#WeinerGate getting old…How about Some Real News…Debt Ceiling Increase Rejected By House In Lopsided Vote (via Phoebe’s Detention Room)

WeinerGate is getting to be old news, titillating as it may be. It’s a distraction from real news like the debt ceiling increase being soundly rejected in the House.

WASHINGTON — House Republicans dealt defeat to their own proposal for a $2.4 trillion increase in the nation's debt limit Tuesday, a political gambit designed to reinforce a demand for spending cuts to accompany any increase in government borrowing. The vote was lopsided, with just 97 in favor of the measure and 318 against. House Democrats accused the GOP of political demagoguery, while the Obama administration maneuvered to avoid taking sides … Read More

via Phoebe's Detention Room

#WeinerGate OMFG! Weiner Steps On Wiener With Video

#WeinerGate OMFG! @RepWeiner Gives Worst Press Conference EVAH! (Video).

It just gets curiouser and curiouser. Weiner is really stepping on his wiener. And there’s video for proof.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Hkf4EBH5bic“>

Alameda police, firefighters watch as man drowns (via Phoebe’s Detention Room)

WTF??? Don’t tell me that out of all the rescue personal standing around, there wasn’t one of them who didn’t know how to swim. You know…shuck your shoes, shirt and pants, dive in and rescue the poor guy.

Alan Wang (All those people there and none of them helped either) (Video at link) ALAMEDA, Calif. (KGO) — Alameda police and firefighters stood by and watched as a man drowned off Crown Beach in Alameda on Monday. Authorities are now trying to explain why they had no choice but to stand on the shoreline. Alameda police received a call shortly before noon on Monday from a woman saying her son wanted to kill himself. Raymond Zack, 53, then walked … Read More

via Phoebe's Detention Room

Fifth Grade English Lesson By #TheOtherMcCain

The Power of Simple Sentences.

Stacy McCain gives us a simple English lesson. And the lesson is on what are called “declarative sentences” and how they can be used to state facts. He even gives us three examples of “declarative sentences” and how to analyze them.

SENTENCE 1

On Nov. 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy in Dallas.

SENTENCE 2

On Sept. 11, 2001, nineteen Islamic radicals perpetrated the worst act of terrorism in U.S. history.

SENTENCE 3

On May 27, 2011, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) used his Twitter account to send a photo of his bulging crotch to a 21-year-old college coed from Seattle he had never met.

A little further along in the article, Stacy gives us the consequences of the statement in declarative sentence number three;

We do not need to choose between these alternatives in order to conclude that it is a worth the effort required to determine the truth or falsehood of Sentence 3. Because the consequences of either alternative are potentially enormous. Either:

CONSEQUENCE A: An influential member of Congress has been the target of a disgusting,criminal and perhaps politically motivate smear attempt, involving the illegal penetration of a government official’s private communications; or

CONSEQUENCE B: An influential member of Congress, married to a key aide to the Secretary of State, has been engaged in surreptitious sex-messaging online and, when this sordid activity was exposed, has initiated what can only be called a “cover-up attempt.”

Consequence A would result in the exposure of malevolent persons unknown, possibly supporters of the Republican Party (or not), deserving of whatever punishment the law allows, should they be convicted in a court of law pursuant to applicable statutes.

Consequence B would, so far as we know, involve no criminal penalty, although it might result in personal embarrassment to the congressman, his family, friends and political allies.

No one has yet proven that Sentence 3 is either true or false. However, several observers have concluded that relevant evidence — including Rep. Weiner’s statements to the media, and his observed previous behavior online — tends to corroborate their theory that Weiner accidentally sent as a public message on Twitter something that he actually meant to send via private Twitter direct message. However, one need not endorse any particular theory of how or why Weiner would have sent that message, in order to believe that he did indeed send it.

Me personally, I think Weiner let the wrong “head” do his thinking for him. He wouldn’t be the first and probably won’t be the last.

Stacy also has links to all the Weiner news you can handle.

Update; Some random thoughts from American Glob

Reward For Info On #WeinerGate #Hacker Suspect

Iowahawk has been kind enough to dip into his own pocket, as well as those of his erstwhile readers, to put out a reward for information on the heinous person who hacked Congressman Weiner’s twitter account. Iowahawk has been very generous by starting the reward fund with $1,000 smackeroos from his 2010 tax return.

