Author: Greg Swann (page 5 of 209)

I link from here every day, and this blog has always been about linking out – not as link love or click bait but as further proof: For anyone telling controversial truths, a link is a footnote.

Even so, I never link to paywalled sites: That would be pointless. My first post at BHB was about the futility of holding ordinary information hostage, and, in a world where being-linked equals being-visible, making the links to your information non-functional is worse than pointless.

Ad-block-block, if you must, but now you must surmount my aversion to unblocking you – just this once – before I can even decide if I might want to link to you.

Wanna be unblocked forever? Just tell the truth, like the epilepsy-inducing circus poster that is The Daily Mail. Charging me money to tell me lies I can’t share is beyond stupid.

In other news:

CNBC: Mortgage rates rose sharply this week – and there could be more increases on the way.

CNBC: The Evergrande crisis may just be a ‘tempest in a teapot,’ says analyst.

The Washington Times: U.S. facing biggest homicide rate increase in 60 years.

Stacey Lennox: Voting With Their Feet: Parents Taking Their Kids Out of Traditional Public Schools in Astounding Numbers.

City Journal: Blame Biden, Not the Military: The president can’t dodge responsibility for the botched Afghanistan withdrawal.

Apparently the best thing managers can do, in the midst of a nationwide labor shortage, is to fire people in bulk…

I smile: Reality will not be suppressed.

Every trade requires mutual agreement. Left over from medieval serfdom, left over from equestrian Rome, left over from the aristocratic Greeks, employment practices have followed the master/slave model, rather than the free trader ideal.

Guess what’s changing at last?

Golden handcuffs will only buy you so much sociopathy, especially when the capital cost of most jobs is plummeting.

In other news:

Redfin.com: Housing Market Update: Homebuyer Demand and Sellers’ Asking Prices Get a Late-Summer Boost.

Housing Wire: Mortgage rates continue to idle at 2.88%.

Yahoo Finance: FedEx just painted a disturbing picture of the job market.

RedState.com: The Feds Are Forced to Release January 6th Surveillance Footage and Narratives Crumble.

City Journal: Immigration Yes, Multiculturalism No: America benefits from immigration – when it thoroughly vets newcomers.

Christopher Rufo: True Privilege: CVS launches a program that forces hourly employees to discuss their “privilege.”

Angelo Codevilla: Stopping The Decay Of Western Civilization Begins With A Great Educational Reset.

I’m finishing a rehab-from-hell right now, and the owner reminded me that we had done another one, seven or eight years ago. But neither of those compare to the worst house we ever worked on – the worst house we ever redeemed.

True fact: Things are either adequate or they are not. If you replace or repair the inadequate things, the home is adequate – turnkey livable. If you can work a little “wow factor” into the budget, so much the better. You cannot lawfully rent an inadequate home, but you can sell one – at a discount. To sell a home at its highest attainable price, you must deliver a turnkey value – the more move-in-ready, the better. That’s the bad news. The good news is that rehab done right nets out to a profit at Close of Escrow: You will sell for more than it cost you to get there.

So here’s a house I’m not in love with in the first place: We’re buying trashed foreclosures at the bottom of the market to rehab and hold as rental properties. It’s four bedrooms, and I like three bedroom homes as rentals, plus this home faces East/West, thought to be bad for exposure to sunlight so penalized on resale. I helped investors buy a lot of houses in the collapse, but this is the only East/West house we bought.

But here’s the prize that sold the house: When they abandoned the property, the former owners left their two Rottweilers behind. The dogs had food, and they were rescued alive. But you would not believe the stench in this home. It made it unsalable – which made it catnip to us. If you want to buy cheap, buy what no one else wants.

So we rehabbed an 1800sf doghouse with all the windows and doors open – in the middle of a brisk-enough Arizona Winter. Carpets out and bleach the slab. Kilz brand primer. Kilz brand paint. New carpets, new counters, new blinds. And just like that, a steady rental for a Read more

At some point I will write an extended rhapsody of everything dogs can do that people can do. Here’s what they can’t do: Connect dots.

When I first started playing with Cleo, coming on a year ago, I would announce my presence at the church by texting Cathleen. Mine is a custom ring tone on Cathleen’s phone, and that ring tone became Miss Chioux’s proxy signal that I was there, such that I can’t text my wife, now, anytime, when I know Cleo is around.

Funnier still, the iPhone issues the notification twice, if you don’t dismiss it. So on hearing the second ringtone, Cleo will race to the window to see if I have arrived a second time.

You figure out the underlying epistemology. Here’s an even better puzzler: Cathleen bought Cleo a spiky blue ball that she loves to play with. The spikes keep it from rolling very far, so play is more of a drunkard’s walk – not a long schlep down the hall when she gets it trapped somewhere.

