On the 13th of February in 1692, is a dark date for Scotland and for my ancestors. On that day British forces massacred families of the MacDonald and Henderson clans under authority of the King. This was in part to “make an example” of them for not being quick to pledge their loyalty to William […]
Since one of the two authors of this piece in the Christian Science Monitor is a partner at David Boies‘ law firm (as in David Boies, Gore’s lead counsel in Gore v. Bush), I assume this article is serious and not a parody: The 22nd Amendment is often described as prohibiting an already twice-elected president, […]
My sister send me an e-mail asking what I thought about the status of the US presidential elections right now. My reply was a bit lengthier than even I expected, but since my cohort Henderson has already posted his thoughts, here are mine. My original first choice was Giuliani, which I talked about at length […]
I am on the road for the beginning of this week, but I wanted to post some overview graphs of what is happening in the Sacramento housing market. As you can see there is quite a drop in the asking price per square foot listed in the MLS. You can click the chart above for […]
(graphic from Wikipedia showing normal sunspot activity) Our wonderful local star, the sun, is a active middle age star. Stars are unimaginably huge, and live billions of years. They are in essence gigantic nuclear furnaces, in essence a continuous hydrogen explosion kept in check by the massive size of the star. Sunspots are areas on […]
Gaius over at Blue Crab Boulevard (one of my favorite daily blogs) reports that Polaroid is shutting down the last of its manufacturing facilities for Polaroid cameras: When Polaroid users pulled a picture out of their cameras, an image would slowly appear before their eyes. Now, like the process in reverse, the image of the […]
Congress has just passed the president’s stimulus package, and the increase of the conforming loan limit to include some “Jumbo” loans is in it. Once again the ID credits go to Professor Kevin Depew at Minianville: Congress gave final approval Thursday night to an economic stimulus package that would send government payments to more than […]
The large mortgage companies, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are government chartered quasi companies. They exist to enable a healthy and robust mortgage debt market, and before the age of Wall Street mortgage generation (which lead to one facet of the current debt and housing crisis) were pretty much the main source for money to […]
My co-blogger Bruce Henderson, as well as a number of other commentators in both new and old media, have raised concerns about the fall election prospects for Republicans given the disparity (typically around 2:1) between Democratic primary turnout and Republican primary turnout in the same state. However, Will Franklin over at WILLisms — who always […]
Friday Afternoon – Doon The Watter
Friday afternoon has come in California. It’s a bright sunny day with temperatures near 70 across most of San Diego county, with the birds on my front porch singing and enjoying a full load of seed in the feeder. The cats are on my office futon couch in rapt attention as the birds queue up […]
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