Category: Group Therapy (page 24 of 81)

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“I’d rather have an ankle monitor than an E-collar, that’s for sure!”

Before Trump, those sorts of events were common, so they can seem to blend together. This one sticks out for me because a young friend of mine was born that day. It was she who made the awful news bearable – her reminding everyone who knows her that death might be news but it is life that matters.

And Elizabeth Grace Trbovich has been a birthday gift to me that way ever since, a steady reminder of what we are all doing this for.

This is me celebrating her birth the day after it happened – the day after the Massacre at San Berdoo:

Greg Swann: Saved by Grace from Islamic Workplace Terrorism: Even in the midst of carnage, hope springs eternal.

Elsewhere:

Housing Wire: Why are sellers sitting on the housing market sidelines?

CNBC: Mortgage refinancing is hot, but using your home as an ATM is not.

Housing Wire: FHFA extends foreclosure and eviction moratorium to Jan. 31.

Don Feder: The Media Stole the 2020 Election Before a Single Vote Was Cast.

John Daniel Davidson: Media Elites, Not Trump Supporters, Are Disconnected From Reality.

Thomas Sowell: Walter E. Williams 1936-2020.

Walter Williams: The Tragedy of Black Education Is New.

The Blaze: A lost generation of children — thanks to adults acting like children.

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“How do you eat corporate weenies? Gradually at first and then all at once.”

The funny part is in the NASDAQ news: As I have been pointing out since Bostock, every commercial entity big enough to have an HR department is being taken over by its Chief Grievances Officer. Corporate America is to have been devoured by its own hypocrisies. None so deserving.

Housing Wire: COVID-19 remains “wildcard” in 2021 housing market.

CNBC: Mortgage demand from homebuyers spikes 28%, and the average loan amount sets a record high.

Housing Wire: Online notarizations usher in era of trusted transactions. When you are marveling at Realty.bot claims, consider that obvious in 1995, legal since 1998 is now almost happening.

Liberty Unyielding: NASDAQ proposes illegal racial quotas for corporate boards; ACLU applauds.

Helen Raleigh: While Lecturing Americans On Racism, Big Business Opposes Ban On Using Foreign Slave Labor.

Jonathan Turley: Daily Beast Editor Calls For “Humiliation” and “Incarceration” For Trump Supporters.

City Journal: Lies and Violence: Averting our gaze from political hyperbole and violence empowers the mob.

Andrew Torba: A Discussion With Business Insider About QAnon.

City Journal: Desert Visionary: The death of Tony Hsieh is the loss of an urban pioneer.

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“I wanna know who makes the TV sound like a ding-dong doorbell!”

The Ruling Class is by now playing chicken, daring ordinary Americans to object to the ever-better-documented theft of the election. I believe Trump will pull this out, but god help the Democrats if he doesn’t. When the CIA used a Mafia proxy to assassinate President Kennedy, the idea of the “conspiracy theory” – so named by the CIA as disinformation – took root.

We know our governments lie to us. We have good reasons to suspect that the Deep State – the henchmen of the Ruling Class – are the Praetorian Guard of the American Republic. Should Biden escape prison and somehow attain inauguration, millions of people will spend the next four years documenting every fraudulent ballot.

CNBC: October pending home sales fall unexpectedly, as high prices take their toll on buyers.

Rob Hahn: Harshing the Mellow: NAR, DOJ, Lawsuits.

Margot Cleveland: Trump’s Michael Flynn Pardon Is Only The Beginning Of The Justice This Nation Deserves.

Mark Judge: Slanted: Our Dumb, Incompetent, Dangerous and Awful Media.

Tyler O’Neil: Four Data Dumps in the Witching Hour After the Election Gave Biden Victory. Rand Paul Has Questions.

The American Spectator: Legitimacy of Biden Win Buried by Objective Data.

American Greatness: Mathematician Says Biden May have Received 130 Percent of the Democrat Vote in Maricopa County, AZ. I am normally so proud to be a Zonie. We keep electing carpet-bagger governors. Now we’re a banana republic. Nice.

City Journal: Beat Cops Cut Crime: A new study explores how police presence maintains public order. Big duh, yeah? Vigilant schoolteachers minimize cheating on exams. Who knew?

