October 2010 archive

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

October 12 is the 285th day of the year (286th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 80 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1810, Bavarian Crown Prince Louis, later King Louis I of Bavaria, marries Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen. The Bavarian royalty invited the citizens of Munich to attend the festivities, held on the fields in front of the city gates. These famous public fields were named Theresienwiese-“Therese’s fields”-in honor of the crown princess; although locals have since abbreviated the name simply to the “Wies’n.” Horse races in the presence of the royal family concluded the popular event, celebrated in varying forms all across Bavaria.

Oktoberfest is a 16-18 day festival held each year in Munich, Bavaria, Germany, running from late September to the first weekend in October. It is one of the most famous events in Germany and the world’s largest fair, with more than 5 million people attending every year. The Oktoberfest is an important part of Bavarian culture. Other cities across the world also hold Oktoberfest celebrations, modelled after the Munich event.

The Munich Oktoberfest, traditionally, takes place during the sixteen days up to and including the first Sunday in October. In 1994, the schedule was modified in response to German reunification so that if the first Sunday in October falls on the 1st or 2nd, then the festival will go on until October 3 (German Unity Day). Thus, the festival is now 17 days when the first Sunday is October 2 and 18 days when it is October 1. In 2010, the festival lasts until the first Monday in October, to mark the 200-year anniversary of the event. The festival is held in an area named the Theresienwiese (field, or meadow, of Therese), often called Wiesn for short, located near Munich’s centre.

Visitors eat huge amounts of traditional hearty fare such as Hendl (chicken), Schweinsbraten (roast pork), Schweinshaxe (ham hock), Steckerlfisch (grilled fish on a stick), Würstl (sausages) along with Brezn (Pretzel), Knödel (potato or bread dumplings), Kasspatzn (cheese noodles), Reiberdatschi (potato pancakes), Sauerkraut or Blaukraut (red cabbage) along with such Bavarian delicacies as Obatzda (a spiced cheese-butter spread) and Weisswurst (a white sausage).

First hundred years

In the year 1811, an agricultural show was added to boost Bavarian agriculture. The horse race persisted until 1960, the agricultural show still exists and it is held every four years on the southern part of the festival grounds. In 1816, carnival booths appeared; the main prizes were silver, porcelain, and jewelry. The founding citizens of Munich assumed responsibility for festival management in 1819, and it was agreed that the Oktoberfest would become an annual event. Later, it was lengthened and the date pushed forward, the reason being that days are longer and warmer at the end of September.

To honour the marriage of King Ludwig I and Therese of Bavaria, a parade took place for the first time in 1835. Since 1850, this has become a yearly event and an important component of the Oktoberfest. 8,000 people-mostly from Bavaria-in traditional costumes walk from Maximilian Street, through the centre of Munich, to the Oktoberfest. The march is led by the Münchner Kindl.

Since 1850, the statue of Bavaria has watched the Oktoberfest. This worldly Bavarian patron was first sketched by Leo von Klenze in a classic style and Ludwig Michael Schwanthaler romanticised and “Germanised” the draft; it was constructed by Johann Baptist Stiglmaier and Ferdinand von Miller.

In 1853, the Bavarian Ruhmeshalle was finished. In 1854, 3,000 residents of Munich succumbed to an epidemic of cholera, so the festival was cancelled. Also, in the year 1866, there was no Oktoberfest as Bavaria fought in the Austro-Prussian War. In 1870, the Franco-Prussian war was the reason for cancellation of the festival. In 1873, the festival was once more cancelled due to a cholera epidemic. In 1880, the electric light illuminated over 400 booths and tents (Albert Einstein helped install light bulbs in the Schottenhamel tent as an apprentice in his uncle’s electricity business in 1896). In 1881, booths selling bratwursts opened. Beer was first served in glass mugs in 1892.

At the end of the 19th century, a re-organization took place. Until then, there were games of skittles, large dance floors, and trees for climbing in the beer booths. They wanted more room for guests and musicians. The booths became beer halls.

