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Can You Fog A Mirror?

It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “After months of mayhem in the real estate market, data shows homebuyers may finally be taking a breather, with real estate agents reporting slowdown in showings and bidding wars. Kyle Hioki said he paid near asking price for his two-bedroom house and put an offer in less than 24 hours after it hit the market. Hioki said he had been worried about his investment. ‘You buy when the market’s [higher] than it has been in a while,’ he said. ‘It’s always like, what goes up must come down.'”

“About 300 homes are about to hit the inventory-starved Tampa Bay real estate market. That’s thanks to federal government efforts to recover money lost by hundreds of elderly investors in what it contends was a Ponzi scheme. ‘That’s a lot of houses coming on the market at once,’ said Lance Williams, a Tampa Realtor.”

“Data from the Denver Metro Association of Realtors suggests the potential for prices starting to plateau. The number of new listings for detached homes in June actually exceeded the May total: 5,663 to 4,543. The number of active listings at the end of June (2,137) was also higher than at the end of May (1,336). ‘For the first time in what feels like a long time, buyers have to compete with less competition, and therefore, the extreme bidding wars have drastically decreased,’ says Andrew Abrams, chair of the DMAR market trends committee.”

“Homebuyers may find some good news in the latest report from Northwest Multiple Listing Service. The number of active listings at the end of June, 6,358, reached the highest level since November. Dick Beeson, managing broker at RE/MAX Northwest, Tacoma-Gig Harbor, said it reflects a ‘slight turn of the wheel. Sellers are still in control, but their expectations need a slight readjustment. Instead of 20 offers, there may only be five or fewer. Maybe even only one.'”

“According to the Las Vegas Realtors, the median price for a single-family home in Southern Nevada rose $10,000 from May to June, reaching a new record high of $395,000. Loan officer Casey Smith has a warning for buyers tempted to mortgage up to the appraised value, then put a pile of cash on top to meet the seller’s asking price. ‘Be wary of basically entering into an agreement in your contract, and purchasing a home when you’re already underwater,’ Smith said.”

“Robert Meers and Miriam Kelly, just sold their Madison Square home for $3.75 million, according to property records. That is less than the $3.86 million they bought it for back in 2009. The three-bedroom, three-bathroom condo at 15 E. 26th St. first went on the market for $4.99 million in 2018.”

“After many years, and several lawsuits, a property overlooking Beverly Hills and owned by real-estate developer Mohamed Hadid is going on the market with an asking price of $100 million. The bankruptcy court documents show that in 2019, the entities through which Mr. Hadid owns the site defaulted on a loan for up to $25 million, and last year, creditors began foreclosure proceedings. That led to the development entities filing for bankruptcy in January 2021.”

“Greater Vancouver real estate prices have been on a tear, but that may be coming to an end. In parts of the City of Vancouver, home prices have seen 5-figure drops in just one month. Greater Vancouver real estate prices are up a lot from last year, but the gains are slowing. Monthly increases have abruptly decided that they were no longer booming. It doesn’t even resemble the same market seen just a few months ago. City of Vancouver home prices have been rising very fast, which is what people are talking about. The narrative is a little too focused though, failing to compare other timelines. Over the past three years, many of these segments have seen much smaller price growth. If you bought last year, congrats. If you bought a few years ago, you may not have made any money yet.”

“A drop in the expatriate population in Oman is likely to put further pressure on the sultanate’s residential real estate sector, according to Savills. According to the Oman census 2020, there are currently around 80,000 vacant residential units – around 20 percent of the total residential supply – in Muscat. With the vast majority of Omanis being owner-occupiers, it is estimated that a significant proportion of the vacant units are likely to be investment properties for the rental market.”

“The Federal Government on Thursday lamented the increasing number of empty houses in the country. ‘There are housing deficits in urban areas no doubt but there are empty houses in the rural areas and even in the urban centres where there is a deficit. There are many empty houses across the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Onitsha, Asaba. There are empty houses all over the major urban centres of Nigeria,’ Minister of Works and Housing Babatunde Fashola said.”

