Vox Popoli

Deutsche Bank has a grim forecast:

The percentage of U.S. homeowners who owe more than their house is worth will nearly double to 48 percent in 2011 from 26 percent at the end of March, portending another blow to the housing market, Deutsche Bank said on Wednesday.

Home price declines will have their biggest impact on prime “conforming” loans that meet underwriting and size guidelines of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the bank said in a report. Prime conforming loans make up two-thirds of mortgages, and are typically less risky because of stringent requirements.

“We project the next phase of the housing decline will have a far greater impact on prime borrowers,” Deutsche analysts Karen Weaver and Ying Shen said in the report…. Covering 100 U.S. metropolitan areas, Deutsche Bank in June forecast home prices would fall 14 percent through the first quarter of 2011, for a total drop of 41.7 percent.

This can be expected to significantly increase the rate of foreclosures, which will take down an increasing number of banks. And the FDIC already has some sizeable problems on its hands, as its inability to find takers for the assets and deposits of several large banks that are in the process of failing has it scrambling to split the banks’ assets among acquirers, which it has to do before it can seize them and shut them down.

Don’t put too much faith in the short term happy talk on housing. That’s just a blip from the foreclosure hiatus and people snapping up the initial wave of foreclosure “bargains”. The fragility of the housing market is why the Fed won’t even think of doing what needs to be done and raising interest rates, which would appear to doom the US to a Japan scenario at best.

NW notes a pattern with regards to dating at the office and sexual harassment:

Please don’t assume I’m whining or anything. The following is more like a casual observation from patternist that is despairing just a little for people. [Consider the] funny SNL skit about sexual harassment. The moral? Just don’t even associate with girls unless you’re good looking. What’s sad is how true this seems to becoming. Once upon a time when you asked someone out, the worst they could say is no. Now the worst is losing your job for “sexually harassing” someone or outright being thrown in jail.

Personal aside: yes I may have some light Asberger’s syndrome myself but I at least recognize that I’m awkward and bad at social situations. Still at one place I tried to be friendly and fit in only to later get a warning for sexual harassment. (still don’t know what I did) So I just stopped talking to everyone.

Anyway, reading posts like this or ones where you talk about women always being the pursued and I can’t help but wonder… maybe the game is too rigged? One article spoke about how a lot of trouble in the middle-east arises from polyagamy because the older men are sapping up most of the brides, leaving a large segment of young, single (and bored) men. Meanwhile in the west it seems like we’re also getting a large segment of young, single men only here they are actively punished for trying to rectify the situation.

You asked: “Which came first? The murderous bitterness or the inability to attract women?”

With the way things are, isn’t it a bigger surprise that there isn’t more murderous bitterness out there?

I don’t think it’s quite fair to assert, as the SNL skit did, that being attractive is the only way for men to be able to ask women out without sexually harassing them. There’s also being rich, as well as being famous and being powerful. But it’s true, the Tom Bradys of the world are permitted behavior that would see another man lose his job. It’s not fair, but then, what is? Of course, once you recognize that unfairness is inherent to the system, you will realize that men also have an advantage, which is that women don’t have a reliable way of knowing who is rich and powerful, and who is not. Players exploit this information gap all the time, which of course leads women to complain that those men aren’t playing fair. But again, what is?

Anyhow, the main thing to keep in mind is that women despise desperation and weakness more than anything. They view it as creepy; therefore a man who sends off signals of being weak is by definition a probable harasser. It’s almost absurd how a man who stops viewing women as beautiful pedestal-dwelling dispensers of love and social approval and instead looks at them as prey becomes almost instantly more attractive to them. Single women are complicated and dynamic, which in male terms means that because what they want tends to change rapidly, there is no point in putting any stock in what they say at any given moment. And once you figure out that women find your honesty unattractive… why are you still being honest with them? Seriously, Asperger’s or not, is this difficult? As I have had occasion to tell both men and women: “Sometimes people say things that aren’t true.”

