Is Our Children Learning? (Weekend Open Thread)

by Jacob Davies

Ours is - learning to walk, that is:

One day about a week ago he took one tottering step and two days later he was rampaging around the house anywhere he wanted.

I am also helping him prepare for a career in the Godzilla-sized-monster business, since I feel everyone should learn a trade:

This is an open thread. My weekend is devoted to turkey day preparations (11 for dinner) with a brief stop for Yo Gabba Gabba Live in San Francisco. Yes, that scares me as much as it does you.

I'm having a hard time figuring out anything useful or interesting to say on the political or economic front, since it's apparent that despite all the pressing needs we have, nothing at all is likely to get done for the next two years. I look forward to a thrilling parade of conspiracy theories in all the serious media and a lot of terrifying grandstanding on matters of life-or-death importance.

1998 was awesome. Let's do it again!

Comments

[b9n10nt]

Heh. My wife is taking our 2 yr old to yo g g too. I get to chauffeur and go to Amoeba records!

Btw, those 20 year olds in attendance without kids are on shrooms.

[ItinerantPedant]

Hey, at least YGG Live actually involves the actual cast/artists. It's much more like a rock concert than a kids show (down to overpriced T-shirts you already know you'll wind up buying). Have fun.

[chuchundra]

Just FYI, my daughter had a serious freak out at YGG live back in October at Radio City. The show starts out with a loud bang and confetti canons. After the big bang, she freaked and we were back and forth to the lobby to try and calm her down. She'd calm down a bit, but once we'd get back to the seat she'd start crying again. We left shortly after intermission.

The show itself was rather loud, I thought, for a kids show. That could have been a function of the venue. It's hard to say.

She's not quite as enamored with YGG these days. Now it's all about Winnie The Pooh.

[Ugh]

I'm having a hard time figuring out anything useful or interesting to say on the political or economic front, since it's apparent that despite all the pressing needs we have, nothing at all is likely to get done for the next two years.

What do you mean? The banksters are going to get their MERS fix:

The financial services industry has launched an aggressive campaign on Capitol Hill to bolster the legality of the way companies have turned mortgages into securities and traded them across the globe in recent years.

The companies have opened wide their wallets for lobbying and are flying top executives to Washington for one-on-one meetings with lawmakers. They are holding briefings for key staffers, including an event last week that drew more than 60 aides. ...

The focal point of their efforts is Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, or MERS....

Okay, and...?

In the vast majority of mortgage documents at local courts and offices across the country, it is listed as the holder of the loans. That allows the financial industry to trade mortgages as much as it wishes without spending the time and money to refile the paperwork.

That's an interesting way to put it. Another way to put it isthat MERS allows the financial industry to "trade" mortgages while violating state the law and hope nobody would notice while they skipped the paper work and saved billions of $$ and risking billions more in fines if anyone figured out the skipping the paper work part. Oopsie, who do they fix that now that they've been found out?

The industry is seeking legislation that would effectively affirm MERS's legality and block any bill that would call into question what MERS does.

A retroactively immunity, it worked for the telecoms, why not the mortgage industry?

If successful on Capitol Hill, the industry could in one quick swoop make all lawsuits related to MERS across the country moot and remove one of the key uncertainties dangling over the mortgage industry. On the flip side, lawmakers could create a new federal registry, effectively killing MERS's business and forcing the industry to submit to greater oversight.

I think right now the industry will take that deal every day of the week and twice on Sunday. I mean, otherwise:

One lawsuit in California alone is seeking recording fees that could cost the company from $60 billion to $120 billion. But the consequences for the financial industry are even greater, as challenges to the validity of transfers done by MERS call into question the entire process of how loans were securitized and could render the 66 million mortgages in its system foreclosure-proof.

Sounds worse than closing down MERS to me. Is the industry making good arguments in its defense?

The MERS database "is a powerful tool that can be harnessed by the Congress and the industry to improve the mortgage finance system," R.K. Arnold, Merscorp chief executive, told members of the Senate banking committee this week.

Well maybe, what does that do to help the royal clusterfnck you help create R.K.?

Tom Deutsch, deputy executive director of the American Securitization Forum, an industry group that defended the validity of MERS in a recent paper being circulated on Capitol Hill, said establishing a centralized tracking system would resolve much of the confusion resulting from the patchwork of local laws governing mortgages and their transfer.

There is no confusion you a$$hole, you just didn't want to have to deal with the basic real property transfer system and the associated time and expense it requires, which has been in place for, what, decades? A couple centuries? They had land in ancient Greece, right?

In its paper, the forum argued that although there have been "several minority decisions" in the courts that have taken issue with MERS, "not one of these decisions has challenged MERS' ability to act as a central system to track changes in the ownership."

WTF does "several minority decisions" even mean? Not one of those decisions has challenged my ability to act like a fool either, what do you suppose that ability has in common with MERS' ability "to act as a central system to track changes in the ownership"?

What a bunch of shameless, worthless, assholes.

As such, I bet the bill sails through congress and is signed into law before Christmas.

[russell]

How can there be anything named "Gabba Gabba" with no Ramones?

It's just not right.

That's a cute little boy Jacob!

[Brett Bellmore]

Speaking of turkey, I like turkey. No, I REALLY like turkey. When I was single, I used to buy a dozen in the weeks before Thanksgiving, store them in a chest freezer, and cook one a month. Hardly had to cook anything else, what with their being 20 plus pounders...

My wife? Her attitude towards turkey is, eh. About the only time outside Thanksgiving I get a turkey fix, is when I want to grill some hamburgers, and she insists on ground turkey instead of beef. And that's not quite the same.

I lost the turkey a month battle. But I think I'm winning on another front; It's been my habit to roast a turkey the weekend before Thanksgiving, so I could have a private feast on the wings, and after packing away the meat in the freezer, make a gallon or so of stock to use for gravy and moistening stuffing at my mom's house Thanksgiving. (Use the rendered fat for making the roux for the gravy, too. It really does make a difference.)

I think I've just about got her persuaded to let me buy a couple of turkeys, strip the meat off for the freezer raw to grind later, and boil the carcasses down for stock...

[Eric Martin]

Little Eric took his first steps on Thursday. But he really only uses them sparingly still. He's addicted to the crawl, a skill at which he has attained a remarkable acumen.

As I like to say, he crawls like the wind. Unfortunately, it makes walking seem, well, pedestrian to him.