Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktHow do you drop bombs from an airplane?
It’s actually quite an interesting engineering problem.
“Gosh, that was loud!”
The British Air Force testing the UK’s first hydrogen bomb.
Miniature nuke set off on a table-top? No, it’s a trick. But good camera tracking.
There ya go! Merry Christmas, everybody!
Filed under: Uncategorized |
All Things in Moderation 
lmsinca: if you're interested in serial killers, are you familiar with Herman Webster Mudgett, or H. H. Holmes, and his infamous "Murder Castle"?And amazing story, and something that I don't think could happen today. Contractors building your bizarre hotel would get suspicious, and after you didn't pay them, the labor union would come break your kneecaps.
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Kevin…that's a great story, very well told by Erik Larson in The Devil in the White City.. He tells the story in conjunction with the story of Chicago's World's Fair, which took place at the same time. Very interesting.
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Awesome Kevin thanks. Are you familiar with the Wineville murders? They were only a few miles from me but luckily from another era. The movie "The Changeling" depicted them pretty well.And, speaking of Atomic Bombs, one of my Dad's best friends, Rick Nelson, was the radio man on the Enola Gay. I've mentioned him before but didn't know if you knew it or not. He sure had some stories to tell. We're still good friends with his wife, Nancy, and she comes to a lot of our family parties. She owns a big avocado orchard in Riverside about 20 minutes from us so we go pick her up as she doesn't drive much any more. My kids learned how to drive tractors out there.
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lms, one of my fond childhood memories is learning to drive a tractor. My driving instructor was a brilliant patent attorney who happened to own a small farm in Woodstock, IL (where "Groundhog Day" was filmed).
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One of the first things our son did MsJS after he bought the house and property they own now was go out and buy a tractor. So I know what you mean about childhood memories. That's pretty neat about Groundhog Day, I loved that movie. Our daughter was in New Orleans last weekend and spent some time at a bar and a diner that were used in the filming of her all time favorite movie, "Love Song for Bobby Long". She fell in love with New Orleans. One of her job offers was supposed to be for New Orleans but they had something different in mind so she was disappointed. If she takes the offer she may get to rotate through in a few years though.
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Here we go again. Have any of you been following the Buy Here, Pay Here sub-prime auto loan story? The LA Times is running a pretty good series on it. This is from part two.Investor money is pouring into the industry from several sources, helping Buy Here Pay Here dealers expand their reach and raise their profile.In addition to private equity firms such as Altamont, several payday lending chains are moving into Buy Here Pay Here and have acquired dealerships.Stock investors are snatching up shares in Buy Here Pay Here chains and other publicly traded companies in the business. Two of the biggest, America's Car-Mart Inc. and Credit Acceptance Corp., have seen big gains in their share prices this year, outpacing the market.Buy Here Pay Here is also being boosted by one of the sophisticated financial strategies that drove the nation's recent housing boom and bust: securitization.Loans on decade-old clunkers are being bundled into securities, just as subprime mortgages were a few years ago. In the last two years, investors have bought more than $15 billion in subprime auto securities.Although they're backed mainly by installment contracts signed by people who can't even qualify for a credit card, most of these bonds have been rated investment grade. Many have received the highest rating: AAA.That's because rating firms believe that with tens of thousands of loans lumped together, the securities are safe even if some of the loans prove worthless.Some analysts worry that the rush to securitization could lead to careless lending by dealers eager to sell more loans, as happened with many mortgage-backed bonds.
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"Here we go again. Have any of you been following the Buy Here, Pay Here sub-prime auto loan story? The LA Times is running a pretty good series on it. This is from part two."When this blows up, I will be interested to hear how it's all George W. Bush's fault.
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Oh, crap.
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Here we go again, and all we can do is stand to the side and watch? Mark, crap does not begin to describe it. Can there possibly be as much aggregate money in used cars as there was in housing?
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Part three comes out tomorrow so I'll link it in the morning. It's definitely not something we need here in CA, but here it is anyway.
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You all have had a fun day!Scott: The Devil in the White City is one of my favorite books; I think I heard about it first with an interview with the author on The Diane Rehm show, and then persuaded my book group to read it. Absolutely fascinating. . .Sub-prime used car loans???? You've got to be kidding me!And I also had fun today: hunky cop 0, killer boots 1. They slayed him. Getting together again later this week.
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Hi, michi. Poor guy did not stand a chance against those boots. :)I know you're just getting here, but I have to check out now. Enjoy!
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Sweet dreams, okie!
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BTW, I'm finally done with the PL, I signed off for good after a lecture from RUK because of a comment I made about something he said earlier. It's for the best………….I'll let the rest of you keep me posted on any interesting dialogue. I'll read Greg's morning and evening roundup for the links but that's it, I'm not reading the comments any longer. Yay
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"Can there possibly be as much aggregate money in used cars as there was in housing?"I would guess it's not even close, but it's still adding insult to injury. Has there ever been a time when we've enjoyed a robust economy when it hasn't been in some form debt financed, or riding on the back of a doomed asset bubble? Or both?
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"I'm not reading the comments any longer. Yay"I don't have time. I occasionally skim for something interesting (like a comment from you or Mark), or to be a smartass (there's really not much point to anything else there, to be honest), but otherwise . . . Jzap finds interesting articles and news items to share and Banned Again has awesome comments, but there's just no other reason to dip into the comments, in my opinion. I usually only end up there when somebody says we were mentioned (in the comments, I mean). Was the Ruk lecture on the Happy Hour Roundup? You know I gotta go find it now.