When honesty is acceptable, women usually want you to tell them what you want; they don’t want you to always be asking them what they want. They often want you to take responsibility for their decisions for them. That’s why they have such common fantasies about being ravished and swept away and so forth. So, to the extent that a man’s behavior is not in line with the way women’s desires orient – which is very often directly opposed to not only what they say they want, but what they think they want – a man’s behavior will usually be self-defeating.

For deeper insight into what makes women tick on a sexual level, I recommend reading Roissy or some of the Pick-Up Artist sites. Like good predators, they study their prey incessantly and make a point of knowing them intimately. I don’t recommend their attitude lifestyle because it is both immoral and ultimately unfulfilling, but it is at least an antidote to the misinformation under which so many men labor. But there’s a very good reason why women are naturally drawn to men like me and Tucker Max; it’s BECAUSE we’re independent bastards, it’s not DESPITE that.

Now, that independence came naturally to me because Spacebunny was, and is, the only woman I’ve ever loved or even cared much about. But we’re not talking about love, we’re talking about initial male-female interactions. The key is that you can’t ACT independent, you have to BE independent. For most men, it’s a process, but you can get there in time. Never forget that there are plenty of girls on the girl tree. If one happens to be out of reach, pluck another. Remember, it’s not love you’re feeling, it’s just physical attraction and momentary infatuation.

So, I have no sympathy for the bitter nice guys. They’re stupid, they’re stubborn, they’re reactive, and they’re naive. It’s not hard to understand why no woman wants them to bend her over and take her hard. Because, let’s face it, they probably wouldn’t anyhow. As PJ O’Rourke once pointed out, women fantasize about Nazis, they don’t fantasize about nice, sensitive liberals.

The murderous bitterness or the inability to attract women? In any case, it’s an interesting glimpse into the despairing mind of a killer.

December 24, 2008:
Moving into Christmas again. No girlfriend since 1984, last Christmas with Pam was in 1983. Who knows why. I am not ugly or too weird. No sex since July 1990 either (I was 29). No shit! Over eighteen years ago. And did it maybe only 50-75 times in my life. Getting to think that a woman now would just, uh, get in the way of things. Isolated. I have extra money and enjoy traveling, too, wtih my 25-30 days of vacation. LA was the best! But going alone is not too fun. Invited to a party on Christmas day tomorrow. Seems about 15-25 people will actually show. I like her parties; I can meet new people and talk. Got the next 8 days off. I should have exit plan done and practiced by then. I know nothing will change, no matter how hard I try or what goals I set.

The most frightening thing about it, I think, is how relatively normal the tone of it is. There is none of the predator’s superiority complex of the serial killer or any rambling psychosis, it’s mostly a depressing tale of deep and abiding narcissistic loneliness. I’m only surprised that he didn’t shoot his domineering mother first.

UPDATE: The link is dead so I’ve removed it, but Josh has the whole thing posted in the comments.

RS runs a recent column by an econ professor:

This is the email I received from an Econ professor about your most recent WND column:

To reduce “healthcare” to a simple supply and demand model is not very helpful. Will the demand for healthcare increase if everyone has insurance? Yes. But there will be less demand on expensive emergency services. Given the amount this nation spends on healthcare I’m not expecting “rationing” anytime soon.

I’m not buying it.

Pleading “complexity” is the usual dodge from an educated individual who is either too lazy to think through the implications or is politically disinclined to avoid them. It never ceases to amaze me how so many people are determined to explain why the law of supply and demand doesn’t apply to one thing or another, only to be eventually proven wrong like so many before them. While there are proven exceptions, as Veblen and Prechter have demonstrated, they tend to be more particular and circumstantial rather than complex. The professor is presuming here that there will be less demand on expensive emergency services because uninsured people will increasingly utilize preventative medical care rather than more expensive emergency services, which is a superficially logical assumption. It’s also incorrect.

