The media, part (mumble dozen)

AP real estate writer Alan Zibel tell us this morning that homes sales "surged" last month, "reflecting an extraordinary level of federal support that has pulled the housing market back from the worst downturn since the Great Depression."

Not quite, Al, and your own choice of words suggests the contradiction.

"Federal support " of a "market" is a serious oxymoron. Governments may disrupt markets, or distort them, or end them altogether. If fact, governments often do. But markets either support themselves or they are something other than markets.

This federal support you cite reflects the will of federal regulators who decide which citizens may or may not receive mortgages with which to buy homes. The same gaggle also decides what homes are worth in dollars, largely by controlling the current and expected value of the currency .

One proper lead (there are others, of course) could have been written thusly: "Home transfers rose in November as unprecedented federal spending further eroded confidence in the American dollar, accelerating the flight from the greenback to tangible assets."

You'd need a little evidence to back that up, but God knows it isn't hard to find.

He said vas?

Sixty-five years ago today Germans demand the surrender of the surrounded and badly outnumbered 101st Airborne Division. In Bastogne, Acting Commmander Brig. Gen, Anthony C. McAuliffe officially replies "Nuts. " The allies, principally Americans, go on to straighten out the bulge.

Greatest generation? I don't know. But certainly a higher proportion of good men than the whine-soaked boomers who came along later.

There are too many generations of pious-tongued Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians between me and my Celtic heritage. In old Ireland I could cuss like a man and insult effectively.

American English has no match for the majestic "gobshite." Nothing to even approach "richfokkenturd."

---

EDIT: Yes, I am reading Greeley, specifically "Irish Gold."

Let's Be Careful Out There

The mysterious solstice can bring bad things. For instance, 143 years ago today Captain William Fetterman decided he was smarter than his commanding officer, smarter than Red Cloud, smarter than Roman Nose. A couple of hours later he was dead, which probably constituted no harm to the Republic. But the gobshite took 79 good men with him.

It was part of Red Cloud's War. It happened because the government of the United States, a la Kelo, decided to exercise a little eminent domain against some people who weren't buying the concept and were brave enough to resist it.