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okie (et al):Can there possibly be as much aggregate money in used cars as there was in housing?No. Everyone can just relax. No one is lending to these people on the assumption that the market for 10 year old clunkers will forever be rising. Or, in fact, rising at all. Ever. There is no quasi-government agency guaranteeing car loans and no politicians demanding that loans be made to bad credits. And there is a significant difference between not being able to pay $3,000 on a laon for a used that everyone knows is depreciating and not being able to pay $300,000 on a house that everyone thought would never depreciate.There is not going to be a used car bubble that will burst, crashing the market for new Mercedes or Acuras or Fords or Hondas.From the sound of it, the theory behind these loans is basically the same as Michael Milken's theory regarding junk bonds. The theory is not a lack of concern about who you are lending to because of the value of the underlying collateral (as it was with sub-prime housing) but rather that the out-sized return one gets from lending to questionable credits will, if you lend to a diverse enough set of them, compensate you for the inevitable and higher than normal default rate.Again, everyone, relax. Just because something is a packaged securitization doesn't now make it a Bad Thing That We All Must Fear.
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"Again, everyone, relax. Just because something is a packaged securitization doesn't now make it a Bad Thing That We All Must Fear."Of course you'd say that! You're a banker! 😉
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Mich…if you liked Devil in the White City, you might also enjoy Thunderstruck by the same author, and is much the same style as Devil. He interweaves two stories, that of Hawley Crippen, a serial killer in London, and that of Marconi and his quest to transmit radio signals across the ocean. Again, it is very interesting, and he brings the two seemingly unconnected stories together in the end.
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You corked me on that one kevinI didn't link it to claim it was going to be the next "housing bubble", but it's very illustrative of the kinds of schemes financial services find to make money off the poor guy with bad credit. Isn't a 20%+ car loan similar to loan sharking?
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There's a lot of stuff similar to loan sharking out there, including the kind of pre-paid debit card like Russell Simmons Rush Card (and this guys been out their "showing solidarity" when the OWS folks).While I usually pay off my credit cards, one of them (the Sea Miles card, which I am using to pretty much pay for a cruise in 2012) has an insane interest rate. I've got golden credit, I've had the card for 6 years, I've had credit cards for 20 years, and the interest rate is like 29%. But, every dollar I spend is a penny off the next cruise, and over 6 years that adds up. I just have to make sure to never, ever, ever carry a balance. But it's a great way to make me as a consumer not like them at all, and look forward to dropping them when something better comes a long, even as I work to get my 1% back in the form of future cruises.
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lmsinca: where did Ruk lecture you? I tried, I can't wade through every post. And was it in Top Comments are All Comments–an increasing irritating distinction. 😉
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lms:the kinds of schemes financial services find to make money off the poor guy with bad credit. Truly amazing. A method is derived by which access to credit is arranged for people who otherwise would have none, a truly valuable service for them, and somehow the people who arrange this valuable service are bad people for making money from it. I don't know what business you are in, lms, (or should I say what kind of "scheme" you've come up with to make money?) but how careful are you about making sure you don't make money off of poor people who might find your products useful?
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Thanks for the recommendation, Scott, went and ordered it on Amazon. Weekend reading!Just because something is a packaged securitization doesn't now make it a Bad Thing That We All Must Fear.Wait! It doesn't???? Whew.
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Kevin:So let me understand…you really like the benefits the credit card provides you (1% back on all purchases, which goes towards a cruise..is that right?), but you hate the company because it charges high interest rates? Have you considered the possibility that it is the high interest rates that allows them to offer you the special benefits? Would that make you hate them less?
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Kevin/lms:BTW, generally a loan shark is defined not just by high interest rates, but also by the means through which he ensures collection. I'm pretty sure neither the investors in the car loan securitizations nor your credit company are threatening to break your legs if you don't pay.
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Scott Did you read the part where they lured the one girl in to offer her an adjustment on her loan only to surround her car with four other cars so she wouldn't be able to leave and then repossess it. Three days later it's back on the lot for sale again. If that seems like sound and honest business to you and doing something generous for someone, we're miles apart business wise. We don't generally take advantage of our customers.
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Mich:I read Thunderstruck first, which led me to Devil. I enjoyed them both, but I think Thunderstruck was better. After reading it I went to the Cape to see where Marconi had set up his transmissions. Pretty interesting.
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lms:Did you read the part where they lured the one girl in to offer her an adjustment on her loan only to surround her car with four other cars so she wouldn't be able to leave and then repossess it.No, but presumably she was in default, and that was the only way to repossess it. And I did read this:Others predict that investor scrutiny will shave a few of the sharper edges off a business notorious for high prices and interest rates, and for lightning-fast repossessions. "Investors are looking at the good operators, the ones that want to keep their customers in their cars," said John Nagy, a managing director at investment bank Stephens Inc. "We don't want to associate with the bad apples."This is the result of securitization, the "scheme" you seemed so contemptuous of.Three days later it's back on the lot for sale again. If that seems like sound and honest business to you…Like I said, I didn't see the details of that story. Was she in default? Did she know she was in default? Was she willing to return the car in the absence of such tactics? These things matter. (BTW…how long is the proper amount of time to wait before trying to re-sell a repossessed car the loan on which was not re-paid?…and doing something generous for someone,I didn't say anything about generosity. Clearly they are providing a service in order to make money. But it remains a valuable service to their customers. Do you think you would be doing their customers a favor if you shut down the business tomorrow? The whole reason it is a successful business model is because they have no other means of getting a needed car. Who's going to provide this service if you shut them down?We don't generally take advantage of our customers.Sure, but you do try to make money off of them, no?
