Category: Group Therapy (page 23 of 81)

I think getting the rank and file back into the office is going to prove impossible. Apple-polishers may yearn for the visibility, but a 45-minute commute each way translates to a whole work-day of extra free time every week. Better yet, you can live anywhere…

As I’ve discussed, we may find that remote work is big-tech’s H1B workaround: Don’t import talent, work it where it is. But: Meanwhile: People moving to Phoenix or Austin will soon be people moving to Nashville or Montgomery. There are many wonderful cities in the U.S. where the median price for a single-family home is under $100,000.

Everyone living in those places is petrified of being overrun by big-city Grasshoppers, but this seems overblown to me. Even though they may have some residual Grasshopper affectations, the people moving in this exodus are Ants – people who believe that hard work pays off and crime does not pay.

What’s a great way to demonstrate to your new neighbors how much freedom they have bought with a three-day drive in a U-Haul? Take them to the shooting range – where every day is Independence Day.

Christmas Brutality: How I got thrown out of Walmart at Christmas for unauthorized salesmanship.

Life beyond Walmart:

Housing Wire: Single-family housing starts reach highest level since 2007.

CNBC: Home flipping profits are the highest in 20 years, but fewer are doing it.

Housing Wire: Mortgage rates hit another record low at 2.67%.

Watts Up With That?: The End of Big Cities? The Hill Blames Coronavirus for the Exodus.

Housing Wire: The next coronavirus front: evictions and foreclosures.

Andy Ngo: Portland lets Antifa win big — again.

The National Pulse: ‘Theft By A Thousand Cuts’ Report Conclusive On Election Fraud, Slams Media Cover Up.

R. Emmett Tyrrell: Who’s Attacking Democratic Process?

We’re all just waiting for the hammer to drop. My bets are tomorrow or Christmas Eve.

What if there is no hammer? God help us all.

Christmas Brutality: A father for Christmas.

In snowscapes less slushy:

Housing Wire: Fed will keep interest rates low until economy recovers.

CNBC: Homebuilder confidence drops from record high as rising prices hit buyers.

Housing Wire: 2021 will be the year of the tech-enabled agent.

FEE.org: Why Seattle’s Proposed ‘Poverty Excuse’ for Crimes Would Destroy the City’s Economy.

The Federalist: Mollie Hemingway: When People Claim The Election Was Rigged, They Include Big Tech And Big Media.

Zero Hedge: Year Zero.

The Federalist: Mike Rowe: I Don’t Want To Pay For Your Useless College Degree.

In the rectangle described by the SR-303 and SR-202 freeways – in other words, all of Metropolitan Phoenix, the entire Valley of the Ever-Fecund Sun, from BFE to shimmering BFE – how many single-family-detached homes are Actively for sale for $200,000 or less?

Zero.

Call it an exodus or a diaspora, we are hugely the beneficiaries.

My question, as always: What’s happening on the other end. If y’all are filling all of our houses, it argues that we’re emptying quite a few of yours. What’s up with that?

Meanwhile: It’s a great time to be a lister in Phoenix, a lousy time to be a buyer’s agent, but maybe an excellent time to be on the supply side.

And: Anyone selling without testing the market – anyone selling to wholesalers or iBuyers – is making a five-figure mistake right now.

Christmas Brutality: A dumpster diver’s Christmas.

In environs less fragrant:

CNBC: Refinance demand jumps 105% annually, as mortgage rates set 15th record low of 2020.

Housing Wire: The nail in the coffin for ending GSE conservatorship under Trump?

The Federalist: How Going Soft On Drugs And Crime Has Turned Seattle Into Another American Wasteland.

New York Post: NYC’s mass COVID-19 exodus cost $34B in lost income, study says.

City Journal: Flight of the Icons: Anti-business policies are driving flagship firms out of California.

American Thinker: The Fraudulent 2020 Election Is History Unfolding before Our Eyes.

Victor Davis Hanson: Where Did the New Mad Left Come From?

The American Spectator: The Road to Hell is paved with government intervention.

