Stop Sandy Foreclosures?

From the APP:

EDITORIAL: Stop rising tide of foreclosures in N.J.

Superstorm Sandy is still wreaking havoc in New Jersey nearly 21/2years after it moved away from the Jersey Shore. And the bureaucracy in New Jersey has made things worse.

Hundreds of families forced from their homes during Sandy now face a new storm: foreclosure They are finding it increasingly difficult, if not downright impossible, to pay the mortgage on their still unrepaired homes while continuing to pay the rent on their temporary residences. It is time for Trenton to take up this fight on behalf of those who are in danger of losing their homes altogether.

What they don’t need is Gov. Chris Christie’s administration simply saying, ad nauseum, that it is working on the problem. What they do need is to work to overcome the hurdles that have stalled a bill introduced in December by Sen. Jeff Van Drew that would have prevented homes damaged by superstorm Sandy from being foreclosed on for three years.

Objections were raised to some provisions in the bill, including the fact it would apply to first and second homes. But the objections need to be resolved, not ignored.

An Asbury Park Press analysis published Sunday identified 305 Sandy-affected homes in Monmouth and Ocean counties that have been pushed into the property-seizure process during the first 10 months of 2014. Through October of last year, there were 46,000 foreclosure filings in New Jersey and one in seven of those homes in distress was in Monmouth and Ocean counties, according to the state Administrative Office of the Courts.

Foreclosures are up 15 percent compared to the same period in 2013. About one in nine mortgage loans in the state — or nearly 100,000 properties — is distressed, meaning it is either in foreclosure or 90 days in arrears for payments. New Jersey, by percentage, has more distressed properties than any state in the nation.

There are many reasons for that dubious distinction, including the snail’s pace of state and federal aid for Sandy victims, combined with paltry insurance payouts and slow-moving rebuilding programs.

This entry was posted in Foreclosures, Housing Recovery, Politics, Shore Real Estate. Bookmark the permalink.

152 Responses to Stop Sandy Foreclosures?

  1. grim says:

    This is what a concerted effort to stall the foreclosure pipeline looks like. It is done in what appear to be small, seemingly logical steps, which add up to create the biggest foreclosure backlog in history.

    Wonder if the author stopped to consider how many of these foreclosures were intentional. Faced with unbearable property taxes, made more unbearable by insane flood insurance, and not to mention the cost necessary to raise a house. Perhaps walking away is the lowest cost solution?

  2. grim says:

    Van Drew’s proposal contains no clear definition for what “damaged by Superstorm Sandy” means. No clear delineation from a financial perspective ($25,000 or 30% of the home value) or even from a structural perspective (uninhabitable, condemned). It contains no provisions to establish that the damage actually happened (insurance claim paperwork, insurance payout paperwork, building permits or applications, etc). No geographic limitation to limit this to the hardest hit areas at the shore.

    So, if the gutter on my house in Wayne fell off as a result of Superstorm Sandy, I would be covered by the new law. I could get another 3 year extension to foreclosure. It would be plausible that some could parlay this law into pushing near 6 years without making a single mortgage payment, which would be valued at between $100-200k in free rent. Talk about subsidized housing.

    I would expect this to be wildly abused by everyone currently in foreclosure, anywhere in the state, regardless of whether or not their house had actually been damaged. It would be relatively easy to make the filing, and I’m sure the courts would have absolutely no idea how to handle, nor would they even question the claim (since they are complicit in the scam).

  3. grim says:

    Not to mention many of these properties were already given a 1 year foreclosure grace period, so this would extend to a total of 4 years.

  4. grim says:

    Nice to see the government is above the law, from the NYT:

    After the Housing Crisis, a Cash Flood and Silence

    On Aug. 17, 2012, the federal government began expropriating all the earnings of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance giants that succumbed to the 2008 crisis.

    Now the government is taking extraordinary measures to keep secret the deliberations surrounding that action. What exactly is it trying to hide?

    Initially, Fannie and Freddie had to pay interest on the loan. But in August 2012, the Treasury and F.H.F.A. abruptly changed the agreement; under the so-called third amendment, the government began sweeping all the companies’ profits into the Treasury.

    Since then, Fannie and Freddie have been immensely profitable. As of last December, the Treasury had received a total of $225.4 billion from the companies. An additional $153.3 billion in receipts from Fannie and Freddie could be generated through fiscal year 2025, according to estimates in the 2016 budget offered by the president.

    The initial $187.5 billion loan remains outstanding, however, because of the deal’s structure.

    Watching these profits pour into the Treasury, shareholders cried foul. Contending the sweep was unjust, one of those with large stakes in both Fannie and Freddie securities — the Fairholme Fund — sued the government in July 2013. From the outset, the government demanded extreme secrecy in the case. Lawyers at the Justice Department secured confidential treatment of almost all the 150,000 pages of documents submitted by the Treasury and F.H.F.A. by late January. Even the plaintiff bringing the case is barred from viewing these documents; only its lawyers can see them.

    The government has also fought every discovery request made by the Fannie and Freddie shareholder. Officials at the Treasury and F.H.F.A. claim that disclosure of documents relating to their actions would destabilize the economy and financial markets and raise mortgage rates.

    In a Jan. 28 letter to investors, Bruce Berkowitz, Fairholme’s managing member, questioned the broad sweep of the government’s claims to secrecy.

    “Why are F.H.F.A. and, particularly, Treasury resisting discovery so fiercely?” he wrote. “Is it because the document trail directly implicates some of the president’s most senior advisers in the White House?”

  5. grim says:

    Yeah – because believing that the Millennial generation, as a whole, is no better (and likely worse) than the current crop of @sshats in charge, and a far cry from the generation that won a world war, requires a belief that no one from said generation will succeed. Whatever.

    The “Greatest Generation” monicker was bestowed upon the GI generation in 1998, the youngest of the GIs was 74, and the oldest was 97. I suspect anywhere from 1/2 to 1/3rd of them had fully completed their lives and legacies. Realize that bestowing this title significantly colored the average perception of the generation.

    Compare this to the Millennials, whose characterization was cemented while they were basically children. This worthless Millennial meme is now 7 years old, which means this stereotype was established when the millennials were 11 to 26 years old.

    It would have been exactly the equivalent of characterizing the GI generation by the flippant behavior during the Roaring Twenties, defined largely by mass consumption, mass consumerism, mass media, mass production, mass credit, and the birth of pop culture as we know it today. The similarities are shocking, and I suspect the criticisms of the generation at that point in time would have been very similar to today.

    It’s outrageous the ego and callousness of the Boomers and the X’ers to characterize the Millennials when they did, and in the way they did. Even Coupland waited 5 years longer. With this trend, we’ll be defining the next Generation based on their behaviors at 5 years old.

    Although what better way to define the Boomers than ‘Holier than thou’. So maybe my expecting a little bit more out of them is what’s out of line.

  6. Liquor Luge says:

    Grim (4)-

    TreasCo doesn’t want the world to see how the gubmint sets up and operates a giant financial garbage can.

    “Fcuk you, pay me” should be Phony & Fraudy’s new mission statement.

  7. Liquor Luge says:

    The world will be a better place once the last boomer dies.

  8. grim says:

    And I find it amazingly humorous that the GI’s living through a recession is a thing of merit, a source of pride. They buckled down and persevered, they made do with so little. See? See how hard they had it?

    While, at the same time, the Millennials living through a recession is a thing of embarrassment, something held against them, as if they had anything to do with it (unlike the GIs, who at least got to enjoy the epic bubble and boom that preceded it). See? Their unemployment rate is so high, because they are worthless. They live at home, because they are worthless.

    Pretty sure that household formation during the great depression was no different, but let’s not get facts get in the way of a good story.

  9. grim says:

    Wow, no shit, I’m right – housing construction and households during the Great Depression:

    http://www.demographia.com/db-hstarts.pdf

    Based on the starts and formations data from the Census Department, during the Great Depression there would have been plenty of adult kids living with their parents, potentially doubling up in rooming houses, apartments, etc.

    Exactly what we’re seeing today.

    Again, for them it’s a virtue, for the Millennials it’s a vice.

  10. BearsFan says:

    “The world will be a better place once the last boomer dies.”
    – couldn’t agree more.

  11. grim says:

    I just hope I get the opportunity to write my own history, it’ll be an amazing story.

  12. Juice Box says:

    Re # 4 – Bunch of preferred stock holders want to get paid out.

  13. Toxic Crayons says:

    11 – History is nothing but a bag of tricks we play on the dead.

    -Voltaire

  14. Toxic Crayons says:

    Grim, if you don’t mind me asking, are you of Generation X or a Millennial?

  15. Liquor Luge says:

    Juice (12)-

    Looks like TreasCo gets paid first. Loan sharks always get paid first.

    Fcuk you, pay me. Pf holders can pound salt. Gubmint racketeers “saved” Phony/Fraudy.

  16. HouseWhineWine says:

    I am a younger baby boomer and I am tired of the Millennial bashing. Collectively, they have their strong suits and their weak points, as every generation has. They are an important part of my team at work, and I have millennial children. They are generally pleasant, helpful, insightful. I wish they would be a bit more inquisitive but that’s pretty much my only complaint. It’s not like most of them WANT to be living in their parent’s homes. I love their energy and their acceptance of diversity.