In 1887, the Entry of the Oktoberfest Staff and Breweries took place for the first time. This event showcases the splendidly decorated horse teams of the breweries and the bands that play in the festival tents. This event always takes place on the first Saturday of the Oktoberfest and symbolises the official prelude to the Oktoberfest celebration

In the year 1910, Oktoberfest celebrated its 100th birthday. 120,000 litres of beer were poured. In 1913, the Braurosl was founded, which was the largest Oktoberfest beer tent of all time, with room for about 12,000 guests.

I have very fond memories of Oktoberfest. If you ever have the opportunity to visit Europe, do it in late September because this is a must see and experience.

Chile prepares for attempt to rescue 33 miners

An attempt to rescue 33 miners trapped underground in Chile will begin at midnight on Tuesday (0300 GMT), Mining Minister Laurence Golborne has said.  

The BBC  12 October 2010

A test of the steel rescue capsule was earlier carried out successfully, descending almost the whole way down a 622m (2,040ft) shaft, engineers said.

The men were trapped in the San Jose mine by a tunnel collapse on 5 August.

Correspondents say there is a sense of excitement on the surface, with the miners’ families counting the hours.

Journalists have flocked to the mine from all over the world to see the freed men emerge from their two-month ordeal.

If there is one single simple message I want you to take away from my writing about this issue, IT’S NOT JUST FORECLOSURES!

Every transfer of real estate from a seller to a buyer involves a title search which includes little things like just what are the boundaries of the property AND WHO OWNS IT!

If you pay cash, who owns “your” property is perfectly clear (usually) but we don’t customarily hand over wheel barrows of bills or even cut a check.

Usually you purchase by financing and share your title with a bank which has the right to seize your property if you don’t make the payments specified in your contract.  You’ll also be expected to pay for “title insurance”.  This protects the bank’s investment if it is later discovered that the person who sold it to to you has about as much right to sell it as I have to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge (you set a hard bargain, how about just what you have in your pocket right now?).  You, on the other hand, won’t get much satisfaction from it.

Now if you don’t pay the bank they take your property and sell it.  That’s foreclosure.  But what if you are paying the bank and have a better offer come along?

Well, normally you could just pay the bank what you owe (including the penalties in the fine print that they use to make this difficult and expensive for you and profitable for them) and accept the money from the new purchaser and transfer the title.

You found a sucker who’s willing to buy the Brooklyn Bridge for more than you paid me?  Congratulations Gordon Gekko.  Greed is good.

On the other hand, what has happened if you have financed or re-financed in the last 10 years is that your title (even supposing I had a legitimate claim to the Brooklyn Bridge because it was built on and with the bones of my Viking Ancestors) has been sliced and diced into so many pieces that the banks can’t track it anymore.

You can’t sell your property because you don’t have clear title.

Anyone who buys property at the moment is no better than a rube who’d buy the Brooklyn Bridge if the price was right, and this is ALL property.  That there is a market at all is a testimony to how many rubes are born every minute.

Now me, I have the $6.45 you had in your pocket which I’ve already invested in a bottle of Night Train so I can sleep under my bridge.

Your government, Barack Hussein Obama and all his Washington Wall Street Wizard Advisors, think that if they can just keep you from peeking at that man behind the curtain you’ll always find a sucker to sell to, but the title insurance companies aren’t buying it.

Nor should you.

I need not say more

Glen Greenwald: Collapsing Empire Watch

t’s easy to say and easy to document, but quite difficult to really internalize, that the United States is in the process of imperial collapse.  Every now and then, however, one encounters certain facts which compellingly and viscerally highlight how real that is.  Here’s the latest such fact, from a new study in Health Affairs by Columbia Health Policy Professors Peter A. Muennig and Sherry A. Glied (h/t):

   

In 1950, the United States was fifth among the leading industrialized nations with respect to female life expectancy at birth, surpassed only by Sweden, Norway, Australia, and the Netherlands.  The last available measure of female life expectancy had the United States ranked at forty-sixth in the world.  As of September 23, 2010, the United States ranked forty-ninth for both male and female life expectancy combined.

. . .

There is, however, some good news:  the U.S. is now in fifth place in total number of executions, behind only China, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and comfortably ahead of Yemen and Sudan, while there are two categories in which the U.S. has been and remains the undisputed champion of the world — this one and this one.

