Well, not quite. But even though I’m into the real estate market up to my eyeballs, articles such as this one make me long to see the housing bubble burst–suddenly and mercilessly:

Such thriftiness has gone out of fashion. What was once considered undesirable — taking on large debt — is now seen as smart. And what used to be smart — becoming debt-free — is described as imprudent.

“If you paid your mortgage off, it means you probably did not manage your funds efficiently over the years,” said David Lereah, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors and author of “Are You Missing the Real Estate Boom?” “It’s as if you had 500,000 dollar bills stuffed in your mattress.”

He called it “very unsophisticated.”

Anthony Hsieh, chief executive of LendingTree Loans, an Internet-based mortgage company, used a more disparaging term. “If you own your own home free and clear, people will often refer to you as a fool. All that money sitting there, doing nothing.”

Really, whatever financial harm comes my way when the bubble bursts will be totally out-balanced by the satisfaction of seeing prats like these two get beached.

Galley Friend C.L. adds:

Because in the New Economy, the laws of supply and demand are irrelevant!

Honestly, in five years these guys are going to be looking at the same kind of jail time that Merrill equity analysts are doing today.

Amen.

Update, 1:15 p.m.: A commenter says:

No offense, but the laws of supply and demand are very much at the source of the real-estate boom. Look at the areas that are experiencing the biggest booms: dense urban areas and the surrounding suburbs. The supply of homes is in limited quantities due to strict zoning regulations that keep builders from erecting more homes. At the same time those areas are seeing huge influxes of immigration. Increased demand, capped supply, higher costs. It’s the same reason why you can check out real estate in Raleigh, NC and notice that it’s barely moved over the past 5 years. There is basically an unlimited supply of land to build on and homes are going up incredibly fast. Same with Salt Lake City, UT. The market is overpriced, but it’s hardly a bubble that will lead to any sort of serious crash.

If only that was true! Look down the list of red-hot, out-of-control markets and you’ll see cities such as Phoenix, and Bakersfield, and Naples–medium-sized, diffuse metropolitan and suburban areas with no space constraints.

And at the top of the list of percentage price increases over the last several years is . . . Nevada, lead by the insane market in Las Vegas. You know what they’ve got in Las Vegas? Land! They’re not bumping up against rivers or oceans or 200-year-old suburbs in Sin City.

Look at this list of the top markets for 2004: Las Vegas real estate increased by 47.3 percent in one year. 47.3 percent! And it isn’t because there’s not enough sand to build on.

Look down the complete list and you’ll find only 6 markets that could even charitably be described as dense and urban in the top 30. San Francisco and New York City–the archetypes of the incredibly expensive, densely-packed urban market–don’t even make the top 40!

You tell me how any of this makes sense.

In a piece that GOP types will both love and hate, Hitchens sounds a number of important notes:

LET ME BEGIN WITH A simple sentence that, even as I write it, appears less than Swiftian in the modesty of its proposal: “Prison conditions at Abu Ghraib have improved markedly and dramatically since the arrival of Coalition troops in Baghdad.”

I could undertake to defend that statement against any member of Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International, and I know in advance that none of them could challenge it, let alone negate it. Before March 2003, Abu Ghraib was an abattoir, a torture chamber, and a concentration camp. Now, and not without reason, it is an international byword for Yankee imperialism and sadism. Yet the improvement is still, unarguably, the difference between night and day. How is it possible that the advocates of a post-Saddam Iraq have been placed on the defensive in this manner?

His defense of the war in Iraq is fairly convincing, as is his indictment of President Bush:

I have a ready answer to those who accuse me of being an agent and tool of the Bush-Cheney administration . . . Attempting a little levity, I respond that I could stay at home if the authorities could bother to make their own case, but that I meanwhile am a prisoner of what I actually do know about the permanent hell, and the permanent threat, of the Saddam regime. However, having debated almost all of the spokespeople for the antiwar faction, both the sane and the deranged, I was recently asked a question that I was temporarily unable to answer. “If what you claim is true,” the honest citizen at this meeting politely asked me, “how come the White House hasn’t told us?”

I do in fact know the answer to this question.

And later, this:

Two pieces of good fortune still attend those of us who go out on the road for this urgent and worthy cause. The first is contingent: There are an astounding number of plain frauds and charlatans (to phrase it at its highest) in charge of the propaganda of the other side. Just to tell off the names is to frighten children more than Saki ever could: Michael Moore, George Galloway, Jacques Chirac, Tim Robbins, Richard Clarke, Joseph Wilson . . . a roster of gargoyles that would send Ripley himself into early retirement. Some of these characters are flippant, and make heavy jokes about Halliburton, and some disdain to conceal their sympathy for the opposite side. So that’s easy enough.

