Mark Davis

How's everyone doing in here? Hope we didn't lose anyone off the ledge before it retraced a good bit of the losses. Another example of why you should never sell into the fear.

I agree with this take. The mentally ill have higher suicide rates, it shouldn't be a surprise.

Totally possible. I'm just trying to think of their best chance. If you could sacrifice 20 to blind him it might be worth it. They'll always be near, but it will be much easier to get clean runs at him. The only path is to immobilize/disable him. That would involve limbs, but to get clean runs where he misses most of them he would have to be blinded.

Not a great plan but if they had time to plot strategy, perhaps split in half and try to each take a side to try and immobilize his arms. A few would perish in the effort. But if they can effectively "smother" and restrain movement enough have a few go in for the eyes to try and rip them out to blind him. That's their best path because if they can blind him they can just then attack in force without him being able to efficiently defend himself to the level he would start at.

Father Time catches us all. I was hoping to make bank on my Lakers tickets with a deep playoff run. But you could tell from game 1 this was a bad matchup for them. LeBron’s age is showing. Not a slap to him, he’s held it off a long time.

This is where the two sides get parted. You’re right in that most has been spent with US companies for armaments for the US. However that’s still a significant cost. Yes we gave them the old weapons and upgraded ours with newer models so to speak. But it’s at a cost, and in most cases likely could have been at the least deferred or we would have done it earlier. So the true economic incremental cost lies somewhere in between the two stories we are told.

I don’t know the specifics or details and it sounds like you do. However, someone is going to need to provide the technology they need. I’d rather this be us than China. But what little I do know suggests as you said this is a long term payoff, not short term. Hopefully future administrations hold the course on this deal and make it beneficial for both parties.

The Clintons

My favorite is walking around on a football Saturday in Tuscaloosa and seeing girls, clearly from out of state, that look like they just got pulled off the cast of Jersey Shore crooning to Sweet Home Alabama with their houndstooth hats on. It's pretty funny times.

I understand why the realtors would be for it, I understand why both you and I as property owners of rentals would be for it. And let me be clear that this would benefit me personally in that regard. So if this forgiveness did happen even if I don't like it, I guess I'll take the benefit. But there's zero doubt it would inflationary to prices. I do want to ask though, aren't you concerned that would artificially prop up and inflate the housing market along the lines of some of the low qualification standards ushered in by Clinton and later on we would suffer the washout from it? It also strikes me if I were a welder, an electrician, a barber, or just someone who had some parental help as I worked my way through school that I'd probably be bitter not only at the loan forgiveness, but also that for me to now buy a property I'm going to have to pay more because the market is going to be inflated by this forgiveness. The price those people pay is beyond a fairness or sense of justice. The market by it's nature will force them to pay more for housing as well as a result. I think some of this is why you've seen some realignment politically towards Trump from black and Hispanic men. There's no doubt we still have a racial divide, but to some, we have an even larger class divide.

Yeah, I've never demanded an apology from anyone in my life. If someone feels the need to apologize, that's when it's sincere. If you demand one, you aren't going to be getting a sincere one anyway. But more so it says a lot about the type person who feels the authority to demand one so their feelings aren't hurt. People who live in that head space need to toughen up.

Yeah I don't keep cash sitting within brokerage accounts. I do have a little, but nothing of major consequence. Most of mine is sitting in my overnight sweep account for my business. It's earning north of 4% and on hand when I need it. I just have to take a distribution from the company to move it so it takes a couple business days. I'm not trying to catch an exact bottom so I'm sitting on go if we dip a bit more and just average in some.

Mathematically you are correct, especially if expected returns hold. From my point of view I extinguished my debt because in some ways it freed my mind up for what I could do with my assets once I was debt free. There is an amount that is hard to quantify that you will feel free to invest or otherwise put to work for you if you don't have that looming monthly payment because you have no need for that safety net. Mathematically I think you are still probably better to keep that low rate mortgage if you don't feel the need to keep extra cash reserves, and I have successful friends who have gone either way on keeping that mortgage or paying it off.

Tell me all about it Mr. Buffett. P.S. You can't buy ETFs until funds settle either.