You go dude…we need to find this nefarious character as soon as possible before he  hacks some other high profile public figure’s twitter account and posts pictures of naughty bits for the world to see.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/embed/lJTwqQDxyiU“>

Double Dip In Housing…Doh!!

From CNBC via Memeorandum;

This is really bad news for those of us in the building trades. Even in the “second home” market, building has fallen off considerably. Even remodeling has slowed way down. The glut in the market is in the median priced homes, where people who bought more house than they could afford are being foreclosed on.

U.S. single-family home prices dropped in March, dipping below their 2009 low, as the housing market remained bogged down by inventory and weak demand, a closely watched survey said Tuesday.

AP

The S&P/Case Shiller composite index of 20 metropolitan areas declined 0.2 percent in March from February on a seasonally adjusted basis, in line with economists’ expectations.

The price index was below the low seen in April 2009 during the financial crisis. The glut of houses for sale, foreclosures, tight credit and weak demand have kept the housing market on the ropes even as other areas of the economy start to recover.

The 20-city composite index was at 138.16, falling below the 2009 low of 139.26.

“This month’s report is marked by the confirmation of a double-dip in home prices across much of the nation,” David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P Indices, said in a statement. “Home prices continue on their downward spiral with no relief in sight.”

Eight cities fell 1 percent or more in March, while Washington was the only city where prices increased on both a monthly and yearly basis. Prices in the 20 cities fell 3.6 percent year over year, topping expectations for a decline of 3.3 percent.

“The declines sustained in the last 12 months have almost erased the gains of the previous 12 months. The housing market is treading backward, but not drowning,” said Cary Leahey, economist and managing director at Decision Economics in New York.

In the first quarter, the national index fell 1.9 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis, compared to a decline of 1.8 percent in the previous quarter. On a non-adjusted basis, they fell by 4.2 percent in the quarter. Nationally, home prices are back to their mid-2002 levels, the report said.

Blitzer told CNBC that the decline in prices, though fairly widespread, has become more prevalent in geographic pockets—the Southwest and Southeast as well as the Michigan and Ohio manufacturing regions.

“What we’ve seen over the last few months despite the decline in prices is we’ve gone back to the old ‘location, location, location’ story instead of everything going down at once,” he said. “California has clearly broken out of the pattern it was in, which is a big plus.”

Though there had been hopes in the industry that prices were troughing and ready to turn higher, the latest trends show little hope in sight until later this year or early in 2012, he added.

“Everybody’s now keeping their fingers crossed for 2012 and wondering whether people just don’t want to own homes anymore,” he said.

On a non-adjusted basis, they fell by 4.2 percent in the quarter.

Of course, the WSJ has a different take on it. Basically, the author is saying that people either have high expectations of what the housing market is going to do, or they have low expectations. I can only go by what I see in our local market and it aint pretty.

Expectation can affect in a positive or negative way the economic reality.  Keynes refers to this “naive” confidence as the “animal spirits”.  False expectations that appear real can misdirect consumer mood and behavior.

Home values are a component of the personal wealth and greatly affect the economy’s consumer and housing sectors. When the price of houses increase, consumer sentiment increases and also the consumers’ ability to draw from a much improved home equity.  This boosts spending, creating new demand for goods and services.

Housing prices increase also boost homebuilder confidence and encourage new construction starts, creating new demand for labor and goods. On the other hand, weakness in house prices have a reverse effect on consumer and housing sectors overall.

As a result, an accurate home price index that has a significant impact on the consumer or homebuilder sentiment is much needed. The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices self-portrait is a reliable and consistent benchmark of housing prices in 10 to 20 major metropolitan areas. It measures the average home price change between arm-lengths repeat sales of single-family home in a particular metropolitan area.

The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices for May showed continual strength during spring. The unadjusted composite 10-index surged 1.2 percent in May, following a healthy 0.7 percent increase for the previous month.  However, RealtyTrac reported Bank repossessions (REOs) hit a record monthly high for the second month in a row in May, with a total of 93,777 U.S. properties repossessed by lenders during the month—an increase of 1% from the previous month and an increase of 44% from May 2009. All 50 states posted year-over-year increases in REO activity.