  17. Liquor Luge says:

    When Phony/Fraudy are primed for another ass-r@ing, they will be properly gutted, then the rotting remains handed to the Pf holders as slivers of cold, dead meat to fight over.

  18. joyce says:

    Are you saying you fought in the war(s)?

    Juice Box says:
    February 16, 2015 at 11:19 pm
    Joyce last thing in my bones is war. Go for yourself, that is why I went.

  19. Liquor Luge says:

    Of course, banksters will collect their vig, as they relentlessly shove the worthless paper up Phony/Fraudy’s arses.

  20. Grim says:

    Gen X, tail end, 1976.

  21. leftwing says:

    “History is written by the victors.”

    The Millennials seem to get an unwarranted bad rap, if for no other reason that their history isn’t fully written yet. As a class can they be generalized to be workforce employment place painful, yes, but that can be as much an indictment of youth as anything else. Lots of time left for them to define themselves after everyone criticizing them are pushing up daisies.

    My biggest issue is with the Boomers’ parents. Not a big fan of my generation and I land it squarely on mom and pop abdicating basic parenting responsibilities. Understandable and warranted given the times? Likely, but still.

    Bottom line, major world events outside of anyone’s control – world wars, massive technology change, or the like – set the stage for any generation. Some yet unknown event(s) will define this generation, potentially moreso than even their actual response to it.

    If some pathological suicidal f**k had been just a little better artist he could have decorated the Secession under Klimt rather than defining at least three generations by taking a mechanized cruise through the Polish outback.

    You can only play the hand you are dealt.

  22. leftwing says:

    13. Haha, like that quote a lot.

    Difference between the French and Brits I guess.

  23. Liquor Luge says:

    FedCo will be buying mortgage paper again within our lifetimes. Prolly within the next ten years.

  24. Happy Renter says:

    Comparing the struggles of those who went through the Great Depression with the recent recession illustrates the point. People were living on the edge back then — hungry, cold, a few meager possessions (a valuable cast iron pot comes to mind). Today? Cashing in their EBT cards for Fritos.

    Young people living at home back then were out busting their butts working any job they could — any job; there wasn’t a “job Americans aren’t willing to do.”

    Today they’re living with their parents so the can hold out for a job that provides self-actualization and devoting their time to staging Die-in protests for Ferguson.

    Of course it’s insane to put a special mantle on the Millennials at such a young age – and that’s my point; Everyone going on about how supposedly great the Millinnials are and how they will turn this country around is drinking that Kool-aid. In my view they’ve done nothing to warrant savior status or favorable comparisons to the WWII generation, and if anything they seem destined to continue the downward trend we’re on at an accelerated pace.

    Glad they’re usiing their allowances to buy high end liquor, but just be ready for it to be taken away from you when they lose their subsidies. After all, you didn’t build that. And check your privilege, you rape culture enabler.

  25. Liquor Luge says:

    Name one hardship Milennials face that has been self-imposed.

    Everything they face is basically part of a doomsday machine that has been deliberately rigged by prior generations for the purpose of sticking them with the biggest unpaid bar tab of all time.

    Children are not a constituency and have no financial or political clout. What better group to stick with the tab for almost a century of racking up unpayable debt? Of course, things go even easier when you can also manage to brainwash the children into loving the serfdom to which they’re doomed.

    Love the way in which older people here denigrate a generation that has yet to come of age or accrue any sort of real influence…while at the same time, the same older people keep the binge going and the bar tab growing.

  26. grim says:

    You have an incredibly revisionistic view of the 1920s and 30s.

    The 1920s was the birth of installment purchase plans, for all sorts of new fangled inventions. Refrigerators, Radios, Cars, Houses, Record Players, Vacuum Cleaners, Furniture, Cheap clothing, Washing machines, etc etc. It was a gadget shopper’s paradise.

    People were living on the edge back then — hungry, cold, a few meager possessions (a valuable cast iron pot comes to mind).

    While this statement might have applied to a poor rural family in the midwest during the depression, it largely didn’t apply to anyone middle class or better in the 1920s and 1930s.

    Spend some time going through 1920s newspapers and you’ll get a much different view. The birth of adverting, the birth of mass consumption. I guarantee you’ll recognize more than 75% of the brands established in the early part of the 1900s.

  27. Liquor Luge says:

    The survivors of the Great Depression- and their offspring- created EBT cards and the other appurtenances of the modern welfare state.

    Of course, it goes without saying that the programs put in place to mitigate poverty also enslave those who use the programs, as they take away people’s God-given right to fail (and to suffer the consequences of that failure).

    Again, all these things weren’t the invention of Millenials.

  28. Liquor Luge says:

    All this shit started with the advent of federal income taxes and then the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

  29. Happy Renter says:

    (25) Not saying Millennials are to blame for the recession or the debt any more than the WWII generation was responsible for the Great Depression.

    Of course, they have voted en masse for Our Dear Leader, so the process of taking ownership of the disaster to come is fully underway.

    What I love is oldsters making endless predictions of doom, then suddenly throwing on rose colored glasses about the supposed “greatness” of the latest generation of man-boobed sheeple and how they’re going to save us.

  30. Jason says:

    24. Right on!

    To put it succinctly: too much coddling leads to loss of ambition, loss of ambition means no Greatest Generation.

  31. chicagofinance says:

    The whole Gen Y/Millennial thing started when this pile of crap sold 19 million copies in one year…….most people in business were thinking how is this development even possible?
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spice_(album)

    These chuckleheads stood in front on an award show audience at the Radio City shaking thier booty and most in the audience could be seen on TV thinking WTF is this?

    Suddenly, it dawn on the business community that there were hordes of these little kids in charge of their helicopter parents’ disposable income and soon you had Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears……then the unimaginable happened……you were served warmed over stale pablum and then you took a cynical derivative take on it…….
    ‘N Sync….and that crap was minting money…..all bets were off……the new paradigm was cemented for the next 50 years……market to this group of lemmings……

  32. Liquor Luge says:

    Andrew Jackson had the whole thing figured out and dealt with in the 1820s. The scum politicians and the banksters just kept at it until they prevailed.

  33. Happy Renter says:

    (26) I don’t care what brands were around in he 1930s — my grandparents lived it and I know the stories and enough history to know that anyone who thinks people today have it anywhere near as tough as they had it back then is delusional.

  34. Liquor Luge says:

    On second thought, yeah, the Spice Girls pretty much brought down Western Civilization.

  35. chicagofinance says:

    Driving back from Pennsyltucky on I78 yesterday…..crossed the Delaware and my shrewd son said “The is no ‘Welcome To New Jersey’ sign….I think all the wind must have knocked it over…”…….I said under my breath that it was intentional……..

  36. Happy Renter says:

    (32) Andrew Jackson! OMFG racism! I need a week off of school just for hearing his name. Check your privilege!

    Here I come to save the day!

  37. grim says:

    31 – So Good:

    Bop Magazine – February 1985

    Win a personal christmas gift from Menudo! Ralph Maccio! John Stamos! John Taylor! I could just DIE!

  38. Toxic Crayons says:

    20 – Oh, no sh1t, we were born the same year.

  39. grim says:

    Wasn’t that script in place since the Monkees? Completely fabricated bands, huge advertising push to build popularity, etc? Licensing deals and selling branded crap?

  40. chicagofinance says:

    It was assumed that the boomers only happened once……it wasn’t clear that there was a going to be a reconstitution of the effect…..the Spice Girls were the prima facie evidence……

    grim says:
    February 17, 2015 at 9:58 am
    Wasn’t that script in place since the Monkees? Completely fabricated bands, huge advertising push to build popularity, etc?

  41. Xolepa says:

    (39) The Monkees were part of the bubblegum set. You know what that means? Knock three times on the ceiling and I’ll let you know.

  42. Xolepa says:

    Can anyone imagine Steven Stills being part of that band? Look where history took him. Thank God he was missing teeth.

  43. Xolepa says:

    In reality, the Monkees performers were accomplished musicians. They were forced by the big players to play more ‘pop’ than rock. A lot of musicians were starving back then. Think ticket prices at 4 bucks each.

  44. Juice Box says:

    Joyce I made no claim to have served. What I said was go take trip and find out for yourself who your friends are.

  45. joyce says:

    Depending on where you draw the beginning/end lines of generation Y/millennials … about half weren’t born yet / six years old or less.

    chicagofinance says:
    February 17, 2015 at 9:45 am
    The whole Gen Y/Millennial thing started when this pile of crap sold 19 million copies in one year…….most people in business were thinking how is this development even possible?
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spice_(album)

  46. joyce says:

    All I did was ask a question to clarify because I wasn’t sure. That said, I haven’t been there nor do I plan to ever go. But let me ask you this, do you think taking a trip there after the US has been (let’s use the word “active”) in the region for decades is a fair way to assess the whole picture?

    Juice Box says:
    February 17, 2015 at 10:20 am
    Joyce I made no claim to have served. What I said was go take trip and find out for yourself who your friends are.

  47. JJ says:

    Monkeys one one tour had Jimi Hendrix as opening act. Now that was a cool show.

