BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Category: Group Therapy (page 53 of 81)

May 20, 2010

Rand Paul’s take on private property rights is correct — and daring to tell unfamiliar, uncomfortable truths to voters is laudable.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Well.

I’m thinking that “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” has brought us a nearly universal display of cowardice from the RE.net. If I am mistaken in this, I will happily amend my error with a link and a courtly bow. But I expect there is even more room for quivering, quibbling, cowering, caviling cowardice on this fine and perfect day.

Like this: The position Kentucky senatorial candidate Rand Paul took on property rights yesterday is correct — not just as regards property rights, but as an expression of the errors we need to correct in the body politic if we are to reemerge, eventually, as something resembling a civilized society.

The left is attempting to smear Paul as a racist for insisting that private property owners themselves have the moral authority to be racists, even if Paul and virtually everyone else find that position to be morally-repugnant. This Two-Minutes-Hate campaign doesn’t seem like a winning strategy to me, in the age of the internet. The left will have no trouble finding reasons to hate Rand Paul, but his own tea party admirers may find in his principled arguments even more cause to admire him.

But mainstream Republicans are in full-reverse mode, backing away from Paul as quickly as they can. This seems to me to be a mistake. The tea party movement is an artifact of the age of the internet. At the least, tea partiers check up on the things they are told by the mainstream media. And it seems plausible to me that many of those folks are aware that the United States has been pursuing the wrong policies — as a matter of philosophy — since the end of the nineteenth century, at least. Anyone seeking greater human liberty has to regard this present moment as an incredible opportunity to get ordinary Americans thinking about ideas they might never have considered before. For Republicans to race away from the actual philosophy of liberty seems to me to be hugely stupid.

So let’s start here: Racism is by far the stupidest and most morally-repugnant form of collectivism. This is completely obvious to any thoughtful individualist, Read more

May 15, 2010

The Desperation Waltz

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

“Hey, Tommy,” Jimmy said without looking up from the newspaper he had spread out on the bar, “what’s Reubenesque mean again?”

“Jeesh! It means ‘fat’. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

“Statuesque?”

“Fat.”

“Weight proportionate?”

“Fat.”

“Full figured?”

“That means really fat. Whaddaya doin’ that for? We got a whole club full of babes here. How do you expect to get next to a girl in the personals?” He thumbed his own chest. “Tommy Klein, he knows better. Tommy Klein is an operator. You just stand back and watch me work.”

This is the truth: I don’t even like bars. I can go for years at a stretch without taking a drink, and the last place I’d be tempted to drink would be a bar. But I had come to a club that is not but ought to be called Desperation to see a singer and songwriter, a chanteuse named Celia Redmond who is making a name for herself.

Desperation is her name for the dumpy little country bar stuck right in the heart of the big city. The real name is “Country City” or something equally forgettable. It’s a costume bar, really, as phony in its way as a gay bar or the tap-room at the American Legion Hall. Country transplants and the children of country transplants and would-be country transplants put on clothes they don’t wear all day, speak in an affected diction and dance and drink until the house band strikes up “The Desperation Waltz” at midnight. Desperation is a place to escape from the real life of the big city: Office work, factory work, construction work — and unemployment.

Jimmy and Tommy were not untypical of the crowd, just more immanently pitiful. Jimmy’s a gentle giant of a man, as broad as he is tall. His hair was cut down to the scalp and he had a fringy little mustache and his neck was very, very red. Tommy was dapper. If Jimmy had asked me what dapper means, I would have told him: “Short, and overcompensating for it.” He was trim and toned without actually bearing muscles and his Read more

May 15, 2010

@tcar’s manifesto: “Toothy chumps of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your brains.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Witness: “The next big project from 2nd Century will be Realtor University. A fully accredited educational institution[.]”

I do not for one second hate to say I told you so:

We know sheep will follow a Judas goat to their slaughter, as will cattle. Now the NAR is testing the idea on lemmings…

Todd Carpenter becomes one with the Borg and the charming little lemmings elbow each other out of the way to dive off the cliff head first.

One of two things will happen: Todd will discover he’s made a terrible mistake and will quit this job with dispatch — I hope very loudly. Or: Todd will deliver us to our slaughter.

Anyone who expects anything other than evil from the National Association of Realtors has either not been paying attention, or, much worse, embraces that evil.

In any case, this is not something to be celebrated, not even to affect to be “nice” in chorus with the rest of the lemmings.

The NAR may want to infest our world in order to destroy it. More likely, they want to take it over.

