Fish Fear Me

Yowza

Ed Morrissey points out that mortgage delinquencies continue to rise, now hitting people with good credit and conventional loans and adds:

Why are these loans failing at a higher rate?  Most likely, it’s due to unemployment.  As people remain unemployed for longer periods of time — and the average length of unemployment is at its highest in decades — they will miss more house payments regardless of whether they bought responsibly or not.  The irresponsible buyers have mostly been identified in the foreclosures.

This is bad news indeed, more so than the overall rate increase.  While the market needed to correct for irresponsible lending, a correction delayed by gimmicks from the Obama administration, the risk now is an extended collapse in the housing and lending markets as inventory increases and lenders take more losses.  The only real cure for this is to stimulate large-scale economic growth, but the Obama administration has already wasted a year with an ineffective stimulus plan and shackled growth through its signals on taxes, fees, and debt.

And I was fairly shocked to hear this bit of news last week about the local market here in the Twin Cities:

More troubling, the real estate website Zillow.com calculates that more than 268,000 Twin Cities area single-family homeowners with mortgages owe more than their homes are worth. That number is about 41.2 percent of the total. That compares with an estimated national average of 23.3 percent of single-family mortgages with negative equity, according to the report.

Prices have slid to the point where 41% of local homeowners are now underwater? That's kind of mind-boggling. Personally, I'm in good shape since I have been paying on my mortgage for 15 years now and the small home niche my house is in has been holding its own lately. But geez, that has to be having some kind of effect on the overall economy. Would you get work done on a home that was underwater? And sure as hell you can't use it to get a loan for anything else.

I think Morrissey is right. Team Obama blew it with a stimulus plan that mostly took care of government workers for a year or two while simultaneously shocking people with enormous deficits and signals of an ever expanding tax and regulation regime. I see no sign that they get what the above numbers are doing to the overall economy beyond coming up with some standard talk of government programs that don't seem to be very effective and are probably making things even worse.

People are dreaming if they think the anti-incumbent mood will die by November. This stuff is one reason why it won't. 

Oh, and one other thing. Continued denial by the politicians and the media over the government's role in this whole mess isn't washing either. We know that Fannie and Freddie and Barney and the rest of the corrupt Washington/New York crowd helped to create this mess. Denying it just pisses us off even more.

Your Unintentionally Accurate Typo Of The Day

Matthew Yglesias weighs in on the Connecticut Senate race and unintentionally hits the nail on the head:

For quite a long time now people have been urging Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal to run for hire office, but he always seemed reluctant to go for the prize until this year Chris Dodd’s troubles forced him out of the Connecticut Senate race and Blumenthal in.

Heh, "hire office" and Chris Dodd in the same sentence. How appropriate given Dodd's history as customer lackey employee of Countrywide and the financial industry as a whole.

And it's proof that if you put enough progressives in a room at Think Progress and have them bang away on keyboards, eventually one of them will write something true.

Approving Snort

Guestblogger Ed Driscoll wields an impressive clue bat:

Here’s a tip: don’t listen to us. Truth is, you already know what’s going on.

Curiously, that’s the one piece of advice that millions have already taken in recent years from Newsweek.

Not that the regular host is any slouch, but he's got a serious bench going on right now.

Death Star Takes A Hit

Friday night it was the Yankees who came up with the grand slam and sank the Twins. Yesterday, the Twins got their payback when Jason Kubel put one into the seats with the bases loaded and the Twins avoided getting swept(again) in New York. What was even better was the blow came off of Mariano Rivera after he walked Jim Thome to force in a run. Twins win, 6-3, and come from behind wins are pretty darn scarce for visitors to Yankee Stadium. This will be one to savor for a little while.

The Twins still lost the series, so I can't get too excited. It was nice to end that 12-game losing streak in the Bronx though. And to do it in such stunning fashion, the same way the Yankees have beaten the Twins so many times the last few years.

Two games in Toronto and two in Boston will complete this East Coast road trip. Two more big tests for our boys. Then they get in an interleague series at home with the Brewers before hosting the evil empire for three. That will be another big test, and we'll see if yesterday's win was just a one off or if it will really be the turning point that it felt like at the time.

So...

...What do you call finding a dead rabbit outside your back door the first thing in the morning?

Answer: If you're a gardener, a good start.

Now, now, I'm just kidding. Sort of. Besides, if you've never had a garden get ravaged by the little buggers, you're simply not qualified to judge me.

There was not a mark on it and it looked otherwise healthy, so I have no idea what killed it. I hope a neighbor hasn't taken to putting out poison. I joke about slaying them, but my real solution is a fence. This one didn't show any obvious signs of poisoning, but I'm not sure I would be able to tell. It looked just like the ones that Sammy would occasionally bring me in her younger days.

Hmmm, you don't suppose...

My Hero

Me: Well, your blood tests are back.
My Liver: Oh. So uh, how'd I do?
Me: You passed with flying colors.
My Liver: Really?
Me: Yep.
My Liver: Wow. I have to say I was a little worried.
Me: Yeah, me too. The doc is still going to push us to cut back you know.
My Liver: I suppose.
Me:
My Liver:
Me: Oh, what the heck. Let's celebrate.
My Liver: Alright!

DADT

A group of milbloggers has issued a statement saying that the end of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy is inevitable, but asks that Congress wait until the US military completes a study on how to implement the new policy before working up any legislation. Here's Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive:

There was a recent exchange of letters between Sen. Levin and Sec. Def. Gates about the study the military is doing about Don't Ask, Don't Tell. In it Sec. Gates confirmed that the military was looking at how best to implement the policy on the assumption that the rule would be changed. He also asked Congress to wait until the study was completed so any action they took would be based on the advice of the services. A number of Milbloggers agree with this and are releasing the following joint statement.