The second bit of luck is a certain fiber displayed by a huge number of anonymous Americans. Faced with a constant drizzle of bad news and purposely demoralizing commentary, millions of people stick out their jaws and hang tight. I am no fan of populism, but I surmise that these citizens are clear on the main point: It is out of the question–plainly and absolutely out of the question–that we should surrender the keystone state of the Middle East to a rotten, murderous alliance between Baathists and bin Ladenists. When they hear the fatuous insinuation that this alliance has only been created by the resistance to it, voters know in their intestines that those who say so are soft on crime and soft on fascism. The more temperate anti-warriors, such as Mark Danner and Harold Meyerson, like to employ the term “a war of choice.” One should have no problem in accepting this concept. As they cannot and do not deny, there was going to be another round with Saddam Hussein no matter what. To whom, then, should the “choice” of time and place have fallen? The clear implication of the antichoice faction–if I may so dub them–is that this decision should have been left up to Saddam Hussein. As so often before . . .

DOES THE PRESIDENT deserve the benefit of the reserve of fortitude that I just mentioned? Only just, if at all.

David Adesnik has an excellent post giving context to a disturbing picture from the Washington Post.

Seriously! Hugh has a long and devastating post comparing the work of Nick Lemann (of the New Yorker) and Tim Rutten (of the Los Angeles Times). Here’s Hewitt on Lemann:

I have been asked by many why did I “chance” such a piece? Answer: Before I agreed I read everything Nicholas Lemann had produced for the magazine over the previous four years, and found all of them to be rigourously fair and of course spectacularly well written. Lemann really does practice “the craft” that so many in old media claim to follow in the way that 2,000,000 Angelenos claim to have been at Chavez Ravine when Gibson hit his home run.

We’ve got a convert!

To be polite, Mr. Rutten does not compare favorably.

Bonus: Be sure to read this post for a pre-war Lemann excerpt which accurately describes the Bush administration’s multi-pronged rationale. It’s a tonic to the “no WMDS” refrain.

Amazing:

Referring to the certified miracle which is required for sainthood, Dziwisz said: “The Holy Father didn’t want to hear talk of such things. He would say `If by chance something should happen, God makes miracles, not me. I pray. These are mysteries. Let’s not talk of these things.'”

I’ll just give you the first paragraph of the story:

AUGUSTA — The Maine Human Rights Commission has agreed that a former Skowhegan man was subjected to sexual harassment during visits to an adult book and video store.

I lied. Here’s more:

“I was a regular customer at FABV,” Clark said. “I was subjected to constant sexual harassment and sexual advances by one of the gay male clerks at the store, Carlton Larrabee. I found his actions to be totally unwelcome and offensive.”

Clark said he complained to Larrabee, and threatened to go to his supervisor.

Shortly thereafter, Clark said, he was banned from 1st Amendment Book and Video.

In his response, Stuart noted that Clark was protesting in front of his store.

It does get better, though.

Courtesy of George Will:

In the 1960s, just as conservatism was beginning to grow from a fringe tendency into what it has become — the nation’s most potent persuasion — it was threatened by a boarding party of people not much, if any, loonier than Sheehan. The John Birch Society, whose catechism included the novel tenet that Dwight Eisenhower was an agent of the Kremlin, was not numerous — its membership probably never numbered more than 100,000 — but its power to taint all of conservatism was huge, particularly given the media’s eagerness to abet the tainting. Responsible conservatives, especially William F. Buckley and his National Review, repelled the boarders, driving them into the dark cave where, today, they ferociously guard the secret of their size from a nation no longer curious about it.

MoveOn.org, which claims 3.3 million members and is becoming a tone-setting tail that wags the Democratic Party dog that is mostly such tails, adopted Sheehan during her Crawford demonstration, organizing 1,627 vigils around the country to express solidarity with her. But the Democratic Party, whose democratically elected chairman is Howard (“I Hate the Republicans and Everything They Stand For”) Dean, is not ripe for lessons in temperate rhetoric, which may be why the Republican Party has far fewer worries than it deserves.

From a local ABC affiliate:

There is real reluctance to talk about whose paying. And the PR machine that’s promoting Cindy Sheehan. But not everyone here is completely comfortable with it.

Gold Star mother Karen Meredith went to Crawford from Mt. View. Her son Ken Ballard died last year.

Karen Meredith: “Sometimes things don’t feel quite right to me. They don’t feel wrong but maybe that’s how they do it in the marketing business.”

ABC7’s Mark Matthew: “You feel you’re part of a marketing business?”

Karen Meredith: “Possibly. Yeah I think so.”