CMRivdogs

Mike Sharkey also had COVID about the same time. Wonder if it was from COVID Rudy..

The housing market seems to still be in decent shape here, though not as strong as say a year ago. Part of it I think is the season. Not many want to move in December. The other factors going for sales here is it's a military area and still attracts a fair amount of retirees.

Rents may be the biggest problem in finding affordable housing. When we made the decision to downsize in 2017 we found a fairly new build ranch style complex. Rent was about half the mortgage payments we were making. When we moved out in Sept 2020 the rate would have been at least 50% more that what the original rent without any changes in amenities. Supply and demand, I guess (This was in Commerce Twp) Home sale prices in that area have skyrocketed as well. Lots of new builds, but even trying to buy an older home would take a lot of capital. Especially the ones I've seen on Zillow and Reality once you factor in the cost to do needed upgrades.

We've used a financial advisor when my spouse came into a fairly substantial chunk of change in a "retirement buyout" several years ago. We found him helpful and have remained mostly in the black with their efforts. They also came in handy navigating the whole Medicare morass especially when it came to prescription drugs not covered under the basic plans.

Browns up by 14, 5 1/2 min left...

Browns now up by 10 over the Commodes end of 3

And didn’t Bush Jr once say we needed them to do jobs real Americans didn’t want to do anymore?

Attempting to get a clean title on a vehicle we're trading in. When we bought the car in 2016, we only put my wife's name on the loan. We received a letter from Toyota in 2019 stating the loan was paid off. (I think we may have sent a copy to the SOS office in Lansing as well). Neither one of us remember getting a paper title from Michigan. In late Summer 2020 we registered the vehicle in Virginia, placed both names on the registration. Now to the trade in. Virginia still shows a lien on the title. The letter from the lender evidently means nothing because both names are not included in the release. Toyota says everything is done electronically now. Virginia can't clear it because their computers won't let them. No one can get thru to Lansing. I'm hoping something gets done this week (it's been over a month now). Last conversation with Toyota told us they were able to electronically clear the lien, but it takes 3 business days. That means at least one more trip to the DMV and probably another drive to the dealer to release the check we gave them as a promissory note. Meanwhile it looks like our trade-in may have been sold. It's all one big racket...

We regularly book hotel rooms based on points. I doubt if the rates would drop significantly in places like Cambridge, OH or Wixom, MI

The final embers of the evening in our Solo Stove

I've gotten into Slow Horses. Based on Mick Herron's spy novels. So far the first two seasons are faithful to the books. Gary Oldman is a treasure as Jackson Lamb, ringmaster of this band of misfits.

I will guarantee that robots would still probably get my order wrong at Wendy's

The party that proudly promoted personal responsibility abandoned that policy in 2016

Spent a lot of time on the injured list last year. Similar stats to Shane Halter at his age...

Good we don't want anymore freakin Half-Backs from Texas or Florida to come in and destroy our lovely tourist traps, build more pancake houses and mattress stores and tear down lovely spots like all our antique malls.

Yet DeSantis and Abbott love immigrants from Northern states (including so called Snowbirds). Let's face it we are a country that hates foreigners, from the very beginning. Our ancestors hated the Dutch, Germans, Irish, anyone who wasn't English and the ones they sent here were usually the debtors or poor reputations (outside of the businessmen that were in charge of the business proposition of the new world) In our history we've rejected the Jews, Irish, Italians, Japanese, Chinese, folks from the Middle East. I even remember the uproar over accepting boat people from Cuba, even Vietnamese refugees. Why change now, hell let's invade Mexico again.

"But Biden's not doing anything" https://www.cato.org/blog/most-venezuelan-asylum-seekers-were-let-legally-november

Maybe if you did a bit of research you would see how wrong you are. Immigrants just don't just increase the labor supply, they also buy stuff. Food, clothing, they pay for housing, health care, etc. All that stuff needs to be produced. Granted newcomers may not start spending on day 1 but businesses can see the immigration wave coming (f they were intelligent) and start ramping up. They'll need to hire more workers and probably increase wages. Here's a bit help with your research.. https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-immigration-doesnt-reduce-wages?r=8iar&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

He should face kidnapping charges.

Read the entire Charen column I linked to. It mentioned the Biden Administration ideas. I inferred the second part since it's likely to get shot down by the usual suspects. IT IS UNDER CONSIDERITION!!!!!!!!!

