Disqus - Latest Comments for Tully

Re: Most Mortgages Are Probably Invalid And Courts Are Starting To Notice

Tully — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:05:54 -0000

It's even a bigger mess than the problem described, though in a way that's GOOD for the property owners. In some cases of mortgages that were sold forward or securitized, the original loan papers failed to follow them. So homeowners in foreclosures are (rightfully) demanding that the original loan documents be presented, the ones with their signatures on them. And in many cases those documents are lost or no longer exist... or, as the story alludes, sometimes the documentation of the chain of transfers is inadequate.

Result: The homeowner can sometimes walk away with the house, free and clear, because the mortgage holders failed to properly document their ownership of the loan. Even when they DO have all the paperwork or can track it down eventually, just demanding it be produced can provide some extra time for the homeowner to get on top of the situation before their home is taken away from them.

Re: Rasmussen: Hey! You know what doesn’t suck? Our health care!

Tully — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 16:06:15 -0000

Horrors, I put less weight on opinions that have been empirically demonstrated to be wrong than I put on opinions empirically proven to be correct! However will I live with myself? :-D

Re: Rasmussen: Hey! You know what doesn’t suck? Our health care!

SteveK — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:13:14 -0000

Tully, They say a broken clock is right twice a day, too, but since you put NO value on what all the other MAJOR pollsters (Rasmussen included) think there's nothing left for me to say. I'll leave you to your belief system. November 2008 in IOWA, eh? Boy howdy you got me with that one.

Re: Rasmussen: Hey! You know what doesn’t suck? Our health care!

Tully — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:40:04 -0000

Um, you're nitpicking my example with a subjective poll of other pollster's subjective opinions of the "dependability" of other pollster's polling of a single state for a single caucus (Iowa Dem Caucus 2008), said survey being taken before the results of the caucus were in? That said poll is not even remotely an objective analysis of polling accuracy at all, in any way shape, or form? Sweet irony.

Let's look at the actual results and polling in November 2008 for Iowa, that state you think Rasmussen so sucked at. Hmmm. Seems Rasmussen called it at 8% for Obama a week before the election and noted a rising trend in his favor, and the final results were (insert drum roll) Obama 54.0% versus McCain 44.7%, for a final of 9.3% Obama, a 1.3% undermargin for Rasmussen but reflective of their claim of a slight upward Obama trend. Marist, also a week out, was first in accuracy for Iowa at 10% or 0.7% off. Third was Mason-Dixon, also a week out, with 11% or 1.7% off. ALL other Iowa pollsters in the final week or closer were off at least 4.7%.

Re: Rasmussen: Hey! You know what doesn’t suck? Our health care!

SteveK — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 11:13:09 -0000

Tully wrote: "Heh. Rasmussen consistently scores up at the top of pollsters for accuracy."

Consistently, eh? Tully, your link only says that Rasmussen was third in polls regarding "Democratic contests in North Carolina, Indiana, West Virgina, Kentucky and Oregon." in May, 2008. That hardly fits most peoples definition of 'Consistent'.

Following are our updated pollster ratings, accounting for the Democratic contests in North Carolina, Indiana, West Virgina, Kentucky and Oregon.

UPDATE:
The Poll of Polsters: Rating the IA Polls at polster.com shows that Rasmussen was at the bottom of the barrel eeking out a mere 16th a field of 18.

The pollsters receiving the lowest scores are Zogby International, the American Research Group and Rasmussen Reports. In the case of Zogby, four out of five pollsters rated their surveys as not very (28%) or not at all reliable (52%).

Re: Rasmussen: Hey! You know what doesn’t suck? Our health care!

Tully — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 11:44:55 -0000

when it comes to political polling, Rasmussen has been one of the least accurate

Heh. Rasmussen consistently scores up at the top of pollsters for accuracy. Not as good as SurveyUSA, but well above Mason/Dixon and Gallup and Zogby.

