BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Tag: politics (page 1 of 1)

October 31, 2011

Why do Liberals and Progressives in America deny their beliefs?

by

Realtor, Media Mogul

Author website

While reading Jeff’s post asking about how people can justify theft from others in the name of government, I was most stricken by the absolute denial from those who defended more and more taxation have over their own beliefs.  Even though they clearly support socialism, and can put forward tales of great woe over why they believe socialism is needed, nowhere would they agree that what they espouse is socialism.

Sure, socialism has been demonized by conservatives over the years.  But does that surprise you?  Socialism is the opposite of what many conservatives profess to be.  Yet, socialists, most of whom prefer to be called liberals, just can’t admit that they support theft by government force.  None of the liberals who commented would admit they believed “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”  They just don’t go there.

People are full of these contradictions.  Warren Buffet was mentioned as an example in the comments of Jeff’s post, about his supposed concern about paying less in taxes than his secretary.  Yet, this same Warren Buffet has been fighting against paying taxes he legally owes for years!  What is that all about if he supports more taxation so much?

In the video above, Bill Maher, calls out Americans on what he calls their secret love of socialism.  In the video Bill Maher says “It’s time to stop fighting it and just come out of the closet, and the group I’m talking about is the American public and the love they’re denying is their love of socialism. Now I know that there are few words in America more toxic than socialist, and these days big government spending is about as popular as Casey Anthony at a Chucky Cheese. Yes, Americans say they hate socialism but when it comes to Social Security, Medicare, unemployment, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, corporate welfare, bailouts, and farm subsidies, what we really say to socialism is I can’t quit you.”

He goes on from there.  In this case, I agree with Bill Maher.

Certainly there is a disconnect between what many Americans say versus what they actually support.  Liberals Read more

March 3, 2011

Rage and Rates… a Tin Foil Hat Production

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

I wrote the article below a couple of days ago for a blog on political and economic freedom.  I’m reprinting it here after enjoying some discussion on the matter with fellow Bloodhound and VA mortgage expert Brian Brady.  Besides it being a brilliant piece (of tin foil hat wearing rantings), the article does actually touch on an area that could be of great importance to our real estate buying clients:  mortgage rates.  You see (in an over-simplified explanation), when the world gets scared, money flows to safety.  Safety, at least for the time being, still resides in US bonds.  Though not always correlated, the interest rates on mortgages often travel in the same direction as those on bonds.  So if, for some crazy, unforseen reason, the world becomes a little apprehensive over the next 2 weeks, we might see mortgage rates drop.  The question is: when do you lock the rate for your client?  Well, if we knew the actual date this crazy, unforseen event may occur, we could watch closely and lock right up to the day before. Why the day before?  Because there are three possible outcomes to this disruptive event, and two of them are bad:

  1. It could turn out to be a tempest in a teapot, in which case money will quickly flow out of the bond market and interest rates will rise.  (Because of the inverse relationship between bond prices and interest rates, when people sell bonds the price drops and the rate rises… I see people’s eyes rolling back in their heads… moving on then);
  2. Or, things could go as bad or even worse than expected and oil prices shoot up (geographical hint), causing inflationary fears. Because inflation erodes fixed rate returns, bonds sell off and interest rates rise in response;
  3. Or, things could go as bad or even worse than expected adding to the already existing fear – oil prices be damned; in which case even more money flows to the safety of bonds and interest rates continue to drop.

As you can see, of the three scenarios, two give rise to higher interest rates making us heroes for locking our client’s rate before the event.  If, on the other hand, we find ourselves knee deep in the third Read more

June 23, 2010

There are Only Four Things Certain Since Social Progress Began

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

(alternatively entitled – with all due apologies)
Though I’ve Belted You and Flayed You, By the Livin’ Gawd That Made You;
You’ve Made a Worser Man of Me, Socialism

 

“And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke”  (from The Betrothed).  I have loved Rudyard Kipling from the very first time I read Gunga Din.  His pace and pattern appeal to me, as does his archaic sense of manhood.  I have argued before, and dare say would do so again quite successfully, that his poem If  is among the finest pieces ever written in the English language.  Of all the inspirational articles I have written and the many orations I have given, much time could have been saved had I simply gone in, recited If and walked out.  If you have never read it, stop what you are doing now and do so.  The answer to just about every event you may encounter in your life is contained in that poem.

This post, however, is not about Kipling’s great work If.  (If it were, I would certainly link to my own, real estate based homage to wisdom, and I’ve done no such thing.)  No, this post is about another poem Kipling wrote, one I am chagrined to admit I only recently discovered.  More mortifying still, I discovered it only because Glenn Beck is using a couple of lines from this poem to plug a new book of his.  (I’m not denigrating Mr. Beck, only lamenting the discovery of fine art through it’s crass commercialization.)

The poem refers to Copybook Headings and I was unsure what those were.  For the one or two of you out there as simple as I am, copybooks were primers used by school children to perfect their penmanship.  Across the top of each page was written a Biblical passage or similar lesson of moral imperative.  The children would copy the line over and over on the page below, thus improving their cursive and at the same internalizing certain truths.  Truths that, according to Mr. Kipling, are forgotten at our own peril.

Printed below in its entirety, this poem was written almost 100 years ago.  But you’d be amazed Read more

March 3, 2009

Confessions of a Married Man

by

Mortgage Officer

Author website

No, not that type of confessions, I’ve been happily married for 23 1/2 years and believe firmly in the “until death do us part” of my marriage vows.