The big news on Hunter’s laptop – all along – is that China Joe is beyond all doubt China’s hand-picked puppet.

We didn’t see it at the time, but this was the reason for the timing of the virus, along with TrustTheScience’s genocidal campaign against cheap therapeutics:

No panic, no mail ballots, no fraud opportunities.

That’s the bad news. Here’s the good news: Joe Biden cannot be inaugurated – if America is to remain independent. He was nominated and dragged across the finish line (he hopes) to put America and its arsenal under Chinese control.

Hence: We are all of us waiting for a Christmas miracle. Might be time to look in the mirror.

Christmas Brutality: Christmas in Las Vegas with Kim Jong-un.

In worlds less brutal:

Redfin: Redfin’s 2021 Housing Market Predictions: 14.5 Million Americans Will Move Out of Town, Fueling 10% Sales Growth. No mention of the riots, of course, nor of the housing being abandoned to fill all those new builds. Predicting 70% homeownership is fun: If you’re looking for a BubbleScore™ metric, that’s the one.

Housing Wire: Homebuyer snags $1.4 million seed funding for first-time homebuyers. Bravo, Dan Green, a past BloodhoundBlog contributor.

Redfin: Escaping the City: America’s Hottest Neighborhoods of 2021. You cannot make this shit up: “Redfin’s 10 hottest neighborhoods of 2021 all have one thing in common: They’re offering American homebuyers respite from crowded, costly cities during the coronavirus pandemic.” No, they’re all a long way from the riots. Basing real estate projections on ugly, obviously-false psychological projections seems like a poor strategy.

Housing Wire: Opendoor expands suite of services in multiple states. Everything Realty.bots say to the lapdog media is a confession of financial agony. The iBuyers are branching out to find new ways to burn through investor cash without ever having thought through anything.

John Nolte: Nolte: Box Office Revenue Crashes 80 Percent to 40-Year Low.

The Epoch Times: Dominion Software Intentionally Designed to Influence Election Results: Forensics Report.

WND: Pence to decide race? Law profs say VP allowed to ‘count’ electoral votes.

The Epoch Times: At Read more

Welcome to the infowar, y’all. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

I left out the Chinese spies leak yesterday, but then the treasury breach made it plan I was mistaken. The first was old news, narrative manipulation, a shot across the bow. But if SolarWinds is compromised, then much (most?) of the useful internet is compromised.

The quote in the headline is me in a comment on Facebook last night. I’m pithy everywhere.

Rob Hahn: Seven Predictions for 2021.

National File: LEAK CONFIRMED: Chinese Communists Have Infiltrated Top Companies, Governments In US, UK, Australia.

Apple Insider: Foreign hackers breach US Treasury Department.

Just The News: Amid fears of overwhelmed medical systems, data shows ample hospital capacity nationwide.

Real Clear Politics: Republicans Are Blowing It in Georgia, and We May All Pay the Price.

The Federalist: Ben Domenech: Media, Big Tech Deliberately Lied About Hunter Biden To Shield Joe.

Hal Turner: Loud Arguments in US Supreme Court Chambers over Texas Lawsuit – COURT INTIMIDATED.

AmmoLand: Terror, Supreme Court Justices, and the Existential Threat.

Kurt Schlichter: Could Secession Succeed?

City Journal: How to Fix American Capitalism: End insider privileges by renewing the freedoms to build, to work, to sell, and to learn.

I’m not even linking to the Seth Rich news. If you care you know, and if you don’t you’re deathcamp-bait anyway.

The biggest news story in the world is another one that is not being reported: We are at war with China. We have been since the virus, at least, and we still have much to learn about the virus and its lockdowns. This is the year of dropping masks, and the war with China is making itself known over the election fraud.

And: For all of my talk about Peak 2020 occurring in October, that appellation could well apply, successively, to every day this week. Buckle up.

CNN: New York City’s iconic 21 Club is closing down.

The Epoch Times: Newt Gingrich on Georgia Runoff: ‘We Need to Win by a Bigger Margin Than the Left Can Steal’.

