If I understood you correctly, land that has no building on it is not eligible for a mortgage, and is therefore cheaper to buy? With the downside that you have to pay cash, because you can't get a mortgage either?
Yes the land value is so insanely cheaper on un-mortgagable properties in my state, it's off the charts.
I have developed land in my county so I'm familiar with the costs to develop, buy land, place utilities etc. (I did not become a land developer on purpose, only because I realized this absolutely crazy arbitrage)
It would cost you about $200-$250k to buy a rural small acreage land with a manufactured home on it. If you pay cash for the land and drop the exact same manufactured home on it, it would only cost you about $150k, and you would get a brand new house instead of a "used" one.
There is huge pent up demand for someone to just buy a huge swath of small acreage properties and just drop the cheapest manufactured home you could on it as the non-luxury starter home market is currently not being met. You could pretty much double your money. I'm not sure why this isn't being done en masse although a few private actors seem to be doing it and making a killing.
Hmm. You just gave me a flashback to Putin's invasion of Ukraine. He was saying all these threatening things, and moving all these troops, but surely he would never do that, right?
Wrong, it turned out. Sometimes bluster isn't bluster. Or perhaps sometimes blusterers back themselves into a corner with their mouth.
To me, the problem isn't politics per se. It's the zealots, ideologues, and shills that it brings out. What I wish the moderators would do is go through the comments carefully and wield the ban hammer vigorously.
Even having a curated list of people that are not allowed to post on political-adjacent stories would help.
And no, I'm not a hypocrite, that list would help the quality of discussion here even if I am put on it. Now I won't like that, but, frankly, my contributions to the discussion on such topics are not all that vital.
2 is hundreds of thousands dead at a minimum. 1, even at its worst, would not come close to that. Worse, 2 breaks the "no actual use since Nagasaki" moratorium that has held for 80 years. Once it's broken, how long until the next use? Until Russia decides it can just start nuking cities in Ukraine, say?
Yup. Remember the blowback from those videos showing potential double-taps on the alleged drug smuggling vessels in the Caribbean? That’s a clear violation of “hors de combat” as outlined on page 244 of DoD’s own Law of War Manual [1] because unlike Hegseth, I actually took the time to read it.
Hegseth came completely unhinged, going after Senator Mark Kelly’s retirement, etc.
Then a few weeks ago, Hegseth gave an interview where he literally argued that the United States doesn’t have to follow international law. He called the rules of engagement “stupid” and went on with a bunch of similar remarks.
It’s pretty clear that rather than trying to defend violations of international (and U.S.) law, the regime is now just saying they don’t have to follow them in the first place.
International law consists of treaties that have been bilaterally agreed to by several countries, in most cases including the US. Being treaties, they are US laws that are much more difficult for the US to amend than ordinary laws. US law/international law is a false distinction, when we speak of international law in the context of the US, we are generally referring specifically to treaties that the US is party to.
> it is selectively applied for national security.
This is true. The US gets creative when it wants to avoid adhering to the law. But international law is established through treaties, and the terms the US agrees to in treaties is US law.
This is true in this case, but in general complicated in the US. Since the executive branch is responsible for diplomacy, but only Congress can pass laws, there's a weird wiggle room where the Executive branch is completely on board with signing some treaty, but then when it comes time to actually implement it in any way that actually binds, Congress can refuse to do so.
It's one of the reasons why for a lot of the "everybody joins" treaties, a bunch of countries sign with a statement that they don't recognize the US as a signatory.
It is a can of worms indeed. Sadly, the President may be able to break the law without any repercussions. However, the same isn't true for the people under him.
Internationally, reputation is, essentially, your country's track record projected forward in other nations' thinking. It's their expectation value for how you will behave in the future.
People prioritize reputation because that's pretty much all there is to go on. Treaties? Sure, but how likely is the country to keep the terms of it? Agreements? Same question. Place for investments? How good is the rule of law there, and how likely is that to continue? Those are reputation questions; that is, they are questions about future behavior as predicted by past behavior.
To someone neutral (yeah, humor me), the Trump administration has done far more to demolish the reputation of the US than any other administration in my lifetime (OK, maybe Nixon - I don't remember all that much about him firsthand).
But I would also say that Biden, while not as bad as Trump, was worse than anybody since Nixon.
Which of Biden's policies and actions did you find worse than any since Nixon? And where do you rank the Iraq debacle that Bush started? How about selling arms to Iran to fund the Contras in Nicaragua?
Remember what we're talking about. It's not about their policies per se, it's about what they do to the US's international reputation.
So what did Biden do? The botched withdrawal from Afghanistan was the biggest thing. But his own frailty didn't help (speech fumbling and falling on stairs). Yeah, I know, his personal frailty shouldn't affect the US's reputation. But I think it did.
I mean, yes, the fact that we were leaving at all is due to Trump. (Either credit or blame, depending on whether you think we should have stayed there.) But the absolute debacle of how we left is on Biden. And it's that debacle that tarnished the reputation of the US.
Well, he's threatening to jail reporters for reporting that an airman was down inside Iran, claiming that Iran didn't know until the US media reported it. He's not currently threatening reporters for claiming that the US was going after the HEU.
reply