Distressed real estate properties will keep prices down. Foreclosures count for almost 30 percent of the all home sales. This is in contrast with the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price indicators that show price increases or at most price stabilization. These home price indicators are distorted because the index methodology, in this case, weighs down or eliminates data points associated with distressed property sales.

Distorted home price indicators can adversely affect the consumer by increasing expectations of a stabilized housing market. If these false expectations do not become reality, the result will be consumer fear. Managing expectations is an important factor in macroeconomics.

S&P/Case-Shiller indicates that the indices accuracy depends only on the accuracy of its data. However, in addition to the input data, initial assumptions are a very important factor in representing systems’ performance and reflecting conditions that need analysis.

Once assumptions are established, the system boundaries and state are confined and the output performance data represent that system-state performance. Therefore, selecting different assumptions can provide different results. When assumptions are far from real market condition, even with accurate input data, the results will misrepresent the analysis intend.

The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices methodology introduces assumptions to control data quality for the collected sale prices.  The intent is to avoid introducing in the analysis of home prices anomalous prices or idiosyncratic price changes

By GIGEL MARINESCU

Update; Danny Butcher writing at Pundit Press has more.

Let the entitlement riots begin (via Phoebe’s Detention Room)

This goes in line with the last post about “Poor” people in America.

Congress Mulls Cuts to Food Stamps Program Amid Record Number of Recipients May 31, 2011 11:48 AM PrintRSS Share: Email More FarkTechnoratiGoogleLiveMy Space NewsvineRedditDeliciousMixxYahoo ABC News' Huma Khan reports: Congress is under pressure to cut the rapidly rising costs of the federal government’s food stamps program at a time when a record number of Americans are relying on it. The House Appropriations Committee today will review the fis … Read More

via Phoebe's Detention Room

“Poor” is relative, so is social consciousness (via Fleece Me)

Aint math great? Just a few numbers here and there and the hypocrisy of the Liberal mindset shows through.

So I have been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be poor, especially in America.  To get started, let's check out some stats: (from wikipedia.org) Last years poverty line was around 22,300 dollars (sorry it varies…the gubment likes to have multiple numbers to cook the books ya know) In 2009, 43.6 million Americans were technically living in poverty If you include all social welfare programs like Medicare and Social Security, half of … Read More

via Fleece Me

There’s a thin line between buttery and battery (via Phoebe’s Detention Room)

And on the lighter side…

Dawn Elizabeth Rhash Attacks Roommate With Butter, Cops Say First Posted: 05/26/11 03:40 PM ET Updated: 05/26/11 05:17 PM ET There's a thin line between buttery and battery — and Dawn Elizabeth Rhash crossed it, according to police. Sheriff's deputies in Collier County, Fla, say the 49-year-old attacked her male roommate with butter on May 21. The incident occurred at some point before 6:46 p.m., when authorities arrived on the scene of a report … Read More

via Phoebe's Detention Room

Gypsies, Tramps And THIEVES

Three stories from Drudge;

In Chicago, metal scrappers presumably stole a Teen’s wheelchair for the scrap metal. “Scrappers” are folks who drive the neighborhoods on trash day and look for scrap metal, copper, aluminum, anything that will bring a buck at the recycling yard.

GURNEE (CBS) — Police believe scrappers, people who cruise areas when it is garbage day and pick up metal, may have been the ones who stole a teen’s wheelchair.

Marlon Tapang’s specialized motorized wheelchair was taken just before the bus arrived to take him to Warren Township High School last Friday, which was garbage day in his Hasting Lane neighborhood.

His mother, Jarka, said the chair cost $7,681.

LISTEN: Newsradio 780′s Nancy Harty Reports

Jarka’s husband Paul was going about his usual routine that Friday morning. He placed the chair outside in the driveway and returned to the house to help his son use a walker to get to the driveway.

When Paul got back outside, the bus was already there and he assumed the bus driver had already taken the chair, which had a backpack with Marlon’s study notes for his final exams and his lunch bag, and put it on the bus.