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ScottC asks Kevin"you really like the benefits the credit card provides you (1% back on all purchases, which goes towards a cruise..is that right?), but you hate the company because it charges high interest rates? Have you considered the possibility that it is the high interest rates that allows them to offer you the special benefits? Would that make you hate them less?" Kevin is gambling that he is a more sophisticated borrower than Sea Miles is a lender. I've made that gamble myself, when Amazon gave me a "first $40 free" credit card. I bought $39 of books & haven't used it since. The question is whether the Buy Here Pay Here scheme / business model is designed around clearly explaining the payment schedule & total costs to the borrower, or if it perhaps glosses over some of the details. I suppose in the dog-eat-dog worldview, this is a price we pay for freedom; caveat emptor.
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Off to bed…touch base tomorrow.
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bsimon:The question is whether the Buy Here Pay Here scheme / business model is designed around clearly explaining the payment schedule & total costs to the borrower, or if it perhaps glosses over some of the details. Certainly that is a worthy question.
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bsimon:Kevin is gambling that he is a more sophisticated borrower than Sea Miles is a lender.Actually I think Kevin's bet is that Sea Miles is sophisticated enough to be marketing itself mostly to a clientele that will not be acting like Kevin. That is to say, Kevin is able to get his benefits without paying the big interest costs only because most others are not trying to do the same thing he's doing. Kevin isn't pulling one over on Sea Miles. He's taking advantage of the general lack of sophistication of Sea Miles' customer base.
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Now, truly to bed.
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Having read the article, the Buy Here Pay Here scheme is a pretty good racket, from the business side: find customers who think they have no other alternative & get them to pay exorbitant interest rates. The brilliant part is getting the customer to return to the lot to make payments: as lms notes above, the customer is delivering the car to the repo man. That's likely how they get the AAA bond rating: they sell the car, get some kind of down payment plus a couple months of payments. When the buyer is late, then comes in to pay up, just repossess the car & restart the process. You end up with possession of the asset (the car), plus you collect the down payment & some number of monthly payments.
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"Kevin is able to get his benefits without paying the big interest costs only because most others are not trying to do the same thing he's doing."Not to be argumentative, but my guess is some significant number of borrowers think they can do what Kevin is doing. The challenge is in maintaining the discipline to only buy what you can truly pay that month. Sea Miles is betting that most will slip up & carry a balance from time to time – if not all the time.
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I've understood that the business model of Buy Here/Pay Here places includes assuming a very high repo rate which is why they can afford to sell the cars at low prices. They get to sell each car multiple times and pocket the interest they do get on each sell.It's the same as Payday Loan places which count on the principal getting rolled over every week at APRs which approach the low hundreds. It may be perfectly legal but it is trafficking in human misery.
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kevin, I too was intrigued by how ruk might have insulted lms on PL, enough so that I found it. See thread at ruk comment at 7:26pm CDT.I have a couple more technical questions for you. What exactly are the two counters on this site measuring (N Visitors since X and Total Pageviews)? I'm wondering how much we skew it or if there is a way to estimate how many visitors other than us contributors have been here.Scott, while I understand your strictly business view of what I consider to be an immoral practice (legal or not), I think that attitude represents a sea change from my younger days that has not served our country well. I find it morally reprehensible to take advantage of those who have no other options. Perhaps it is a generational difference?
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Good morning, yjkt. "[W]hich is why they can afford to sell the cars at low prices." Not. According to the links, they are selling the cars at exorbitantly inflated prices along with their other practices.
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bsimon:That's likely how they get the AAA bond rating: they sell the car, get some kind of down payment plus a couple months of payments.The article was not clear about that. It seems unlikely to me that they get much if any down/pre-payment, giving the dmeographic that these loans target. But I could be wrong.
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bsimon:Sea Miles is betting that most will slip up & carry a balance from time to time – if not all the time. Sure…and so is Kevin. Or, at least, he is presumably hoping Sea Miles is right, otherwise he will no longer be able to reap the benefit he now enjoys.
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yellojkt:They get to sell each car multiple times and pocket the interest they do get on each sell.That may be (probably is) true of the seller/loan originator. But I don't see how multiple sales will benefit investors in the packaged securitization of the loans. The securitized loans, while collateralized with the car, are attached to the individual borrower. When he defaults, the investor is out the cash he invested. In fact, I am now even more interested in how these securitizations work. Unlike an individual franchise Buy Here/Pay Here owner, who can simply replace a defaulted loan with a new loan on the reposessed car, a packaged securitization will have a fixewd, defined set of underlying loans. It can't simply replace a defaulted one with any new loan made in the future. When someone defaults and the car is repossessed, the car is now "owned" by the holders of the security, not the Buy Here/Pay Here franchise. So what is the mechanism by which the collateral (the car) is liquidated and investors repaid? I don't know, but, again, it seems unlikely that the securitized loan is or can be simply replaced by a new loan, as the individual franchise owner would do.This, it seems to me, is one reason to believe that, as was mentioned in the article, investors in the securitization will actually be interested in operations which seek to keep borrowers in the car (and paying), not operations which rely on quick defaults and multiple re-sales.