What they certainly do not want is to approach the public as we do — openly, authentically, concealing nothing. The entire edifice of residential real estate is founded on secrets and lies, and, as long as it is, the NAR will be nothing but a cesspit of tyrannical motives and vendorslut con games.

And — more is the pity — Todd Carpenter cannot take their money without being their shill and their Judas goat — or worse.

I’m saddened by this, because of all the gutless big-name real estate webloggers, Todd has more guts than most. But nothing good for us will come of this, and the only good that can come of it for Todd is for him to escape with his scruples intact as quickly as he can.

Too late for that now. If you’re in for a penny, you’re in for a pound.

Four years ago, almost, when I started this little project, I had huge hopes for a newer, cleaner style of real estate, one based on integrity and transparency. I’ve watched as Read more

May 14, 2010

Unchained melodies: You either get Glee — or you will.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

A fun bit from Mother’s Day was agreeing with my mom, on the phone, about the intense and comical excellence that is Glee, the FOX-TV musical teen melodrama. The melodrama is hugely repetitive, but still very rude and pomo, but the music is often simply breath-taking.

There is this: They harmonize the voices, so everyone sings with perfect pitch in a slightly mechanical tone. But the song choices — coupled with the dancing, the meta-melodrama, and the incredible quantity of incredible vocalists — serve to deliver the aural equivalent of a Broadway musical every week.

But that’s not right: I hate Broadway musicals, and I love Glee. The whole thing just works. I make time for it somewhere in my week, every week.

Here’s a fun contrast, playing off of last week’s episode. First up is Total Eclipse of the Heart, as recorded by Bonnie Tyler. This song was written by Jim Steinman, who wrote all of Meatloaf’s hits. The tune has melodrama of its own to spare, but it’s still a totally killer rock ballad, maybe the last chapter in the story of The Seventies.

Glee took this song and wove it into its plot — not without consequences. Take this, for example, from the original lyrics:

Once upon a time, there was light in my life.
Now there’s only love in the dark.*

That’s painfully simple, but it works as poetry because it’s so excruciatingly full of pain. But to make Total Eclipse work in the context of the Glee story arc, that lyric was cut.

Not cool. But still… This is a searing cover of the song. When Rachel soars upward on her second time through the chorus, I’m ready to take flight with her.

Sadly, my mother doesn’t love South Park, my other weekly TV obsession. But if you will give Glee a chance, it could be you’ll see why so many seemingly sane people are raving about it.

 
*She sings it right in this video. A mystery…

May 8, 2010

A Home that’s Worth at Least a Million

by

Realtor, Rabble-Rouser

Author website

Sometimes location, location, location isn’t the key to defining the value of a home.  Often times its God’s providence.

When I relocated home to Dallas last July, my brother and his family decided to put their home on the market – they wanted to take advantage of a soft market and ideally get a deal on a property not far from their current location.  They had two offers but neither stuck.  It just seemed like they weren’t destined to move.

Their existing place was fine but rather than sell, they decided to stay put. An extensive renovation was in order, however, there was one feature of their home that simply couldn’t be changed – their home’s  best feature transcended any physical characteristic, it was a metaphysical connection – or rather a spiritual one.  A bond they shared with their neighbors – Dave, Carol and their daughters Patrice and Anna Basso.  The Bassos aren’t really just neighbors, they’re more like family.

I believe there was a far greater reason why my brother’s house didn’t sell.

Just a day before Thanksgiving, 2009, Anna, Dave and Carol’s youngest, was diagnosed with Ewing Sarcoma, a very rare and terribly aggressive form of cancer that typically strikes children to young adults between the ages of 10 to 20.  So rare that only a handful of cases are diagnosed in a year.  Anna’s cancer was diagnosed at Stage 4.  The tumors were identified on her pelvis and the cancer had spread to her bone marrow.

While the news was devastating to Dave and Carol, the impact was almost as severe to my brother and sister-in-law – they’ve seen Anna grow up.  She was simply part of the family.  There is perhaps no stronger or more overwhelming sense of helplessness felt by a parent or loved one when the there appears to be no hope for a child.

But again, this is God’s providence.  Where there is faith, there is always hope.