“Expat rents are down across Asia with noticeable declines recorded in Bangkok, Hanoi and Singapore last year. ‘Rental prices have dropped in many locations across Asia over the past year, but this has been especially notable in locations which are heavily reliant on overseas visitors and residents, such as Thailand and Vietnam,’ said Lee Quane, Regional Director – Asia at ECA International explained. He continued, ‘The rental market in these locations is heavily tied to the fortunes of the tourism industry, and landlords who previously rented out accommodation on a short-term basis, have since converted these to long-term leases – thus increasing supply and reducing market rents further.'”

“The pandemic-driven Sydney property boom has been a blessing in disguise for some first-home buyers — provided they aren’t set on a standalone house. The glut of apartments and bad press around new developments also slowed unit price growth. ‘There’s definitely an oversupply of apartments, and I think apartments have had a bad wrap with Opal Towers, so apartment prices have come back a bit, and that makes them a bit more affordable,’ says Belle Property Annandale associate director Simone Azzi.”

“The loftiest of home prices are upon us. Like the 17th-century tulip mania, everybody has got to get on the road to homeownership. Now, even first-time buyers without a down payment can get in on the action. That means no skin in the game — just like the good old Great Mortgage Meltdown days. No down-payment loans are available for up to $1.25 million so long as the primary wage earner has at least a 700 middle FICO credit score.”

“Should you not show enough income from your day job or your self-employment income to qualify, you can document your income with bank statements, averaging the most recent 24 months of personal bank statement deposits. The only significant differences between this current crop of exotic zero-down mortgages to yesteryear’s so-called no-down subprime category are today’s mortgages ban balloon payments and prepayment penalties.”

“But remember, the race to the bottom prior to the Great Recession. It was always about competing mortgage lenders undercutting that other guys’ or gals’ underwriting standards. Take that to the department of foreclosure prevention.”

“How about some more memory lane craziness? Can you fog a mirror? Of course you can. Fog-the-mirror mortgages are available now with just 20% down on a purchase and 25% equity on a refinance for loan amounts to $3 million. No income or job listed whatsoever? No tax returns? No pay stubs? No averaging bank deposits over 12 or 24 months to calculate income?”

“You will need just page one of your bank account statement to source your down payment funds, provided you are not receiving 100% gift funds. Do not you worry about the lender seeing those bounced checks or other financial difficulties on page two of your bank statement. Rates start at 4%. How about investors instruments? Believe it or not, fog-the-mirror type mortgages start even lower for loans on investment properties than for primary residence mortgages.”

“If you are considering one of these mortgages because you cannot qualify for a traditionally cheaper Fannie or Freddie mortgage, first let’s get real. Think through this. Home prices are peaking. Unless you are triple sure you can handle the higher house payments, have a family lifeline to rely on, have lots and lots of cash reserves and have the stomach to ride out the eventual property value downturn, then don’t do it.”

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This Post Has 81 Comments

  1. ‘The only significant differences between this current crop of exotic zero-down mortgages to yesteryear’s so-called no-down subprime category are today’s mortgages ban balloon payments and prepayment penalties’

    This is from a S CA mortgage broker. I’ve been pointing this out for years. Remember when I found that LO bragging about no-doc loans a few years ago in Tennessee? If it’s in one market it’s in all of them. There’s way more subprime today than ever in history. And subprime was less than 5% of defaults last decade. The dominate feature of a foreclosure in 2009? Bought at the peak.

    1. ‘The only significant differences between this current crop of exotic zero-down mortgages to yesteryear’s so-called no-down subprime category …’

      Another significant difference is that yesteryear’s crop of subprime mortgage timebombs already blew up real good.

      Today’s bumper crop of subprime mortgage timebombs is still loudly ticking, with uncertain timing of future detonation.