End of life care accounts for 20 percent of all health care costs. That’s going to be completely unaffected by preventative care and will rise with the addition of the newly insured. But the more significant statistic is the one that says uninsured patients are only twice as likely to visit hospital emergency rooms than the insured. Since emergency care accounts for 17 percent of all medical visits, (9.9 percent of all ambulatory visits, compared to 49 percent for primary care), this means that the maximum total potential reduction in costs is 5.6 percent of the total cost of emergency room visits. This is not going to be anywhere nearly enough savings to cover the cost of millions of newly insured people going in for free primary care visits, especially since there isn’t going to be a one-to-one substitution between primary care visits and emergency visits. Uninsured people who wait for the emergency room don’t go in every time they get a minor sniffle, (this is by the definition of those who are making the savings argument, remember), so the ratio of Obamacare primary care visits to pre-Obamacare emergency room visits by the previously uninsured will rise and dilute the savings effect, possibly even eliminating it altogether.

And this doesn’t even take into account the fact that a percentage of the previously uninsured will live longer from receiving preventative treatment than they would have before and therefore require more treatment over time, so it is safe to conclude that the net cost of treating the previously uninsured at the primary care level rather than the emergency room will almost certainly cost more, not less.

“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.”
– Barack Obama

“You know the people who always try to SCARE people whenever you try to bring them health-insurance reform are at it again. And they’re taking sentences and phrases out of context, and they’re cobbling them together to leave a VERY false impression.”
– Linda Douglass, Communications Director for the White House Office of Health Reform

Will someone please tell these cretins that it’s an uncut video of Obama himself talking. Of course, if you’re dumb enough to buy the CERTIFICATION/CERTIFICATE sleight of hand, perhaps you’re dumb enough to believe that an unedited video of an Obama statement about his beliefs regarding health insurance is an out-of-context, cobbled-together hatchet job.

John Hood explains how “cash for clunkers” is the automotive equivalent of the 1930s-era crop destruction programs.

Back in the first term of the Roosevelt administration, its agricultural policies created the absurdity of the federal government paying farmers to destroy their crops even as many Americans were finding it difficult to feed their families. The program was intended to prop up prices and thus benefit farm interests at the expense of consumers — the former being well-represented in Washington, the latter not so much. If you think about the economy in Keynesian terms, such a policy might appear rational. If you think about the economy in practical terms, of course, the policy was idiotic.

There’s something similar going on with Cash for Clunkers. Automobiles represent a significant share of the nation’s capital stock. Even used cars often have years of life left in them, years during which owners can use them to get to work, perform work, or transport themselves and their families for education, recreation, or consumption.

The program is remarkably stupid. It’s just another form of credit inflation pushing the demand curve out. Once it hits the limits of demand, the shifting back of the curve to its place on the supply curve will be nasty because none of those new cars will need replacement as soon as the clunkers would have. There are some differences of course. Roosevelt was trying to reduce supply, whereas this program is just a means of consuming tomorrow’s demand today.

I’m very impressed with this woman’s Lao Tzu-inspired approach to preventing her marriage from falling apart:

Sure, you have your marital issues, but on the whole you feel so self-satisfied about how things have worked out that you would never, in your wildest nightmares, think you would hear these words from your husband one fine summer day: “I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did. I’m moving out. The kids will understand. They’ll want me to be happy.”

But wait. This isn’t the divorce story you think it is. Neither is it a begging-him-to-stay story. It’s a story about hearing your husband say “I don’t love you anymore” and deciding not to believe him. And what can happen as a result.

Now, I’m skeptical that this would work for a man dealing with a wife determined to leave, but it makes a lot of sense when the core problem isn’t rooted in a desire for change or strange, but merely a personal struggle to humble oneself enough to accept one’s mortality and mediocrity.

An Infernal Economy II

At the peak of a lofty precipice
A noisome stench wafted high in the air,
And yet my guide commenced to reminisce
As if there was no mirksome foulness there.
It was ever so at the cycle’s peak,
He said with a rueful shake of despair.
Greed, whispered words, and an air of mystique
Brings the innocent lambs to the slaughter.
They hope to catch on to the winning streak,
Doomed, from the start, come hell or high water.
But justice they’ll have, for here it is found,
Payback for each duplicitous fraudster.
He showed me a path that led further down,
Deeper into that corpse-scented chasm….