BTW, one of the plans under discussion by the current administration is to require asylum seeks to register with the US Embassy in their country of origin. It keeps being blocked by the same folks who shot down GWB's pathway to citizenship proposals (and it's not the Democrats)

Last I heard the "Party of Trump" has been branding themselves as the blue collar workers party. That's his base

From Mona Cheren https://www.thebulwark.com/greg-abbott-scrooge/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email It isn’t that Abbott didn’t anticipate the coming weather. In a December 20 letter to President Biden, he wrote: Help us understand the reasoning here. Is the problem that Biden has caused human suffering by letting people be exposed to freezing temperatures? In that case, how is the solution to move people to another freezing jurisdiction and dump them on the sidewalk? Yes, this country is being swamped by would-be immigrants, and a mature polity would address the problem with sensible reforms. But that’s not what the governors of Florida and Texas are demanding. They and their right-wing media claque are saying that immigrants are clamoring for admission to the United States only because President Biden has an “open borders” policy. Here’s a typical story from Fox News: “Biden’s dangerous open border policies are record-breaking in all the wrong ways. Illegal immigrants, possible terrorists and deadly drugs mark Biden’s open border policies.” GOP politicians proclaim almost daily that Biden has created an “open border.” They repeat this mantra even though it flatly contradicts another of their favorite talking points, namely that the border patrol has experienced record numbers of encounters with would-be crossers. The CPB reports that agents had 2.2 million encounters with illegal border crossers in fiscal year 2022—a new record. (Many are repeat crossers.) If the border were truly open, the border patrol would not be apprehending anyone, right? They’d be standing aside and waving them on in. In fact, the constant GOP refrain about the border being “open” may actually be aggravating the problem by disseminating the impression around the globe that it’s worth making the attempt to get into the United States. Here is the complicated reality. It is not Biden’s fault that so many people want to come to the United States. There was a big jump in border encounters under the Trump administration as well (from 310,531 in fiscal year 2017 to 859,501 in fiscal year 2019—the numbers plunged temporarily during the COVID-19 pandemic). People want to come here because 1) so many nations around the globe are hellish and a number of those are within walking distance; 2) this is a place where people with a good work ethic can get ahead and enjoy the blessings of liberty; 3) our immigration laws and rules are confusing. Those who object that immigrants are “breaking into our country” as a burglar breaks into a home are dead wrong. The vast majority of would-be entrants are not sneaking past sentries in the desert or wading through the Rio Grande (not that such acts are equivalent to burglary either). Most immigrants are attempting to come through international points of entry and ask for asylum. This is permitted under a law Congress passed in 1980, providing that people may seek asylum when they have a well-founded fear of persecution in their home country on the grounds of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. The law was designed for people like the Uighurs in China, the Yazidis in Iraq and Syria, democrats in Cuba, the Rohingya in Myanmar, the Baha’i in Iran, and others. Among those who have benefited from asylum in the United States are Gloria Estefan, Sergey Brin, Hannah Arendt, Salvador Dalí, and Mikhail Barishnikov. The United States separately admits refugees from wars and natural disasters. Here’s another solution to the immigration problem—welcome more legal immigrants! Opponents of immigration frequently object that policy should be aimed at what’s best for this country, not what’s in the interests of millions of unhappy people around the globe. Things are tough out there, sure, but we can’t be the dumping ground for the world’s problems! True, but more immigration is in our national interest. Even aside from the injection of vitality that immigrants always provide, we are suffering from a serious labor shortage. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell estimates that “The combination of a plunge in net immigration and a surge in deaths during the pandemic probably accounts for about one and a half million missing workers.” And the lack of those employees is driving up wages, which is contributing to our inflation problem. The unemployment rate stands at 3.7 percent, a 50-year low. For every job seeker, there are 1.7 job openings. The worker shortages are particularly acute in construction, farming, health care, and hospitality. The owner of a home health care company, Mariama Lowe, told the Washington Post that before the immigration restrictions and the pandemic she employed 100 nurses and personal care aides, most of them immigrants. Now, she is down to 27. She isn’t sure how long she can hold out. The wait for green cards, even for those who’ve been fully vetted, can be insanely long because our needlessly complicated law imposes caps by country of origin. Immigrants from India and China, for example, can wait their entire working lives. We are starved for workers. Americans are paying more for food, housing, and other commodities and services due to the severe labor shortage. We have backlogs of already-vetted immigrants, asylum-seekers with credible claims, and refugees who would gratefully (dare I say tearfully) accept jobs and lives in this country if we could only get out of our own way.

Texas has 2100 MEGA Churches, churches that have average attendance 2000 "worshipers" weekly. You would think these "christians" would welcome refugees on a weekend that celebrates the birth of the "Savior". http://hirr.hartsem.edu/cgi-bin/mega/db.pl?db=default&uid=default&view_records=1&ID=*&sb=4&State=TX I will admit there is an immigration problem but short of publicity stunts I have yet to see anything being done in the way of Republican "Leaders" working with the current administration.