      1. Since today’s subprimes are backed by gobmint, I think they will do all they can do extend and pretend.

        1. Traditionally, all subprime loans were guberment backed. This was because subprime was very limited. It was for some group, like veterans, who got the loan because of terms in the military, things like that. So subprime was around 1% of the market. The default rate was always double digits, but it was considered a bearable trade off cuz special. In 2003, subprime exploded – because prime borrowing had cratered. The default rate was predictably double digits!

          When you look at these things, what stands out today is risk layering. (That was prominent back in the race to the bottom days too.) Credit scores, debt to income, loan to value, etc, all the ways these dogs can shoehorn suckers into a loan. And that’s just the surface, we got fraud too! OK so we’ve got risk layering. How about the percentage of the market? Last decade VA loans were 2% of the market. Now it’s 12% of the market. And Obammie lifted the cap entirely! That’s right, the coast guard guy in San Diego can gamble with guberment backed borrowed money, with no limit to the shack he can buy.

          So you see it’s a complex thing, and every move that’s made, every tweak to the rules, only lowers the bar. Never do they raise it. Here’s another significant aspect almost no one has any idea of: FHA was always counter cyclical. Fannie-Freddie pro-cyclical. When the market took a dump, in came FHA. When the market was up, FHA stepped back. Mel Watt changed that to all GSE’s being pedal to the metal, all the time.

          1. “every tweak to the rules, only lowers the bar. Never do they raise it.”

            Precisely. But the money shot is the fact they’ve been scraping the bottom of the barrel since 2009. 12 years of dregs collection makes the previous correction seem like a church picnic.

        1. I love random yew toob links… it’s another opportunity to post some falling housing prices.

        2. This clip comes to mind when I think about how today’s crop of subprime mortgages will end up…

          1. “We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.” – Alan Turing, one of the top minds produced by humanity.

            This is true of economic policy as well. Today, there’s a veneer of mechanical mathematics covering over human nature and greed masquerading as disinterested economic policy.

            The Fed was supposed to be an independent bank which would make sure the government would always be funded. Once politicians figured out they could use it to improve their election chances, and had academics telling them what they wanted to hear about monetary policy bringing order and control to a chaotic economy, I think we started down the same road the leaders of yore walked.

            Time will tell.

          2. The Fed was supposed to be an independent bank which would make sure the government would always be funded.

            The government or the banks?

          3. From endthefed.org (emphasis added):

            The Federal Reserve, “the Fed”, is the central bank of the United States of America that was created in 1913 by Congress. It is a banking cartel that has a government-granted monopoly on the creation of money and credit. The Fed literally loans “money” (Federal Reserve Notes) into existence. Federal Reserve Notes are paper promises backed by nothing of intrinsic value and they are only functioning as money because the government forces them on the public through legal tender laws. Federal Reserve Notes are referred to as dollars but are not. The definition of a dollar is a weight of silver (371 grains). To put it simply, the Fed is a group of banks running a national criminal counterfeiting racket with the protection of the government.

  2. ‘a ‘slight turn of the wheel. Sellers are still in control, but their expectations need a slight readjustment. Instead of 20 offers, there may only be five or fewer. Maybe even only one’

    Or maybe none, right Dick? BTW I saw the Seattle Times and PI articles on this UHS report. All sunshine and easy riches.

  3. ‘For the first time in what feels like a long time, buyers have to compete with less competition, and therefore, the extreme bidding wars have drastically decreased’

    It really hasn’t been a long time Andy. I have the ebola posts to prove it. The REIC moves a lot of money to create this idea that it’s been to the moon Alice! forever, and that’s just not true.

    ‘prices have been rising very fast, which is what people are talking about. The narrative is a little too focused though, failing to compare other timelines. Over the past three years, many of these segments have seen much smaller price growth. If you bought last year, congrats. If you bought a few years ago, you may not have made any money yet’

  4. “After months of mayhem in the real estate market, data shows homebuyers may finally be taking a breather, with real estate agents reporting slowdown in showings and bidding wars.”

    Yikes! Sounds like the Fed may need to find an excuse to pour in more monetary stimulus to keep the real estate party rolling.

