Interesting "investigation" by the US Humane Society - link.



The Humane Society is on to you midwestern breeders! Be Warned!

You have got to love Ben Stein. I've always had an enormous amount of respect for him and this article in the NYTimes is very thought provoking about the current state of the mortgage mess and Wall Street's role...



The Long and Short of It at Goldman Sachs



The article is particularly interesting in light of recent developments in deferring higher payments on the crazy mortgages some folks took out in order to buy into homeownership (or at least renting it from the bank on an installment plan if you prefer that view). I wouldn't call it a "bailout" as 5-7 years of reduced payments, which will almost certainly be tacked on to the amount of the loan, in a market of generally declining home prices will probably just defer the pain. [Of course, I've also argued this is all being ginned up by the banks to help their balance sheets look better over the next X number of quarters so they can slowly eat the losses over time...]



Paulson Foresees Deal on Mortgage Rates



As many of you know, I've been bitching about and watching with some morbid fascination the Bay Area housing market for the last few years. I've even argued the financial games folks have played with housing out here essentially amount to leasing their home on a bet that housing prices will go up and they'll make money on it (similar to the exact opposite they are all doing with the fancy cars they all lease). In the end, I guess we'll all just have to sit back and see how this all plays out - good, bad, or otherwise.



It appears bright minds at Goldman, former Goldman folks at the Treasury and in Congress have it all figured out - both long and short.



Happy reading...



Gov. J

Ok so I must say, Perez Hilton is too much. But this post...takes the cake! THANK YOU PEREZ!







I mean who doesn't love a man who will take a picture of a celeb. Notice the wonderful showing of straight guy package and then BLOW UP THE PICTURE and put it online for every man, woman and child to enjoy...but, not only that, make sure he writes the word YUM underneath it all. Just so you know what he's gettin at.



Happy Sunday!

This video brought back so many memories...reasonably work safe...

One of the stories that really got me involved in Russian culture and history as a youngster was the events surrounding the Russian royal family shortly after the start of the Russian Revolution. I remember watching a mini-series on one of the networks about a woman claiming to be Anastasia Romanov. To a young impressionable mind the story had all it needed to hook me - politics, violence, and a singular character mixed up in it all to bring it down to an understandable level. Years later, I earned a Russian Studies degree but the story would crop up now and then...did anyone survive? If not, where were their bodies...



Well fast forward to today: The NYTimes had an interesting article today discussing a recent finding of the remains of two bodies near the site of where 9 remains which folks claim to be the Romanov's were found. People are speculating these remains could be the remains of the final two missing members of the family.



It will bear watching to see if DNA analysis shows these two bodies to also be the missing Romanovs.