modesty and a buoyant spirit’; ‘a statesman, a savvy lawyer and a magnet for talented people’; ‘smart, thoughtful, energetic’ (that’s Condi); ‘knowledgeable, articulate and confident’ (that’s Rummy); ‘a wise, principled, humane man’ (Clarence Thomas); and so on. Then the person does whatever Bush tells him to do.

Bush is the lone hero of every page of Decision Points. [...]

This is a chronicle of the Bush Era with no colour-coded Terror Alerts; no Freedom Fries; no Halliburton; no Healthy Forests Initiative (which opened up wilderness areas to logging); no Clear Skies Act (which reduced air pollution standards); no New Freedom Initiative (which proposed testing all Americans, beginning with schoolchildren, for mental illness); no pamphlets sold by the National Parks Service explaining that the Grand Canyon was created by the Flood; no research by the National Institutes of Health on whether prayer can cure cancer (‘imperative’, because poor people have limited access to healthcare); no cover-up of the death of football star Pat Tillman by ‘friendly fire’ in Afghanistan; no ‘Total Information Awareness’ from the Information Awareness Office; no Project for the New American Century; no invented heroic rescue of Private Jessica Lynch; no Fox News; no hundreds of millions spent on ‘abstinence education’. It does not deal with the Cheney theory of the ‘unitary executive’ – essentially that neither the Congress nor the courts can tell the president what to do – or Bush’s frequent use of ‘signing statements’ to indicate that he would completely ignore a bill that the Congress had just passed.

A pup in a valley of alpha males, inadequate compared to Dad, humiliated by Mother, he classically became a bully to compensate: an ass-brander, noted for what he calls verbal ‘needling’; a boss who cussed out his subordinates and invented demeaning nicknames for everyone around him; a president who taunted terrorists, most of them imaginary, and challenged them to ‘bring it on’.

The reviewer uses many words well to describe Bush where I use only two: a sociopathic weakling.

Top 25 Dick Cheney Facts

Give Us This Day Our Daily Dread

• Dick Cheney does not sign contracts with the Devil- He makes the Devil offers he can’t refuse.

• Dick Cheney’s burps smell like Iraqi infants.

• Dick Cheney doesn’t have a defibrillator but a Halliburton pump station.

• People actually go fuck themselves if Dick Cheney tells them to.

• Dick Cheney’s new house is in the center of Mordor.

• Eve sprang from Adam’s rib but Liz Cheney had sprung from Dick Cheney’s bile duct.

• Dick Cheney once made General Pinochet stand in a corner for an hour for not killing enough liberals in Chile.

The only ones ...

In the house who are happy about the blizzard and it ain't any of the humans. I got Chooch and Ziva out as soon as the wind died down a bit.

Click to make big.

World's Weirdest Gift Shop?

I'm feeling like death warmed over today so maybe going shopping will cheer me up!

NYTimes

Body bags go for $20. Yellow crime scene tape is $6. Toe tags are normally $5, but they were sold out this month. The merchandise comes in a white plastic shopping bag that says “Los Angeles County Department of Coroner.”

Tucked in the corner of a squat brick building that houses a huge depository of the dead is the strangest of gift shops. For years, the county coroner has run the shop, aptly named Skeletons in the Closet, selling knickknacks playing off the rather morbid humor that the department’s business arouses in many people.

But it turns out that the shop’s slogan — “We’re dying for your business!” — is all too accurate. The shop was once supposed to make enough money to pay for an anti-drunken-driving course for teenagers that includes a visit to the morgue.

A visit to the morgue has been a post-drunken-driving stop for far too many as well.

Officer Alvarado, who was there with his girlfriend, said he frequently wore his favorite purchase — a barbecue apron emblazoned “L.A. County Coroner Has ♥” in the center and two pockets labeled “spare ribs” and “spare hands.”

Ms. Pereyda said that much of the merchandise in the store had been the same for years, leaving many regular customers eager for more. So she is brainstorming new ideas and is particularly excited about a shipment of water bottles that is supposed to arrive next month.