    Maybe they could blame it on the delta variant of COVID-19?

    2. The recent frenzy in the housing market is finally running out of steam. This can only mean one thing: an impending manufactured crisis to create a smoke screen for pumping trillions more dollars into the banking system. Most likely scenarios are a new pandemic scare, a cyber attack, a stock market crash, a war, or a climate crisis. I know the last one seems too far fetched but they need to acclimate us to lockdowns and artificial scarcity for the whole plan to come together. Cyber attacks, wars, and pandemics are too short lived. They need an immortal boogie man to plant the flag of the state of eternal servitude.

  5. “Pricing is nasty on this so-called 80/20 piggy-back mortgage. But beggars can’t be choosers.”

    And just how nasty is this pricing?

    “There is a 4.5% minimum ‘floor rate’ on the 30-year mortgage.”

    Ouch.

    “It is subject to an initial rate adjustment after the first 5-years.”

    Bahahahaha … take a guess in which direction the rates are likely to be adjusted.

    “The second mortgage has a floor of 9.99%, fully amortizing over 15-years.”

    Bahahahaha … it used to be that people walked into banks and robbed them, not the other way around.

    What we are witnessing here, folks, is a severe case of highly inflamable burning stupidity.

    1. I don’t know about stupid at some levels. So you don’t need to say “a dog ate the second page of my bank statement.” They don’t want to see it. The loan people make serious money in times like these. And the standards are high! Maybe high school education, but naaahhh. They fogged a mirror too! Again, ignore the people who can’t see this cuz they never will til it baps em upside the head.

      May 25, 2018

      “In his corner of American finance, where hard selling meets hard luck, Angelo Christian is a star. Each time Christian sells a home loan, the company he works for, American Financial Network Inc., takes as much as 5 percent. Many of Christian’s customers have no savings, poor credit, or low income—sometimes all three. Some are like Joseph Taylor, a corrections officer who saw Christian’s roadside billboard touting zero-down mortgages. Taylor had recently filed for bankruptcy because of his $25,000 in credit card debt. But he just bought his first home for $120,000 with a zero-down loan from Christian’s company. Monthly debt payments now eat up half his take-home pay. ‘If he can help me, he can help anyone,’ Taylor says. ‘My credit history was just horrible.’”

      “Christian can do this kind of deal because he is, in effect, making the loan on behalf of the federal government through its most important affordable housing program. It’s a sweet deal: He gets his nearly risk-free commission. Taylor puts no money down. If things go south, the government ultimately bears the risk. Many borrowers ‘are living paycheck to paycheck and, if they lose their jobs, they go into default immediately,’ says John Burns, a housing consultant.”

      http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/?p=10443

      1. “…Joseph Taylor, a corrections officer *snip* recently filed for bankruptcy because of his $25,000 in credit card debt.”

        Society’s finest!

  6. “No down-payment loans are available for up to $1.25 million so long as the primary wage earner has at least a 700 middle FICO credit score.”

    What if his FICO score sucks?

    Not to worry, he can piggyback on somebody else’s credit score. Go here …

    How Credit Card Piggybacking Works – Forbes Advisor
    https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/how-credit-card-piggybacking-works/

    (snip snip snip)

    “Piggybacking is when someone becomes an authorized user on another person’s credit card for the purpose of boosting their credit score. This is not to be confused with being a joint account holder. The difference between the two is that authorized users are not legally responsible for charges made on the credit card, whereas joint account holders are.

    “Nevertheless, the authorized user gets the full account history reflected on their credit report. They will get credit characteristics such as the payment history, the age of the account and the utilization rate. When these characteristics are positive, they can help to raise an authorized user’s credit score. If they are not positive, however, the authorized user risks losing points.”

    (snip)

    “If you can’t find credit refuge from your family and friends, you can turn to tradeline credit repair companies. For a fee, a company will match you with a cardholder who has great credit and add you to the person’s credit card. The cardholder gets a piece of the fee you pay and you will not receive an actual card.”