The bad news: it isn’t in Hawaii after all:

California attorney Orly Taitz, who has filed a number of lawsuits demanding proof of Barack Obama’s eligibility to serve as president, has released a copy of what purports to be a Kenyan certification of birth and has filed a new motion in U.S. District Court for its authentication. The document lists Obama’s parents as Barack Hussein Obama and Stanley Ann Obama, formerly Stanley Ann Dunham, the birth date as Aug. 4, 1961, and the hospital of birth as Coast General Hospital in Mombasa, Kenya. No doctor is listed. But the alleged certificate bears the signature of the deputy registrar of Coast Province, Joshua Simon Couya. It was allegedly issued as a certified copy of the original in February 1964.

WND was able to obtain other birth certificates from Kenya for purposes of comparison, and the form of the documents appear to be identical.

Well, you have to admit. The Obama administration, however short-lived it turns out to be, has certainly more than lived up to its comedic potential. If this alleged certified document from 1964 – the year Obama’s parents divorced – turns out to be a genuine certified copy of Obama’s actual birth certificate, it would certainly explain why Kenyan authorities were hassling Jerome Corsi the last time he was snooping around Mombasa.

It will be interesting to see how this is explained away. After all, it’s even harder to explain how and why Obama’s enemies planted a document with a Kenyan registrar back in 1961 than it is to explain why Obama’s mother would have played a little fast-and-loose with the truth in order to ensure that her son got American citizenship.

UPDATE – The important question is: how did Bill Maher know this document was on the verge of being found? 1) “‘Birthers’ must be stopped [before they find the real birth certificate].” 2) “No matter how dumb, the people who are questioning whether Obama was born in the U.S. could eventually cause real problems [by finding the real birth certificate].” 3) “Never underestimate the ability of a tiny fringe group of losers to ruin everything [by finding the real birth certificate].”

UPDATE II – If the alleged certified copy of a Kenyan birth certificate is another fake – and there appears to be some evidence that it is – I fail to see how this is going to help the Obama administration in its cause to prevent the release of a Hawaiian long-form certificate of live birth. Its goal is to get people to STOP talking about birth certificates, not to draw even more attention to the fact that he is desperately trying to avoid being forced to produce one. And aside from the irrelevant juvenile glee it affords the more devout Obama devotees, the primary impact of the appearance of this document, even if forged, is to increase the pressure on the Obama administration to show its cards. What seems to have escaped everyone’s attention is that if it is a forgery, its release was probably a tactical legal move because now that it has been entered into the court record, it will be up to the other side to show that it is a forgery in court. I found Taitz’s wording to be quite suggestive in this regard: “”I’m forcing the issue, where Obama will have to respond. Before, they said, ‘You don’t have anything backing your claims.’ Now I have something.” Notice how she didn’t say she had something conclusive as would normally have been the case if she was certain that the document was real.

It’s not hard to imagine that Taitz suspects the document is fake, but that she can’t be proven to know one way or the other. Now that it’s been entered into evidence, it will serve its purpose by putting pressure on the other side to conclusively disprove it by showing the real document… if they can. I also suspect that she can show how the CERTIFICATION does not necessarily serve as proof of the existence of a Hawaiian-issued certificate, otherwise the tactical maneuver of entering the alleged Kenyan document into evidence would make little sense.

In any case, no amount of forgeries and frauds will make this go away. The determined lack of curiosity among Obama supporters is telling; if they had genuine confidence in the truth of the Obama story, they would not only be mocking the so-called “birthers”, they’d be calling for the release of the birth certificate themselves. They’re not, because they’re rightly afraid that there is something very politically damaging being hidden in his past. And for all the desperate whistling past the graveyard, this hasn’t helped Obama in the least as his approval numbers have been trending steeply down, not up.