May 2012 archive

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

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

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May 5 is the 125th day of the year (126th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 240 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1862, the Mexican Army defeated the French forces at the Battle of Puebla

Certain that French victory would come swiftly in Mexico, 6,000 French troops under General Charles Latrille de Lorencez set out to attack Puebla de Los Angeles. From his new headquarters in the north, Juarez rounded up a rag-tag force of loyal men and sent them to Puebla. Led by Texas-born General Zaragoza, the 2,000 Mexicans fortified the town and prepared for the French assault. On the fifth of May, 1862, Lorencez drew his army, well-provisioned and supported by heavy artillery, before the city of Puebla and began their assault from the north. The battle lasted from daybreak to early evening, and when the French finally retreated they had lost nearly 500 soldiers to the fewer than 100 Mexicans killed.

Although not a major strategic victory in the overall war against the French, Zaragoza’s victory at Puebla tightened Mexican resistance, and six years later France withdrew. The same year, Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, who had been installed as emperor of Mexico by Napoleon in 1864, was captured and executed by Juarez’ forces. Puebla de Los Angeles, the site of Zaragoza’s historic victory, was renamed Puebla de Zaragoza in honor of the general.

Mexico

Cinco de Mayo is a regional holiday limited primarily to the state of Puebla. There is some limited recognition of the holiday in other parts of the country.

United States

In a 1998 study in the Journal of American Culture it was reported that there were more than 120 official U.S. celebrations of Cinco de Mayo, and they could be found in 21 different states. An update in 2006, found that the number of official Cinco de Mayo events was 150 or more, according to Jose Alamillo, professor of ethnic studies at Washington State University in Pullman, who has studied the cultural impact of Cinco de Mayo north of the border.

In the United States Cinco de Mayo has taken on a significance beyond that in Mexico. The date is perhaps best recognized in the United States as a date to celebrate the culture and experiences of Americans of Mexican ancestry, much as St. Patrick’s Day, Oktoberfest, and the Chinese New Year are used to celebrate those of Irish, German, and Chinese ancestry respectively. Similar to those holidays, Cinco de Mayo is observed by many Americans regardless of ethnic origin. Celebrations tend to draw both from traditional Mexican symbols, such as the Virgen de Guadalupe, and from prominent figures of Mexican descent in the United States, including Cesar Chavez. To celebrate, many display Cinco de Mayo banners while school districts hold special events to educate pupils about its historical significance. Special events and celebrations highlight Mexican culture, especially in its music and regional dancing. Examples include baile folklorico and mariachi demonstrations held annually at the Plaza del Pueblo de Los Angeles, near Olvera Street. Commercial interests in the United States have capitalized on the celebration, advertising Mexican products and services, with an emphasis on beverages, foods, and music.

Rachel teaches viewers how to make a Stinger as a means for acquiring a taste for a real Mint Julep. [..]

Ingredients:

   2 1/4 oz. Cognac or Brandy

   3/4 oz. ounce creme de menthe (get a good brand — and get the clear one, not the green one).

That’s it.

And then you have to shake the living daylights out of it. The key is to make it absolutely frigid. That’s why you shake it with ice and then you pour it over ice.

OK. I know you don’t cook Margaritas but this Cinco de Mayo is special. It’s 150th anniversary of defeat the French forces by the Mexican Army at the Battle of Puebla. (It’s also Dr. TMC’s 70th birthday. Time flies when your living life.)

There are various filling for Quesadillas but essentially they are the Mexican version of the French crepe using a flour tortilla instead of a thin pancake. It can contain vegetables meat or sea food, especially shrimp, or not, but it always has cheese. Use your imagination, be creative.

Quesadillas

The way I make them is rather easy, using mostly store purchased ingredients:

You’ll need a grill pan or a 10″ large, heavy flat skillet, cooking spray or a small bowl of vegetable oil and a brush, a large spatula and a cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil and a dinner plate.

Preheat the oven to 200° F. Heat the skillet over medium heat, sprayed with vegetable oil. Place a tortilla on a dinner plate. Over half of the tortilla about a inch from the edge, spread some salsa, sprinkle with cheese, refried beans and shredded chicken/beef/pork/shrimp. If you like extra “heat”, add some jalapeño pepper slices. Fold in half. You can also cover one tortilla with fillings and top it with a second but it’s harder to flip.

Gently slide onto the skillet.

Let brown for 2 to 3 minutes until golden brown. Using the large spatula, flip, cooking 2 to 3 minutes, until golden brown. Adjust the heat if browning too fast or too slow. Place the finished quesadilla on the lined cookie sheet in the oven to keep warm. Repeat; making sure the pan is lightly oiled.