    They should foreclose ASAP on these Sandy folk. No offense. But the zombie houses and condos are dragging down property values of the folks who actually fixed homes. In addition for instance in my town we have young couples and investors looking to buy homes at good prices and fix them up. Meanwhile every block had one or two empty zombie homes and in most cases the owner is never coming back. Foreclose, sell them and let them be fixed up.

  48. Juice Box says:

    Chi – everyone’s favorite boy band from 1986.

    “The perfect pop group”

    http://magazines.famousfix.com/tpx_9016688/no1-magazine-united-kingdom-22-february-1986/

  49. Liquor Luge says:

    Pat Boone and white crooners doing covers of R&B hits came before the Monkees.

    That mf’er should be gutted William Wallace style for what he did to music. Pure stealing, and he shouldn’t be able to hide behind his handlers. Easy to be a born-again when you’ve got yours. His whole clan makes me want to vomit.

  50. njescapee says:

    Upstate New York town surrenders to winter, says just head to Key West instead http://www.keysnet.com/2015/02/16/501245/upstate-new-york-town-surrenders.html

  51. Liquor Luge says:

    Pat Boone prolly smoked bats like all the rest of those boy band poofs.

  52. Juice Box says:

    Something does not smell right on these Sandy Forclosures.

    Case in point House in this article is worth $177k and the mortgage payment is $2500 a month?

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/02/14/new-storm-foreclosures-rise-sandy-victims/23434391/

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/02/14/new-storm-foreclosures-rise-sandy-victims/23434391/

  53. jcer says:

    Old is new and new is old. Yes mass consumerism really started in the 20’s, yes the 20’s was a great time and the parallels with the early 2000’s are frightening. The difference with the great depression and now is the government intervention and the generally higher standard of living. People in the 20’s were still living in cold water apartments, apartments with shared baths, and rural homes with no plumbing. That is progress even in the depths of the depression the greatest generation was still living better than their parents and grand parents did back in the old country, dealing with famine, crop failure, corruption and downright poverty. It is more comfortable to be poor today with government aid, but that doesn’t necessarily make it easier as in general the standard of living they are used to is quite a bit higher than that of the early 20th century. The millenials really are playing in a fixed game, they can’t find good work, the cost of living has been manipulated by profiteering companies, hedge funds and private equity rigging the rental housing market, and wall street manipulated commodities markets and oh yeah they’ll have to pay back all that debt racked up in the last 20 years. They have been dealt a pretty bad hand, I have a job in a field with very high demand(software development), I have no millenials working for me, I have people from age 70 down to 40 but no youth, why, because any job we’d hire them to do is off shored or given to an H1B, again the management, who are boomers have no interest in developing talent, training, etc, it is all about profits. So yes call millenials lazy, they are only asked to survive on $10 an hour barista jobs 25hrs a week while paying at least 1.5k per month for a rat hole apartment, oh yeah and even with subsidized obamacare they still have to pay, and yes food costs are through the roof. They are just lucky they have a parents basement to live in because otherwise there is no way they’d make it. No don’t take this as an argument for a minimum wage raise, it isn’t crap jobs are just that, they are for the youth or students and teach a valuable lesson about work and how to work, they are not careers and are not meant to support ones self, they are for the young and the elderly, a little supplemental income. The problem is job quality, and liberal politicians will not talk about it. The issue isn’t the minimum wage it is that the job ladder is frozen, companies are building stuff in america so no manufacturing jobs, and we aren’t hiring enough domestically in the high tech fields. All employers are looking for workers who are ready and trained to do the job and want to hire them as contractors and discard them when they aren’t needed. So instead of beating the $15 minimum wage drum how about tax credits for creating good jobs and training americans to do the work.

  54. Fast Eddie says:

    You need to be “hungry” to be great. This generation is not hungry so the verdict is out whether they will be great.

  55. Anon E. Moose says:

    Juice [52];

    Never trust the media to get the story right, esp. a Gannett paper. USA Today is like 3rd grade reading level.

    Suppose the owners bought on a 10-yr equity loan; or they got raked on the rate for 2nd/investment home; add escrow for property taxes and flood insurance?

  56. JJ says:

    We have two condos in foreclosure in my building. Sandy was final straw. One owner paid 305K for in a “garden apartment” near beach. Meaning ranch style all one level that is four feet below sidewalk level. So roof of condo is around four feet off sidewalk.

    Condos were worth maybe 280K day before sandy now fully renovated worth 200K and renovated like 150K.

    Building is at a BFE of 11. Meaning FEMA says there is a one in 100 year chance there will be an 11 foot hide flood. These units had six feet of water in sandy.

    Some folks actually put down 20% back in Spring 2007 and after almost 8 years of loan payments are still underwater. We have one guy in my building at peak paid 500K for a unit all time high, today his unit is worth 280K

    Some of this has to do with flood insurance not paying out as intended. One house near me is called a Lanai ranch style home. Kinda a large ranch with a weird style. Large fist floor straight across on ground, then a 1/2 floor that is a basement and a 1/2 floor upstairs.

    Well those ranch main floors are on a slab built in 1955. Flat on ground, in 1955. Ground settles, folks turf up lawn, folks put in pavers etc.

    Guess what the homes many have main floors 3inches to 9 inches below ground, where kitchens, bathrooms etc are and most furniture. Fema called them basements and the payout was very small. Folks took a bath. They are also hard to sell as you cant insure the entire main level or basement properly. And a large ranch style home on a slab with a basement on one side and attached garage on another are extemely expensive to raise and Flood Insurance pays only 30K.

    One sold recently all redone for 399K, sounds good. Not really those homes sold for 590K back in 2007 and that was a redone one, the ones sold as is from Sandy are going for 290. That is 300K loss. And you only get 290K if you fixed mechanicals, heat, electric, gutter and mold remediated. The homes that are sitting moldy and dirty with no heat or electric are going for like 150K. Those are tear downs now as mold has infected whole house. And with possible Lead and Absestos mixed in with mold the permits are a pain.

  57. HouseWhineWine says:

    I don’t know what millennials you posters actually know well. There are plenty of “hungry”millennials, although the mass media doesn’t often show them. More importantly, there are plenty of well-meaning, thoughtful millennials. Bravo to those who aren’t all about cutting each others throats! I had enough of those types in my generation to last a lifetime. So now you are going to say, well that means that they aren’t tough enough. I hope their “toughness” doesn’t have to get tested by a useless war, or depression, but I have no doubt they will rise to the challenge if need be.

  58. yep no shortage on teenage girls who need non threatening boys to get their panties wet over

  59. wow that got through the filter

  60. Toxic Crayons says:

    When Jimi Hendrix opened for the Monkees. I think millenials of today would refer to this as….epic. Hendrix is still one of my favorite musicians.

    https://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/when-jimi-hendrix-opened-for-the-monkees/

    Rock music critic Lillian Roxon saw the show in Forest Hills, Queens. She said Hendrix’s love for his guitar was:

    so passionate, so concentrated and so intense that anyone with halfway decent manners had to look away. And that was the way the act began, not ended. By the time it was over he had lapped and nuzzled his guitar with his lips and tongue, caressed it with his inner thighs, jabbed at it with a series of powerful pelvic thrusts.

    As a joke she said the Daughters of the American Revolution got him fired for being “too erotic”. In fact on the eighth night Hendrix gave the audience the finger and stormed off stage. And that was it.

    One woman who saw the show in Charlotte when she was 11 remembers it this way:

    I have no recollections of anyone screaming for the Monkees to come on stage. All I remember is everyone screaming, standing on chairs, jumping up and down, waving their arms in the air, and being entranced by Jimi Hendrix on that stage. The music was like nothing I had ever heard and the crowd was in a fever when he was on stage. The last thing I remember about the evening was him setting his guitar on fire.

    grim says:

    February 17, 2015 at 9:58 am

    Wasn’t that script in place since the Monkees? Completely fabricated bands, huge advertising push to build popularity, etc? Licensing deals and selling branded crap?

  61. Grim says:

    Was named after Hendrix or Carter, pick one.

  62. Juice Box says:

    rer #56 – Moose I thought it was published the Asbury Park Press. Here is the video. Seems they fixed the house but skipped payments for over two years then got served two months ago and cannot make the back payments of one year. Wife plays it like they are still traumatized and don’t want to move back but that new kitchen, doors and windows etc did not just show up on it’s own. The place looks livable from the interior shots.

    http://www.app.com/videos/news/local/monmouth-county/sandy-recovery/2015/02/12/23314215/

  63. ExPat in NJ says:

    Subtitute boomer with Jew and you have the Muslim religion in a nutshell.
    “The world will be a better place once the last boomer dies.”
    – couldn’t agree more.

  64. anon (the good one) says:

    can’t get more entitled than that

    @BillMoyersHQ: A recent investigation unearthed a total of 3,959 racially-motivated lynchings btwn Reconstruction & WWII

  65. Juice Box says:

    re # 46 – re: “a fair way to assess the whole picture” Joyce we did not get involved until the First Barbary war, before that is was strictly a European problem from the 8th to the 18th centuries, a thousand years of war. Millions of slaves taken from the European states for centuries, countless killed in wars. It took the combined armies of the Holy Roman Empire, the German Nation, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth to defeat them.

