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LCHorn

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Everything posted by LCHorn

  1. I’m not sure in what industry that gives you so much presumed visibility into ours, but licensed LO’s are 60% of what they were in 2022 and I bet that number declines further after the 2024 renewal period concludes at the end of the year. No idea on realtors and title co folks, but the former has a lot of people doing it as a side gig and I know the latter has been hammered. Sorry to pick on you but an appraiser presenting to mortgage folks on interest rates is a bit pedantic, as well. Sorry, why would that be our responsibility? Most buyers aren’t stupid, they can do the math themselves and if they bought before 2022 most of them couldn’t buy the SAME house today without paying hundreds, and sometimes thousands, more a month.
  2. It really shouldn’t be that hard. Upthread I referred to yesterday’s PSA podcast with Sarah Longwell. They also talked about who is the Joe Rogan on the left and one of them said “Actually, Joe Rogan WAS the Joe Rogan on the left.” Point is that a big part of elections going forward is you have to include a media strategy of everywhere all the time, and you can’t forego media like Rogan or conservative outlets. The Dems aren’t stupid, they have four years now to polish a message and Trump has done absolutely nothing to think there won’t be huge areas of popular discontent in two and four years. Dems policies continue to be favored over GOP policies. I think a bigger challenge is they have to break the cycle in which every election is a change election.
  3. Disagree-they have multiple governors and legislators with the personal charisma. As James Carville has said, they have a lot of young upcoming talent, they just haven’t been the ones in charge. I might have agreed with the sentiment that Mayor Pete just needed more seasoning and would be a great candidate, but this election should be a wake-up call that anyone culturally conspicuous is out of the mainstream. And this goes for women, too. One of the PSA boys said this the day after but everyone else seems too afraid to repeat it (including PSA)-this should be the last female nominee they run for a while. You’ve had two elections in which that’s been rejected. Also, everyone that cares about the deficit are currently hiding in the MAGA shadow and are unlikely to constitute a significant contribution to the next Dem coalition. Sarah Longwell on today’s PSA talked about survey groups she ran and finally answered a question that I’ve been asking myself. “What’s a more consolidated theory of what comes next?” She stated that change candidates are likely the voters preference going forward as we in the west settle into something of an institutional malaise (so this isn’t just the US). She imagines a Presidency where the incumbent always loses, a Congress where the party out of power regains it every two years, and voters who are never happy with anyone. She places the blame on the prevalence of social media, connectivity via our phones, and the pervasive sense both help create that “those people over there have it better than me and that pisses me off.” I thought that was interesting because I think Bernie’s “we need to appeal to working people more” only scratches at the real issue. David Brooks writes about this kind of thing all the time, in which he concludes current politics isn’t nurturing the soul. The Democrats have a great opportunity over the next couple of election cycles to build a movement that doesn’t require a black man with a funny name and once in a lifetime charisma to take back the Presidency.
  4. Not that I disagree with your intention, but to clarify, only 30% of veterans receive any disability payment. Your 56% award rating is for those who receive disability. That’s about $1k a month, so far from enough to live on. According to the CBO, the most common award for Gulf War veterans is for hearing loss, which relies on a screening designed to weed out those trying to fake a disability. I’m all for trying to dissuade illegitimate awards, but let’s not surmise this is some huge potential savings for the government or that it should rank highly in a hierarchy of systems in need of reform.
  5. David Frum was on the Bulwark podcast Election Day (so recorded well before any results were known) and he brought this up. He said blacks and Hispanics are voting with their economic peers and that’s a good thing in the long run.
  6. Perhaps there’s a plan to drive Dallas into municipal bankruptcy so there can be more support for budget reform.
  7. Exactly-it’s like some of you were born after 2008. Real estate prices falling in a broad, noticeable way is terrible for the economy. If you want to get PE out of residential real estate then the economy needs to create more attractive avenues of investment. To that point, a far bigger problem is that major parts of the economy are in thrall to rent-seeking. It’s an area that JD Vance is reputed to be aligned with Lina Khan* on and if there’s a continuation of anti-monopoly enforcement it would mark a welcome surprise. *that said, I’m not terribly hopeful because this wouldn’t play nice with pretty much everyone else in Trump’s ear.
  8. Well, kudos to whoever stole my Harris/Waltz sign that was still up as of yesterday evening, along with the rest of our neighbors' signs. Probably teen pranks but it does put a fitting capstone on the end of the Biden presidency and probably a fitting reminder of the courtesy to expect over the next four years.
  9. This might be better in the “things my wife says thread,” but I asked her this morning what country we should move to and her reply was “well, we both like Argentina.”
  10. Wildly overdue.
  11. And down 70-good morning America.
  12. It’s prehensile, in fact he uses it to sign his name.
  13. Mine is very close:
  14. We got both rain and sunshine together in ‘59.
  15. Hah! I like to stop at the 290 Brenham location on the way back and forth from Houston for a dip cone. Sometimes it’s a five minute stop, sometimes it’s 30 minutes. I tell the kids the randomness is a good way to be reminded of the instability in modern America.
  16. I’m okay letting him walk if he wants more than that. Maybe that pushes the Astros to be more aggressive with Tucker to either extend or trade.
  17. I understood absolutely none of that.
  18. I don’t want to be overly presumptuous about farmers in Iowa, none of whom I know and in a state I’ve never visited. That said, I grew up around SE Texas rice farmers (and after rice didn’t make money they cycled through sorghum, soybeans, even cotton and of course now everyone is growing corn) and they are just are plenty happy to take a handout. I watched those families get bailed annually in the 80’s and that “bail-out” money wasn’t going to just food, it got spent in new trucks, boats, 4 wheelers and the like. I wouldn’t get overly sanctimonious about their dislike of federal support when it’s meant for them. I’ll tell you something else you probably don’t know about those hard working, independent problem solvers. Most of them aren’t farming anymore (too much work, too little profit) but they are still getting USDA money for leasing their fields to other farmers, sometimes just for leaving them fallow. These are the same people, mind you, passing along emails later forwarded to me that claimed Obama was a Muslim jihadist back in 2005. I’m sure that’s migrated to Facebook or other social networks, but I’m sure the rhetoric about Harris isn’t any less racist.
  19. Holy shit on jobs report.
  20. I’m sure you can search his posts, but he would do Counselor riffs every time Nate Paul was brought up. One of our losses with his passing is a fuller account of his detective work on the cartel money laundering.
  21. Except they fired the guy most responsible for whatever authenticity was ascribed to their polling.
  22. Looks awesome. Fassbender struggling with a southern accent is also a fun part, RIP Lobo and his full memorization of The Counselor screenplay.
  23. I appreciate that they are trying to expand their audience but you’re right, she really was. I would hope they know that and decided to proceed anyway because they had a show runner lined up with a really good take (that said, checking out IMDb right now and her resume is light).
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