Mark Davis

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.

How many of us have ever had a restraining order pursued on us for punching a woman? It's getting harder to believe we are dealing with Father of the Year material here.

You're misinterpreting your own article in my opinion. As with any poll, a lot of results come in how you ask the questions. You're trying to square net positive views on immigration but saying now the public strongly disagrees with his policies. I suggest to you there is going to be a difference in those results if you say "Do you support Trump defying court orders to remove a father who has been here 10 years and committed no crimes?" and the question of "Do you support the Trump administration doing all it can to deport suspected gang members who illegally crossed our border back to their country of origin?" Both questions have a slant to them and both would likely get some people to give contradictory answers. I just think Democrats showing up in a sovereign country to demand one of their citizens who crossed our border illegally and is suspected, even if unproven, of having ties to MS-13 is a loser politically. Believe otherwise if you wish, but I think they're diving off the high board into an empty pool on that one. And even if there is water in that pool, it gets shallow quickly if any negative personal info starts to leak out on this guy. I don't think the administration is sitting on anything, but if they are they'd love to trickle it out as soon as they get that delegation on camera down in El Salvador.

I don't really support everything that anyone does. I always tell people if you can't find a difference ideologically with someone you aren't thinking for yourself but rather following. Honestly I'm not a Republican, never have been. I don't think of myself as necessarily even a conservative, although I guess I am because times have shifted as to who falls into that category. I always have been a fiscal conservative but in general I believe in smaller government staying out of our personal lives. There are a lot of things about Trump's policies that I like. But when we look at immigration as a whole, I think the majority of voters, specifically those voters who either swing or need motivation to show up to the polls agree with Trump's overall get tough stances on the border. You see this as a looming constitutional crisis but I don't think we are there. If we get specific to this one case I think one can argue over the term "facilitate". But let's put that disagreement aside. Strictly in political terms, imagine what the optics will be if that delegation goes to El Salvador. There are things I may feel I want for the country that really don't play well politically specifically when it comes to government programs. I think this is one of those issues for Democrats. They can go, their base may want them to, it may be good for those wanting to win primaries, but I think it helps Trump tremendously because the simple view is that he's getting tough on immigration. I'm actually with Trump we should do something about China, and I'm fine with doing what we need to do to get there, but even if I approve I have to admit politically it isn't playing well right now because of the market turbulence. We will see if it subsides, which he is certainly betting on. But the reality I believe is this whole dust up is going to shift from something that is losing in the polls to something he would love to talk about that he has net positives on.

We don’t agree on much but you’re right in that the tariffs and shaky financial situation resulting in the markets presently are his weak spot. Anything that shifts that narrative to immigration is a winner for him. His numbers on his handling of immigration poll the best.

You kind of framed things in ideological terms there. But if you believe sending delegations to bring back an illegal immigrant suspected of gang activity to this country is winning messaging then I can’t help you. Maybe he is innocent of that assertion, maybe he isn’t. But the optics on it politically should be apparent.

And Trump gets bailed out in the news cycle again. This is a winning issue for him, the tariffs at least as it stands now is terrible for him. They have to be salivating profusely imagining the footage they are going to get if this congressional delegation truly goes to El Salvador to try to bring an illegal immigrant back.

Thom McKee was a bad ass champion