    Don’t think they don’t teach that over there, they lost and want it all back. This whole IS caliphate crap is all about that, why do you think O man wants boots on the ground again? His legacy will go down we lost if we don’t.

  66. 1987 Condo says:

    I get a kick out of the fact I live 5 minutes from the inspiration for Pleasant Valley Sunday…”rows of houses that are all the same..and no one seems to care”…..

    I also think that “Shades of Gray” is a classic!

    Then again I like Kentucky Woman and Solitary Man too!!!

  67. Ragnar says:

    People are individuals. Grouping everyone born within a decade of the other as having certain shared characteristics is quite unfair. There are far more differences than similarities. Cultural and fashion trends are about as far as one can go, but how many people really stay within whatever is considered the “mainstream” of their generation?

  68. 1987 Condo says:

    Oh, and by Shades of Gray I mean the Monkees song, not the movie!:

    “Shades Of Gray”

    When the world and I were young,
    Just yesterday.
    Live was such a simple game,
    A child could play.
    It was easy then to tell right from wrong.
    Easy then to tell weak from strong.
    When a man should stand and fight,
    Or just go along.

    But today there is no day or night
    Today there is no dark or light.
    Today there is no black or white,
    Only shades of gray.

    I remember when the answers seemed so clear
    We had never lived with doubt or tasted fear.
    It was easy then to tell truth from lies
    Selling out from compromise
    Who to love and who to hate,
    The foolish from the wise.

    But today there is no day or night
    Today there is no dark or light.
    Today there is no black or white,
    Only shades of gray.

    [Instrumental interlude]

    It was easy then to know what was fair
    When to keep and when to share.
    How much to protect your heart
    And how much to care.

    But today there is no day or night
    Today there is no dark or light.
    Today there is no black or white,
    Only shades of gray.
    Only shades of gray.

  69. ExPat in NJ says:

    I was just telling my wife and MIL yesterday that I arrived at college in 1977 not knowing any “FM” music, only AM Pop. I knew Beatles, Boston, ELO, Hall & Oates but I had no idea who Stones, Springsteen, Bowie, or Steely Dan were.

    (39) The Monkees were part of the bubblegum set. You know what that means? Knock three times on the ceiling and I’ll let you know.

  70. Juice Box says:

    The Millennial’s bad rap is mostly due to the whole work-life balance crap that the Media mostly puts forth, how they are changing the large corporations. It makes them sound like they don’t want to earn their keep and put the time in to be successful at a large corporation. The Hipster movement and OWS does not help their image either.

  71. joyce says:

    St. Louis Cop Warns Officers to Turn Off Dashcam While Arresting Suspect
    http://newsfeed.gawker.com/st-louis-cop-warns-officers-to-turn-off-dashcam-while-1686131597

  72. joyce says:

    Records show Seattle police lost thousands of dashcam recordings
    http://www.komonews.com/news/local/130209878.html

  73. JJ says:

    I used to be a huge Jimi Hendrix fan. Although he did not leave long he taped everything, even practices, jam sessions, live shows. After his death tons of albums came out for a long time. His Dad got all the money.

    I stopped collecting when I got to 40 Jimi Hendrix records by the time I was 20. My wife laughs at the albums I have of Hendrix. But she does not realize I bought everyone Used. Meaning nearly all are original releases. Several are DJ versions stamped in big letters DJ Version Illegal to Sell. Hendrix albums given to radio stations and by the time Disco came out stations cleared out old albums and many ended up in record collector stores.
    Also have a lot of Led Zep, Stones etc. And rare Otis Redding ones. I have a very rare Otis Redding album where Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix performed live. Funny it is obvious Jim Morrison is high on the album.

    I also have lots of Library copies or records. The ones in the plastic lining. Pretty much once again when Disco and New Wave music took over. Those are really valuable as the album cover is completely encased since new. I have Woodstock album first edition for instance since new.

  74. JJ says:

    I saw Monkees perform live at World Trade Center lunch time in August 2001, shortly afterwards no WTC then no Monkees. They were pretty good.

  75. joyce says:

    Officer who shot Mary Hawkes fired
    http://www.abqjournal.com/503875/news/lawyer-albuquerque-officer-in-shooting-fired.html

    maybe it was related to the fact this was his 3rd time his camera “malfunctioned” before using force and/or killing someone

  76. Ragnar says:

    All millennials who think like Chris Hayes should go line up at Clot’s house to be disposed of. He has the ambition of being the hateable face of his generation.
    http://newsbusters.org/blogs/scott-whitlock/2015/02/17/chris-hayes-global-warming-single-most-important-thing-we-face
    Anon likely already is following him on twitter, salivating at the chance to forward his every tweet.

  77. chicagofinance says:

    Ragnar…..he went to my High School ….welcome to my jungle….

  78. chicagofinance says:

    Bill Maher said the same thing…..frankly I am perplexed……who creating this particular talking point and why have they all been charged with parroting it?

  79. The Great Pumpkin says:

    Great post!!!

    “Come on, they live in their parent’s basement because they are lazy”, says the baby boomer shipping away the millenials jobs in the name of profit. Then this manager wonders why he has to pay more taxes. Gee whiz, maybe if I hired more people or gave a raise, just maybe my taxes would go down. Don’t suck up all the profit and you won’t have to pay all the taxes a-hole.

    The economy (gdp) can grow all it wants, but if you don’t improve the job market, you are only making billionaires richer and what good does that do? ……crickets.

    jcer says:
    February 17, 2015 at 10:44 am
    Old is new and new is old. Yes mass consumerism really started in the 20′s, yes the 20′s was a great time and the parallels with the early 2000′s are frightening. The difference with the great depression and now is the government intervention and the generally higher standard of living. People in the 20′s were still living in cold water apartments, apartments with shared baths, and rural homes with no plumbing. That is progress even in the depths of the depression the greatest generation was still living better than their parents and grand parents did back in the old country, dealing with famine, crop failure, corruption and downright poverty. It is more comfortable to be poor today with government aid, but that doesn’t necessarily make it easier as in general the standard of living they are used to is quite a bit higher than that of the early 20th century. The millenials really are playing in a fixed game, they can’t find good work, the cost of living has been manipulated by profiteering companies, hedge funds and private equity rigging the rental housing market, and wall street manipulated commodities markets and oh yeah they’ll have to pay back all that debt racked up in the last 20 years. They have been dealt a pretty bad hand, I have a job in a field with very high demand(software development), I have no millenials working for me, I have people from age 70 down to 40 but no youth, why, because any job we’d hire them to do is off shored or given to an H1B, again the management, who are boomers have no interest in developing talent, training, etc, it is all about profits. So yes call millenials lazy, they are only asked to survive on $10 an hour barista jobs 25hrs a week while paying at least 1.5k per month for a rat hole apartment, oh yeah and even with subsidized obamacare they still have to pay, and yes food costs are through the roof. They are just lucky they have a parents basement to live in because otherwise there is no way they’d make it. No don’t take this as an argument for a minimum wage raise, it isn’t crap jobs are just that, they are for the youth or students and teach a valuable lesson about work and how to work, they are not careers and are not meant to support ones self, they are for the young and the elderly, a little supplemental income. The problem is job quality, and liberal politicians will not talk about it. The issue isn’t the minimum wage it is that the job ladder is frozen, companies are building stuff in america so no manufacturing jobs, and we aren’t hiring enough domestically in the high tech fields. All employers are looking for workers who are ready and trained to do the job and want to hire them as contractors and discard them when they aren’t needed. So instead of beating the $15 minimum wage drum how about tax credits for creating good jobs and training americans to do the work.

  80. The Great Pumpkin says:

    Do you believe everything has a cause and effect? You are telling me that burning things has no effect on the planet at all? These people are just saying this(making this up) because they want your money? You are lost. If you don’t realize that we are at a point where our actions are dramatically altering the planet we are on, you are lost. Please kill yourself so that you can give the rest of the planet a chance instead of manipulating people into thinking there is no chance that humans are changing the planet. How can you sit here and say this stuff, look into the mirror, and see an intelligent individual. The ocean is dying and it’s all our fault. Open up your eyes before you spit nonsense. The data says the earth is changing at a rapid pace, why are you in denial of the data? You are telling me that the industrial revolution did not change this world? That if the industrial revolution had never happened, the data would still look the same today?

    That’s one thing that I hate about Fox News and the right, they are so crazy that they believe climate change is a hoax developed by the left to get their money and ruin their business. Sick, just sick. I’m not left or right, think they are both crazy.

    Ragnar says:
    February 17, 2015 at 12:42 pm
    All millennials who think like Chris Hayes should go line up at Clot’s house to be disposed of. He has the ambition of being the hateable face of his generation.
    http://newsbusters.org/blogs/scott-whitlock/2015/02/17/chris-hayes-global-warming-single-most-important-thing-we-face
    Anon likely already is following him on twitter, salivating at the chance to forward his every tweet.

  81. joyce says:

    The problem with so-called “climate science” is that it’s not science at all; it’s hucksterism and fraud. Let’s look at a few (and only a few!) of the problems that the so-called “climate change” people peddle.

