Housing sputters and starts

The single greatest item to the US economic recovery has to do with consumers and their single largest debt item--homes.

The housing market must recover in order for any sizeable and sustainable recovery to happen. For 4+ years now the housing market has been in tough. People looking to sell can't because nobody will buy. Those who want to move to find jobs can't accept because they can't sell their home or the mortgage is worth far more than the home.... They're stuck putting consumers in an even deeper cyclical problem. Others would like to move up but can't because their current property won't sell to anyone. Basically a holding pattern exists in the market.

New starts are in the same boat. New home builds were in fact up in October, so that's a strong sign that builders think that things are, albeit really tiny, slowly picking up. But then with new housing start numbers slightly up, new housing SALES were in fact down in October 2012. So you have more houses on the market but even fewer people buying them.

Long story short the American economy still needs help. Primary driving force behind that will be job creation. More folks with more money will then help push the housing market (so long as the banks also do their part and lend at these historic interest rate lows).

When will this happen? Well no time soon and certainly not quickly. We're in it for a long time, perhaps a decade, in fact, certainly a decade (if you start counting fro m2008).


-- With notes from Calgary real-estate law firm TC.

Nail bitter to the end

For a moment a nation was on the edge, and if you were (are) a Republican then you had increasing expectations leading up to election day that perhaps this was the year Mitt was going to pull it off. Democrats on election day itself had an early scare as results trickled in.

But after all was said and done the contest wasn't close, there was a clear victory. Despite what Karl 'Idiot' Rove suggests, the election results were never in doubt. Obama handedly won his second term and the Democrats took the popular vote.

It was close, however. The nation itself remains polarized. And frankly, what's causing us to stay in the miry clay is the ineptitude of Congress. Republican President may have meant the cry babies in Congress would've been working rather than stalling.

But now we have another frustrating four years. If Obama could get work done he would, but lawmakers need to work together, we hope, to pull the nation out of its economic slump and push it as leaders for the world tomorrow.

Duo-tangs Full of Women

Unlike my buddy (he's not my buddy) Mitt, I do'nt have binders full of women. I mean, think about it, that's A LOT of women. But thru my travels living in the same city for most of my life, I have added up my women and they fit quite nicely in a couple of duo-tangs. Sure, I haven't spent enough time as Mitt has building up a war chest of women raring to go (for what purpose I don't know), but I think my duo-tang set is a good asset given I havent procured women for very long.

It's going to make complete sense when women flock to vote for Romney and his Republican cronies given their copious amounts of empty binders--women just wanna get a chance to be filed away in Mitt's arsenal of women.

Election day should be a doozy.

National Conventions End

All we can really ascertain from the Democratic and Republican conventions is that Democrats are more fun and Republicans are, well, boring. No real front runner at this point but you have to give the ever so slight edge to Democrats. They have better storytellers in the end.

Doesn't help Mitt that he continues to make ridiculous mistakes that pit him against the majority of Americans....

Santorum

The other white meat. -SNL

Is he really the alternative Conservative? I know one thing. Obama will destroy him in any debate. That's just stating the obvious Update: April 16th. Santorum is out. He had a good run trying to capture all the ultra conservatives who were unhappy with lukewarm Romney. But now everyone will have to unite and come together to beat the 'evil' Democrats. November should be interesting, but fact remains it's nothing near 4 years ago. Democrats will take this in a cakewalk. I"ms ure many would like to see a stronger opposition, but right now the Republicans can't get it right.

What will Christians do about Romney?

Conservative Christians certainly vote with their heart, and for the candidate that reflects their ideals. That's why Republicans get a lion's share of the conservative right-wing vote. That's changing somewhat as young Republicans notice a bit of a divide between what people say and what they do.

Does Romney really represent young emerging Americans on the political right? It's hard for the middle class, let alone lower, to cozy up to someone who only knows a life of wealth.

But that's not the only conundrum. Romney is a mormon. If there was a stronger Christian candidate (stronger than the wacko Santorum) you'd probably discover a stronger rhetoric of 'dont vote for that mormon guy'. If you go down that path then regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum it's Obama who reflects family values in his real life. Let your walk do the talking and not your empty rhetoric.

So that's the conundrum. Romney, the rich mormon who, well loves his family I'm sure, or Obama, the President who inherited a mess, might be creating a bigger one, yet seems a bit more accessible to the avg. Joe.

Newt, Santy, Mitt

Just keep talking boys, there's no way the religious right will win you the upcoming election.....Less in fighting and more discussions on how they can change America for the better (without using words like: "wars, justice, abortion, stem cell, etc"

Newt?!

I would've taken Bachmann! The conservative Christians sure have a massive problem now. Vote for a man who really believes in family as per his actions (Obama) ,or a man with 3 wives.