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PL Update: lms, see CF's comment addressed to you at 3:02am CDT on 11/2 HH. LOL. Please consider yourself appropriately chastised. I continue to find it incredibly humorous that they apparently only miss scott and qb and not any of the lefty commenters. If they think this blog has done them such a great favor by drawing off scott and qb, why do they continually bring it up? Somewhere in their little psyches, they must recognize how rigid they are.
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Scott, excellent point at 5:30am. I had not thought that through.
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okie: have a couple more technical questions for you. What exactly are the two counters on this site measuring (N Visitors since X and Total Pageviews)? I'm wondering how much we skew it or if there is a way to estimate how many visitors other than us contributors have been here.The counter at the bottom is the best/most relevant one, and we skew it almost entirely. There is no specific way to know how many people outside our group are visiting, but I check the counter every once in a while to see who is on or has been on, and where they are located, and it is consistently the same few people/places, suggesting to me that we don't have many outsiders coming at all.I suggested to Kevin the other say that we ought to seek ways of getting linked to other sites, so that we can build up a bigger readership/commenter base. But I don't know if people prefer our current cozy, insular atmosphere to one in which outsiders are providing a lot of comments. So I haven't yet tried to attract outside comments.
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Thanks, scott, for the counter info. I don't check the location info and surmised the same as you indicate. I for one like our "cozy, insular atmosphere" but would be very interested in attracting new outside commenters. Can we not just block them if they are too obnoxious? I have tried to google us a few times and our blog did not come up. BTW, also saw and appreciated your exchange with Kite. Very well handled IMHO.
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okie:I find it morally reprehensible to take advantage of those who have no other options. I understand the negative reaction. But in these kinds of situations, I always try to think about the alternative. If these operations did not exist, what would their customers do? Would they really be better off? Sure, it would be great if someone would offer car loans to these people with better terms, but no one is doing so. Why is that? Condemning the people who are offering them loans for the terms they set isn't going to help secure the needed car if the operation stopped lending. What do they do then?If the terms are so egregiously unfair, the best way of altering that dynamic is to create a business in which the terms are more fair, and take away the business from the "exploiter". If no one is doing that, perhaps the terms are not quite so egregiously unfair as it at first seems.
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scott, again, I understand your point and agree to some extent. My comment was just expressing my knee-jerk reaction. This may have the makings of an interesting post of its own, but I have to rein in my emotional "fairness" reaction and think it through intellectually. (I heart the Fairness Fairy, which probably is a personal flaw.) My comment about perhaps a generational issue is something that has been on my mind for a while, and probably not in a way that most would assume . . . it's more to do with cyclical reactions to the immediately previous generation.
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okie:Can we not just block them if they are too obnoxious?I'm not aware of any part of the blogger software that allows blocking of particular users. We would, I think simply have to delete comments that didn't conform to our standards, which is certainly something to consider before trying to get the whole world to start reading ATiM.BTW, also saw and appreciated your exchange with Kite. Very well handled IMHO.Not sure what you mean. You sure it was me?
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Here's part three of the Buy Here, Pay Here story. Actually there are alternatives in some states to the high interest rate these places are charging. In one, they offer 8% auto loans after meeting certain requirements such as having a job and children and undergoing financial counseling. Their default rate is 1 in 10 compared to the 1 in 4 of the higher interest lots.This third piece mostly details the necessity of cars, especially for the working poor with families and alternatives to the Buy Here Pay Here "scheme".Okie, I read CF's comment but I'm not going to respond, afaic they've mostly got their heads up their you know whats. I'm done with them.
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Hmmm, it's been a bit since I saw the Kite exchange, but I thought it was you. Maybe not. I'm not seeing the roster of "followers" lately, so I can't review it again. Anyway, Kite (maybe I am not remembering the name correctly) showed up at one point as a follower here who had not commented. S/he said was interested in political blogs and was following us because interested in the fact that we could have political exchanges without it exploding in the first five comments, or something to that effect.Gotta drag my happy ass to work for another day that promises to be grueling. We have a big (to us) and very important (to us) grant submission due today to NSF. We're working on a very exciting robotic assistance technique to help infants with cerebral palsy develop mobility, which has been proven to have many positive effects on cognitive development.
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Good morning, lms. I guess I need to be on a different schedule. I keep missing folks at both ends of the day and cannot comment in between.I think it best not to respond to any of the PL comments any more. But I do still read and value Greg's posts and the links in them.
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okie…oh yes, that kite. I forgot about that. Thanks.
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Before I leave, I do want to mention that the Buy Here Pay Here business would seem to be more important in some regions than others depending on mass trans available. It is virtually nonexistent where I live, so a car is a necessity rather than a luxury. We have a bus system that is extremely limited geographically. For years I tried it off and on, but not worth it. My 15-20 minute drive to/from work takes 2 to 2 1/2 hours on the bus, not to mention no sheltered stops so you have to stand out in rain, etc. to wait on a bus that may or may not run on time. If you missed it because it ran early, another is not scheduled for an hour. And forget being able to get to a grocery store, etc.
