C&L covers the Obama-economic-team unveiling. Mr. President-elect says “This won’t be easy. There are no shortcuts or quick fixes to this crisis, which has been many years in the making – and the economy is likely to get worse before it gets better.”
He artfully neglects to include the sentence “Also, Larry is kind of a jackass, even though he’s very smart.”
Bob Reich explains it all: GM is screwed because it’s made of boring things like jobs and humans and communities, whereas Citi is getting a bailout because it’s made of money.
Print anything three times, and it’s true. It’s the case for politics and it’s the case for bogus trends.
And it might, maybe, be the case for leases and deeds.
I’ve seen a few stories about the scam of breaking into a place and claiming to have a lease, and I can’t tell if it’s just an outlier or if it really is happening more, but it’s brilliant in its simplicity: All you need is a fake lease, a fake deed, a crowbar, and some new locks.
First, prep your fake paperwork. Ideally in triplicate, because if you have three copies it looks more real. Then break into an empty and foreclosed house, change the locks, set up and pay for utilities, and you’re home free. Claim you pay rent every month. When the rightful owners show up, say they must be mistaken, because some other guy owns the place. If they don’t pay you to leave, it’ll take months for them to evict you, months in which you’re living rent-free.
Brilliant and evil.
The variant I hadn’t heard of before takes a little more organization, because it involves faking ownership yourself with a bogus deed and title transfer, then writing leases and, I think, collecting rent. Of course, the group seems to be some kind of cult: ” Johnson said in a telephone interview that the organization is based in Nevada and headed by an archbishop who is her uncle, King Solomon II. She described herself and her uncle as sovereign, which she said means among other things they are not required to pay taxes, mortgages or homeowner association fees.”
And you thought a no-doc ARM was ridiculous!
Boston.com is reporting that City Hall has been dubbed the world’s ugliest building. And yes, it’s an unwholesome grey blob that looks kind of like an oil platform from Star Wars. And the word “brutalist” is perhaps the least-appealing name for a movement of architecture, even if it actually refers to the “rawness” of the concrete (in French, béton brut). And City Hall Plaza is almost uniquely unwelcoming for anything but a large-scale political rally, circus, or riot.
But City Hall does look pretty awesome from up on Beacon Hill, on a sunny day, when the light striking it turns gold and you can see the water behind it.
Which, if you think about it, is almost certainly the angle you’d have if you stood at a conference table with an architectural model of city hall on it. It would have looked great at those pitch meetings. It just doesn’t work as well for anyone who has to beside its grey eminence on a windswept plaza turning their collars against the chill rushing between the skyscrapers and the sea.
Thaw three beef marrow bones. Roast at 400 degrees with salt, pepper, any herbs on hand, until gooey and sizzling (45 minutes or so). Place over salad greens, top with parsley, lemon, toast, and more salt and pepper.
Eat with hands. There’s not much marrow, but you can gnaw on the bones to get bits of fat and meat off of them. Picking the gristle from your teeth counts as flossing, and the tallow all over everything surrounding you counts as either moisturizer or furniture polish.
Yes, the lady of the house is out for the evening.
Bloomberg: General Motors Corp. plummeted as much as 31 percent after a Deutsche Bank AG analyst downgraded the shares and cut the price target to zero.
I’m sure there’s a very good answer to this question, but why should GM continue to exist? It doesn’t seem to sell very good products. If GM went under, maybe the remaining US automakers could survive. Maybe if we had some sort of national health plan, GM and the rest of the US manufacturing sector could be competitive.
But they’d still have to start making products that don’t suck and get more than 20MPG… and offering them to US customers as well as Europeans.
The gay marriage ban is damaging the bridal industry. As I’ve said before, it makes no sense to have such intrusive government regulation of the business of setting up a household.
I saw a protestor on TV last night holding a sign that said “Yes On 8: Less Government.” Which is pretty much the opposite of true. But then, I’m used to the opposite of true from the anti-marriage, anti-love, anti-household-formation, anti-small-business crowd that creates the right in this country.
My old pal Mark has a great analysis of Republican coalitions since 1902: The upshot is that plutocrats dominated the party, and Coolidge and Hoover really screwed things up for the party and the country. Only in the sixties was the Republican party able to peel off enough special to form a winning coalition: Nixon attracted racists who hated the civil rights act, McGovern alienated the xenophobes and warmongers, and of course the bible-beaters left the tent when the Dems came out against homophobia, sexism, and back-alley abortions. Fox News, as much as it’s been thumping for social conservatism, is fundamentally a plutocrat-led institution, and so it has now begun to undermine Sarah Palin, because she’s not part of their core constituency of rich bastards and people who just hate the poor.
I wrote a review of my friend’s sister’s book, and of course he linked to the review from Twitter, and… it all feels like some kind of pat-on-the-back thing. But I like Peach herself, and I liked her book. I mean it.
No, seriously.
McCain just gave a very graceful concession speech. MA Prop 1 looks like it’s going to fail, and Prop 2 looks like it’ll pass. I’m still worried about California’s Prop 8, but that’s out of my hands. I’ve got the pinko champagne and elitist arugula salad out, and I’m deeply proud of my country.
Would an announcement of a Palin/McCain rally in Davis Square produce dozens of comments asking “wait, is this a joke?”
I don’t know if it actually happened or not. I certainly didn’t see anything when I went through at eight, but it could have been over by then.
Secretly Ironic 