The Federalist: Stuck In Online Schooling, U.S. Kids Are Failing More Classes Than Ever And Will Never Recover.

City Journal: Growth of the Pod: The public education establishment is losing customers as more parents take charge of how their kids learn amid the pandemic. The big story of 2020? Ci overplayed its panic and lost its stranglehold on American thought. Some children will do worse, academically, but some will do very much better. A rebirth of intellectual Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“Geese are a lot of work and a lot of racket. I’m more of a scurrying-mammal kind of hunter.”

NBC News: ‘Good riddance’: Tech’s flight from San Francisco is a relief to some advocates.

The American Mind: California, There It Goes.

The American Mind: The Big Tech Occupation.

Roger Kimball: Reality and the Narrative.

Roger Simon: Now Is the Time for All Good Men and Women to Get Off Twitter.

Roger Kimball: Crime Hiding Crime: A Motive for the Steal.

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“Mmm… Sausage…”

Want some better news? The salary required to pretend to ignore electoral fraud is skyrocketing. Soon only the emperors themselves will be naked.

And here’s the news about the news: A link makes it to the ‘Overnight news’ if I made it to the end – and I think it’s worth your time, too. Me making it to the end of anything is a major hurdle, but, even so, I have little to choose from just now. My apologies.

Just the News: Whole Foods CEO: Socialism means ‘trickle up poverty’ that ‘impoverishes everything’.

FEE.org: How Big Government Stacked the Deck Against Small Business.

National Review: The Great Reset: If Only It Were Just a Conspiracy.

AND Magazine: Censored: How Many People Are Really Dying Of This Pandemic?

Spiked Online: Jordan Peterson: how the left manufactured a folk devil.

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“I like my potatoes every way they hit the floor.”

Think about Arizona and then think about how many miles of “last mile” electrical support had to be built to put useless signs over empty freeways in the remote mountains of the most uninhabitable deserts in North America. Your tax dollars at work.

But pity the poor writers who have to populate those signs – ever at the mercy of the witless bosses tasked with tormenting them.

Witness: On our freeways now, for Thanksgiving:

“I like my potatoes mashed and my drivers sober.”

The joke was “smashed,” of course, but a bulb to dim to get it ruined it.

Perhaps that offends only me, but I am in every way an entrepreneur for a reason.

No real estate news again, also offensive, but I have a 4-bedroom rental in Goodyear coming soon: A short hop to the I-10 one way or to Spring Training the other.

Breaking Ground: Exodus.

FrontPage Mag: Everything is on the Line: A close look at Georgia Senate Candidate Raphael Warnock.

Christopher Bedford: The Future Of President Trump’s Agenda Hangs On Georgia.

Daniel Greenfield: An Illegitimate Election Plunges the Republic into a Crisis.

Theodore Dalrymple: The Age of Cant.

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“When you find a Bloodhound with a boss, you’ve found fraud: There is no such thing.”

In this I am one with Caesar and Trump and possibly also even the Nazarene: I am a natural-born boss, but I abhor and resist the way most bosses do things. I am not beset by enemies like those other guys, lucky me, because I lack their ambition. But their enemies – for Caesar and Trump, anyway – assailed them because they resisted and hoped to supplant the predation of the boss class.

The DISC of this is simple: Only the Driven temperament should lead, and only Ds should lead things meant to endure. I’m Di – solo projects, skunk works, turnarounds – but I understand why Ds matters – and, where it doesn’t, why nothing else does.

The boss class right now is enthralled by Ci – much weakened this year by Ci’s many unforced errors – but it is flirting with Dc. This would be the entire battle of recorded history – Ci theocracy (here technocracy) versus Dc oligarchy – minus the Nazarene, who brought with him the Ds golden age none of us thought to question until Ci started tearing it down.

Ci in power is predatory – you know, like squeezing broke people and calling it “optimization” – but Di and Dc will drift toward Cautious tyranny over time, as well. Why? Because “rank has its privileges.” This is something that should never be said, and certainly never said down, to your own people. But a whole lot of bosses seem to think their job title confers upon them a change of identity whereby the boss points and says, “My bags,” and whomever he says it to is instantly minionized.