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I did comment this morning about CF's post.Said nice stuff about you, lms.
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"So let me understand…you really like the benefits the credit card provides you (1% back on all purchases, which goes towards a cruise..is that right?), but you hate the company because it charges high interest rates? "And I love Capital One that gives me similar benefits elsewhere, but at 6%. If I think I may have to carry a balance, I use that card, so they actually make some money off me, too. I think the interest rates they charge are exorbitant, and there's a huge missed opportunity to build customer loyalty by simply not charging confiscatory rates of interest. They clearly aren't aren't interested in that. "Have you considered the possibility that it is the high interest rates that allows them to offer you the special benefits? Would that make you hate them less?"Well, clearly I don't hate 'em enough not to use the card. But if I ever come across a better offer, I'll jump at it. Also, Capital One offers me similar benefits (just not double miles for purchases from Carnival, the only reason I've held on to the card for this long) and charges me six percent.Also, it's just dumb. The reason I never carry a balance on the card is because the interest rate is so high. If high tax rates punish achievement, those high interest rates punish me for ever needing to carry a balance. So I never carry a balance, just like wealthy people will find ways not to pay confiscatory taxes. And it just seems stupid to me, when a reasonable rate (they are not paying 29% to lend me the money, they aren't paying 9%) would both be less offensive to a fellow of fine and upstanding credit, such as myself, and lead to me occasionally carrying a balance, if needed, which would then make them something, rather than nothing. Given that I don't carry a balance, and have excellent credit, and have been a customer for a long time, what would it cost them to say: hey, you've been a great customer. We're cutting your interest rate in half. It would still be too high, and I still wouldn't carry a balance, but I'd be less disposed to think negatively of them. It's just a very bad strategy for building brand loyalty among good customers.
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okie: "Somewhere in their little psyches, they must recognize how rigid they are."It's the story of the fox and the grapes. You're right, if it didn't occupy their minds (or, vice versa, lets be honest), they'd never mention it. But we're not sitting around saying, "Oh, we're never thinking of it, what a favor Plum Line is doing by keeping Apoc and Ruk over there, blah blah blah."
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Thanks MarkI'm not too worried about what Chris thinks of me or says about me. I really am done over there, I'll read Greg's stuff but skip the comments. It's made me really angry the number of reasonable people they've chased off and I think Greg would be disappointed if he really thought about it. If either one of them saw my conversations with scott and qb, they'd know we still don't get along all that well, lol. Right boys?Anyway, I have enough to keep me busy without delving into the "dark recesses" of CF or ruk's minds. I think they've taken some of Bernie's propaganda "all day every day" routine a little too seriously.
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Scott: "Kevin isn't pulling one over on Sea Miles. He's taking advantage of the general lack of sophistication of Sea Miles' customer base."No, indeed. However, if the interest rate was 6%, they'd get some money from me now and again (certain times of year are tight, I need to carry a little over from month to month). At 29%, no. They have a lower end on the card that is around 17% + prime. They don't even charge me that. No brand loyalty efforts whatsoever. They did, however, lower the value of the Sea Miles (for everybody) before I could redeem them. You don't even get Sea Miles for interest charges. It's like they don't want to make money. 😉
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Yeah, I'm will lm. I'm abandoning Plumline. It's clear we're not wanted there, why overstay our welcome? It's getting tribal, with thunder and apoc and ruk and others ganging up on us, and not just when we show up but just the entire idea of "us" talking without accusing each other of wanting to beat disabled children.Or wish that people we disagree with on an issue be out of our sight, and preferably dead and buried. Seriously, what kind of garbage is that? And these people pretend they want to communicate with other human beings. It's just bullshit.Also, yay, no net nanny.
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*I'm with lmsinca.
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BTW, I never did say I hated my credit card company, only that I'm dissatisfied, and a little offended. But I don't hate them, I just would jump in a minute to another company offering me a better deal, because they choose to do nothing to build brand loyalty.
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"We're working on a very exciting robotic assistance technique to help infants with cerebral palsy develop mobility, which has been proven to have many positive effects on cognitive development."That's awesome, okie. Since I was a birth trauma attorney I had the opportunity to be around and read about a lot of kids with CP. When I am a big shot partner and have some time to do pro bono work, I'm going to represent parents of special needs kids who are challenging the school's Individualized education plans.
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Kevin- Have you tried calling the company and asking for a lower rate? I've actually heard that can work.
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Kevin:Also, yay, no net nanny.I thought you were the net nanny.BTW, I am confused about why, if you get the same benefits from Capitol One at 6% as you get from Sea Miles (or whatever it is called) at 29%, why would you ever use Sea Miles? Unless, of course, you get some schadenfreud out of the knowledge that you are getting a benefit from those bastards without ever giving anything back to them. That would make sense to me, and would suggest that you ought to use the Sea Miles card to its limit every month without ever carryng a balance. Which, in its own way, is a sort of brand anti-loyalty!