And the rich get richer one life at a time

Miami Thrice: DCCC to Gay Iraq Vet, "Your Money’s No Good Here"

By: Teddy Partridge Monday October 11, 2010 4:55 pm

Your money’s no good here, sir: seems to cover it. Anthony Woods was good enough to get sent to Harvard by the military, good enough to lead men in battle in Iraq, and good enough to admit to West Point. But his money’s no good to the Democrats who won’t repeal DADT. And the President who won’t issue a stop/loss order to suspend DADT discharges can’t even face Anthony Woods man-to-man.

Or perhaps this black gay man was unwelcome in NBA superstar Alonzo Mourning’s home.

Well, then – my money is no good either. I’ll give when I get Equal, too.

More posts by Teddy about today’s protests at the Barack Obama/Alonzo Mourning Miami Fundraiser.

• Miami Thrice: GetEQUAL Protests Obama Event by Land, by Air, by Sea (1)
  
  By: Teddy Partridge Monday October 11, 2010 2:20 pm

• Miami Thrice: GetEQUAL Protests Obama Event by Land, by Air, by Sea (2): PHOTOS
  
  By: Teddy Partridge Monday October 11, 2010 3:24 pm

• Miami Thrice: GetEQUAL Protests Obama Event by Land, by Air, by Sea (3): POOL REPORT
  
  By: Teddy Partridge Monday October 11, 2010 3:38 pm

Coverage from Americablog Gay-

• BREAKING: GetEqual protesting Obama DADT inaction at high-$ fundraiser in Miami by air, land and sea; sending weather balloons over NBA star’s home; three boats of protesters and press underway
  
  Posted by Brad Luna at 10/11/2010 05:00:00 PM

• Lesbian activist, Gay vet refused admission to DCCC fundraising event with Obama
  
  Posted by Joe Sudbay (DC) at 10/11/2010 07:51:00 PM

Mostly premiers on broadcast.  Let’s check our brackets shall we?  Yankees and Phillies sweep.  The Braves’ third string 2nd baseman has error problems and will sit, which is probably the best thing for both him and the team.  He’s not really the problem anyway, it’s that the Braves’ offense has sucked.  The Rangers can’t possibly prove what great choke artists they are tonight since they’re not playing until tomorrow.  The Braves could lose it all though on TBS.  Should the Rays and the Giants win against my expectations I just don’t think they pose any problems the Yankees and Phillies can’t solve in a 7 game series.

But it’s only sports folks, a diversion from the fact that the title to your house is fraudulent and all those Collateralized Mortgage Obligations and derivatives the banks are basing their balance sheets on worthless.

It’s not just foreclosures, it’s every piece of property in the United States and collectively they are the single largest asset in the entire world financial system.

Still, while we’re waiting for Armageddon at least we have 3rd rate entertainment to divert us from our imminent destruction.

• ABC Family– The Wedding Date x 2
• AMC– Random Hearts
• Bravo– Real Housewives (last week’s and premier)
• Disney– The Incredibles
• ESPN– Throwball, Favres @ Jets
• Food– New Unwrapped, Best Thing I Ever Ate
• FX– Night at the Museum
• Golf– Tin Cup (have I mentioned this is a really acceptable movie?)
• History– American Pickers (premier)
• Lifetime– P.S. I Love You, Reviving Ophelia
• Nick– iCarly, Big Time Rush (premiers)
• Style– Bridget Jones’s Diary
• Turner Classic– The Big Sleep, His Girl Friday
• TLC– Cake Boss (premier)
• Toon– Regular Show, MAD, Total Drama World Tour (premiers)
• Vs.– Wildcats (not Goldie’s best work, but watchable)
• VH1– 8 Mile (after the imaginative Michigan way of naming roads)

Later-

• AMC– Rubicon, Mad Men (this week’s)
• FX– Halloween 6 (exactly as bad as you’d expect it to be)
• Sci Fi– Caprica (repeat of this week’s Season Premier)
• Turner Classic– The Perils of Pauline
• USA– Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (the best one actually)

Dave hosts Jim Parsons, Geoffrey Canada, Mark Ronson and the Business Intl. with Q-Tip and MNDR.  Jon has Johnny Knoxville (idiot), Stephen Robert Reich (which might be interesting, but he’s basically pitching his book).  Double down Alton, Tempura fry and Chicken fry.