“Then they got a telephone call from the school and they asked why they sent him to school without his wheelchair,” Gurnee Police Cmdr. Jay Patrick said Wednesday. “There have been no leads,” he said, adding he believes scrappers got it.

The motorized custom-made wheelchair affords Marlon, who has cerebral palsy, the most independence. His mother expects to be able to get another one through the insurance company, and she is asking people who want to donate money to her to instead donate money to the Great Lakes Adaptive Sports Association of Lake Forest, which helps disabled children play sports by providing special equipment.

“If the insurance comes through, people should help out this place, it’s the best place,” she said. GLASA donated a chair for Marlon to use temporarily.

She recently heard from a friend who had their lawnmower grabbed by scrappers. The friend’s husband tried to chase them, but they were too fast.

What kind of sick person steals someone’s wheelchair?

Next on the docket is this one - Copper thieves are dressing up as road workers and stealing copper wire from already installed street lighting in our nation’s Capitol;

WASHINGTON – Copper thieves possibly posing as road crews are causing parts of the District to go dark.

The D.C. Department of Transportation says thieves have stolen copper wire installed in underground conduits at least four times in recent weeks. Officials say in some cases the thieves may be posing as road contractors at staged work zones in order to commit the crime. They may even be detouring traffic.

One wire theft caused an illuminated Interstate 295 sign to go dark on northbound Kenilworth Avenue between Polk Street and Eastern Avenue.

Thieves also have taken wire that powers sidewalk lights along Kenilworth Avenue in Northeast between Foote and Hayes streets, and copper additionally has been stolen at North Capitol and Irving streets and at South Capitol and Potomac streets.

In the 295 and Kenilworth Avenue incidents, officials say the wire was located between manholes in a grass median.

The thefts come as scrap metal dealers are paying nearly $3 per pound for copper wire. Acting DDOT Director Terry Bellamy says the incidents constitute a “community safety problem.”

Dang stuff’s almost as valuable as Gold. Have you tried to buy copper pipe or wire lately?

The next story involves some guys who really had to work for their thievery. They got the smart idea to dismantle some railroad tracks for the scrap metal. Funny, people used to be a lot smarter in California;

MANTECA (CBS13) — A pair of thieves spent hours dismantling a section of the Manteca railroad tracks, only to have their plan derailed by a neighboring worker.

“They have no fear of getting caught, doing this in broad daylight, that’s just crazy,” said an Ace Tomato employee.

A man who didn’t want to appear on camera is one of many Ace Tomato employees working in the yard when he noticed the duo destroying the private railroad line.

“They were stealing the rails and the iron that held the rails together,” he told CBS13.

Working by hand, the men took their time with what had to be a tedious task.

“They were working hard doing it, they were using poles to wedge and pull everything up,” the Ace Tomato employee said.

The two men stripped 100 yards of the tomato company’s track, hoping to get away with a hefty load of iron to then cash in as scrap metal.

And to top off the mayhem today, we have an ATM repairman who stole the cash out of the machine and replaced it with photocopies of cash, about two hundred grand’s worth. And hey, this happened in California, too;

REDWOOD CITY (CBS SF) – It was en elaborate heist that nearly paid off, big time. An ATM repairman swapped out fake bills for real cash, police said, getting away with $200,000.

The phony $20 bills coming out of some Bank of America automated bank machines last July 4 didn’t fool anyone. They were printed on a photocopier and stuffed into the ATM by a serviceman, who took the real money and fled, according to investigators.

“He went into seven of these machines, took the cash out and replaced it with counterfeit, and not sophisticated, just simply taking some bills, placing them on the Xerox machine, cut them up and put them in its place in the machines,” said Steve Wagstaffe, San Mateo County District Attorney.

The real money, $200,000, was on its way out of town, along with 64-year-old service man Samuel Kioskli, police said. Two weeks ago, Kioskli, of San Francisco, was arrested in Phoenix.

So it took them a year to catch the guy. That money is long gone. You can live pretty large on $200,000 bucks for a year. I just wonder why the thief stopped short of the border. Wouldn’t Bolivia or Brazil have been the place to go with his ill gotten gain?