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I'm not expecting anyone else to stand with me. I've just grown tired of the place and life for me is too short to be aggravated with them most of the time. Ever since CF showed up there the place has gone downhill IMO so I'm going to cut my losses and run.I really thought ruk's comment was over the top so left him a one line comment and then they both proceeded to lecture me that I'm the one being unfair………….sheeshScottI don't mind if we open this place up further, but I expect a period of turmoil if we do, so I think we need to really have our game on to deal with it. It can't be liberal vs conservative decisions, it needs to be ATiM against the "masses", if they show up that is, lol.
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lms:It can't be liberal vs conservative decisions, it needs to be ATiM against the "masses", if they show up that is, lol. I most definitely agree.
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Here's an interesting story re "liar loans" that goes back to about 2005. During the height of refinancing and people using their homes as an ATM machine, we, like pretty much everyone else in CA, received about 2 or 3 calls a day for refinancing our mortgage to the new 1% to 1 1/2% low interest loan. We were actually getting ready to refinance or take out a line of credit as we had decided to move the business home and build a $120K warehouse in our backyard…….yikes.Anyway, I couldn't figure out how these deals worked and when one guy who was very persistent and called us numerous times told us he was working with our bank, I finally got his name, number and the name of his company. I called the bank, who held our mortgage, and asked them if they were aware this outfit was using their name to get a hook into us for this low interest loan. Next time he called I mentioned that our bank had not only never heard of them but they didn't recommend these types of loans because the first time you're even a day late on a payment the loan automatically reverts to a very high new interest rate. This of course was not something he bothered to mention to me even though I asked him repeatedly "what's the catch"?
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"why would you ever use Sea Miles" — double miles for Carnival purchases, guaranteed redemption for Carnival (Capital One's travel redemption is open for interpretation), and the miles used to be worth quite a bit more, when I first signed up with the card. They were still worth 1.4 cents per mile before going to 1 cent per mile only a few months before I ended up redeeming them. It's the only reason I keep the card. They are in the door, the have an opportunity to make money off me, they aren't interested. It offends my sensibilities. 😉
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"I'm not expecting anyone else to stand with me."I would, they're just being dicks over there. I mean that with the most even-handed objectivity. ;)But they are just saying stuff to be nasty, and there's a bit of tribal/mobbishness going on with it now that's just kind of ugly (at least, to me). More than one of them has said that our kind is wanted there, with the caveat that they are willing to talk about facts with reasonable people (despite all evidence to the contrary). Speaking of offending my delicate sensibilities!I'm joining the boycott! 😉
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*that our kind is not wanted there… and as I said in what may well be my last post on Plum Line, I'm okay with that.
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Well, I was too busy this morning continuing to ignoring a plea from lms and talking offline 🙂 to see the continued fracas at PL until just now, but I added a comment there under Scott. I guess being "done" with PL doesn't mean I won't still respond to some of the crap if I see it and let Greg and the world know what I think, whether or not he cares.I don't know how many saw that last night the resident psychopath over there randomly posted a comment to insult me, yet again, and repeat how happy he is that I'm gone. I find it darkly humorous that he just can't stop obsessing; it's as though every few hours he has to talk about me. He appears desolate and without purpose in life since Scott and I are gone. I honestly think he is like a wounded animal over not being invited here.I don't care what shrink says about internet lay diagnoses, that guy has serious, serious mental and emotional problems, and part of what I said under Scott's comment was what lms said above: PL went into the dumper over the past year under his influence … but, and this is the important part, with Greg's enablement and encouragement. Okay, now I'm "done" again and on to hard work like Okie. : )
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"I'm joining the boycott! ;)"Funnily, that probably WILL drive them nuts, since at PL it does seem that absence makes the heart grow fonder (and more hateful).
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"Anyway, I couldn't figure out how these deals worked and when one guy who was very persistent and called us numerous times told us he was working with our bank"Never sign up for a loan from people who cold call you. Never. Also, never wire money to the bank of somebody holding funds for a deceased African prince. Do not invest your life savings with someone calling over the phone who promises a 100% return on your investment. I remember seeing a show on 20/20 about 15 or 20 years ago like that, and even as young as I was (and not having yet gotten into the future situations where my own trust and naiveté lost me money), I had a hard time feeling sorry for these poor, destitute old people. You invested your life savings with a guy calling on the phone that promised to double your money in six months? No, no, no, no no. Very smart to call the bank. Not running a business myself, I don't answer the phone if I don't know the number. They can leave a message if it's important.
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I guess you all saw the death-wish aimed at qb and I this morning. If I suddenly disappear from ATiM for an extended period without explanation, you can assume that CF got his wish, and you may want to launch an investigation into whether he had anything to do with it.(I say that only half in jest, BTW.)
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On the assumption the ABR post is dormant, I comment here with this link:http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-governor-romney-worked-to-reassure-liberals/2011/11/02/gIQAookxgM_story.html
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qb: Perhaps there will be whole threads about how wonderful it is that none of us are there. 😉 I've participated in a variety of online forums, since I was dialing BBS with my 300 baud acoustic modem back in 1982, and I've never seen anything like it. Well, once, a guy who ran a BBS got irritated that a friend started his own BBS, and tried to sabotage it. But that was, like, 1985 or 1986. Every place else, people come and go, others occasionally ask "whatever happened to x"? I invited a conservative friend of mine to a forum where I was the only conservative. I knew she was, um, opinionated, but she was totally Brigade x Battleground there, pissed everybody off, I got a lot of "I can't believe you're friends with this person" type stuff, and then she bailed. There was like a day of, "Phew, glad she's gone, why'd you invite *her*?" and then it was over with. Never came up again.There had been a hostile ultra-lefty in the Chris Fox mold there, too, who left in a huff over personal issues, and he occasionally came up, but he had been with the group for years and had personally known many of them in real-time. And it was never these long treatises on how much better things were, now that he was gone, and we hoped he liked his echo chamber, yada yada yada. That's just weird, to me. I wonder if eventually those folks will cycle out. I notice when I go to Ezra's blog, where I used to participate more, many of the folks that were there when I engaged more seem to gone. As the audience cycles, there may be less a sense of former member having splintered off the group, because the original group, as such, will no longer exist, and it will all be new people.