Boondocks– A Date With the Health Inspector.

Anyone getting Hub Network?  They’re featuring Laverne & Shirley and Adam West, Burt Ward Batman.

I don’t like your manners.

And I’m not crazy about yours. I didn’t ask to see you. I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners, I don’t like them myself. They are pretty bad. I grieve over them on long winter evenings. I don’t mind your ritzing me drinking your lunch out of a bottle. But don’t waste your time trying to cross-examine me.

There will come a time when you have a chance to do the right thing.

I love those moments. I like to wave at them as they pass by.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 British hostage may have been killed by US grenade: Cameron

by Danny Kemp, AFP

29 mins ago

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Paul Krugman: Hey, Small Spender

Here’s the narrative you hear everywhere: President Obama has presided over a huge expansion of government, but unemployment has remained high. And this proves that government spending can’t create jobs.

Here’s what you need to know: The whole story is a myth. There never was a big expansion of government spending. In fact, that has been the key problem with economic policy in the Obama years: we never had the kind of fiscal expansion that might have created the millions of jobs we need.

Ask yourself: What major new federal programs have started up since Mr. Obama took office? Health care reform, for the most part, hasn’t kicked in yet, so that can’t be it. So are there giant infrastructure projects under way? No. Are there huge new benefits for low-income workers or the poor? No. Where’s all that spending we keep hearing about? It never happened.

Robert Kuttner: Obama Calls the Question on Geithner

By pocket-vetoing the bill that sailed through Congress to expedite mortgage foreclosures, President Obama may have begun a chain reaction that will blow up Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s confidence game with the banks. Let me explain.

In early 2009, Obama and his top economic aides faced a fateful choice: either do an honest accounting of the nation’s big insolvent banks, like Citigroup; or keep propping them up and collude with the banks in camouflaging just how bad things were — and still are.

They opted for camouflage. Geithner and the Federal Reserve devised a “stress test” exercise that avoided an honest accounting of the junk on the banks’ balance sheets; instead they used economic models based on very rosy assumptions about how bad the recession would be. Citi and the others were pronounced basically healthy.

E.J. Dionne Jr.: Shadowy players in a new class war

The 2010 election is turning into a class war. The wealthy and the powerful started it.

This is a strange development. President Obama, after all, has been working overtime to save capitalism. Wall Street is doing just fine, and the rich are getting richer again. The financial reform bill passed by Congress was moderate, not radical.

Nonetheless, corporations and affluent individuals are pouring tens of millions of dollars into attack ads aimed almost exclusively at Democrats. One of the biggest political players, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, accepts money from foreign sources.

The chamber piously insists that none of the cash from abroad is going into its ad campaigns. But without full disclosure, there’s no way of knowing if that’s true or simply an accounting trick. And the chamber is just one of many groups engaged in an election-year spending spree.

Dean Baker  and Sarita Gupta: Memo to the Tax Cut Party — Painful Double-Digit Unemployment Doesn’t Have to Continue

A modest tax on Wall Street financial speculation could raise more than $150 billion a year — money that would go a long way toward funding a serious jobs agenda.

here is a depressing complicity among much of the political leadership about the recession. Many politicians seem prepared to accept that we will have sky-high rates of unemployment for the indefinite future. Projections from the Congressional Budget Office and other authoritative forecasts show the situation improving little over the next few years.

At the moment, this means 15 million people unemployed, 9 million under-employed and millions of other workers who don’t even get counted because they have given up hope of finding a job and stopped looking. It is outrageous that we have this situation. Allowing high unemployment to continue for years into the future is unacceptable.

We know how to get the unemployment rate down.

Monday Business Edition

As much as I would like it to be, the chief problem with Barack Hussein Obama is not Civil Liberties on which he is in fact objectively worse than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Nope.

It’s that he’s a coward economically.

We KNOW! what works and policymakers have willfully choosen to avoid it for the sake of academic reputation and neo-liberal policy purity.