But, after a conversation I had with Teri and after reading Sean’s post and the subsequent conversation in the comments by a number of people including a couple of friends who I respect and value their opinions, I felt I had a confession to make.   Much of this confession is based on what I’ve learned from my wife.

So here goes the confession:
1. There is a LOT to worry about right now.  Probably more to worry about now than any time in my adult life.
2. Listening to CNBC can increase the amount of worry that one has about the financial mess that’s happening.
3. There are a lot of people who make a living off of increasing the worry that other people have.  Many of them work in the main stream media, but many of them work in Washington too.
4. While I agree with people like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh more than I disagree with them, I told Jeff Brown yesterday that I can’t listen to either one of them for very long.   Why?  The way that they play on the worry and discord over what’s happening in Washington is just too depressing.
5. While I have voted in every Presidential election I’ve been able to and all of the congressional elections (off years), I have missed a few school board and township elections.  I firmly believe in the power of people to make a difference by voting, but I’m also very jaded by pretty much everyone who is in Washington and the state capitals as well.

So what did I learn from my wife?   It’s pretty simple:

Don’t worry about things you can’t control.

I can’t control what happens in Washington – but I can learn and be informed about what’s happening so I can make wise decisions.

I can’t control what happens in the stock market – but I can learn and be informed so I can make knowledgeable decisions and help my clients and my referral sources Read more

November 2, 2008

How Will the Party End?

by

Realtor, Rabble-Rouser

Author website

Growing up as a kid, I remember my mom and dad throwing a lot of parties. They were the kind of folks who liked to “entertain”. It seems nobody entertains like my parents these days. It was usually on a Friday or Saturday night – my mom would order pizza – her hair in rollers – and my brothers and sisters and I would eat before 6. Immediately after dinner, it was bath time. Once upstairs we’d be relegated to the master bedroom and forced to watch The Brady Bunch on the black and white TV set.

Unless we were dying, we were not to set foot on the stairs – God help us if we ever set foot on the first floor.

Sometimes we’d sit at the top of the stairs and listen in on the festivities. I knew when mom had one too many Manhattans because she’d whoop it up – her laugh was the loudest. You knew things were getting good – the noise level would increase and the laughter became louder and more frequent. It wasn’t a real party unless the cigarette smoke began to linger in the upstair’s hallway.

Everybody liked my parent’s parties.

I remember one party in particular – it was a family party – a rare event – the kids were included. My mom was the consummate hostess – she used to use the “good stuff” – silver-plated footed bowls for snacks, sterling silver cutlery and china for dinner. Back then when people entertained, it was more of a production. Mom could have won an Oscar – everything was just so.

Even at a young age, I was a rabble rouser. My younger brother Mark and I concocted a plan to replace the mixed nuts in one of the silver bowls with a spicer snack – something with more kick – one that would really add some zest and zing to the cocktail hour.

Our secret? Why Gravy Train dog kibbles of course.

Mark was instructed to nonchalantly remove the bowl from the Read more

February 29, 2008

A Season To Be Objective

by

Real Estate Broker

Author website

Modernism, or post-modernism, has little use for philosophy . Pragmatism is most people’s mind bent. Tough-minded pragmatism has a lot going for it, but when it denigrates philosophy it might be acting a little too tough. Isn’t philosopy that old-timey pursuit back when intellectuals talked endlessly and abstrusely about whether we really exist or just a bundle of impressions. What good did any of that talk do? It doesn’t pay the rent, by God, and it doesn’t bring the bacon (tofu?) home.

Others are more mystical about life, therefore philosophy is an illusory construct created by dead white European males to rule by reason and logic, or to confuse the issues with consistency — there is nothing consistently true for mystics, and all the intellectualizing in the world won’t reveal the mystical flow of The Great Unknown to the puny mind of reason — it’s intuitive, soft and open in spirit — felt by those connected to the universal spirit.

One looks at “what works” as the only marker for value, and the other goes by “what feels right”, what can be intuited as the marker of value. There are many variations of these two types of believers. And there are many who are mostly social, who don’t think much at all about the larger issues of life; they want to belong and be accepted, and merely being a part of a group is fine with them. They might take a stand if it’s to protect a friend or if they feel like their group is being threatened, but mostly they just want social comfort.

The second definition of philosophy from The Free Dictionary is — 2. Investigation of the nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values, based on logical reasoning rather than empirical methods.

The first definition is — 1. Love and pursuit of wisdom by intellectual means and moral self-discipline.

Very few people live by, or hold ideas to the test of, a set of principles that they’ve forged through a consistent philosophy. They usually go by antecdotal evidence, snapshots of reality taken out of context, as their measure to make decisions. “I have a cousin who did this and got this result, and it seems to be Read more

Inventing Real Estate 2.0

Welcome to BloodhoundBlog, the national real estate industry marketing and technology weblog written by, for and about real estate professionals. Better yet, welcome to the wired world of real estate. We are busily inventing Real Estate 2.0 – technology, marketing, service and salesmanship. Like all Bloodhounds, we are smart, frisky and fiercely independent. We've built a spot on the earth – beloved over all – where each one of us can be who we are, no matter who that might be. We are committed to an idea of excellence that will flush the bums, the con-men and the crybabies out of the real estate industry. If you yearn to have your failures excused, your moral lapses absolved or your boo-boos kissed, seek elsewhere. But if you are sick to death of mediocrity – welcome home. Read all about us, subscribe to our feed and steel yourself for the hunt. We work hard, we play hard, we learn everything we can – and we bow to no one.

Media Contacts