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Yahoo Sports reports:

“Over the weekend, a golfer’s routine swing in the rough at the Shady Canyon Golf Course in Irvine, Calif., struck a rock. Not so different from the way you play, right? Only this time, the impact caused a spark, and the spark set off a blaze that eventually covered 25 acres, according to the Steven Buck, General Manager of Shady Canyon Golf Course, and required the efforts of 150 Orange County firefighters….”

Irvine?  Seriously?  One little spark set Irvine ablaze?

Is it any wonder half of California burns every late summer?

Yahoo Sports Blog:  Golfer’s swing sparks 25-acre Cali fire

Check out this graph that has been adjusted year to year for inflation. Just look at how silly things got in 2006. The housing bubble of 2001-2006 was America’s “Tulip Mania“. We reached a point in the American psyche where the price for a house didn’t matter any more, because that house was sure to go up 20% every year, and it was the vehicle that was going to make Joe-Six-Pack rich.

Now the market is correcting itself, and according to the graph, it has a lot more correcting to do before the price of a house really is evaluated on the basis of a living space, not a chip in a casino game where “you can’t lose”.

View the full size image here.

Today’s news about the housing market doesn’t come the usual “Bear” known as Dr. Housing Bubble, but the New York Times. The news: houses aren’t moving off the market despite claims by the real estate industry that housing is more affordable than ever.

Really? The market sure doesn’t think so.

See, this is what happens when the funny-money and liar-loans of the early 2000’s are no longer legal, and people are actually expected to pay the nut on their mortgage, taxes and insurance. And the fact is, most “average” families making less than $100,000 per year just can’t afford a $400,000 house.

Out in SoCal, the market is still in denial, and 1,200 square foot beaters are still fetching $360,000 or more as people get duped into thinking that they can flip it in two years for a $50,000 profit. What’s worse is that $360K is truly still out of reach for a family making with a grooss income of $75,000 which can really only afford about $250,000 at their limit. So we are adding more bad debt on top of bad debt, as surely a good number of the FHA loans are not going to pan out. And guess who foots the bill when and FHA loan goes belly up. You and me, the American taxpayer.

The market is still somewhat inflated. That’s why prices are still dropping. Without the fake ARM loans, and a silly $8,000 tax credit to fake people into buying houses that they can’t afford, reasonable Americans simply don’t have the flow to make it happen, especially with the massive taxes that many states are slapping on top of the huge federal income taxes.

I’d look for the market to continue to drop or at least languish at current levels for another four to six years. Prices won’t bounce back several years after this current unemployment crisis is averted. And I’m not so sure that mortgage rates are going to go anywhere. The Fed can’t raise rates without causing our economy to go into a tailspin. They have to hold the rates artificially low to keep things from totally tanking.

Now is not a bad time to buy, but the hype about this being the best time to buy doesn’t seem to really carry any validity. In the light of today’s news, I’d say that the bulls of the housing market have a lot of egg on their face.

“This jet, before it heralds death for enemies, is the messenger of salvation and dignity for humanity.”

- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

You’ve gotta love Mahmoud’s quotes.  The guy seriously has a flair for hyperbole and exaggeration.

Note: This was intentionally filed under News *and* Humor.

Yahoo has the real news on Mahmoud’s new rocket, er, jet.

Not again….or wait…..yes again! Love or hate him, Brett Favre took another step toward returning for a 20th NFL season today. Apparently a group of his 2009 teammates twisted his arm hard enough in a private meeting to convince him that he’s their man for 2010.

Favre jumped on a plane, and the NFL Network reports that an announcement might be made sometime today or tomorrow.

The people at ESPN must be jumping for joy today. As for me, I’ll find myself actually rooting for the Vikings again if he throws his hat back in the ring.

The Washington Post has more.

If Usain Bolt was a freak of nature, then today truly is Freaky Friday in the world of Track & Field as Tyson Gay beat Bolt and became the new “fastest man on earth”.

Gay clocked 9.84 seconds to beat the fit-again 23-year-old Jamaican by 0.13s and record his first ever win over the World and Olympic champion over 100m.

BBC Sport has the real news.

BP Failed to Fix Device Before Blast, Worker Says

KENNER, La. — BP failed to fix a leak from a critical safety device in the days before the Deepwater Horizon exploded, a company official testified on Tuesday.

Drilling was allowed to continue despite a leak on a control pod connected to the blowout preventer, an emergency mechanism that failed to activate after the disaster, said the official, Ronald Sepulvado, a BP well site leader. He testified that he had expected BP officials in Houston and the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency that regulates offshore drilling, to respond to the leak, but they did not do so before the April 20 disaster.

There’s more from the NY Times.  According to the article, BP inspected the Deepwater Horizon site in 2009, but didn’t schedule a shipyard visit for the rig until 2011.   The realization that this disaster could have been completely avoidable with proper safety actions, actions left undone, is unfathomable to me.

“We told the IMF/EU that further austerity was out of the question.”

-Hungary’s economic minister Gyorgy Matolcsy

This quote from the CFO of Hungary is hilarious. Here’s a guy in charge of a nation that is in the middle of a financial disaster, and he’s telling the bank how to do their business, and that they should just fork over billions.