It’s easy to spot bad bosses – unless you come to the office after five or on the weekend: The only practical way they have of proving the privilege of their rank is by not working. Half the economy worked yesterday so the other half could take the day off. But almost none of the bosses worked, and those who Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“Busy day for me, too: Heavy dropunder duty.”

From ten years ago, same headline:

Greg Swann: “Thanksgiving was a holiday established by productive people to celebrate the success of their work.”

And elsewhere:

Housing Wire: The best new home sales report ever.

Housing Wire: Record low mortgage rates hold steady at 2.72%.

Patrick Byrne: Election 2020 Was Rigged: The Evidence.

Victoria Taft: Sidney Powell Releases the ‘Kraken’ in Georgia with Explosive New Lawsuit.

Issues and Insights: Impeach Joe Biden.

The Washington Examiner: ‘Strongly biased in favor of liberals’: Psychologist says Google manipulated content ahead of election that swayed votes.

The Washington Examiner: Study finds 84% fewer hospitalizations for patients treated with controversial drug hydroxychloroquine. Media lied, thousands died.

Big League Politics: Study Points to Pervasive Mental Illness Among White American Liberals.

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“If I’m welcome on the sofa, the sofa has been moved to the front porch.”

Redfin doesn’t want to talk about that. That’s their business, and it’s understood that their “news” is PR, happy babble meant to motivate their perpetually-fearful clientele.

Even so, this is fun:

“While life in the city has changed during the pandemic, with empty sidewalks and boarded-up storefronts becoming the norm, some buyers are looking long-term and realizing it’s possible to buy a condo for a 2017 price without competition,” said Jessie Culbert Boucher, a Redfin real estate agent in Seattle. “If they hold onto it for five years, they’ll likely ride out the current downturn, make money and enjoy the return of vibrant city life.”

“It’s just a gully that’s all. Just nerves.” – The Big Short.

Testimony is always unreliable, and yet the truth is always there to be dug out. If you’re buying at the 2017 price without compeition, offer the 2016 price. Will it be possible to buy at the 2014 price in a few months? If way better housing is now discounted by three years’ of appreciation, how is way worse doing? My read is that whole neighborhoods in Seattle will be constructively abandoned soon. I do love the forward-looking statement, though. That can’t result in lawsuits from people relying on widely-publicized uniformed advice.

Redfin: Home Searches in Cities Up 200% From Last Year, Reflecting Renewed Interest in Urban Areas After Pandemic-Driven Drop.

Housing Wire: 2021 housing market forecast: It’s about politics, not economics.

Jason Rantz: Oregon Tougher on Thanksgiving Families than Antifa Terrorists.

Jeffrey Tucker: The Blizzard of Bogus Journalism on Covid.

Sharyl Atkisson: How The New York Times Became A Propaganda Bullhorn For The Left.

American Thinker: To Restore Election Integrity, End Mail-In Vote Fraud.

The Federalist: 5 More Ways Joe Biden Magically Outperformed Election Norms.

Michael Walsh: President Trump, Explain to the American Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“Why do waiters serve the big tippers so much better?”

But consider: Per this ridiculous NAR “settlement,” Buyer’s Agents are now supposed to abjure any knowledge of the Buyer’s Agent’s commission, and to operate as if incentives have no motivating power. Worse, as summarized in the headline and masticated to someone’s taste in the Inglorious Blob post cited below, the actual purpose of the lawsuit was to screw Buyer’s Agents – to forbid them from noticing they are being screwed by Realty.bots who cannot explain themselves to their customers.

Here’s a hint: If real estate commissions are too damn high, why aren’t Redfin and REX demanding to rebate the excess to the seller – you know, the party who is allegedly paying too damn much for the buyer’s representation?

Yeah. Who’s not full of shit? Meanwhile, listers who screw the hardest-working, worst-paid people in real estate should expect to hear more about an ineffable mustiness. You cannot forbid protozoa from pursuing their own interests. Why would you try that with people?

Yesterday on BloodhoundBlog, some thoughts on what Trump might be doing:

Greg Swann: “Doc” Holliday, Donald Trump and the art of the bluff. Here’s the truth you might have guessed, knowing the world you’re in and who you are reading from: The storied gunfight at the OK Corral was a rent-seeker’s dispute over a shipping concession – the Earps, representing Wells Fargo, muscling in on a market controlled by the Sandy-Bob stage coach line. Ain’t that America?