Re: WaPo: Only Positive Obama Ads, Please - mediabistro.com: FishbowlDC

Tully — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 15:38:00 -0000

They have the right to determine what they will and won't publish, but it sure does emphasize the one-sidedness that's killing newspapers, doesn't it?

Re: Prediction: The Ayers Haters Still Won't be Satisfied

Tully — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 03:50:26 -0000

It is true the potential for killing existed in the acts, but no one died as a result of the activities of the Weather Underground.

Better re-check that premise. Not only DID the activities of the WUO kill people, that they didn't kill many more seems to be mostly a result of incompetence. Blowing buildings up is not a marker of peaceful intentions.

The bombing of the Berkeley PD in 1970 injured two police officers. The bombing of the San Francisco PD three days later killed Sergeant Brian McConnell. Less than a month later a WUO bomb containing 34 sticks of dynamite is found in a Detroit police station. A WUO bomb left in the San Francisco Hall of Justice likewise failed to detonate.

And while few mourn too much over WUO members Terry Robbins, Diana Oughton, and Ted Gold blowing themselves into little itty bitty bits while building nail bombs with which to blow up Fort Dix soldiers, they are most assuredly dead as a result of "the activities of the Weather Underground."

Re: Gay Marriage: Where The Right Is Wrong

Amanda — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:45:02 -0000

Tully,

The legal benefits aspect is an interesting point. To me, though, I don't think that should matter. Gay people contribute to social security, too. They pay taxes on their income. Why should they not then be allowed to access the benefits in the same way hetero couples do? If they are contributing to the benefits pool at the same level as their hetero counterparts, there's no logical reason to deny them the benefits.

Re: Legendary US Oil Man Wants To Kick Addiction

Tully — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 12:01:18 -0000

SteveK nails part of it, but there's more.

T. Boone has spent millions acquiring the right-of-way for the transmission lines to feed power and water to Dallas/Ft. Worth. He's also acquired the water rights to massive chunks of north Texas, which would let him suck the Ogalalla aquifer dry. He has his massive windfarm under development--and has spent more piles of money ensuring huge tax credits and subsidies for same. He has hundreds of millions invested in natural gas production, and is doing his best to get control of all the natural gas pipelines in the region.

He KNOWS wind cannot replace 20+% of current power generation for the nation. But if demand for natural gas goes up he will have locked up control of the energy and water utilities markets for north Texas while raising the demand for NG substantially.

He's a wannabe monopolist. Period. T. Boone is ALL about T. Boone.

Re: Quote Of The Day: On Maliki’s Being “Misquoted” About Supporting Obama Iraq Pullout Timetable

Tully — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 18:20:09 -0000

Maliki didn't "retract what he said," he simply did not say what he was misrepresented as saying. He was represented by Der Spiegel as supporting or endorsing Obama's Iraq plan, and he most explicitly did not do that. That's editorialism on DS's part.

Even in the interview itself he made that clear. If you read what he actually said, he said he would prefer that the situation allowed for us to withdraw in 16 months if circumstances permitted rather than for us to maintain an indefinite combat presence. (Well, doesn't almost everyone?) He did not say it would happen that way or that he was endorsing any timetable other than "sooner is better than later." He then went on to lay out specific conditions required for that to occur. Stability in central Iraq, sufficient strength and expertise of Iraqi security forces, the eradication of AQ in Iraq, and economic progress and recovery.

One would note that "Obama's Plan" does not really call for any such conditions, just for exit, regardless.

Re: America’s Tricks: As Usual, Poland is Falling for Them

Tully — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:01:16 -0000

I see that Polish jokes are still politically correct in some circles.

Re: About ‘Gay’. And some speculation on why the Religious Right insists we’re ‘homosexual’

Tully — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:31:22 -0000

I don't consider either term pejorative, but I'm not gay, so what do I know?

I did find the auto-substitution at AFA to be absolutely hilarious, and symptomatic of reflexive idiocy.

Re: Obama Hating the Wimminfolk!