    1. A reminder …

      A credit score is a number lenders use to help them decide how likely it is that they will be repaid on time if they give a person a loan or a credit card. Your personal credit score is built on your credit history.”

      Source:
      Understanding Credit Scores – Experian
      https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/credit-education/score-basics/understanding-credit-scores/#:~:text=A%20credit%20score%20is%20a,built%20on%20your%20credit%20history.

      So this piggybacking sort of nullifies the purpose of tracking one’s credit history, does it not?

    2. “No down-payment loans are available for up to $1.25 million so long as the primary wage earner has at least a 700 middle FICO credit score.”

      IIRC some homeless dude died somewhere on the west coast of Florida somewhere around 2006 – 2008. He didn’t have a penny to his name but he was the proud owner of 2 or 3 condos or McMansions some mortgage broker/realtor team had signed him up for on one of those stated income loans. I don’t believe he was the only homeless dude they signed up either.

      1. “IIRC some homeless dude died somewhere on the west coast of Florida somewhere around 2006 – 2008. He didn’t have a penny to his name but he was the proud owner of 2 or 3 condos or McMansions …”

        spent his $ on hookers & blow. the rest he wasted

    3. But wouldn’t that have the effect of harming the stronger person’s score?

      This makes no sense to me.

      2. Some people don’t care what their credit score is because they rarely use credit.

        1. Some people don’t care what their credit score is because they rarely use credit.

          Sadly it’s not just about borrowing money — it can impact one’s ability to rent a home, insurance rates, etc…

          2. How is your project going?

            Thanks for asking! Moving along slowly. Architect and builder are locked down, currently working on finalizing the plans and starting to move some dirt around + getting some forestry mulching done. Need to at least get a drive and workshop in so we can keep a tractor and some tools out there.

            In the meantime I’ve been busy pounding t-posts and clearing out some trees. Miserable work in summer weather, but there’s a nice satisfaction in hard physical labor.

            Debating how inhumane it would be to just dump a bunch of guinea fowl on the property without anyone/thing there to protect them. The ticks are out of control!

          3. Good for you Drumminj on breaking ground. Good luck and best wishes on the project.

          4. The ticks

            Learn about the Lone Star tick. It can render you unable to eat a steak. No kidding. Long pants and a full body check after working outdoors.

          5. Good luck and best wishes on the project.

            Thanks, I appreciate it!

            Learn about the Lone Star tick

            I’m intimately familiar with them — always seem to have one or two of them on me by the time I get back to the truck…

            I wear long pants, long sleeves and a hat. Commercially Permethrin-treated shirts and hat and I treated my jeans and socks myself, I use picaridin spray and lotion on neck, arms, and even waistline (had one of the lone-star ticks just hanging out on my stomach where I had put the lotion yesterday). There is just no stopping these guys!

            Luckily I’ve found found the ones that have dug in pretty quickly, so hopefully no issues. No interest in red meat allergy, rocky mountain spotted fever, or lyme disease here!

            Just need to get guineas and chickens out there to eat them.

      3. It doesn’t work like that. It is a one way data push of payment history from the cardholders credit profile to the authorized user’s. The cardholder’s credit profile is not affected. For instance, if they have a 5 year history of on time payments to their Visa, then those 60 months show up on the user’s profile. I recall this was popular in the 06-08 period. I believe Fair Issac Corp took steps to limit the effectiveness of this technique.

        Maybe they limited it to people with the same last name or something. Don’t recall.

  8. Speaking of buyer’s remorse. My half-brother and his wife recently bought a house in Corpus Christi, TX that’s quickly becoming a black hole. The inspector missed (?) obvious and significant water damage that their insurance company unsurprisingly won’t cover. They can’t live in the house until it’s fixed so they currently have a mortgage and are still paying rent. The house was a rental and the renters have been more helpful than the owners who may no longer be in the country.

  9. The communist approach to the economy? Rig markets and fix prices (through fraud) and then stand back and declare, “Hey it’s broke… someone fix it!”