That ball was for the church, but she liked it so well that we got another one for her home. And yesterday we bought another one for our home.

Here’s the epistemology quiz: What does Cleo make of the fact that her favorite ball is everywhere she goes? Does she know there is more than one ball? Or does she surmise the universe just comes equipped that way?

In other news:

The Federalist: Democrats Plan Tax Giveaway To The Rich, Bailout To Blue States.

Heather Mac Donald: Ripping Off the Veil: A British classical music organization exposes the sordid business behind all racial-preference regimes.

American Thinker: Is the Republic dead? Can it be saved?

Mark Steyn: A Hinge Moment of History.

We are moving in forty-something days, and I only just now realized why: It’s Cleo’s other house we’re moving to.

I was up early because that’s who I am, and Miss Cleopatra Chioux – the French Bulldog to whom I am part-time de facto factotum – woke up early to poop because that’s who she is.

But she wouldn’t go back to sleep, and she had Cathleen and me playing her favorite game – “You Can’t Catch Cleo!” – at 4 am.

And the new house has a block wall. Where we are is wide open, and the New River – scorpions, snakes, owls, hawks, coyotes – is right there, so Cleo can never play off the lead. But at the new house, a dog who loves, loves, loves to run can fetch tennis balls until she collapses in exhaustion – perchance to dream of fetching more tennis balls.

I’m losing the New River – Willie’s a mile-and-a-half south of us, in Rio Nuevo, and I’m leaving him there – but we will be fairly close to the Aqua Fria River, so I can continue to seek thorns big enough to penetrate Arizona-fortified bike tires. Close, too, to the Duffeeland Dog Park, which Odysseus loved and which I wrote a lot about in Sun City. So: Even better: Socializing off-lead play, which Cleo – almost a year old – has never had enough of.

She’s with us maybe 100 days a year, but she’s family. Real estate is kids and dogs, never doubt it. She is not how we chose our next home, I swear, but we might as well call it Cleo’s Playhouse.

In other news:

American Thinker: K–12: the Clutter is the Message.

Andrea Widburg: While the Rally for January 6 prisoners was a bust, it still mattered a lot.

Intellectual Takeout: Why It’s Time to Treat the Hammer and Sickle Like the Swastika.

I had precisely this much to do with the events of January 6th: I made sure people I know and love would not be there. It was obviously a mistake – and a glaring example of Trump’s baseline foolishness – if only because, in times of turmoil, a man’s duty is to his own family, his own home, his own values.

Likewise today, still more obviously a mistake. Photos of everyone there would make a nice database of suspected FBI employees.

But note that peaceful protest by non-Marxists is by now effectively outlawed in the United States: Any organized protest is FBI entrapment, backed up by twenty-year prison terms. To engage with any stranger is to invite lifelong persecution.

The solution is simply non-cooperation. We can’t organize in the streets like the British or the French, not without risking prison, but we don’t have to. All we have to do is nothing.

The tyrant’s chief fear is not of the people turning against him, but of his own henchmen. As Genocide Joe’s Fiascopade extends to three and four performances a day, the upsides to a polite regicide will sell themselves.

What then? Legitimacy literally means the ongoing, uninterrupted consent of the overwhelming majority of the governed. All government compulsion is crime, not just vaccine mandates. Withdraw your consent. When enough people do – then do all tyrants have reason to fear.

In other news:

Housing Wire: These are the hottest housing markets in America.

CNBC: Artificial intelligence is taking over real estate – here’s what that means for homebuyers.

The Los Angeles Times: Watch out, NIMBYs. Newsom just dumped single-family zoning.

Real Clear Politics: The Conservative Temperament Is Dooming America.

City Journal: Heaping on the SALT: Democrats press Biden to reinstate a tax break for the wealthy.

I was showing for Cathleen once, maybe 15 years ago, to a woman who was deeply paranoid about her ex-boyfriend. We were looking at gated, restricted-parking condos because she thought they would be most secure. She was particularly interested in a unit that had nearby access to the parking lot – easy in, easy out.

“For you and who else?”

“Huh…?” And this is maybe why you should never let me cover your buyers.

“Your ex tailgates someone past that door and waits up the the stairs. He rushes your door when you come home and he’s in. There is no security here. You don’t need a condo. What you need is a gun.”

We stopped looking that day and I sent her to Shooter’s World off of Indian School Road – still there – and she acquired a Glock and soon thereafter a concealed-carry permit. She bought a single-family home way out west, by the Aqua Fria River, but she also range-qualified in all sorts of ways and ended up teaching self-defense to women much like she had been.

As it turns out, real estate is kids and dogs – and, when necessary, guns. I love the idea of more women becoming armed, but, unless they are like Cathleen’s client – dangerous men when it matters – many of those women will lose their guns to felons, perhaps thereby becoming felons themselves.