Tully — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:46:46 -0000

The first, and largest problem with the account is that there is no reference to the relative positions of the employees involved. How long has each been on the team? What experience and education did they bring with them at the time of their hiring? How skillful were they in negotiating their starting employment level? (and, following that, starting pay.) How many compensation reviews have they had?

Of course, applying those metrics across the board in society at large just about completely negates the broad-brush much-touted pay differences between men and women.

Re: One way ticket to the other side!

Tully — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:05:51 -0000

Holly does make a good point about perps who are later exonerated by DNA.

Holly's point applies to the death penalty ITSELF but has no bearing at all on whether the death penalty is appropriate for child rape. I'm with T-Steel there. But I still agree with her point, as courts and juries can and do screw up and convict the innocent, and once someone has been executed its too late to say "Oops!" I've always thought that a much higher standard of proof should be required for DP sentences, as in "pretty much beyond ALL doubt." (EX: Just as DNA has freed many wrongfully convicted of rape, it can also conclusively prove same beyond any shadow of a doubt in a child rape case.)

Convince me that life no parole really means jsut that and that prisoners never escape, and I'll happily forgo the death penalty. But in exchange I want child rapists held in the general prison population. :-)

If we broaden the crimes deserving death to child rape . . . we risk opening the floodgates.

Oh, please. For centuries the death penalty used to be about the only penalty for anything resembling a serious crime. Indeed, the word felony referred to crimes for which the death sentence could be applied, and extended down to even fairly petty theft. Slippery slopes rarely run back uphill.

Re: Obama Gets “The” Endorsement: The Lousy Timing of Al Gore

Tully — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:32:17 -0000

Chapter Two, Profiles in Pomposity: Al Gore

Re: Obama ‘Reinforces Sense of White Superiority’

Tully — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:30:54 -0000

I'm gettin' tired of the halos. Really. He may not be a very naughty boy, but he'd still not the Messiah.

Re: Quote of the Day: On Tim Russert

Tully — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:30:12 -0000

cartoon funny 'cause it's true

Re: The Facts About ANWR Drilling And America’s Oil Supply

Tully — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:57:02 -0000

Let's throw in a few numbers you ignored. Adding 2M bbl/day to domestic production would reduce American oil imports by a full 20% at current consumption levels. To figure out how much that would reduce our trade deficits and the amount of money shipped off to nations not always our friends, just do the math at current prices.

However, that would be a somewhat overstated "savings" as current prices are not strictly driven by supply/demand market fundamentals. They're also driven by speculation and geo-political uncertainty. Reducing the uncertainty associated with domestic supply would also put downward pressure on prices, pressure out of proportion with the supply increase.

The "reward" would be somewhat boosted back up because domestic production does not have to be moved around the world by tanker, so there's an associated side benefit of reduced transportation costs, and reduced carbon footprint associated with that transportation.

The DOE uses some very conservative estimates and examines ANWR as a ceteris paribus case (quite properly) in isolation from other changes such as opening up coastal reserves. Their median estimate using those conservative estimates is that opening ANWR would result in a net reduction of $200+B in trade deficits over a 12-yr period using a median production figure of 2.6B bbls produced over same period. That's without taking anything else into account, such as the additional production from the North Slope fields enabled by extending the lifetime of TAPS.

I think ronbeas has a relevant point about opening the coastal reserves being a bigger prize and ANWR being a "flag" issue, but the opening of ANWR is still on the list for reasons above and beyond ANWR itself, namely the smaller fields and the just-leased NPR lands nearby needing TAPS.

We sit on over trillion barrels and barrel-equivalents of domestic reserves that are blocked from production by Congress. We use about 10 billion barrels a year, roughly half of it imported. We don't have an oil crisis, we have an oil production crisis that is political in nature.

Re: GOP To The Rescue: Republicans Block Extra Tax On Oil Companies

Tully — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:46:20 -0000

Jim, I have no problem with taking away any irrational and unjustified tax breaks from oil companies (or any other companies, for that matter). And I'd happily trade a public-land-royalties re-negotiation and re-auction for opening up access to some of the trillion or so barrels and barrel-equivalents of domestic U.S. reserves that Democrats in Congress have placed off-limits over the last three decades. We don't have an oil shortage. We have an allowed-oil-production shortage.