    In short exactly who is the “denier”? When you look at the facts surrounding this alleged “warming” what you find is cooked data, intentional refusal to consider time frames beyond the immediate past in geologic terms, the slander of those who point out the deceptions, omissions and outright lies of those pressing the agenda along with rank hypocrisy (Obama and Gore flying around in jets spewing monstrous amounts of CO2 into the air while claiming it’s a “serious problem”.)

    Indeed, it would appear that those who “believe” in so-called “global warming” (or “climate change” if you prefer) are in fact displaying the same sort of “magical thinking”, along with abject fraud, that “decorates” the claims of those who state that “God Created” and that it is not evolution that is responsible for the diversity and progress of various plants and animals upon this rock.
    http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=229833

  82. The Great Pumpkin says:

    Off-shore it!!!! Hope the upper-level management doesn’t come back and ask why their taxes went up this year. Don’t cry that the infrastructure is messed up and we have no money to pay for it after you have shipped off our tax dollars (jobs) in the name of profit. Are you competing now? Yes, you are. Competing on who can take down this standard of living in this country faster.

    Rags- you claim global warming is a conspiracy. How about I claim that shipping jobs in the name of competition was pure bs. Made up by the powers that be so that they can increase profit. These guys can never get enough profit. Total drug to them.

    Who were you competiting against that you needed to start using cheap labor? What large corporations were founded in one of these third world nations? They are started moving there to lower costs and increase profits. It’s a fallacy that they started to ship jobs and using child/slave labor in the name of competition. No corporation was formed in these third world areas, the corporations brought their factories there for one reason, to take advantage of slave labor.

    Prove me wrong or don’t spew bs that a worker costs too much. No one in their right mind is working for dollar a day in America or any advanced nation. Paying humans(esp kids) a dollar a day has nothing to do with competition and everything to do with greed. Makes me sick. This is why I have no respect for corporations. They are tools for the wealthy. They make slaves of the people and pollute our planet. Zero respect for anything, but profit.

    Nomad says:
    February 17, 2015 at 1:30 pm
    More pharma layoffs

    http://www.fiercebiotech.com/story/boehringer-trims-connecticut-workforce-sales-suffer/2015-02-17

  83. anon (the good one) says:

    @chrislhayes:
    Free advice for GOP presidential candidates: “Yes, I think parents should vaccinate their kids. Yes, I believe in evolution. Next question.”

  84. after nearly 10 years of being on this site in some way or another, pumpkin that is quite possibly one of the dumbest things I have ever read here. So much emoting so little value. Data has proven to be inconclusive on climate change, hypothesis are not facts.

    here is some reading for you

    http://tinyurl.com/prywb8e

    artic ice pack

    http://tinyurl.com/ov34fot

    this one summarizes it

    http://www.climatedepot.com/2014/09/07/global-warming-pause-extends-to-17-years-11-months/

    but feel free to spit the liberal party line.

  85. Libturd in Union says:

    Just got caught up on the last three days. Grim, I had no idea that you and a few others here were Estes rocket hobbyists. I was one too. Though I never aspired to join NASA. We were more interested in building weapons or putting frogs on the launch pad to see what the engine exhaust would do to them. Like you, never even saw an E engine, let alone an F engine.

    I once built a triple stage D engine rocket. I didn’t have the cash to pay for another 3-pack of D’s so I could get one with the charge that would eject the parachute, so I just used all multi-stage engines. This rocket was about 4 feet long and no wider than than the engine itself. It truly resembled a cardboard javelin. Well the rocket wasn’t engineered that well (who had the money for one of those tailfin alignment kits) so rather than going straight up, it arched a bit. By the second stage, the trajectory of the rocket was parallel to the ground. By the third stage, the trajectory was pointed downwards. To make matters worse, we glued the balsa wood nosecone in place since we knew there was no parachute ejection. Of course with that trajectory, we lost site of it shortly after the second stage and prayed the dumb thing didn’t kill someone. I sh1t you not, the next day, some kid brings our rocket to school. It landed in his backyard relatively intact and was sticking into the ground nose first. The center of the rocket had bent in half, but it was still in one piece. The kid lived nearly a mile from our launch site.

  86. The Great Pumpkin says:

    85- Joyce, go take a look at the ocean. We are in trouble if we keep this up. It’s common sense that everything has a cause and effect. Maybe some scientists cooked the books, but that doesn’t mean you throw out the whole idea about climate change. Sure, the planet’s climate has always been changing, but def not as fast as it is now. The snow caps that used to be on the tops of some mountain tops are almost gone. That’s all the evidence I need. Don’t tell me that’s normal. Also, don’t tell me the heating and acidification of the ocean is normal. Open up your eyes, we are changing the planet by the day.

  87. jj says:

    I think part of the reason Jersey shore has so many foreclosures is three fold. Many homes were pure vacation homes that sat empty most of winter and Chris Christie never had state funded property tax relief to the shore towns.

    For instance compare Long Beach NY Bungalows to NJ Bungalows.

    Long Beach Bungalows rent for 2k a month in winter, 10K a month in summer. Most are either primary homes or rented full time or either via AIRBNB or monthly rentals and have winter tenants. Owners are in a rush to fix even out of pocket.

    Second We got big big property tax breaks, if you have a mortgage we all know property tax makes up a big part. Having 8K in property taxes cut to 2k for two years really helps.

    Third, Long Beach and surrounding towns had a dont ask dont tell policy for a good two years after Sandy. No permits, no inspectors poking around, just get it fixed. While NJ deemed tons of homes Sub damaged and required it torn down or raised.

    Finally, Chris Chrisite did too good a job advertising all the damage at Jersey Shore which drove folks in summer 2013 and 2014 to the Hamptons. Also the Long Beach area and even Fire Island are totally rebuilt. Honestly, you can’t lose your year after year summer renters. You may never get them back. Hampton prices are at a record high right now even ones in the flood zones. My beach area was completely up and running by July 2013. High end homes which I do not have rent for up to 40K a month in the summer and 4k in winter. That kind of money on-line even with 130K damage you just write a check. Boom as you get that much rent in one year. End result was folks think Sandy never happened. Why someone in my town who rents every August 2012 looked no different than August 2013. I think Christie made it worse showing the world his damage.

  88. Ragnar says:

    Pumpkin, 84
    Ha ha, you are such a gullible fool. Freaking out just like your state-run propagandists intended, and attacking anyone and any evidence that challenges their orthodoxy. Must be a millennial.

  89. after nearly 10 years of being on this site in some way or another, pumpkin that is quite possibly one of the dumbest things I have ever read here. So much emoting so little value. Data has proven to be inconclusive on climate change, hypothesis are not facts.

    here is some reading for you

    http://tinyurl.com/prywb8e

    artic ice pack

    http://tinyurl.com/ov34fot

    this one summarizes it

    http://www.climatedepot.com/2014/09/07/global-warming-pause-extends-to-17-years-11-months/

  90. grim moderation response to pumpkin at 88. can’t get it past the filters

  91. The Great Pumpkin says:

    Okay, screw global warming. I’ll say that it is fake. So what about pollution?

    What about pollution? Can’t even drink out of a river anymore. That’s a good thing? Our planet seems really stable and healthy when you can’t even drink the water without filtering it. Just think how bad that is for the living things on our planet. We are def messing this planet up whether or not global warming is real.

    Ragnar says:
    February 17, 2015 at 2:13 pm
    Pumpkin, 84
    Ha ha, you are such a gullible fool. Freaking out just like your state-run propagandists intended, and attacking anyone and any evidence that challenges their orthodoxy. Must be a millennial.

  92. grim says:

    Stu – Remember once someone tripped over the igniter wire, pulled the pad down, just as we were launching. The thing took off parallel with the ground, thank god into the woods. I’m pretty sure if you got hit with that thing you would not be happy about it. I have no idea how that thing managed to thread the needle it did, but we never found the rocket, and we walked more than a mile out.

  93. Juice Box says:

    Pumpkin – There is a pretty good chance man won’t be around long enough to really mess things up.

  94. Libturd in Union says:

    What the progressives refuse to accept is that the science around measuring climate change is hokey at best. The leader of the climate change movement, Al Gore, profited and continues to profit greatly from these carbon exchanges. Much of the scientific research around climate change is funded by liberals and these scientists have a vested interest (their financial livelihood) in the existence of climate change. Heck, the whole science of meteorology is in its infancy to begin with. And even if the climate is changing, it’s just as likely to be caused by the wobbling of the earth on its axis which is most likely what caused the Ice Age. Scientists have no way of measuring this tilt or even isolating it as a variable in their experiments. I would also argue that the US is much cleaner and less polluting today than ever. We barely manufacture anymore and what we do produce tends to be done with strict EPA standards. So regardless of your decision to drive a Prius, buy in bulk and use a canvas bag at check out, one must travel to Southeast Asia to realize that every American could do what you are doing and it wouldn’t impact one hundredth of one percent compared to the gross polluting that is going on in these emerging markets. Today, it’s safe to swim in the Hudson north of Jersey City. And to eat some fish from there as well. Go look at nearly every river in the Far East. You can’t eat fish from there since none could possible live in them. So go on and keep Tweeting about how it’s the biggest issue confronting our survival today. Just make sure you share it with China, which you can’t, since their internet is censored. And all of these biased reports on climate change leave out our accelerating ability to adapt to it through technological advances. Trust me, know one thinks pollution is good for the earth and certainly, the West is not promoting pollution. But, you can’t attribute climate change to non-proven science either just as you can’t prove autism is related to vaccination.