My brother Mark knew he had to do something for Anna.  While Anna’s health was in the hands of the medical professionals, her emotional and spiritual well-being – as well as her family Read more

May 3, 2010

This oil spill and the government’s belated response to it do not prove the value and efficacy of the government, but precisely the opposite.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

So I had a spam email from a state-worshipping zealot I’ve never met named Sara P. Miller. Apparently Sara P. Miller is the modern-age equivalent of those noxious creeps you used to find preaching the gospel of Jheeezuhs! on buses and subway trains, self-imprisoned in a never-silent pantomime of exhibitionism and self-loathing. I cannot be trusted to find the truth on my own, so I must have it thrust upon me by benificent busy-bodies. Good grief…

Anyway, here is Sara P. Miller’s argument, all spelling and punctuation errors faithfully reproduced: “As the sludge roles onto Louisiana’s coast, suddenly, the anti-government bashers are silent. [….] And this morning, as that horrible, poison sludge makes its tragic, putrid, photo debut, we will all believe in ‘big government.'” She defends this by making reference to a number of Rotarian Socialist statists, absolutely none of whom are anti-government. They are all exponents of the government — past or current office-holders.

And that doesn’t matter to me. I’m assuming Sara P. Miller sent this nonsense to me because I haven’t said anything about the oil spill in the gulf. “Cum taces, clamas,” say my Roman friends — “When you are silent, you shout.” Not quite. The topics I don’t write about are legion. Hell, the things I think about writing about but don’t constitute a vast library of unwritten prose. I haven’t written about this oil spill because I don’t care about it, frankly, and because I am busy.

But: The actual essence of Sara P. Miller’s argument, which she is not smart enough to make, could not be more wrong. This oil spill and the government’s belated response to it do not prove the value and efficacy of the government, but precisely the opposite. These events — and the cloying chorus of the Rotarian Socialists of both major political parties — do not argue for the glories of the state right now, but, rather, for its inglorious ignobility going back forever. The state is never anything other than crime, and the crimes being played out right now in the Gulf of Mexico are nothing other than further proof Read more

April 25, 2010

It looks like the dam is finally bursting on politicaly-correct self-censorship in behalf of Islamofascist rageaholics.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

You bastards!

The essence of Political Correctness is to get people to volunteer for their own self-imprisonment. In fear of offending some perpetually-offended jackass, the victims of Political Correctness come to be stunted, stilted, stifled — and ultimately silenced. But, alas, they never, ever manage to escape the snide, sneering insults of all those perpetually-offended jackasses.

Why? It’s simple: The sole objective of Political Correctness is to take power of other people — who are innocent of all offenses against anyone — by inducing them to to volunteer for their own self-imprisonment.

Heads up: If you don’t have the guts to stand up these cowards, these moral midgets, then you deserve what they are doing to you.

There’s more, and I’m loving it: Mark Steyn, Diana West, a wonderful unsigned manifesto, a kickin’ cartoon from Chris Muir, and, finally:

May 20th is everybody draw Mohammed day. This last strikes me as being a little over the top, since the objective would seem to be to offend Muslims, rather than simply to defend one’s own right to express oneself at will, without fear of a violent demise. But that distinction delivers precious little difference, and the time for phlegmatic reason in this particular dispute was three years ago.

I’m nobody’s artist, but I do love to make jokes. My poor long-suffering wife can tell you that I can make some raucously funny jokes about religion. Normally I don’t do this in public, because people have a right to believe what they want. But as soon as you or anyone tries to tell me I can’t make fun of religion — that’s when I’ll tell you why Bill O’Reilly says you should never, ever, ever cut Mohammed off in traffic.

This is bug-stomping, carrying out the trash, but it is absolutely necessary. Whenever exponents of savagery manage to stop denouncing the West, they commence comparing themselves to it, instead: “Well, the Incas invented the wheel.” “The Chinese invented explosives.” This is twice sad: It’s the most pathetic kind of collectivism — racism — and it misses the point of Western Civilization entirely. The West didn’t invent this technology or that Read more

April 12, 2010

On work, busywork, hard work, and how to tell the difference

by

Rust Belt Realtor

Author website

A revelation: At this moment in time, my business is exactly where I want it to be. Is that weird? I don’t think so, as I’m getting exactly the business I’ve earned. That’s not to say it’s the business that would make you happy, and it’s not to say it’s the business I want in six months or six years, even six weeks from now, but today, when I stopped to think about it, my business is in direct proportion to the amount of work I’ve put into it.

I’ve been busy over the past few years, but I haven’t always been busy on work. Some of that is my own fault, I’ll own that, I always have owned that, but the fact remains that the business I’m getting is exactly proportional to whatever I put into it, and that’s the good news for the day, because I know that whatever I put in, I’m going to get out.

