Home Sweet Mother of Mercy Home

Chart of the Day:

Today, it was reported that the median price of a single-family home dropped 2.3% in August. The stock market sold off on the news. For some perspective into the all-important US real estate market, today's chart illustrates the US median price of a single-family home over the past 39 years. Not only did housing prices increase at a rapid rate from 1991 to 2005, the rate at which housing prices increased – increased. That brings us to today's chart which illustrates how housing prices are currently 30% off their 2005 peak. In fact, a home buyer who bought the median priced single-family home at the 1979 peak has seen that home appreciate by a mere 4%. Not an impressive performance considering that three decades have passed. Over the past two months, single-family home prices have resumed their decline and remain (until proven otherwise) in an accelerated downtrend.

A Brief Word About . . .

Patrick Swayze. Here he is in all his awesome badness.



Swayze is most appreciated for his ability to wear size 28 jeans and kick-fu hick ass in the film Roadhouse (1989). But the plain truth is that no one watches Roadhouse because Swayze convinced anyone he was a tough guy. For god's sake, his character's name is "Dalton." Oooh, scary. We didn't keep coming back to the movie because of the delicious and glorious throatectomy performed on one of Gazzara's henchmen. We don't even watch it for the Ben Gazzara caricature of Ben Gazzara as an actor doing a caraciture of himself.

We watched -- nay, watch - Roadhouse for one simple reason: Kelly Lynch has one tight bod. And that's it.

Swayze's true accomplishment, though, is his consistent ability to sport a mullet hairstyle. Even when he is playing a chick, he's got a mullet.

Whether he was more successful with that look in The Outsiders or Red Dawn or Roadhouse we will leave to the Eburts and Rogers and Roepoerts of the world. For SBD, a movie is either great or crap. Swayze and his mullet made his films great.

Except for Ghost. Crap.

Could Be Moments

Sydney Brillo Duodenum sauntered across this headline . . .

Irish real estate tycoon found dead, suicide suspected

. . . and immediately thought Sen. Chris Dodd had fallen on his own sword.

Our Bad Mood Day

Today is not a day of service.

Today is not your day of service.

Today is not My Good Deed Day.

It’s not a day to recycle more.

Today is not the day for “rekindling the spirit of service, tolerance, and compassion that unified America and the world in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.”

It’s not the day to go to the grocery store and finally buy that cloth grocery bag you’ve been admonished to keep on your person every time you shop.

Today is not the day for signing up to be a AARP Tax Aide Volunteer.

Today is not the day to volunteer at your neighborhood soup kitchen.

Today is not the day to make a “simple food donation to Project Open Hand in Columbus, Ohio [which] is dedicated to meeting the nutritional needs of people living with HIV/AIDS"

Today is not the day to “be at my county animal shelter, working with dogs that have been abused, neglected, or abandoned and helping them become loving, faithful companions.”

Today is not the day we turn everyone into little community activists.

You can do all that tomorrow.

Today is not the day to remember a tragedy.

A volcano did not explode.

An earthquake did not bring down a city.

A hurricane did not scrub beach front property.

Today is not a day of national tragedy.

What happened today was not an act of God.

What happened today was the mass murder of thousands of Americans.

Men did that.

Those people are still out there. They’re not done.

Today is not the day we think of giving back.

We didn't take anything.

Today is a day of remembering our taken, our dead.

Today it's OK to house some quiet rage, to grind your teeth, to have tunnel vision.

It's not a day to feel good about yourself for petty acts of kindness.

You do more for this country by sitting in a room and stewing for a few hours.

Harden your heart today. Go cold for a bit.

You're an American and so you're inclined to help your fellow Americans anyway or the soaking child in tsunami ravaged village on the other side of the globe. You have 364 other days this year to make it your Good Deed Day.

Don't waste this day thinking about making yourself feel better about you.

Review of Obama Health Scare Speech

YOU LIE!








***

NASA Shoots Its Load

Another diminution of American greatness:

A White House panel of independent space experts says NASA's return-to-the-moon plan just won't fly.

The problem is money. The expert panel estimates it would cost about $3 billion a year beyond NASA's current $18 billion annual budget.

"Under the budget that was proposed, exploration beyond Earth is not viable," panel member Edward Crawley, a professor of aeronautics at MIT, told The Associated Press Tuesday.

The report gives options to President Barack Obama, but said NASA's current plans have to change. Five years ago, then-President George W. Bush proposed returning astronauts to the moon by 2020. To pay for it, he planned on retiring the shuttle next year and shutting down the international space station in 2015.