  95. Grim says:

    Sure, climate change and global warming exists.

    Want to fix it? Go to China and fix it. When you are done there, there are dozens of counties with archaic generation infrastructure that need upgrading.

    God speed, wish you the best of luck.

  96. Libturd in Union says:

    Grim, our launch pad was a metal hanger straightened out to the best of our ability with pliers and then stuck through a tuna can for stability, then stuck into the ground. We didn’t use the ignitors since they required a launch button and a battery. We just stuck fuses from fireworks into the engine. It was much more exciting that way as well. Every once in a while, someone would light the fuse and it would be a quick burner and they would get covered in carbon. Fortunately, no one was ever burned.

  97. Ragnar says:

    You know how millions of people survived the climate change that happened between last summer and this morning? Capitalism and fossil fuels. Thank you Edison, Rockefeller, Goodyear, and thousands of other capitalists, for inventing the things that kept my home temperature a constant 70 this morning, cars that start and can run through snow and ice, and allow me to convey this electronically to an idiotic pawn of progressive education who understands and appreciates it less than my dog can.

  98. Libturd in Union says:

    Rags, 70 degrees? That is a sauna compared to my 65/68 split.

  99. Ragnar says:

    Libturd,
    I prefer something like 67/68 and wanted to try 62, as it’s apparently good for one’s health, but the females in my household complain about feeling cold.
    I should try to secretly gradually walk down the temperature in the coming weeks. But even one degree lower and I usually get caught.

  100. grim says:

    In other news, Clifton cops did not kill a kid who was reaching for a revolver in his pants.

    Tackled him?

    Impressive.

    http://www.northjersey.com/news/police-clifton-cop-tackles-passaic-teen-who-was-reaching-for-gun-1.1272813

  101. anon (the good one) says:

    @richardbranson:

    Removing carbon from the atmosphere should be part of mainstream climate change discussion

  102. 1987 Condo says:

    #98…China, then India…

  103. anon (the good one) says:

    @CBSNews:

    Grand jury indicts #ChapelHillShooting suspect on 3 counts of first-degree murder

  104. grim says:

    105 – says the guy who owns an airline???

  105. 1987 Condo says:

    62/66 split here

  106. Juice Box says:

    Grim – pic of Branson says it all http://www.virginearth.com/the-prize/

  107. Grim says:

    Branson and Gore look like they are on the verge of orgasm caressing those balls like that.

  108. homeboken says:

    Bloomberg quote –

    “It’s controversial, but first thing is all of your — 95 percent of your murders and murderers, and murder victims fit one M.O. You can just take the description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all of the cops. They are male, minorities, 15 to 25. That’s true in New York, it’s true in virtually every city in America,” Bloomberg is heard saying in the newly released audio.

    “That’s where the real crime is,” he added. “You’ve got to get the guns out of the hands of the people that are getting killed. First thing you can do to help that group is to keep them alive.”

    Bloomberg would later make even more candid comments, defending New York’s “stop-and-frisk” policy and even admitting that the city of New York does arrest mostly minorities.

    “So one of the unintended consequences is, people say ‘Oh, my God you are arresting kids for marijuana that are all minorities.’ Yes, that’s true. Why? Because we put all the cops in the minority neighborhoods,” he said. “Yes that’s true, why do we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is. And the first thing you can do for people is to stop them getting killed.”

  109. Libturd in Union says:

    62/66 split here

    That’s how I grew up. Summer AC was set to 72 when the windows weren’t open.

    By the way, I think the wifi thermostat is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I bought this one for $90. Honeywell RTH6580WF Wi-Fi 7-Day Programmable Thermostat

    It works perfectly. How or why people spend $250 on the Nest is beyond me.

  110. Toxic Crayons says:

    Sure we all do. But do you believe you should be forced to do it by the government?

    anon (the good one) says:
    February 17, 2015 at 2:00 pm
    @chrislhayes:
    Free advice for GOP presidential candidates: “Yes, I think parents should vaccinate their kids. Yes, I believe in evolution. Next question.”

  111. Anon E. Moose says:

    TC [114];

    CC said he vaccinates his kids. For anyone paying attention its a notable counterpoint to the leftists who want to run the plebe’s lives for them in a way they themselves would never tolerate. Exhibit A — the easiest place in the world to find a private jet or an SUV limo is the next UN Climate Change party conference.

  112. Toxic Crayons says:

    Record CO2 Coincides With Record-Breaking Crop Yields, ‘Greening of Globe’

    http://m.cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/record-co2-coincides-record-breaking-crop-yields-greening-globe

    anon (the good one) says:
    February 17, 2015 at 3:39 pm
    @richardbranson:

    Removing carbon from the atmosphere should be part of mainstream climate change discussion

  113. jcer says:

    global warming isn’t as scary as global cooling. Just remember the medieval warm period marked many advances for the western world and prosperity, where as when it was colder in the dark ages and the little ice age in the 17th century things were not so rosy for people. Climate isn’t well understood, so until they can actually use logic and reason it isn’t climate science as much as climate religion.

  114. anon (the good one) says:

    is that supposed to be a compliment?

    @GuardianUS: “The funny thing is, many Muslims actually have what one would call ‘southern values'”

  115. Juice Box says:

    CBS Nightly News explained that the cold weather is being caused by Climate Change

    Roll Eyes….

  116. The Great Pumpkin says:

    “These are just a few examples of questions that are critical for our future and that require an understanding of complex systems—the energy system, the climate system, the financial system. Finding sound answers to these questions requires sophisticated scientific analysis and expert knowledge; a lay person’s intuition will clearly not suffice. Yet, decisions in a democracy are (and should be!) taken by politicians and the voting public who are not usually scientific experts. Hence the well-being of our societies—and even more so the living conditions of future generations, which are defined by the decisions we take today—depends on the wider public being well informed about the state of scientific knowledge and discourse.”

    “To give just one striking example, a representative poll conducted by Yale and George Mason Universities (Leiserowitz et al 2011) in 2011 asked the US public what percentage of climate scientists think that global warming is happening. The true answer is a number well above 95%, as surveys of climate scientists or the scientific literature show (Anderegg et al 2010, Doran and Kendall Zimmerman 2009, Oreskes 2004), fully consistent with my own direct experience of working in the climate science community over the past twenty years. But only a small minority (13%) of the survey respondents picked the correct category (81–100%). The largest group of respondents (24%) chose the category 41–60%, i.e. they erroneously thought there are two roughly equal camps in climate science—and this despite the question not even being about the anthropogenic contribution to global warming, but only about the measured fact that global climate is warming! That shows that the general public, at least in the US, has no idea of the very broad consensus that exists in the scientific community about fundamental aspects of climate change.

    How can such a vast misconception of what is controversial and what is well-established in climate science come about? Important evidence is provided by the analyses of media articles on climate change in six countries just published by James Painter, a BBC journalist for many years, and Teresa Ashe from the University of London (Painter and Ashe 2012).

    Painter and Ashe analysed climate articles in quality newspapers in the USA, Brazil, China, France, India and the UK over two periods in 2007 and 2009/2010. They find that the voices of ‘climate sceptics’ are particularly present in the US and the UK, namely in one third and one fifth of the examined articles (respectively) during the latter time period. The US and the UK also were the only of the six countries where ‘type 1’ sceptics (Rahmstorf 2004)—those that deny even the existence of global warming—got a significant media airing. The ‘sceptical voices’ are particularly prevalent in right-leaning papers.

    What could be wrong about airing sceptical voices? In principle that is one of the strengths of free societies, of course, but in my view two problems can arise. Problem one occurs if the overall balance is so skewed that the public is given a seriously false impression of the scientific discourse: a phenomenon known as ‘balance as bias’ (Boykoff and Boykoff 2004). Media tend to balance statements with opposing views, which is fine with matters of opinion. But this tendency to ‘quote the other side’ then gives the public the erroneous concept of there being ‘two equal camps’ in science, as the poll cited above shows. The late Steven Schneider, one of the great communicators of climate science, used to say that this is as if with each report of a satellite launch, someone from the Flat Earth Society was quoted for balance.”

    http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/4/041003?rel=ref&relno=1

  117. The Great Pumpkin says:

    120- cont.

    “Problem number two arises if the facts are outright wrong. To give one example, the British TV documentary ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ claimed that volcanoes emit more carbon dioxide than human activities, in a bizarre brew with many other falsehoods, deceptive graphs and fabricated data. A representative of Channel 4, where the documentary was first broadcast, justified this by stating: ‘this is a controversial film but we feel that it is important that all sides of the debate are aired’ (Wikipedia 2012). Again the false impression of a ‘debate’ was promoted about issues where none exists, instead of shedding light on the real controversies which of course can be found in climate science just like in any other field of research. But how is the viewer to know, e.g., that in reality anthropogenic CO2 emissions are a hundred times greater than volcanic ones (Gerlach 2011)? How ethical is it to present false claims as ‘other side of the debate’? I suspect that in a TV documentary about history, a similarly cavalier attitude about well-documented facts would be unthinkable.