The containers will be labeled “bodily fluids.”

I'm sure we all like the autopsies on NCIS and various CSIs, but for the real deal, watch North Mission Road. The DVD makes a great gift too!

Comedy Isn't Always Funny

The Rude Pundit on Jon Stewart helping get the Zadroga Bill passed and the overreaction to by the mighty Gray Lady:

Don't be stupid and don't act coy, New York Times. Of course, the 9/11 first responders health care bill passed because Jon Stewart made it his cause on The Daily Show. It was an epic assist to New York Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillenbrand (who get the points because they were in position to actually, you know, vote on the bill).

It was the logical end for a year when Stewart and The Daily Show have used comedy to call for rationality, as in its Rally to Restore Sanity. For what could be more irrational than the Senate Republicans filibustering the Zadroga bill? And what could be more ridiculous than a news media more enamored of Sarah Palin's latest jackassery than with the Congress failing in what should have been a no-brainer? How do you satirize that? It's a living, breathing satire in itself. So Stewart zagged when everyone expected him to zig. He took advantage of the closing window of the lame duck Congress as surely as did the voracious tax-slashing Republicans, as surely as Harry Reid did. Good on him.

But the other message not to be lost here is that this is what journalism is supposed to do. On a basic level, it's supposed to hold the powerful to account. It's what Wikileaks is doing. It's the difference between the evening programming of Fox "news" and MSNBC: the former justifies the ways of the mighty for the masses, the latter says that the mighty need to justify themselves.

The New York Times asks whether this puts Stewart in the same league as Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkite. That's insane. Murrow fucked up the anti-American madness of a nutzoid Senator. Cronkite helped fuck up public opinion on a fucked-up war. These were great, nation-changing causes. Stewart said that firefighters, cops, and EMTs ought to have their medical bills paid for. If that's what passes for a crusade these days, then we are lost, lost, lost indeed.

We are lost, lost, lost indeed.

The next "Big Thing" ...

Seems the Republicans now want to force the states into bankruptcy. Why? To break the municipal employees' unions, of course. Seder's in for Keith this week:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

REMINDER
The season to be jolly has ended.

I gotcher ho-ho-ho hangin'. Good fucking riddance.

New Census Data Good News for GOP
Abstinence-only programs boosting population in red states.

Pat Robertson Calls for Decriminalization of Marijuana
After being caught with half an ounce.

Heh. In my dreams!

To protect CEO, Bank of America Buys
BrianMoynihanBlows.com, BrianMoynihanSucks.com, BrianTMoynihanBlows.com, and BrianTMoynihanSucks.com
Still available:
BrianMoynihanBlowsSucksBarfsandPukes.com,
BrianTMoynihanBlowsSucksBarfsandPukes.com.

Fried Fish May Explain Stroke Belt in Southern States
Also contributing: black man in White House.

Hey, whatever works.

Thanks, Gordon ...

For being so kind and sending your weather to us while you were off on the coast. 2 1/2 feet from 3 pm yesterday and it's still snowing with 60 mph winds. I been up for an hour, digging us out through the back door so we could walk the dogs. They, on the other hand, love this shit.

Authorities responded to scores of traffic accidents Sunday on treacherously icy roads and highways, and emergency management officials said conditions would not improve much until later Monday.

By 5 p.m. Sunday, there were at least 58 minor crashes on the Long Island Expressway and Sunrise Highway in Suffolk and 20 calls for disabled motorists, said Michael Sharkey, a spokesman for the Suffolk sheriff's office.

...

In Nassau, police and county officials could not estimate the number of crashes, but said they were busy responding to them.

Though snow was expected to stop falling by 5 a.m., officials said travel would still be difficult because winds of 35 to 50 mph would be whipping snowdrifts back onto the roads.

...

Don't let 'em DREAM

More from the LATimes. Hey, I'm in Southern California and the Fuerza is strong here. So strong that I just had a chorizo burrito for breakfast. I will share with Mrs. G's family later. Heh.

Some readers celebrate demise of the DREAM Act

They say illegal immigrants are here to game the system and are a drag on the U.S. economy, despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary.