John Hawkins: Why Rush Limbaugh Was Right When He Said America Is “Trending Toward Secession”.

PJ Media: How NBC News Helped the Biden Campaign Ruin an Innocent Man and Bury the Hunter Laptop Story.

Monica Showalter: Texas GOP chair calls for a ‘union of states,’ and the left has a cow.

Michael Barone: How the cultural elite came to rule the Democratic Party.

The United States is a club. Of states. We lie to ourselves about this, and Los Federales are ever glad to aggrandize themselves, but the U.S. is an earlier version of the European Union – with better ideals, better ideas, better P.R. and a much greater coherence.

But: Yet: The states are individually and separately sovereign, each entitled to withdraw from the club at will – in theory, which theory Lincoln, et al, disputed.

The Supreme Court exists to mediate disputes among states, thus to avoid dissolution of the union of states.

We’ll see what happens going forward, but yesterday the Supreme Court punted on its reason for existence. Stupid and cowardly. #EverybodyKnows this election was rigged. Doing nothing just makes them look bought, too.

Meanwhile, what would be the alternative to the peaceful resolution of disputes? Another hashtag: #FAFO.

CNBC: Here’s how the eviction crisis could increase the spread of Covid in the US.

Rob Hahn: Disparate Impact and the NAR Code of Ethics.

CNBC: Oracle is moving its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas.

CNBC: Texas governor says companies moving headquarters to the state has turned into a ‘tidal wave’.

Seth Barron: Bailout Bill: Mayor de Blasio can’t conceive of solutions to New York City’s problems that don’t involve massive federal assistance.

The Federalist: SCOTUS Rejects Texas Lawsuit Contesting Biden’s Wins In Swing States.

The Epoch Times: Former Special Forces Officer Warns of Color Revolution Tactics Used Against Trump.

City Journal: Arbitrary and Illogical: California resumes unjustified Covid-19 stay-at-home orders.

Two confessions:

First, I’ve always been the guy who works sick. I get respiratory syndromes that last for weeks, and I promise I have shed them to others.

Second, I have become the guy who is expert at not getting respiratory syndromes that last for weeks – this as a years’-long project.

There’s a lot I could talk about, but the big secret is this: Stay away from sick people.

There are a lot of good reasons for killing the beehive office complex, but the fact that you can’t kill me with your cooties if we only interact electronically seems hugely persuasive to me.

Housing Wire: Yun: fewer people will work from home after pandemic. My take: Hide and watch.

Redfin: Housing Market Update: Home Prices Up 15%, Pending Sales Rose 31%. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Housing Wire: Mortgage interest rates hold steady at record lows.

The Federalist: Congress Is On A Chaotic December Spend-A-Thon With The Nation’s Next 50 Years Of Money.

City Journal: State Election, National Effects: The Georgia Senate runoffs will have implications from coast to coast.

David Harsanyi: How the media covered up the Hunter Biden story — until after the election.

The American Spectator: The Texas Election Challenge and Its Discontents.

Margot Cleveland: 6 Things To Know About Texas’s Supreme Court Petition Over 2020’s Messed-Up Election.

Watts Up With That?: Essential Facts About Covid-19.

The American Spectator: Fox News’ Media Suicide.

Happy days are here again! – so pucker up.

When you know you’re being lied to, when do you know you’re not being lied to? Maybe if you took a poll…

Here’s the deal: There will be hell to pay, somewhere, sometime soon. The dollar is worth 75% of its value at the start of this year, and some significant, largely-unreported fraction of the nation’s housing stock has been abandoned in the aftermath of this summer’s riots.

We had a concentrated recession, and that’s a good thing: Productivity growth ameliorates growth in the money supply. But: Still: Hell is to have been paid – mostly, I expect, in the cities where the exodus is happening. Giant suburbs like Phoenix will probably be hurt less, because of the ongoing artificially-inflated demand.

Why should you be reading the Overnight News every day? Who else is telling you the truth about the real estate markets right now?

CNBC: Homeowners are $1 trillion richer thanks to the pandemic-driven housing boom.