And elsewhere:

Rob Hahn: REX and the DOJ: Implications for the Future. I did a house for $500 once. Foreclosure in self-sabotage. Bank wouldn’t pay and buyers never have cash – that is Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“How much would you overpay to proudly say you ran a relay?”

“That’s not really iBuying!” the iBuyers will shout – and it’s true. It’s flipping Homevestors.com-style – Ug’s uglier offspring. What do you suppose those ads are doing to buy-side prices? How are they affecting the ability of the “real” iBuyers to acquire properties to lose money with?

(Insider’s tip: For now, at least, buy wholesale and fix ’n’ flip to the iBuyers. They need product, and they’ll pay a competitive ROI to get it. DOM is their doom but your deliverance: Shed that puppy, then rinse and repeat.)

I’ll have more to say about iBuyers in due course, but I’m less and less interested. It’s a business built on churn, which is just stupid – and I mean like Bitcoin stupid, the supposed added economic value of entirely-useless efforts. For now, people who can actually make money flipping homes are popping up like mushrooms under the iBuyer marketing buzz. Eventually the market swing is going to slaughter the iBuyers – who already make mistakes by the thousands in the easiest resale market ever. People who are good with computers are typically lousy with everything else – especially people. Only people who are good with computers are astonished to learn this news.

Mike DelPrete: iBuyer Market Share Set to Drop By Half in 2020.

New York Post: Giant New York rats overtaking Central Park and the Upper West Side. Don’t call them rats. They’re Cuomos. Utterly Emmy-worthy. To be fair, we had a similar situation with rabbits eating out the wiring in our cars. We solved the problem by moving to a neighborhood with more coyotes.

Joel Kotkin: The End Game.

Tyler O’Neil: Biden Is Crowdfunding His Own Transition. Now, Do the Federal Government.

The Federalist: Joe Biden: Why Are Reporters Asking Me Questions?

Michael Fumento: If We Want People To Accept A COVID-19 Vaccine, We Should Stop Lying To Them About The Disease.

The American Spectator: Trump Won Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“Learn to sell or go to hell: That’s what downturns are for.”

I have further thoughts on the NAR business, but I’ll lay those aside for a separate post. Meanwhile, Glenn Kelman taught me long ago to listen for the pain, when Realty.bot executives talk to the media or to the public.

Kelman is Cs, and Redfin built its entire business around the Cautious temperament. His lamentations and rejoicings over this piddly-shit NAR “settlement” result from his failures to appeal to a Cautious clientele – the only people who care how Buyer’s Agents get paid.

Here’s worse news for Kelman and all the Realty.bot WannaBrokers – mostly Ci, so even less connected to real people: No rainmakers, no rain.

Housing Wire: NAR launches interactive training to combat housing discrimination. Totally not sick-making. The real estate licensing laws are a huge hurdle for poor communities trying to engender their own middle class. Being ‘diasporatized’ by fair-housing interventions doesn’t help, either. An NAR that cared about black-, brown- and red-skinned lives would get the hell out of the way. Failing that, it would offer Grasshopper-to-Ant classes everywhere, all the time. Take note: Lip service is all you’ll ever get from these goons. Why would they want anything to change?

Redfin: Housing Market Update: Homebuying Picks Up After Election Week, Pending Sales Up 29% From 2019. Not even gonna pick on ’em.

Joel Kotkin: Governor Preen: California’s Gavin Newsom presides with aristocratic hauteur over a state in crisis.

Glenn Reynolds: Why the SpaceX ‘ferry’ just truly launched a new Space Age.

American Greatness: Big Tech Corporate Leftists at WordPress Suppress Critical Public Watchdog.

John Daniel Davidson: Your Political Leaders Hate You And Think You’re Stupid.

American Spectator: What We Must Believe to Believe Biden Won.

Reuters: Why Republican voters say there’s ‘no way in hell’ Trump lost.

Angelo Codevilla: From Ruling Class to Oligarchy: Roughly half the country is living under an alien regime that means to harm us socially, politically, and economically.