    …. and the moonbats and DebtDonkeys bray “inflation” in unison.

  10. But, but … my variants …

    Colorado Gov. Jared Polis lifted the state’s health emergency declaration on Thursday, nearly 16 months after it was issued — back when there were just 17 known coronavirus cases in the state.

    In rescinding the declaration and most of his pandemic executive orders, he praised Coloradans for taking precautions during a challenging time in which at least 7,064 people in the state have died from COVID.

      2. Mask usage here is pretty varied. Mom and pop business are mostly masked. Wal-Mart is mostly not. Grocery stores are half-and-half. I think the only place where masking is required for everybody is public transport, but that may have expired on July 1. Eviction moratorium expires on August 15.

      3. masks at the local King Soopers

        Not in my little burg. I went out for dinner at a big BBQ place over the weekend. It was packed, and not a mask to be seen. Not even the wait staff.

    2. This is why the Governor is rescinding the Emergency Declarations in Colorado:
      https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/colorado/

      Hardly anybody is dying of Covid-19. In fact since the beginning of March, there have been a very small number of deaths weekly. There have been lots of “cases” but very, very few people were dying. These Emergency Declarations have all been a waste of time.

    2. How do you get spare parts for that clunker? How many TR4’s were sold in the US? How many are still running?

      If you just have to have a convertible roadster there are better choices. You can get a brand new Miata for less, even though there is a “shortage”.

    3. The TR4 and early TR6 models are my favorite classic European sports cars. I’m still set on getting one at some point. That is a ridiculous price for a TR4 in that condition. One of my aunts in Ireland had a powder blue triumph spitfire when I was kid. I’ll never forget riding in it with the top down humming along the windy country roads in the west of Ireland. The spitfire was not great mechanically but the TR6s were fairly well made maybe because they outsourced much of the design to German engineers.

      1. You’d need to be very handy making repairs or know a good mechanic who can fix, because it will break a lot.

  13. ‘That’s a lot of houses coming on the market at once,’ said Lance Williams, a Tampa Realtor.”

    While this statement is true, readers should be reminded that realtors are liars.

  14. The number of active listings at the end of June, 6,358, reached the highest level since November. Dick Beeson, managing broker at RE/MAX Northwest, Tacoma-Gig Harbor, said it reflects a ‘slight turn of the wheel.

    Look for lying realtors (redundant) to dust off their circa-2007 dissembling phraseology aimed at obfuscating the extent of the unfolding housing bubble bust.

    1. Marketwatch
      Opinion: The bull market in stocks may last up to five years — here are six reasons why
      Published: July 9, 2021 at 10:59 a.m. ET
      By Michael Brush
      The economy is booming, earnings are rising, and the Federal Reserve is giving unprecedented support
      Referenced Symbols
      SPX 1.13%
      TMUBMUSD10Y 1.358%
      DJIA 1.30%
      RUT 2.01%
      COMP 0.98%
      HD +1.18%

      When the stock market sells off as it did Thursday, the right move was to buy your favorite stocks.

      It’s true that there could be a correction, given the already sizable 17% gain in the S&P 500 Index (SPX, 1.13%) this year. But one ought to buy then, too.

      Here’s why.
      …

      1. With can’t-lose investments like stonks and real estate, every market dip is a buying opportunity.

        So BTFD and enjoy your wealth effects!

  16. The Wall Street Journal
    Opinion Commentary
    Warning to the Real-Estate Cartel
    The Justice Department will take a new look at those outrageous brokers fees.
    By Michael Toth
    July 8, 2021 6:37 pm ET

    The Justice Department backed out last week of a proposed settlement with the National Association of Realtors to take a fresh look at the notoriously high commissions consumers pay real-estate agents. The move sent shock waves through the housing industry. The government occasionally brings an antitrust case and later decides to dismiss it. But never have federal antitrust authorities agreed to a proposed settlement only to back out after receiving public comment.