A few called for Luis Perez, the subject of one of my recent columns, to be immediately deported. Perez, 29, managed to graduate from college and UCLA School of Law despite being an undocumented resident of Los Angeles since his Mexican parents brought him here as an 8-year-old.

That's mighty white of 'them' to want to throw away a smart, hard working kid whose parents came from the wrong side of the border to get a better life. And actually got it for their kid.

So we'll continue to live in this state of collective hypocrisy — lining up for tacos made by people we suspect don't belong here, but enjoying the cheap meal just the same.

The crux of the biscuit. Much more.

What a gay Marine taught me

A good read in the LATimes:

The tough, utterly selfless NCO embodied what every service needs in its ranks. But he left to be able to live openly. In losing many of its gays, the U.S. military lost preparedness, a retired lieutenant colonel says.

So back to my friend, the now-retired Marine sergeant major and distinguished combat veteran. Do I like the idea of openly serving gays? No. Do I recognize that my military needs to look like my country? Yes. So to my fellow vets, if there is no room in the military for him, is there room for any of us?

Seeing the light reluctantly is seeing the light.

Flying reindeer, huh?

Go read the story of Santa and the psychedelic mushrooms. Heh.

Christmas Emmylou Blogging

Merry Christmas, Mele Kelikimaka, Feliz Navidad, and Tits Up in the Tall Yule to all our readers. Thank you.

Emmylou Harris & The McGarrigle Sisters ~ O Little Town Of Bethlehem

Thanks to 1000Magicians, UK.

Friday Monster Blogging

The girls wish you a Merry Christmas too (that's because they got their own special Christmas dinner this evening):

Click to make bigger

The Humbug Express

Paul Krugman

Hey, has anyone noticed that “A Christmas Carol” is a dangerous leftist tract?

I mean, consider the scene, early in the book, where Ebenezer Scrooge rightly refuses to contribute to a poverty relief fund. “I’m opposed to giving people money for doing nothing,” he declares. Oh, wait. That wasn’t Scrooge. That was Newt Gingrich — last week. What Scrooge actually says is, “Are there no prisons?” But it’s pretty much the same thing.

Anyway, instead of praising Scrooge for his principled stand against the welfare state, Charles Dickens makes him out to be some kind of bad guy. How leftist is that?

As you can see, the fundamental issues of public policy haven’t changed since Victorian times. Still, some things are different. In particular, the production of humbug — which was still a somewhat amateurish craft when Dickens wrote — has now become a systematic, even industrial, process.

Call it The Mighty Wurlitzer, FOXProp, the RS3M*, Talking Points, or any name you choose, it's lying writ large and loud and constant until it is believed and therefore the Truth.

*Repuglican Spin, Slime, and Smear Machine.

Best wishes ...

I've got a ton of shit to do to get ready for tomorrow and I might not get back here today, so I'd like to wish the staff here, all our bloggy pals, our readers, and commenters a very Merry Christmas.

Do me a favor and be careful out there if you're gonna be driving this holiday. Keep your eyes open (and your head out of your ass [i.e. phone, GPS, video, beating the kids, etc]) on the road and make sure you got somebody sober to get you home (or you have a place to stay where you're partying) if you indulge in a bit too much "cheer". Your family doesn't need to associate the holiday with your funeral or incarceration.

All the best to you and yours!

The Christmas Tree inside Galleries Lafayette, Paris. Click to make it grow.

I thought ...

Everybody wanted us to bomb Iran?

Despite sanctions and trade embargoes, over the past decade the United States government has allowed American companies to do billions of dollars in business with Iran and other countries blacklisted as state sponsors of terrorism, an examination by The New York Times has found.

At the behest of a host of companies — from Kraft Food and Pepsi to some of the nation’s largest banks — a little-known office of the Treasury Department has granted nearly 10,000 licenses for deals involving countries that have been cast into economic purgatory, beyond the reach of American business.

...

It's all good when there's a buck to be made.

Thanks to Fez for the link.