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qb: "guess being "done" with PL doesn't mean I won't still respond to some of the crap if I see it "Fair enough, I'm just done, at least until there is a different mix of people.
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qb: " I find it darkly humorous that he just can't stop obsessing;"And he's infecting the rest of them. More than once has another commenter brought some or all of us up, apropos of nothing. But, it works both ways. We keep talking about 'em (I do not find this objectionable, btw). We're collectively like the two sides of an old divorced couple. ;)Both of my parents can still evoke old grudges and judgements about each other, 42 years after the divorce.
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Scott:He also wished lms would drive all of us over a cliff in a bus. lolBut I agree, it is only half in jest. This fellow (see what I did there?) is at least semi-dangerous imo.
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I think we should find a happy little bus cartoon of some kind and post it somewhere as an unofficial mascot.
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Kevin:We keep talking about 'em Yeah, and although I admit I am somewhat guilty of joining in, I wish we wouldn't. I was compelled to check it out this morning on the back of Mark's and lms' comments here, and I wish I hadn't. I don't need to hear that kind of thing. It's on me, of course…I need to have the will power to ignore my curiosity no matter what anyone else is saying. But still, my preference is that I'd rather not hear anything more about what's being said at PL.
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Scott, qb and kevinI've been trying to keep my promise to greg and others that I was encouraging all of us here to comment at both sites. In doing so, I follow a few comment threads over there and drop in the occasional link or comment myself. I probably shouldn't have brought my disagreement with ruk up here though. He made me so mad with his saying a couple of posters probably thought the poor CP kid deserved a beating that I just made that one line comment and all hell broke loose.As of now, I consider whatever obligation or loyalty I felt to the Plumline null and void. You won't hear me talking about it again. Everyone else is entirely free to say and do what they want about the Plumline though.
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We are serving a truly different function now that we have evolved. This is nothing like PL at all.Scott, you commented yesterday in response to me that state initiatives were often OK with you while you objected to fed initiatives. I favor initiatives closer to home, too. I almost had that conversation with Tao once, but that forum simply made it nearly impossible to continue it. You and I had interrupted conversations there too. This is more like a club of curious and smart folks [why be modest about it?] with a lot of experience and quite a bit of education and with opinions to boot. There is not enough of this on line, and too much echo chamber. I did not sign into PL 24/7 and none of you did either. The worst stuff I saw over there was the ad hominem attack on NoVAH [aside from the posts of he whom I will not mention]. I really want to understand a lot of what NoVAH knows, so I really did not care to see an attempt to muzzle him.Scott's explanation of the limited risk of the car loan bundles above is somewhat reassuring. We probably never could have moved the conversation to that point anywhere else, b/c we never would have had a discussion about that topic. Brent's contributions here are terrific. QB and I can write about interesting and weird cases on occasion here that we could not do at PL. KW's mastery of pop culture? 'Goose's modeling? Personal experiences of a group that has had a lot of them are shared. What I am saying in anti-trust parlance is that ATiM and PL are different markets. Further, I do not want to aggressively seek public comments here. I think self-selecting comments from persons who appreciate civil discourse and variety is great, and we may all know someone who could be an informed and civil fit. Invite them to read along. If she had time, Mike and Brian and I know an entrepreneur in SF who would be great here. She doesn't. New startup. But you get my drift.
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I do think we should stop talking about the PL. So to that end, I will make my last comment about them. In light of ruk's comment I can't blame lmsinca for speaking up. The thinly veiled accusation that Scott and QB are fine with beating a child with CP was beyond the pale and entirely gratuitous. Nor can I blame Scott or QB for bringing Apoc's comments to Greg's attention. Afterall, Greg openly solicited information regarding why people have left. There is always the hope that Greg addresses the situation. I doubt I will spend much, if any, time over at the PL. It's less about death threats or insults than it is about the disparate treatment of the posters. It appears liberals can say whatever they want while conservatives get flagged for far less inflammatory statements. I'm not interested in endorsing such a blog. Besides, Greg is a very good blogger, but I only went there after Froomkin left and never thought Greg filled Froomkin's shoes.