CNBC: Trend shows home price growth at record high, rising at fastest pace since early 2000s.

CNBC: Renters return to Manhattan, driving 30% gain in new leases in November. Wanna make your eyes pop? “[M]ost landlords offering more than two months free rent.” That’s how you bury the news without actually emitting false statements.

Sam DeBord: Tweetstorming the Industry Relations Podcast with Jack Ryan of REX.

Joel Pollak: Why the 2020 Election Was Neither Free nor Fair.

Jay Valentine: Who Will Be the Fraud Deniers?

PJ Media: YouTube Says It Will Start Deleting Content Alleging 2020 Election Voter Fraud.

The Federalist: Facebook Sued By 48 Attorneys General, FTC For Allegedly Obtaining Social Media Monopoly.

Jay Valentine: How Google Falls.

Want me to tell you the secret to being right most of the time? Bet the odds. What will happen is what has happened. Not always, but most of the time. Hard lesson to learn – particularly when you have billions to burn and a burning need to buck the odds on every bet.

So: RedfinNow is expanding its iBuying business into two new markets: Seattle and San Francisco. I’ve been mocking Redfin for months for its rose-colored riot-denial, but there is no bet more resounding that doubling down on dipshit.

Consider: The game the iBuyers have not yet played, despite The Incumbent’s crowing mid-Spring, is called “Catch a Falling Knife” – not just one, but hundreds. The iBuyers have lived for years in a perpetual Spring: Steady growth in prices with – count them – zero downturns. (So you know, El Incumbento, what happened this Spring was nothing and what has happened since is the riots.)

What happens to the iBuyers when all home values go down all at once?

What happens when the iBuyers’ own price cuts are leading the market-wide slashscade?

What happens when your bold plan to buy at 80% nets you a chance to sell at 60% – hundreds and hundreds of times?

“We’re all spending more time at home than ever before and many of us are dreaming of a home with a larger yard, a dedicated office, maybe even in a new city,” said Quinn Hawkins, head of RedfinNow. “Yet at the same time, the idea of selling your home before you’ve found a new place to move is daunting, especially if you’re moving out of town.”

Could not be plainer: They want to surf the deflation of two great American cities. The riot-denial thus becomes comprehensible: Seattle and San Francisco are “watered stock.” Redfin had been lying about the riots in order to prey upon their victims.

Their safety valve? More de facto redlining: “To qualify for RedfinNow, homes in Seattle and San Francisco need to fit certain parameters and the iBuying service Read more

The actually-dispositive election fraud case may have been filed last night. Today or tomorrow may yet compete for Peak 2020. Think of this: We could have big news now and still bigger news later in the month…

CNBC: Redfin CEO says the booming Covid housing market can get even hotter. How’s the market in Seattle, Glenn? The job of big-name “reporters” is letting big names off the hook.

Redfin: U.S. Housing Market Will Withstand a Wave of Foreclosures When Forbearance Ends. What about the wave of foreclosures when all the folks who bought in the suburbs stop paying on their old loans back in the big city? If a boatload of housing has been abandoned, how will there not be hell to pay?

Housing Wire: How to grow housing market supply in 2021.

David Harsanyi: Journalists Turn on Free Expression.

City Journal: Out of Patience in California: Residents are fed up with officials’ blatant disregard for the public interest.

John Tierney: Pandemic Penitents: Lockdowns are more about faith than science.

Victor Davis Hanson: The Scars of 2020.

The American Mind: Woke Capital Isn’t a Game.

The Daily Wire: Goya Foods CEO: AOC Called For Boycott. Our Sales Jumped, So We Named Her Employee Of The Month.

We’re working with a prospective tenant right now who is sure she has bad credit. In fact, she would have a great credit rating, based on her current payment history – except she has ancient medical icebergs that should have been expunged long ago.

Why does she think she has bad credit? Because she keeps getting turned down – apparently with no one telling her why. In six months she’ll have great credit, because I will have told her where to go and what to do. How do I know she’ll follow through? It’s right there in her payment history – same reason we’re leasing to her.