But yes, when you raise taxes on an industry, the cost does get passed on to consumers in one form or another. Trying to micromanage via government to avoid that just makes it worse. At best, a "monopoly utility market" regulation model can somewhat control the monopoly/oligopoly aspects of the pricing, at a cost of somewhat lowered production, albeit at greater production efficiency.

Runasim--it doesn't matter what you mistakenly believe I imply. Windfall profits? Sure, but why be punitive against just one industry? Let's be fair and do it across the board! As bellisarius notes, farmers are showing record revenues this year, so let's windfall tax them too! (Quick--what would that do to the cost of food? Uh huh.)

We actually have a comparitive for a windfall profits tax against oil companies, in the 1980 WPT tax. That was projected to raise almost $400 billion in federal revenue. Actual revenues were just under $80 billion, and since the tax was deductible half of those were recaptured by the oil companies resulting in net federal revenue of about $40 billion, a tenth of what was projected. In addition the tax discouraged domestic exploration and production while demand continued unabated, resulting in our oil imports increasing steadily. Which is a goodly part of how we got in this mess. Even the New York Times cheered when it was killed off in '88. It's fun to think of sticking it to the oil companies, but experience and analysis says we mostly end up sticking it to ourselves. Narrow taxes designed to address transient phenomena are generically bad ideas, however viscerally appealling. You want to help the American consumer? Drill. Develop new cost-competitive energy technology.

Saw the algal oil thing when it first came out. If they can get roughly an order-of-magnitude reduction in their large-scale production costs, they've got a MAJOR winner. That would put their production cost down to somewhere around $40/bbl-equivalent. That would cut the money flow out from under OPEC, remove tons of power (no pun intended) from Big Oil, would not require any major retooling of existing refineries, and the transportation costs would be near zero because there's no reason not to put your algal-oil plants right next to the refineries. No need to move the crude across half a planet when you can make it next door!

And it's carbon-neutral, and trace-pollutant cleaner than crude to boot. It would likely even be carbon-reducing to some small extent, as there's just no way that some of the CO2 captured out of the atmosphere in the algal production won't be converted to remnant solids. I'm rootin' for 'em. Also for the folks who have almost-not-quite managed to get small-scale solar down to prices competitive with grid power. Pricing aside, that wold be a great thing just by taking the pressure off the grids at peak-demand time.

Re: GOP To The Rescue: Republicans Block Extra Tax On Oil Companies

Tully — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 09:32:29 -0000

I say we should have a windfall profits tax on actors and authors.

To state the obvious, taxes get passed through to the consumer. Why are the Democrats working so hard to raise the cost of gasoline when it's at historic highs?

Re: Justice Department Official Gives $500,000 Anti-Crime Grant To Well-Connected Group For Golf Lessons

Tully — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 09:24:23 -0000

Golf? How's that going to keep them off the streets at night? Midnight basketball is the answer!

Re: Impeachment! (America yawns)

RememberNovember — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:35:03 -0000

People are afraid of the truth, and the consequences. We have become an act without consequences nation/generation. When a football star becomes an alleged spouse killer, and gets acquitted by a circus court, when a President takes a country to war ( though no official Declaration of War was made by Congress, rather an approval for use of force instead which essentially gives the President a blank check to fire at will) based on falsified evidence and has done nothing but subvert the principles and ideals of Democracy he so vehemently vaunts, what do you expect?

Re: Impeachment! (America yawns)

Tully — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:13:27 -0000

Geez, folks, you need someone to state the obvious? Kucinich is nuts. He needs his tin-foil renewed and his neck-bolts tightened. His elevator doesn't go to the top floor anymore since his chimney lost a few bricks, and he's a coupla tacos short of a combo plate.

He and Ron Paul would make a lovely couple.

Re: This Just In!

Tully — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:09:22 -0000

Oh, man, Obama's gonna kick his ass in the other 44 states!