If it does, being in cash wouldn't help you anyway

End of day it closed there twice within two days of each other. There's a thing called clearing of funds that isn't instantaneous. If you had a brokerage account somewhere you would understand.

Exactly. During 2008 I was just newly married, my wife and I bought a new house and had to sell our two we had. So for about a 6 month period during the housing slowdown I had two house notes and a home equity line. That and having a growing business roiled my insides every day with the market turmoil. I made some too conservative plays back then that I regret to this day. The smarter move is to use these times as opportunities if you have the financial ability to do so.

Reading is your friend. If it gets to 5K I am going to start dipping my toes in, that's what I said. I'm not trying to time the market, trade out of it to rebuy, anything more than put some sideline cash to work if the dip goes further. But you do you, calling people buffoons when you can't read and comprehend a simple sentence.

Every time the SP500 nears 5k I get my sideline money warming up in the pen. It’s better over time to look at things like this as opportunities long term.

It's pretty evident the quality of individual this is. I was listening to a podcast yesterday with a Democratic operative who equated this guy to Willie Horton for Michael Dukakis. His argument was to find someone detained incorrectly who is a citizen and go from there. But the problem is people like Van Hollen have dug their heels in now and made a media spectacle over this guy, so they may have wasted the opportunity by taking all the oxygen in the room up on this case. It's amazing to me that they were blindsided by the wife beating and trafficking allegations after going all in on this guy. I'd have thought more due diligence would be done before boarding a plane with a film crew. Maybe this is a winner to protect the left flank in primaries, but otherwise I don't understand it.

The lengths some are willing to go to in order to play the stooge to protect this guy is amazing. Make the due process argument, it is one worth considering. But when making the argument about this guy personally it’s a loser. How many people does anyone here know who’ve been accused of hitting women in your personal circle of friends? I don’t know any. What about being part of Ms-13? No? Human trafficking? Still no? The odds this guy is none of those things is beyond remote. Especially considering battered women often recant or don’t follow through on their cases.

Harvard has an endowment of over $50 billion. The interest alone if that is invested in the most conservative vehicle is in excess of the $2.2 billion funding. If I'm not mistaken they also have tax exempt status. I'm not sure why we are subsidizing them with taxpayer dollars at all, regardless of all the other debate.

Only that it's not irrelevant. Garcia was here because we didn't enforce our borders, those two specific women are dead for the same reason, their killers came in over that border. I'm fine with political theater, grandstanding, butt slapping, whatever label you want to call it, if you are. Or really, because neither of us have a choice. It's simply our political reality today. Van Hollen can do what he wants, I didn't condemn him, even though I don't think it was smart. But let's not pretend one party does these things and the other doesn't. I don't think I'd choose murder victims as my first call-out for it though.

I'm good with a differing opinion all the way to where you dismiss out of hand as political theater the discussion of murdered citizens while you think this is good politics for a sitting US Senator to literally carry a film crew with him to El Salvador. That's kind of an interesting take. But if you think it's good politics, you won't get any pushback from anyone on the Trump side of this. Have at it.

It's like I told you earlier when you disputed that going down there to try and get this guy released would be a political loser for the Democrats, when personal stuff comes out about him it's all likely downhill from a political standpoint. I think they are already on the losing side of it, you disagreed. But that was as things stood, and there is no good news that can make this guy look better. Only the likelihood that more comes out that shows he's really not that good of a guy. As to your Ruby Ridge comparison, you can use Waco if you want as I was in a college philosophy class when that went down. I don't lose too much sleep when bad things happen to bad people. I get your argument and I don't condemn you for it. Perhaps it would have been easier for Trump to have handled it in another way, because the end result was always going to be this guy gets deported somewhere. And while I understand you want to hold the government to a higher standard, some of us view the government having failed someone like Rachel Morin or Laken Riley due to not enforcing our borders. In that failure we had US citizens lose their lives for government inaction/error, in this case we have a guy who has been now accused of being someone who hits women as well as a potential gang member be deported to his country of origin. In the order of egregiousness, I feel one is way worse than the other. And honestly if our government had enforced that border, we likely don't have either set of issues.