    The real-estate lobby called the move “an unprecedented breach.” But there’s a much larger concern for legacy brokers than the novelty of the about-face. The signal from Washington is that antitrust enforcers are prepared to dismantle the collusive practices that burden U.S. homeowners with brokerage costs two to three times as high as in the rest of the developed world.

    As authorities prepare a fresh inquiry, they should give close scrutiny to the bizarre way Americans pay real-estate agents. Unlike any other business, when a homeowner decides to sell, he must agree to pay two agents—his and the buyer’s. It’s a one-of-a-kind arrangement. The buyer agent is supposedly representing the buyer, yet is compensated by the seller. In other agency businesses, each client pays his own agent. If you want a white-shoe law firm to represent you, you can pay for one. But a local practitioner may do just as well, and clients have that option as well. The result is real price competition.

    Real estate, by contrast, has a third-party payment system, which produces predictably inflated prices. Many home buyers would pay a lot less than 2.5% to 3% of the price of the home, the standard rate for buyer agents. Last year, 97% of buyers started their home search online, without the assistance of an agent.
    …

    2. Our Senators will receive a fresh slopping of gravy in the campaign finance trough from the National Association of Realtors. Corruption!

  17. For $33,000 plus any money to fix the car to show-off condition, how many fans of the Triumph are out there? I see a good number of late 60’s mustangs and other muscle car era rides that are getting similar price and they are brought up to new condition but might not have the original tranny or engine, etc. In a few generations, the nostalgia is going to be for hybrids and Teslas.

    1. Well, you can get parts for old Fords, Chevys and Mopars. Plenty of them still running around. Of course, many are being resto-modded, with crate engines, modern transmissions and brakes that actually stop a car; not to mention steering and suspension upgrades.

  18. A “fully vaxxed” colleague is afraid to go on a vacation because of the Delta variant.

  19. Sen. Feinstein Seeks to Restrict Federal Definition of “Real” Journalism

    by Joe Izenman •
    August 15, 2013 •

    A real reporter, declared Feinstein during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, is “a salaried agent” of a media company like the New York Times or ABC News, not a “shoestring operation with volunteers and writers who are not paid.”

    CNN, Mainstream Media’s Worshipping of Michael Avenatti

    Apr 13, 2019

    https://youtu.be/yrJwjYPQvhQ?t=11

    July 8, 2021, 2:57 PM EDT / Updated July 8, 2021, 5:03 PM EDT
    By David K. Li and Adam Reiss

    A federal judge sentenced lawyer Michael Avenatti to 2½ years behind bars for an extortion plot against Nike that Avenatti himself said should make his children “ashamed” of their dad.

  20. Folks are really dumb, they ran out and over paid for a PT cruiser, Prowler and now buy over valued property in the middle of nowhere with little to no county services, septic tanks, and hospitals miles way because they are afraid of the virus?

    1. PT cruiser

      Haven’t most of those gone to the great junkyard in the sky? And even if you could find one that still runs … why?

  21. After careful study, researchers have determined that ancient Islamic graves in Sudan were arranged to spell out “Realtors are liars.”

    Thousands of medieval Islamic tombs were arranged in secret patterns and clusters ‘little like galaxies,’ researchers find

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9773095/Thousands-medieval-Islamic-tombs-arranged-clusters-little-like-galaxies.html

    The placement of thousands of tombs in eastern Sudan has been deciphered using a method typically employed to chart stars and galaxies.

    Archaeologists from the University of Naples L’Orientale and the Sudanese National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums used satellite imagery to get a fuller picture of how many tombs there were and how they were laid out.

  23. What a creepy precedent: the Biden regime is deploying a “Community Corps” to go door to door “persuading” people to get vaccinated. Sounds like a forerunner to the “Committee for the Defense of the Revolution” informer and surveillance networks the Communists established in Cuba. I’m almost looking forward to having these turds show up at my door. It’s going to be memorable – for them.