    Even some high-quality media are affected by the atmosphere created by the aggressive lobbying activity of ‘climate sceptics’ interest groups. Some time ago, an otherwise excellent article on sea level rise in a US newspaper cited a ‘climate sceptic’ falsely claiming that the current sea level rise had been on-going since the end of the last Ice Age. I asked the author, a good environment reporter, why she included this false claim by a scientist who is not noted for any research on sea level. She responded that in the US, she cannot publish articles on climate change without citing a ‘sceptic’, even though she knew well the statement was wrong.

    You would not find newspapers that routinely seek commentary on soccer tactics from a golfer or tennis player who claims that everything that the successful soccer practitioners say is wrong. Or newspapers that would print the views on the latest heart transplantation techniques by a dentist who muddles even simple verifiable facts on the matter. In climate reporting, though, such things are commonplace. Yet it has never been easier to find out who the successful practitioners of science, i.e. the genuine experts, in a given research field are, thanks to the online scientific publication and citation databases.

    Of course, as in every science, many issues are legitimately debated amongst climate scientists. But these real controversies are quite different from the fake controversies about global warming pushed into the media by various ill-informed lay people, pseudo-experts and hardboiled interest groups. Far too few journalists have bothered to investigate and describe the activities of such interest groups, like the Heartland Institute in the US, which in a bill-board campaign earlier this year likened those who accept the facts of global warming to mass murderers (Hickman 2012). Yet the public also needs to understand the background story about where the ‘climate sceptics’ claims originate and who finances their dissemination.

    Let us hope that the study by Painter and Ashe will help to initiate a critical discussion on climate science coverage in the media, particularly in ‘Anglo-Saxon’ countries, and help to improve it in future. There are so many science journalists out there who work hard every day, striving for quality under most difficult working conditions. Their efforts should not be in vain.”

  118. chicagofinance says:

    I would say without a doubt that it is RE101/Pat, but there is no way that Pat would put in that much effort….I ignore weeks at a time, then decide to read a couple of sentences for the hell of it, and *blam* there goes another LCD screen…..

    Painhrtz – aww f*ck it says:
    February 17, 2015 at 2:15 pm
    after nearly 10 years of being on this site in some way or another, pumpkin that is quite possibly one of the dumbest things I have ever read here. So much emoting so little value. Data has proven to be inconclusive on climate change, hypothesis are not facts.

  119. chicagofinance says:

    Are you kidding? How can they say that?

    Juice Box says:
    February 17, 2015 at 7:01 pm
    CBS Nightly News explained that the cold weather is being caused by Climate Change

    Roll Eyes….

  120. The Great Pumpkin says:

    These three paragraphs sum up the problem, imo. (Esp paragraph two )

    “Even some high-quality media are affected by the atmosphere created by the aggressive lobbying activity of ‘climate sceptics’ interest groups. Some time ago, an otherwise excellent article on sea level rise in a US newspaper cited a ‘climate sceptic’ falsely claiming that the current sea level rise had been on-going since the end of the last Ice Age. I asked the author, a good environment reporter, why she included this false claim by a scientist who is not noted for any research on sea level. She responded that in the US, she cannot publish articles on climate change without citing a ‘sceptic’, even though she knew well the statement was wrong.

    You would not find newspapers that routinely seek commentary on soccer tactics from a golfer or tennis player who claims that everything that the successful soccer practitioners say is wrong. Or newspapers that would print the views on the latest heart transplantation techniques by a dentist who muddles even simple verifiable facts on the matter. In climate reporting, though, such things are commonplace. Yet it has never been easier to find out who the successful practitioners of science, i.e. the genuine experts, in a given research field are, thanks to the online scientific publication and citation databases.

    Of course, as in every science, many issues are legitimately debated amongst climate scientists. But these real controversies are quite different from the fake controversies about global warming pushed into the media by various ill-informed lay people, pseudo-experts and hardboiled interest groups. Far too few journalists have bothered to investigate and describe the activities of such interest groups, like the Heartland Institute in the US, which in a bill-board campaign earlier this year likened those who accept the facts of global warming to mass murderers (Hickman 2012). Yet the public also needs to understand the background story about where the ‘climate sceptics’ claims originate and who finances their dissemination.”

  121. The Great Pumpkin says:

    97% of climate scientists back this claim. That’s a high number. I would be hard pressed to go against their researched findings.

    Are they able to predict this change with accuracy, highly doubtful. Not easy to make exact predictions on this issue. On the other hand, if they think humans are playing a role and 97% agree, why would you go against it? You think 97% of the scientists are bought out by the left? Come on now, that’s crazy. You think this idea of global warming came out of a need to swindle the masses? That’s one damn good plan if that’s the case. So good that they deserve to take my money for coming out with such a great idea to steal my money.

    “We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11 944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’. We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. In a second phase of this study, we invited authors to rate their own papers. Compared to abstract ratings, a smaller percentage of self-rated papers expressed no position on AGW (35.5%). Among self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW, 97.2% endorsed the consensus. For both abstract ratings and authors’ self-ratings, the percentage of endorsements among papers expressing a position on AGW marginally increased over time. Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research.”

    http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024?rel=ref&relno=1

  122. Liquor Luge says:

    jj (75)-

    That’s Monterey Pop. Fcuking classic. One of Otis Redding’s last shows. OTOH, The Doors proved themselves to be a motel happy hour band.

    “I have a very rare Otis Redding album where Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix performed live. Funny it is obvious Jim Morrison is high on the album.”

  123. Liquor Luge says:

    anon (105)-

    Dickwad, this is from a guy who wants to shoot passenger rockets through the ozone layer.

    “@richardbranson:

    Removing carbon from the atmosphere should be part of mainstream climate change discussion”

  124. Liquor Luge says:

    Allowing private property rights to dictate vaccination policy is smart and doesn’t allow the gubmint to control anyone’s body.

    Want to come to my club, team, rink, theater, dance studio, ball field, office, etc? Submit your vaccination records. Don’t believe in them? Keep your kids the fcuk off my property.

    End of debate.

  125. Liquor Luge says:

    Don’t want to vaccinate your kid? Be prepared to keep them at home all day and watch their hobby become sleeping with your pets and licking their arseholes.

  126. Liquor Luge says:

    Same for all these goddam hipsters’ kids who are still sucking teat at seven years old.

    Anybody see that Slap show on TV? I’d have knocked that bastard’s teeth out. Dude took it easy on him.

  127. The Great Pumpkin says:

    This study received some funding from the Koch brothers, so don’t be so quick to just ignore it as left propaganda.

    “It shouldn’t need to be said, but the Earth really is warming. Air and ocean temperatures are rising fast, ice is melting across the planet, ecosystems are shifting, sea levels are rising, and so on.

    The latest zombie climate myth to rise from the dead involves the oldest form of global warming denial. It’s a conspiracy theory that the Earth isn’t really warming; rather, fraudulent climate scientists are “fiddling” with the data to introduce a false warming trend.

    In The Telegraph, which is a mostly serious UK newspaper, Christopher Booker calls scientists’ adjustments to temperature data “the biggest science scandal ever.” These accusations have echoed through conservative media and online blogs, even being aired on Fox News (three times).

    In reality climate scientists process the raw temperature data for very good reasons. Sometimes temperature monitoring station locations move. Sometimes the time of day at which they’re read changes. Sometimes changes are made to the instruments themselves. In each case, if adjustments aren’t made, then biases will be included in the data that don’t reflect actual changes in temperatures.

    Richard Muller at UC Berkeley was skeptical that climate scientists were doing all these adjustments correctly, so he assembled the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) team to check the data for themselves. The biggest initial financial contribution to the project came from the Koch brothers.

    As Muller discusses in the video below, his team confirmed that the Earth’s surface temperatures are warming. In fact, BEST finds that NASA, NOAA, and the UK Met Office have slightly underestimated the warming over the past 15 years.”

    http://www.skepticalscience.com/fiddling-with-global-warming-conspiracy-theories-while-rome-burns.html

  128. joyce says:

    California police chief fired over stolen gun scandal

    KENSINGTON, CALIF.
    A small California town has fired its police chief over his handling of an investigation into a sergeant accused of having his gun, badge and handcuffs stolen by a prostitute at a Nevada hotel.

    The dismissal came after incensed residents denounced the chief’s handling of the case in the community north of Oakland.

    The governing board of Kensington announced Monday that it was ending contract negotiations with 59-year-old Chief Greg Harman, the Oakland Tribune reported (http://bayareane.ws/1MtH7xu ).

    Harman’s last day on the job is set to be May 31. He didn’t immediately respond to a call and email from The Associated Press seeking comment Tuesday.

    Many residents criticized Harman after the newspaper reported nine days ago that a prostitute stole Sgt. Keith Barrow’s gun, badge, ammunition and handcuffs from a Reno hotel room as Barrow slept. Barrow’s attorney, Justin Buffington has said his client may have been drugged.

    The weapon was recovered the next day when the prostitute’s pimp shot himself in the leg during a pawnshop altercation.

    Residents were upset that Harman left Barrow on active duty while the incident was investigated for nearly eight months, saying he found Barrow not to be a threat.