You can read the statement at the above link.

I'm too long removed from my service time to say if it truly is inevitable that gay men and women will serve openly in the military, and that such a policy will not harm the readiness and effectiveness of the various services. I have to trust the judgment of the senior officers and civilian leadership along with those milbloggers who are much closer to today's military than I am. If that's a given though, then I think those statement signers are correct to ask that Congress give the military the time needed to come up with the policy and how to implement it. Then Congress can see how those things fit with their vision. That Congress shares the ultimate decision power with President Obama is unquestionably true, however this is one area where they need to pay close attention to the civilian and military leadership.

Another One Bites The Dust

Well, scratch off another progressive that I'll not be talking politics with for the foreseeable future. This one is a relative who could always be counted on before to give a spirited defense of his positions, but generally stayed within the bounds of decency and sanity in doing so. Not anymore.

It started at a family gathering this weekend when the Minnesota governor's race came up in the conversation. That led to talk about the anti-incumbent mood in the country and, holy crap, it was on. The dude became totally unhinged about the Tea Parties and how they gave Bush a pass for the very same things that Obama is doing fiscally. How GW was never held to account by the press the way they are attacking Obama. How Republicans created the financial crisis by having NO REGULATION of the industry. Wait a minute you say, no regulation? NO REGULATION! What about the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? NONSENSE!

The all caps above are there because he really was shouting and it was non-stop. Totally unhinged. The more I tried to reason with him or make a point, the more he shouted over what I was trying to say. He got so rude and so venomous that it actually became kind of amusing. Before my very eyes he had turned into exactly the kind of close-minded, willfully ignorant, and nasty person that he is so fond of accusing conservatives of being. I'm no psychologist, but that was some classic projection if I've ever seen it.

The conversation, if you can call it that, was dropped at that point in the interest of family unity. The rudeness and disrespect toward my opinion was disappointing, but even more so was to see the extent to which his mind is now closed to anything that contradicts his worldview. And when I say closed, I mean locked down to a scary degree. 

I bring all of this up not to paint progressives with a broad brush, but to maybe push back a little on the recent talk of how Tea Partiers are ignorant or that the conservative movement suffers from some kind of epistemic closure crisis. The latter has been very popular with the kids on the left lately. Those two things do exist to some extent and they probably always will. I think they are inherent to some degree across the political spectrum though, and it's something that anyone of good faith should be on guard for. My erstwhile debate partner did not come up with his narrative on his own, it's straight from the Think Progress play book. I know because I read them too. The kids on the left might spend some time cleaning up their own house before they go criticizing others.

Oh Boy

The quit smoking drive continues, but now it has started to hit the hard parts. Like ramping down to only 1 cigarette every two hours or more, which effectively cuts me back to half a pack per day. Oy, that's been really tough the past two days. Same with not smoking in my house. And today I committed to May 17 as my quit day so long as the patch supply arrives by then. I decided against the Zyban or Chantix approach for now. The potential side effects scared me off.

I'm feeling an increase in my appetite with just two days of sticking to a schedule. So far I'm mostly quenching that with fruits and raw veggies as needed, but I have to admit that I'm back to three meals per day already. I usually just eat lunch and dinner. The good news though, is that the exercise regimen is still in place after three weeks and I've fallen into a routine that feels good. That should turn any weight gain into muscle instead of fat, though I expect my BMI will go up from its current 22.4. Woe unto the health care professional who gives me crap for that.

The current routine:

• Five minutes of stretches and calisthenics, including toe touches(yes, I can touch my toes)/deep knee bends. I'm at 40 sit-ups in a minute and a half. My goal is 60 in 60 seconds, my basic training(1983) level.
• Went from 12 to 15lb. dumbbells today for the following(25 reps each): bicep curl, tricep extension, bench press, floor clean and jerk. I would rather have a barbell for these, but right now I don't have access to one.
• Went from 10 to 11 minutes today on the bike machine at 60 RPM(at least) with increasing resistance. The routine I'm using is called "Pike's Peak" and if I can power through this next stage then it goes down from there to complete 20 minutes. This is the exercise I've been most careful about as it gets my heart rate up to about 120 and it's still a grind just to get through 10 minutes. I'm breathing pretty hard at that point too, and since a heart attack would be something of a setback at this stage, I'm trying not to push things too hard.
• Finally, five routines on the weight machine at 50 lbs./20 reps for pecs, biceps, triceps, delts, and abs.

That's it for now. It's a little less than 30 minutes, but it should go over that in the next few weeks as the bike routine creeps towards a full 20 minutes. At some point I'm going to need to refine a few things with the weights and calisthenics as this is probably not an optimal long-term routine. It seems pretty good as a start though.

Rats

Any thoughts of trying to sneak the garden in an extra week early have gone right out the window:

Tonight: Rain and snow, becoming all snow after 10pm. Low around 33. North northwest wind between 8 and 17 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. Total nighttime snow accumulation of around an inch possible. 

Saturday: Partly sunny, with a high near 51. Northwest wind around 15 mph. 

Saturday Night: Areas of frost after 3am. Otherwise, mostly clear, with a low around 32. Northwest wind between 10 and 13 mph becoming light. 

Sunday: Areas of frost before 8am. Otherwise, mostly sunny, with a high near 57. Calm wind. 

April was so nice, but May has pretty much been a drag so far. The long range forecast shows temps warming up the last half of next week though, so it looks like May 15 will still be doable.