The latest symptom in our economic fever is Title Fraud.  If you’ve financed or re-financed your home in the last 10 years (and who wouldn’t with the interest rates so low?) your title is now in doubt.

Not that this is a problem for you personally or, it shouldn’t be. You’ve maintained your good faith payments to your servicing company which they’ve presumably used in a rational manner to keep that 2nd derivative universe (of which they are Masters ‘Elanie‘ O’Donnell) cranking around.

In translation masturbatory fantasies of value created by leverage.

My ancient Economics 101 Perfesser (twisted and wizend from long years surviving an actual Depression) told me- “It’s only paper profits until you sell it.”

Your good old mortgage should protect your serfdom to your property, but the people who’ve placed their bets on black are going to be exceedingly disappointed when the wheel stops on double zero.  This market has a long way to crash.

And we’ve done nothing at all about it and the economic team (with the exception of Geither) jumped ship to avoid accepting responsibility for this disaster.

Except of course the buck stops at that Oval Office desk Obama occupies.

Government had been warned for months about troubles in mortgage servicer industry

By Zachary A. Goldfarb, Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, October 9, 2010; 10:11 PM

Consumer advocates and lawyers warned federal officials in recent years that the U.S. foreclosure system was designed to seize people’s homes as fast as possible, often without regard to the rights of homeowners.

In recent days, amid reports that major lenders have used improper procedures and fraudulent paperwork to seize properties, some Obama administration officials have acknowledged they had been aware of flaws in how the mortgage industry pursues foreclosures.

…

Housing advocates and government reports gave several reasons why servicers try to foreclose so quickly.

In general, servicers make more money when they foreclose on a loan than when they find a better arrangement for the borrower. That’s because the payments to the servicer decline when a loan is modified. But if instead the borrower is in default, the servicer adds fees on the account and can collect when the house is sold, even at foreclosure.

In addition, servicers are under pressure to continue to transfer the money paid by the borrower to the investor in the loan. When a borrower isn’t paying the loan, the servicer has to cover the difference.

Moreover, servicers can expect to charge more if they receive higher ratings from credit rating agencies. And the faster a servicer forecloses when loans are in default, the higher the rating they stand to receive.

Business News below.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

October 11 is the 284th day of the year (285th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 81 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1982, The Mary Rose, a Tudor carrack which sank on July 19 1545, is salvaged from the sea bed of the Solent, off Portsmouth.

The Mary Rose was a carrack-type warship of the English Tudor navy of King Henry VIII. After serving for 33 years in several wars against France, Scotland, and Brittany and after being substantially rebuilt in 1536, she saw her last action on 19 July 1545. While leading the attack on the galleys of a French invasion fleet, she sank in the Solent, the straits north of the Isle of Wight. The wreck of the Mary Rose was rediscovered in 1971 and salvaged in 1982 by the Mary Rose Trust in one of the most complex and expensive projects in the history of maritime archaeology. The surviving section of the ship and thousands of recovered artefacts are of immeasurable value as a Tudor-era time capsule.

The excavation and salvage of the Mary Rose was a milestone in the field of maritime archaeology, comparable in complexity and cost only to the raising of the Swedish 17th-century warship Vasa in 1961. The finds include weapons, sailing equipment, naval supplies and a wide array of objects used by the crew. Many of the artefacts are unique to the Mary Rose and have provided insights into topics ranging from naval warfare to the history of musical instruments. Since the mid-1980s, while undergoing conservation, the remains of the hull have been on display at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. An extensive collection of well-preserved artefacts is on display at the nearby Mary Rose Museum.

The Mary Rose had no known career as a merchant vessel. She was one of the largest ships in the English navy throughout more than three decades of intermittent war and was one of the earliest examples of a purpose-built sailing warship. She was armed with new types of heavy guns that could fire through the recently invented gun-ports. After being substantially rebuilt in 1536, she was also one of the earliest ships that could fire a broadside, although the line of battle tactics that employed it had not yet been developed. Several theories have sought to explain the demise of the Mary Rose, based on historical records, knowledge of 16th-century shipbuilding and modern experiments. However, the precise cause of her sinking is still unclear, because of conflicting testimonies and a lack of conclusive physical evidence.