The ideal woman is Yael – naturally nurturing, but instantly homicidal when that’s the only option. But Yael is married. She’s a fallback. A woman needs a firearm for self-defense when her first line of defense – her husband, her father, her brothers, her sons – has already failed her.

Yael was a dangerous woman. A woman alone must either be a dangerous man, when only a dangerous man will do, or she will be a statistic.

In other news:

Housing Wire: Mortgage rates still flat at 2.86%.

Housing Wire: Study: Real estate firms thrive on repeat and referral business. Who knew?

City Journal: The Ashen State: Green myopia is getting in the way of California’s efforts to Read more

Is the real estate market cooling? Not where I work.

To the contrary, good news just blew in yesterday from California: That state’s few remaining sane voters will be packing up and leaving, with The Tarnished State becoming America’s largest Grasshopper sanctuary.

I can’t tell if there is actually a nationwide housing shortage or not: Reporting about rioted neighborhoods, multi-family and apartments is lacking.

But, regardless, single-family housing that is inaccessible to rioters will continue to do well, going forward.

And housing in states hostile to mask and vaccine mandates, should do well, also.

My timeline is 30 days, 60 when I’m hungry for risk. I have no idea what prices will do – especially since prices are a reflection of the hysterical U.S. dollar. But the housing that will do relatively better, going forward, is far, far away from Grasshoppers.

In other news:

Redfin.com: Home Sales Fell 6% in August, the First Annual Decline in 15 Months.

Redfin.com: Housing Market Update: Pending Sales Show Smallest Year-Over-Year Increase in 15 Months.

Joel Kotkin: Recall Reflections: Gavin Newsom’s victory in California is more of a reality check for the Republican Party than an endorsement of progressive policies.

City Journal: Biden’s Vaccine Mandate Is Unconstitutional: The media were quick to criticize Trump when he claimed similar powers last year.

American Mind: Deep State, Deep Trouble: America’s woke generals and the Military-Industrial Complex must be purged to save the nation.

I am agog – and not in the good way.

Entirely too much news, and of course all the matters right now is Afghanistan and election audits, but out of the quagmire, I pick this:

General Milley was outed as a traitor yesterday, but then leaks from within the Biden administration backed that up.

Throwing Milley under the bus means what? He and Pelosi telegraphed the treason on January 8th – real news is often accidentally reported before it is covered up. So is the idea to put Pelosi on notice?

Whomever is pulling Fiasco Joe’s strings doesn’t want to let them go. The message would seem to be directed to the line of presidential succession: If one goes, the all go, all at once.

If Senator Patrick Leahy wants to buy a bottle of Imodium, charge him double. If he wants to buy life insurance, be sure to thank him for the belly-laugh.

In other news:

CNBC: Mortgage demand from homebuyers jumps to highest level since April, after new listings rise all summer.

City Journal: California’s Misguided Education Spending: Throwing billions at a failing education system is the California way.

Kevin Downey, Jr.: Conservatives Are Now Counter-Culture: True Liberalism Is Dead and Antifa Is Pure Establishment. Brian Brady has been making this argument for a decade, at least.

I’m rehabbing a house right now, and I’m good at it. I’ll end up spending $15K, a lot for me, over two weeks, but in that time I’ll take the property from trashed to treasured – and then I’ll sell it wicked fast.

As with everything, a praxis is just theory plus the practice to put it to the test, but the orchestra of effort that goes into doing that much that fast – it’s fun for me to watch, even as I’m waving the baton.

Here’s the funny part: I’ve never gotten paid for my end of this work. I’m always turning over a rental property or prepping a home for sale. I can, could and should be flipping, but for now all I’ve done is all the executive work for none of the compensation.

That will change, over time. The inventory shortage shows no sign of abating, which makes new wine in old skins taste vintage. And I know how to do a job, quickly and economically, that others find daunting.

I could not be more self-employed, already, but I’m looking to make my world even less dependent on people who imagine they have power over me.

In other news:

Housing Wire: Red-hot US housing market begins to cool.

CNBC: America is short more than 5 million homes, and builders can’t make up the difference.

Mike DelPrete: The Real Estate Disruptors Serious About Mortgage.

Alex Berenson: Quite frankly: The arrogance of Anthony Fauci, and what it means for the rest of us.

American Thinker: The Disposable Children of the Pandemic.

Before the lockdowns, I used to shop at Fry’s. A little grubby and crawling with dragged-along kids, but close to home. When Arizona went into temporary insanity mode, a manager at Fry’s decided he had to impose traffic flow – crowding people outside in the cold, doubly stupid – so I switched to Safeway.