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lmsinca: "I probably shouldn't have brought my disagreement with ruk up here though."Wouldn't have made a difference if, in addition to the absurd premise, he hadn't decided to respond to you by being such a, um, jackass. If I had missed it, I would have missed it, but like you I was trying to put into various threads (sometimes with a little more 'tude than others, often causing CF to initiate stalking mode).I do not make such critiques lightly, as you know. But I'm in agreement. I may lurk, but I'm done participating. As I said, I was okay with that. I noticed Ruk made some argument that he wasn't saying my kind wasn't wanted there, but, really, yes, that's what they are all saying. Which is fine. I think we can manage to have a place where we have discussions with each other, and perhaps learn something, and they can reinforce their notions of who is good and bad, and how they are the good guys, and how good they are, and how those *other* folks like to beat the mentally disabled.We may both occasionally look askance at the other with chagrin, like the veritable old divorcees, but, in the end, it's better that we went on to lead our own separate lives. 😉
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ashot: "It appears liberals can say whatever they want while conservatives get flagged for far less inflammatory statements."They can be. I reported several questionable statements yesterday from CF and beach, all of them got pinked (or removed). I suspect the other righties over there just don't go out of their way to report every inflammatory thing certain people say. I normally do when I'm reading a thread, and it goes away. I also noticed after having flagged a dozen or so of Gold and Tanzanite's comments (right before our odd network configuration kept me off of Plumline for several months), he shows up under a new name. So, who knows, they may be more egalitarian in the moderation than you think, but require other posters (perhaps badged posters get more weight?) to report many of the individual posts.
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Mark: "This is more like a club of curious and smart folks [why be modest about it?] "Why indeed? We rock! And it would be immodest to make any arguments, re: Plumline, about casting our pearls before swine. But don't make me go there to read good links you've posted, Mr. In-Austin! 😉
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qb: "I don't care what shrink says about internet lay diagnoses, that guy has serious, serious mental and emotional problems"Unless he has started threatening you directly and mentioning the name of the street you live on and the school your kids go to (STRF did this to me) , he coulda been worse. Unless, of course, CF was STRF. STRF diminished mightily after CF showed up. An interesting coincidence.
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http://www.texastribune.org/texas-politics/2012-presidential-election/will-texans-vote-mormon-president-maybe/for Kev
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"I'm not aware of any part of the blogger software that allows blocking of particular users. We would, I think simply have to delete comments that didn't conform to our standards, which is certainly something to consider before trying to get the whole world to start reading ATiM."All of us who are administrators, and that's most of us, can delete any comment. Click on "remove comment forever" to get rid of any placeholder, should you so choose. Just click on the trashcan next to the comment. Since there's usually someone here, it will be tough for drive-bys to pollute the blog. Given that, to such people, pollution is the point, if their comments don't survive any length of time, they will stop. Threads that get thread bombed can individually have comments disabled for that thread. I'm not worried about over participation by others. I just don't want to solicit people who might feel mislead by the fact that what passes for normal behavior elsewhere might end up getting them excluded from the conversation here.
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No, STRF was not he whom I will not mention. I had correspondence from STRF – I was able to determine who he was. I have the same suspicion that you do that beach is he, but I have not embarked on an investigation. And do not intend to.
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Mark: "More than one in five Texas voters — 23 percent — say most of the people they know would not vote for a Mormon presidential candidate even if they agreed with him or her on the issues"What does that reveal, asking about what you (the respondent) thinks people you know will do, rather than what *you* would do? Does it reveal the secret prejudice of the responder against Mormons–or does it reveal their low opinion of their neighbor's secret prejudices? Or not so secret ones?
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Well, whoever he is, STRF is still the creepiest person I've personally encountered online.
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Kev/Mark:I am sensitive to Mark's thinking about keeping this place rather self-selective. That's sort of why I brought it up…I wanted to see what others thought. I myself am torn between trying to bring our brilliance to the wider world (and thereby endanger the atmosphere we have) and keeping it all to ourselves (and thus no one else will ever know how brilliant we actually are.)
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kw,That is nasty business, sorry to hear it. I'm convinced these are all different individuals, though.
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Only for the old gossips.They're still spending an awful lot of time discussing on Plum Line:In fact, we're getting as much time devoted to us as the subject of the post.And I was cited more than a few times by name. And apparently Apoc got banned for something (I reported several of his comments yesterday and earlier today, because they offer me a report button when I go there, and the violent rhetoric is against WaPo policy; don't know if I can take credit, though). Though tempted to chime in, I stuck to my pledge not to participate in the conversation, and rather just enjoy the amount of mindshare devoted to a few people who used to post at that blog that now post at another.
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FWIW, I have not been there to check it out since early this morning, and now I'm gonna have to do that out of curiosity. But I do not for a nanosecond buy that the report button works. I did an experiment some time ago and it had no effect at all. And scott or qb or whoever it is who keeps saying the blog nanny at PL is prejudiced against conservatives is flat out wrong. I got pinked enough times for freakin' nuttin' (in my mind anyway, LOL). It was a big reason I quit commenting.
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They (beach, shrink, ddawd) seem to think the report button worked. And the comments I reported (and I report according to my understanding of WaPo policy) got pinked or removed. Which is my fault, apparently, not the fault of WaPo's forum policy. Or the caprice of the WaPo folks, but if it was prejudice against conservatives, Cao wouldn't keep getting banned and expunged.
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I didn't see what happened "over there" later today, but I assume that if cao was banned it was for his most recent death wishes against Scott and me yesterday, plus the litany of insults and attacks that accompanied them. Only a year too late.I still say the moderation, such as it was, was usually ideological for several reasons (including that Greg banned multiple conservatives who never remotely violated the rules the way that many lefties did), but I suppose I could be wrong. It's his blog, so he can ruin if he wants to.
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