He’s a typical socialist. Produces nothing, takes everything.

“The housing market has merely been a charade for the public while banks setup protective barriers and funnel taxpayer money into their balance sheet to fix the gaping financial holes that they created.” -Dr. Housing Bubble

The good Doctor always finds a way to put the feelings of millions of American taxpayers into brilliant analytical nuggets like this.

The FHA program has helped the banks artificially hold up prices, and enticed buyers to dive into home ownership when they weren’t ready. Even worse, many of these buyers are on their way to being underwater as California unemployment continues to ramp up, all while the state government is going bankrupt. This is a recipe for stagnant or falling home prices.

But the mantra of today’s market is that home ownership is the road to wealth, and always a good investment. Sure. Right. Tell that to thousands of home owners that are $200,000 underwater because they bought $565,000 3/2’s on postage stamp lots in 2006. Let’s see what they say about that “sure thing”.

From the LA Times:

L.A. City Council delays exempting red-light camera contract from Arizona boycott

Consideration of a proposed exemption from Los Angeles’ boycott of Arizona to allow continuation of the city’s red light camera program has been postponed until Wednesday.

The City Council had been scheduled to consider a onetime, 10-month extension of a multimillion-dollar agreement with Scottsdale, Ariz.-based American Traffic Solutions, which operates enforcement cameras at 32 intersections.

Last month, the council and mayor agreed to ban most contracts with Arizona firms as a protest of a state law requiring police to check the immigration status of those they legally stop and suspect of being illegal immigrants.

The council also was scheduled to consider a plan to seek new bids for an expanded photo enforcement contract beginning next year. The current camera vendor and another top competitor for the new contract, Redflex Traffic Systems, both are based in Arizona.

The matters were continued a day because some key council members were not present.

In L.A., a boycott is only a boycott when it doesn’t cost the city millions of dollars of red-light-revenue.  The “key council members” will likely duck for cover until this blows over and they can quietly vote for the extension.

I don’t usually recommend reading the LA Times, but here’s their story if you want to read it.

“People for the most part simply aren’t spending. In the past, spending was fueled by debt and that game is quickly coming to an end. Look at Greece and how their debt was just rated as junk. When you spend too much and take on too much debt, there is a point where it is no longer supportable. We’ve reached that point and the Senate trying to extend tax credits so people can buy homes they can’t afford simply reflects this reality.”  – Dr. Housing Bubble

The Federal Government is attempt to extend their program to trick people into buying houses they can’t afford by “giving them back $8,000. Offering back $8,000 on a $400,000 house is like offering 15 free tanks of gas for buying a $40,000 car. The reason they are doing this? To help the banks mostly, but also to get people to spend money again.

Read more from the good doctor.

It is a sad state of affairs when the US military has rolled over to the pressure to be politically correct. The result was a terrible attack that cost precious American lives.

From a report by the Detroit Freep:

An unnamed source close to the Nebraska program told ESPN’s Chris Mortensen that athletic director Tom Osborne informed staff members that the Cornhuskers are going to move to the Big Ten.

Meanwhile, an unnamed source close to the Nebraska Board of Regents told orangebloods.com the regents met informally Wednesday and have agreed to move to the Big Ten and that a formal announcement will come Friday — the deadline set by the Big 12 for Nebraska and Missouri to state whether they intend to leave the conference.

An unnamed Big 12 athletic director told ESPN’s Joe Schad that there is a “good chance” Nebraska would join the Big Ten.

Putting up with those panty-waste easterners from Penn State was bad enough for Big Ten fans to take, but now we’ve got Huskers joining the conference? What’s next, Mizzou? Rutgers? Syracuse?

The BCS is ruining everything good and pure about college football.

That’s his full name. Who new?

Here’s more:

1. Did you know the Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons has a name? It’s Jeff Albertson. But that wasn’t the decision of creator Matt Groening. “I was out of the room when [the writers] named him,” he told MTV in 2007. “In my mind, ‘Louis Lane’ was his name, and he was obsessed and tormented by Lois Lane.”

2. Barbie’s full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts. (Ken’s last name is Carson.)

3. Cap’n Crunch’s full name is Captain Horatio Magellan Crunch

4. Snuffleupagus has a first name—Aloysius.

5. In the Peanuts comic strip, Peppermint Patty’s real name is Patricia Reichard

The Mental Floss blog has more.

Folks, these are the people running our financial system. Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Fed, stated the obvious at a Senate hearing on Wednesday.

From the NY Times:

By SEWELL CHAN

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben S. Bernanke, warned on Wednesday that “the federal budget appears to be on an unsustainable path,” but also recognized that the “exceptional increase” in the deficit had been necessary to ease the recession.

If our Senate needs a “warning” in 2010 that our Federal deficit is unsustainable, they are ridiculously inept and unaware of the situation. The deficits have been unsustainable for 30 years, and now we are being crushed by it.

The Fed chairman might has well gone before the committee and said that “water is wet”. That kind of insight would require about the same amount of thought and analysis.