    The COVID-19 Community Corps is a nationwide, grassroots network of local voices and trusted community leaders to encourage vaccinations, with more than 275 founding member organizations that have the collective ability to reach millions of people. This effort will mobilize health professionals, scientists, community organizations, faith leaders, businesses, rural stakeholders, civil rights organizations, sports leagues and athletes, and people from all walks of life to become leaders within their own communities to help get friends, family and neighbors vaccinated.

    https://greatplainsqin.org/blog/launch-of-the-covid-19-community-corps/

    1. I’m almost looking forward to having these turds show up at my door. Take the easy way out – stop answering your door. If your front door is suddenly blown open from outside with a shotgun blast, you’ll know Biden sent them.

  25. This is not an appropriate place to argue the technical aspect of the Covid-19 epidemic, RT-PCR testing, infectious diseases or infectious disease epidemiology. There is this guy in Stanford which has some interesting thoughts on this entire situation:
    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/07/stanford-dr-jay-bhattacharya-calls-us-covid-response-single-biggest-public-health-mistake-history-video/
    I do believe that he has real credentials–he’s not a retired nurse who teaches CPR at the local YMCA. BTW, a positive PCR test for Covid-19 does not in any way mean that a person is infected or is suffering from the disease. That’s not what PCR tests do. So it’s kind of meaningless to talk about PCR tests and Covid-19 cases in the same sentence.

    1. So it’s kind of meaningless to talk about PCR tests and Covid-19 cases in the same sentence. If so, then thinking or talking or writing about COVID-19 cases is meaningless.

      1. “… If so, then thinking or talking or writing about COVID-19 cases is meaningless.”

        EXACTLY! Talking about Covid-19 CASES is meaningless since nobody has ever defined what IS a Covid-19 case. And across the world and even in this country nobody is using a universally accepted definition of what a case of Covid-19 IS!!!

        It’s even worse for deaths from Covid-19. The WHO changed the rules defining how a Covid-19 death is defined–there has been a very strict and accepted practice on how to code all causes of death on death certificates when a person dies. These rules are universal so that a person dying from lung cancer, for example, was designated as such by all entities that completed death certificates across the world.

        Until Covid-19. WHO mandated a completely NEW rule that applied ONLY to persons who died who had a positive Covid-19 test. All persons like this were coded as having died from Covid-19. This is completely wrong and results in completely inaccurate and invalid Covid-19 death statistics.

        I’m a biostatistician who calculated and analyzed the death statistics for a large health department in California back in the day. From looking at it now, it may be that nobody is EVER is going to know how many people died from Covid-19. WHO and the CDC completely corrupted the data because, IMO, they were running a scam operation at the behest of the Chinese.

        1. All persons like this were coded as having died from Covid-19

          Some places were bold enough to label them “Died with Covid”.

    2. I’ll stop if she stops. I only comment on COVID subject matter to correct her misinformation and to make sure others understand she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Like Drs. Malone, McCollough and Yeadon, Dr. Bhattacharya is solid.

    1. The Financial Times
      Opinion The Long View
      A humbling week for bond bears
      US Treasuries rally as investors’ worries over inflation ease
      A powerful accepted wisdom developed of persistently surging growth, lasting fiscal support and the Fed turning a blind eye to rising price pressures
      Katie Martin yesterday

      Towards the end of January, UBS asked the question that mattered most for global markets: “Bond bears come out of hibernation, but is it too soon?”

      Hibernation was possibly not the right word. Strong demand and sinking benchmark interest rates meant that yields on US government bonds, the centre of markets’ universe, had been sliding pretty smoothly for close to 40 years. So, less a case of waking from a winter snooze, more a case of the resurgent undead.

      In any case, six months or so later, investors appear to have decided it was indeed too soon. The Great Bond Wobble of 2021 was striking — the benchmark 10-year US government bond yield rattled as high as 1.77 per cent in late March, and the first quarter was the darkest for the market in four decades. But this week brought an abrupt rethink, leaving yields as low as 1.25 per cent, still well above the starting point of the year, but a serious dent.
      …

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