    Barrow wasn’t placed on leave earlier this month after the theft was revealed publicly. He’ll serve a suspension.

    The wealthy town of 5,000 people is governed by a five-member board with Harman at its helm. Public records show Harman was paid $262,000 in cash and benefits to supervise nine officers and also serve as general manager of the unincorporated town’s services and police protection district.

    The board is also dealing with a federal civil rights lawsuit naming Barrow as a defendant in the case alleging improper conduct by a drug enforcement task force several years ago.

    The suit alleges that Barrow was one of several officers who acted improperly during the raid of a store in Marin County in September, violating the civil rights of its owner while either stealing or causing to be stolen $5,500 in cash, as well as jewelry and other items, according to a copy of the suit obtained by the Tribune.

    The suit names a regional police cooperative, the West Contra Costa Narcotics Enforcement Task Force, known as WestNET, to which Kensington contributes both funding and Barrow’s participation, as well as Barrow and several other officers individually.

    The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in September but does not list an attorney for Barrow. Deputy Attorney General John Devine, who is representing WestNET, did not immediately respond to an email from the AP seeking comment.

  129. The Great Pumpkin says:

    “Scientific skepticism is healthy. Scientists should always challenge themselves to improve their understanding. Yet this isn’t what happens with climate change denial. Skeptics vigorously criticise any evidence that supports man-made global warming and yet embrace any argument, op-ed, blog or study that purports to refute global warming. This website gets skeptical about global warming skepticism. Do their arguments have any scientific basis? What does the peer reviewed scientific literature say?”

    http://www.skepticalscience.com

  130. Liquor Luge says:

    Somebody find that ho that stole the sheriff’s gun, and tell her to shoot Punkinhead.

  131. Ragnar says:

    Anyone notice that the more confused Punkin gets, the longer his posts get? The final stage is when he starts posting anonymous lengthy comments he finds on websites.

  132. Ragnar says:

    Luge, you are right about property rights being able to enforce vaccination. Even in private schools, I’d expect insurers to demand students be vaccinated or owners charger higher rates.
    The funny thing is that if some herb had half the effectiveness and 100 times the side effects, the anti – Vax crowd would be eating it every day and steaming their vages with it.

  133. The Great Pumpkin says:

    Honestly, how do actually believe that human actions are having no effect on the planet? I thought you are a deciple of logic? How in the world did you come to this conclusion using logic? Get rid of all the technology that tries to eliminate carbon foot print. Instead, let’s get the coal trains going again!!! No such thing as global warming. Let’s make cars that run on coal. Idiot scientists trying to ruin my life by spreading nasty rumors of global warming created by man, as if man could have an effect on this planet or its climate by pumping massive amounts of gas in the air. What fools.

    Ragnar says:
    February 17, 2015 at 8:16 pm
    Anyone notice that the more confused Punkin gets, the longer his posts get? The final stage is when he starts posting anonymous lengthy comments he finds on websites.

  134. grim says:

    C’mon daylight gains! Woo! Love this part of February, always feels like we turn the corner out of the dark Winter. Gaining more than 2 minutes a day, moving into March where we’ll gain 3 minutes a day. Between now and the end of February we’ll gain another half hour of daylight.

  135. The Great Pumpkin says:

    137- Rags, prove this wrong. Im trying to present this in a logical way.

    We have an atmosphere. The atmosphere creates the climate. If the atmosphere changes, the climate changes. You can argue about which way the atmosphere might change, but unless you are a complete buffoon (or a deliberate liar), you cannot argue with the basic premise that changing the atmosphere will change the climate.

  136. chi says:

    Grim. Pumpkin. Troll or no troll. What do the IPs tell you?

  137. Libturd at home says:

    Passion Fruit,

    It’s not so much a left vs. right thing. And few doubt the existence of climate change. What is in question, and this is always left out by these so called scientists, is whether humans are creating this change, is it a natural phenomenon or possibly a combination of both. And wouldn’t it suck for climate scientists to not have climate change? Why, they would have to change their professions. You won’t see this in a tweet because it’s too confrontational, but the biggest story of our time is not climate change. It’s the increase in Islamic religious fundamentalism. And the longer the West waits to deal with it, the bigger the story will become.

  138. Comrade Nom Deplume, basking in the moment, middle finger extended . . . says:

    [83] nomad

    Christ, that hits home. That co was recruiting Mrs. Deplume fiercely. Guess I’m glad she didn’t take it.

  139. Liquor Luge says:

    Punkinhead needs to suck on an exhaust pipe, then come back here and report on greenhouse gases.

  140. The Great Pumpkin says:

    141- Maybe Nostradamus will be right about a wwIII. These extremists blow. I can’t stand people that deal in extremes. There is no talking to them.

    On the issue of scientists acting in self-preservation, maybe this applies to some, but def not the majority. You are telling me that 97% of the scientists out there are ignoring the data and pushing bs in the name of self-preservation? No way. 97% is way too high of a number for a scientific field. These are really smart people. Obviously, it’s a complicated problem and it’s too early in the game to provide 100% accurate predictions, but these scientists are def not blowing smoke to make a dollar. Our offspring will surely be dealing with issues with the climate in the future. No doubt about it. So collect as much data as you can and try to understand the issue. It’s a much better approach than just blowing off climate change and totally ignoring it, which is what skeptics do.

  141. The Great Pumpkin says:

    Interesting read. Are the proponets for free market theories responsible for the modern welfare state? Major contradiction here. By taking away all the lands from the peasants and making them go work in factories to survive, they took away these people’s chance at self-provision. Ironic, don’t you think? Nothing free about it when they are taking the land away from you that you used to survive. Interesting stuff.

    “Free Markets Were Not Natural. They Were Enforced
    The modern system of free trade, free enterprise and market-based economies, actually emerged around 200 years ago, as one of the main engines of development for the Industrial Revolution.

    In 1776, British economist Adam Smith published his book, The Wealth of Nations. Adam Smith, who some regard as the father of modern free market capitalism and this very influential book, suggested that for maximum efficiency, all forms of government interventions in economic issues should be removed and that there should be no restrictions or tariffs on manufacturing and commerce within a nation for it to develop.

    For this to work, social traditions had to be transformed. Free markets were not inevitable, naturally occurring processes. They had to be forced upon people. John Gray, professor of European thought at the London School of Economics, a prominent conservative political thinker and an influence on Margaret Thatcher and the New Right in Britain in the 1980s, notes:

    Mid-nineteenth century England was the subject of a far-reaching experiment in social engineering. Its objective was to free economic life from social and political control and it did so by constructing a new institution, the free market, and by breaking up the more socially rooted markets that had existed in England for centuries. The free market created a new type of economy in which prices of all goods, including labour, changed without regard to their effects on society. In the past economic life had been constrained by the need to maintain social cohesion. It was conducted in social markets — markets that were embedded in society and subject to many kinds of regulation and restraint. The goal of the experiment that was attempted in mid-Victorian England was to demolish these social markets, and replace them by deregulated markets that operated independently of social needs. The rupture in England’s economic life produced by the creation of the free market has been called the Great Transformation.

    — John Gray, False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism, (The New Press, 1998), p.1
    A detailed insight into this process of transformation is revealed by Michael Perelman, Professor of Economics at California State University. In his book The Invention of Capitalism (Duke University Press, 2000), he details how peasants did not willingly abandon their self-sufficient lifestyle to go work in factories.

    Instead they had to be forced with the active support of thinkers and economists of the time, including the famous originators of classical political economy, such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, James Steuart and others.
    Contradicting themselves, as if it were, they argued for government policies that deprived the peasants their way of life of self-provision, to coerce them into waged labor.
    Separating the rural peasantry from their land was successful because of “ideological vigor” from people like Adam Smith, and because of a “revision of history” that created an impression of a humanitarian heritage of political economy; an inevitability to be celebrated.
    This revision, he also noted has evidently “succeeded mightily.””

    http://www.globalissues.org/article/39/a-primer-on-neoliberalism

  142. Ragnar says:

    That 97% figure is also made up for gullible pawns to repeat and feel safe in their ignorance of the real issues. It’s working for Punkin.

  143. The Great Pumpkin says:

    146- made up? Check out this journal.

    “We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11 944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’. We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. In a second phase of this study, we invited authors to rate their own papers. Compared to abstract ratings, a smaller percentage of self-rated papers expressed no position on AGW (35.5%). Among self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW, 97.2% endorsed the consensus. For both abstract ratings and authors’ self-ratings, the percentage of endorsements among papers expressing a position on AGW marginally increased over time. Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research.”

    http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024?rel=ref&relno=1

  144. The Great Pumpkin says:

    Rags, read over post 145 too. Ironic, don’t you think? You wail on the poor for relying on welfare, meanwhile your free market originators are responsible for their current state. They were surviving on their own until they were forced to become workers and work for the man. Now that the owners have found the equivalent of slave labor in Asia and Africa, they no longer need the workers and have since left us (the people aka govt) to take care of these people who can’t find jobs and survive on their own. Beautiful thing!

  145. WickedOrange says:

    House Hunting Season: 6 Key Trends That Search Reveals
    https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/features/house-hunting-season.html

  146. Damon says:

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