I don’t know if this is compassion or not. Wouldn’t it be better for my investor to leave her in the dark, like everyone else is doing? Steady payer who doesn’t know she has options – that’s a candy machine. I cannot even imagine not telling someone how to stop drowning, but I don’t consider that compassion, just simple humanity.

Whatever. Listen to the MercyCrats, and listen to how little their attested compassion actually matters – actually results in any real change in real human lives. A compassionate culture would offer continuous free “Ant 101” classes – “How to stop being a dipshit Grasshopper today!” Instead we indulge in charity theater without ever telling poor people why they are poor and how they can stop being poor.

The Nazarene said the poor will always be with us. Hardly necessary – anyone can master better habits – and it is nothing but cruelty to conceal crucial, mission-critical facts. If you insist you are compassionate, a good New Year’s resolution for 2021 would be to do compassion better: Not just charity theater but real change for real people.

Redfin: Car-Dependent Neighborhoods Are Hotter Than Ever Mid-Pandemic, With Home Prices Up 15%—But Walkable Neighborhoods Aren’t Far Behind. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found. This article is crying out for the RiotScore™ metric.

New York Post: Goldman Sachs eying Florida move Read more

Jason Childs from The Federalist opines below, but I think the all time worst Christmas song is “Happy Holiday/The Holiday Season,” first made famous by Andy Williams.

Every writer knows what’s wrong with that song: It was phoned in. The lyrics were slammed out on deadline, and the shit that shipped was the sad state of affairs when the deadline hit. The lyrics are simply awful, almost dadaesque in their scansion-cramming scat contraptions. I don’t dare link to it for fear I’ll earworm you for months.

And who is credited as the writer of this atrocity? Irving Berlin. Caveat auditor.

[Amending this. Irving Berlin’s chorus from “Happy Holidays” was ripped off and ruined by Kay Thompson to make the double-named abortion that is ever yet coming down the chimneydown.]

Housing Wire: iBuyer purchase volume sank 82% YoY in Q3. There’s a whole lotta blood in Pinocchio’s nose…

City Journal: Blue State, Red Tape: California is shedding residents and businesses.

Brian Boero: Friday Flash: A giant fight. Useless headline, and the pundit thinks he’s being provocative. But I already do better without ARMLS on rental listings. I much prefer the Realty.bots, because I want to meet everyone we lease to, anyway. If I can’t get the NAR to set me free, I will move my resale listings off of the MLS as well. If I can still deliver the goods (with no buyer’s agent’s commission to pay), I lose nothing, but every other agent loses my listings.

City Journal: Hard-Nosed Economist, Generous Soul: Walter E. Williams, 1936–2020.

Townhall: Worthless Heirs.

The Federalist: Top 5 Worst Christmas Song Lyrics Ever.

During the O.J. debacle, it became obvious that Americans have become so well versed in anti-logic that they do not understand what evidence is. “Every crime is videotaped – how else could that make police procedurals? – so if there is no video, there was no crime.”

Bad news for the “No Fraud!” crowd: There’s video. I’ll bet there’s a lot more from around the country. There was video from San Bernardino, too; we just never got to see it.

Housing Wire: Even with low inventory, expect a strong 2021 housing market.

Redfin: Housing Market Update: Pending Sales Return to Typical Seasonal Trend, Still Up 28% From 2019.

Housing Wire: Mortgage rates fall to new record low at 2.71%.

SFGate: Over half a million Californians left the state last year. Here’s where they went.

Fox News: Chuck DeVore: Hewlett Packard packs up – Will California ever get fed up with losing to Texas?

TownHall: Georgia Governor Changes Tune After Trump Lawyers Present Troubling Video of Alleged Fraud.

Real Clear Politics: The Georgia Runoffs and Our Embattled Constitution.

American Thinker: If the Elections are Stolen, the Biden Nightmare Begins.

Christopher Rufo: The New Untouchables: Seattle policymakers want to provide the city’s underclass with blanket immunity for misdemeanor crime.