Also a trade-off – everything in commerce is – since they’ve never known how to take the money there, the sort of retail mistake I normally like to punish all the way to bankruptcy. But their viral hysteria was better contained, and I’ve been going there since – weekly, since I took over the big-bulk shopping as my own bit of hysteria.

Here’s what’s interesting to me: Safeway has its own viral rituals – plexiglas, arrows on the floor for a while, social-distancing guides. They also have people assigned to go around spraying things with disinfectant, since religious rituals, once enacted, are thereafter impervious to facts. They were lying about surface contamination, y’all. Sweet Doctor Birx was lying her ass off about everything, and Doctor Fauci won’t stop lying until he lands himself in prison.

But: In the early-morning hours, the kid in charge of diligently spraying and wiping down uncontaminated surfaces weighs at least 400 pounds. His circumference easily exceeds his height. We are each of us shards of perfection, but I cannot imagine why this individual was hired in the first place. Nepotism? Exceptional zeal in the job interview? Fear of fair-hiring persecution? Was there actually a manager in a store that can’t take the money who said, “Dagnabit, health insurance costs be damned, the future of Safeway is rotund!”

But: Yet: Even so: Which manager thought it was wise to put the employee most likely to die of COVID in charge of COVID clean-up? Is that a sick joke, or just more of the same cluelessness?

My bet is on the latter, sadly, No one, anywhere, is penalized for being a fool, and, accordingly, we are led at Read more

Legitimacy, ultimately, is a bargain: In exchange for my not fighting City Hall, City Hall agrees to do its deal as efficiently as possible and to stay out of my business otherwise.

What happens when City Hall gradually reneges on the deal? Not rebellion out right, certainly not right away, but mutiny – graduated rebellion – instead.

This does Fiasco Joe invite.

Job-separations are hard to tally, easy to obscure over time. Watch retail sales: Everyone whom Fiasco Joe has taxed of the confidence of future income just stopped spending. That news, too obvious to hide, will hit America around Columbus Day.

The actual, objectively-discernible sound of Atlas shrugging? That would be the sound of silence. “Brother, you asked for it.”

In other news:

Rob Hahn: On the 20th Anniversary of 9/11.

Mark Steyn: The Years We Wasted.

The New York Post: Biden’s disastrous handling of Afghanistan cast a cloud over this 9/11 anniversary.

Suzy Weiss: American Homeschooling Goes Boom: Meet the parents yanking their children — some five million of them — from schools that they say aren’t working.

This is the day for commemorating 9/11, but, really, why bother? We can just wait for the next one.

By doing what should have been done by Dubya – very publicly exterminating the big bosses – Trump had Islamofascism on its heels. The Arabs could see how rich Israel has gotten – without oil and with constant harassment – and finally figured out which side of the bread has the butter on it. From the announcement of the Neom deal, the War on Terror was over.

Until last month, when Fiasco Joe rearmed the terrorists – reenergizing them, too. And that was only the third-worst fiasco in the Afghanistan capitulation: Surrendering Taiwan was second, but first and worst was delivering all of the American military technology in Afghanistan to Red China.

It seems likely that the catastrophes brought down upon us by Fiasco Joe will extend far more than twenty years into the future, so there is no need to look backwards: From both Islam and Marxism – also reinvigorated by Fiasco Joe – there is worse to come.

In other news:

Unherd.com: Will the Amish take over America? Historically persecuted religious sects are winning the demographic war.

FEE.org: Non-Compliance Is an American Virtue That Stretches Back to Abolitionism (and Beyond).

Victor Davis Hanson: What Made Them Do Their Duty? At the Twin Towers, cops and firemen showed they really were New York’s Finest, New York’s Bravest.

Julie Kelly: Justice Department’s Foremost Felony Charge May Be on Thin Ice: Even in this toxic political atmosphere, will American juries consent to criminalize previously lawful political protest in the nation’s capital?

I smile.

The society with which I have almost nothing to do threatens to shun me. What shall I do?

We spoke about Irish Democracy before, but now you’re going to see plenty of it: If your argument was any good, your policy wouldn’t be mandatory.

America is Cs and D-ish. I wish it were more Ds, and it is at its best, but all of that D is indomitable. To the contrary, assertion of dominance itself incites resistance. Ask me how I know.

Cs America takes the vax and pays the tax. We’re about to find out what them D boys might do.

In other news:

Joel Kotkin: The Fading Family: The world’s major economies face a serious demographic crunch.

Bonchie: oe Biden Threatens the Unvaccinated and Announces His Unconstitutional Vaccine Mandate in Disturbing, Dictatorial Speech.

City Journal: Dismal Sequels: Twenty years after 9/11, Afghanistan has reverted to the Taliban and America has disappeared down a rabbit hole.

John Daniel Davidson: The 9/11 Attacks Ultimately Proved A Lesser Threat To America Than The Totalitarian Left.