All those deadlines have to change, the panel said. Space exploration would work better by including other countries and private for-profit firms, the panel concluded.

The panel had previously estimated that the current plan would cost $100 billion in spending to 2020.

Former NASA associate administrator Alan Stern said the report showed the harsh facts that NASA's space plans had "a mismatch between resources and rhetoric." Now, he said, Obama faces a choice of "essentially abandoning human spaceflight" or paying the extra money.

[...]

The panel also urged NASA to pay private companies to develop spaceships to ferry astronauts to the space station and low-Earth orbit. That may be riskier, but it would free up NASA to explore elsewhere, the panel said. Elon Musk, chief executive officer of SpaceX, said within a few years he could send astronauts to space for about $20 million a person, less than the $50 million Russia is charging. He hopes to launch his private rocket, Falcon 9, later this year or early next.

NASA should encourage other countries to join the U.S. in exploring space beyond Earth orbit, the panel said.

"If after designing cleverly, building alliances with partners and engaging commercial providers, the nation cannot afford to fund the effort to pursue the goals it would like to embrace, it should accept the disappointment of setting lesser goals," the report said.

If this country can't find the means to send a man to the moon (again), then how the hell can it subsidize healthcare for every man, woman and child? The total moon shot cost of $100 billion is the amount lost to Medicare/Medicaid fraud and mismanagement every year. Imagine the "savings" under a fiat system! Interestingly, the moon panel calls for expanding the effort by coordinating with other countries and involving more private for-profit firms. Sounds almost federalist in nature.

Our Shameful Past, Present and Future

This opinion letter in the Philadelphia Inquirer perfectly exemplifies this country's shameful past and illuminates our country's current shame, which will serve to frame our future shames.

Dear Attorney General Holder:

I read with dismay the inspector general's report concerning enhanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA to extract information from al-Qaeda terrorists. Buzzing power drills, gunshots, threats - all utterly appalling.

I write not to add to the informed legal opinion that supports your decision to investigate the CIA for these atrocities. Instead, I am asking that you expand the scope of your investigation to include similar horrors that occurred right here in the United States.

I am referring, of course, to the mistreatment I and millions like me suffered while undergoing Catholic primary and secondary educations in the period from 1950 to 1962 (hereinafter "The Reign of Clerical Terror"). I cannot begin to catalog all the violence inflicted on me and others by the nuns and priests who taught us. But a few examples may be instructive.

In 1955, I was a fifth grader in Catholic school (hereinafter "Indoctrination Center X"). One day, while in the cloakroom adjacent to the classroom, I was engaged in a creative, albeit nonacademic, pursuit - i.e., preparing a spitball that I intended to use as a means of self-expression by splatting it on the back of Dave Beckley's head. (Beckley was a known collaborator with those who ran Indoctrination Center X.)

I was almost finished chewing the paper when either Sister Mary Mark or Sister Margaret Mary - it was dark in the cloakroom, and they all dressed alike, so I'm not sure which - grabbed me by the throat, slapped me hard across the face, and made me swallow the spitball. This not only caused me a great deal of physical discomfort - I experienced a simulated choking sensation not unlike that caused by waterboarding - but it also denied my right of self-expression.

Similarly, at my all-male Catholic high school (hereinafter "Indoctrination Center Y"), the priests subjected us to daily assaults with paddles, drumsticks, closed fists, open hands, books, or anything else that was heavy, handy, and capable of getting our undivided attention when applied with force to our heads.

Put aside that most of my classmates went on to outstanding careers in business and the professions. This inhumane treatment undoubtedly stifled our creativity and deadened our sensitivities. I mean, how many choreographers, lyricists, and poets were lost in the cauldron of abuse and suffering that was Indoctrination Center Y?

Mr. Holder, my fellow internees and I would have gladly traded getting slapped or whacked with paddles for someone merely buzzing a power drill at us or making some other empty gesture. You see, unlike the CIA, the nuns and priests actually delivered on their threats. And sometimes they delivered spontaneously - without making any threats at all.

American principles and basic humanity demand that you expose the Reign of Clerical Terror.

Respectfully,
L. George Parry, Esq.

P.S. It occurs to me that, if these al-Qaeda guys stop talking, you may consider having them spend some quality time with Sister Margaret Mary. She is getting along in years and may have lost some of her wallop, but I am sure she would still be up to the task.

Behold: The $4,800 Punching Bag

Get yours today at Lineaus Athletic Company

Or, have children.

A Wing and A Prayer

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Sydney's posterous