I haven’t talked about my dad in a long while, but everything I know about work, I learned from him. I think you’d like my dad- he’s a Bloodhound. He grew up in a hardscrabble part of town, in a Catholic orphanage where the nuns let him be as much as they could. He is a kinesthetic learner. He’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever known, but not in a bookish way. He can teach himself any sort of thing, but only if he does it and the nuns allowed him to follow the plumbers, the maintenance people, the doers, around. He’d ask them questions about what they were doing and hand them tools when they asked. Other kids were off playing pick up games or getting into neighborhood fights, Dad was learning, always learning stuff.

When he had a family to support, Dad became a salesman which allowed him to get out and talk to people. A desk job? No thanks. My dad needed to live unchained, so he headed out- an independent sales rep for tool manufacturers. It wasn’t an easy life for him, but he was used to that. He loved Read more

April 10, 2010

Simple Concept – Not So Simple To Execute – Grow a Pair

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

As if it happened yesterday, I remember having just began seriously bodybuilding with a (understatement) stern trainer, a world champ who had no patience for anything less than all-out effort. One day my partner and I were following the workout he’d given us, when our trainer, Gene, walked up without preamble. “This is a man’s gym. If you girls are gonna keep playin’ around, get outa here!” What? Huh?

From that day forward, my workout partner and I never gave less than 100% again, at least if Gene was in the same hemisphere. He was that scary, and we were, well, 16. Gene wouldn’t let us fail. Our goal was to end up competing — which we did about 30 months later. In that time we became the more or less adopted sons of nearly the entire gym population. Our growth musta been fun to watch. What I thought would take a few months though, took over two years to accomplish. The goal was met though, as we both competed, and credibly so.

One might think I’d of learned my lesson about goals through that experience.

Much is made of setting and achieving goals. Dad was a crazy-ass goal setter. The guy had the ability to set a goal, become Stephen King obsessed, yet without anyone knowing about it. Try that sometime. One day after his third Jack on the rocks at the Club, his friends got him to share with them the 10 year goal he’d set for his real estate company over five years earlier. They were dumbfounded, and proceeded to ‘let him down gently’ by explaining how he’d maybe been a mite too optimistic.

It wasn’t ’till almost a year later that he told them he’d already accomplished that 10 year goal a few months before the first conversation. He’d done what they told him was impossible to accomplish in a decade, in just over half the time.

Setting goals and achieving them are entirely different things, an understatement of which I’m sure you’re painfully aware. We’ve all learned that one the hard way, right? I sure did.

I’m putting Read more

April 10, 2010

Mark Steyn: “We are now not merely disincentivizing economic energy but actively waging war on it.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Shrug, Atlas, shrug. Mark Steyn from Investors’ Business Daily:

In less than a quarter-millennium, the American Revolution will have evolved from “No taxation without representation” to representation without taxation. We have bigger government, bigger bureaucracy, bigger spending, bigger deficits, bigger debt, and yet an ever smaller proportion of citizens paying for it. The top 5% of taxpayers contribute 60% of revenue. The top 10% provide 75%. Another two-fifths make up the rest. And half are exempt.

This isn’t redistribution — a “leveling” to address the “mal-distribution” of income, as Sen. Max Baucus, (D-Kleptocristan) put it the other day. It isn’t even “spreading the wealth around,” as then Sen. Barack Obama put it in an unfortunate off-the-prompter moment during the 2008 campaign.

Rather, it’s an assault on the moral legitimacy of the system. If you accept the principle of a tax on income, it might seem reasonable to exclude the very poor from having to contribute to it. But in no meaningful sense can half the country be considered “poor.” The U.S. income tax is becoming the 21st century equivalent of the “jizya” — the punitive tax levied by Muslim states on their non-Muslim citizens: In return for funding the Islamic imperium, the infidels were permitted to carry on practicing their faith.

Likewise, under the American jizya, in return for funding Big Government, nonbelievers are permitted to carry on practicing their faith in capitalism, small business, economic activity and the other primitive belief systems to which they cling so touchingly.

In the Islamic world, the infidel tax base eventually wised up. You can see it literally in the landscape in rural parts of the Balkans: Christian tradesmen got fed up paying the jizya and moved out of the towns up into remote hills far from the shakedown crowd.

In less mountainous terrain where it’s harder to lie low, non-Muslims found it easier to convert. That’s partly what drove Islamic expansion. Once Araby was all-Muslim, it was necessary to move on to the Levant, and to Persia, and to Central Asia and North Africa and India and Europe — in search of new infidels to mug.

Don’t worry, I’m not Read more

« Older posts Newer posts »

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