You can do to or three at a time, depending on the size of the tortilla and the skillet. If you have a grill top on your stove, you can do as many as will fit.

Cut quesadillas in half, thirds or quarters; serve with more salsa, refried beans, sliced jalapeños, sour cream, guacamole and avocado slices.

Margarita

This is the recipe I have used for years without complaints. I use 1800 Reposado Tequila, Rose’s Lime, Triple Sec, Kosher or course ground sea salt and fresh slices of lime. You’ll need either a shaker or a large glass filled with ice and a strainer and you’ll need lots of ice.

Ingredients:

Moisten them rim of a large glass with lime juice. Dip the glass into salt spread on a flat plate. Fill glass with ice.

In the shaker or other large glass filled with ice add tequila, Triple Sec and lime juice. If user a shaker, shake vigorously or mix with a stirrer in the glass. Pour through a strainer into the salt rimmed glass. Serve with extra lime slices.

Last time we talked about the origins of The Moody Blues and some of their earlier work.  We ended on “The Best Way to Travel” from In Search of the Lost Chord.

I was called away to help my friend do something to get ready to attend a wedding the next day, so we shall finish that album tonight and start on the next one, On the Threshold of a Dream.  That was also a fine album.

It’s time to stand still a moment, look up, and breathe. Saturday night at 11:34 PM EDT the moon will reach its perigee, its closest point to Earth in its elliptical orbit and one minute later it become full. According to NASA, 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than the other full moons of 2012.

Saturday also marks the midpoint of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. The exact moment between the March equinox and the June solstice occurs at 10:11 a.m. EDT May 5.  

High tide will be higher and low tide will be lower. The only worry there is if Manhattan slides away into the Atlantic but Long Island would have to go first.

But whatever you’re doing, take time to go out side, stand still a moment to look up at the night sky and breathe.

The French Presidential election will take place this Sunday, May 6. Meanwhile, the campaigning has ended Friday evening with the Socialist challenger, François Hollande, still predicted to defeat current President Nicholas Sarkozy:

The last Ipsos poll for French television and Le Monde puts Hollande on 52.5% with Sarkozy closing the gap but still behind on 47.5%. The poll was taken before the dramatic decision by centrist François Bayrou to throw his weight behind Hollande in the second round.

The vast majority of voters appear to have made up their minds, with 92% saying they know who they will vote for, and 82% saying they will definitely turn out.

Many are seeing this as not just a referendum about Sarkoszy’s “hyperactive” style but the start of a revolt against austerity which many now believe has slowed the recovery from the recession. Wolfgang Münchau wrote in the Financial Times that Hollande is start of progressive insurrection:

. Nicolas Sarkozy does not look like a president, talk like a president, or act like a president. But there is a better reason why he deserves to be ejected. He won the 2007 campaign with a promise of ambitious economic reforms. He was one of the few European politicians with a mandate for big changes. He flunked it for a reason that already became apparent during the 2007 campaign: he was hyperactive. Reforms are for boring politicians. [..]

The main reason why I look forward to a Hollande presidency is for its impact on Europe. At present, all the large, and many of the small, eurozone countries are governed by centre-right governments. Angela Merkel is their undisputed queen. Mr Hollande is not going to be a comfortable partner. On some issues, such as the fiscal pact, he will challenge her outright.

I would welcome a Hollande presidency on the grounds that it would introduce a much needed shift in the toxic narrative about the eurozone crisis and its resolution. According to this narrative, the crisis was caused by fiscal irresponsibility. Its prescription is austerity and economic reforms. The tool to achieve the former is the fiscal pact, which Mr Hollande has said he will not sign unless it is complemented by policies to boost economic growth.

I wish that Mr Hollande would go further because austerity will snare countries in a low-growth trap. No set of structural policies will change this. I understand the political reason why he does not want to go further. He does not want his presidency to start with an existential fight with Germany – and the dreaded prospect of another panic attack by global investors.

While, as Paul Krugman as noted, the prospect of a Hollande presidency has generated some “hysteria” in the financial world:

Today’s FT is all Hollande, all the time. Some of it is sensible; some of it is like, well, this piece by Josef Joffe, which declares that Hollande’s likely victory is “a bleak prospect for all but new Keynesians and old socialists.” [..]

Joffe is, however, useful as a guide to the German view, which is basically that we got ourselves competitive and restored growth, so why can’t everyone else. Somehow he never mentions that Germany’s recovery in the 2000s was driven by a huge move into trade surplus; is everyone supposed to do the same thing, all at once? What’s the Germany for “fallacy of composition”?

The voting ends at 8 PM Paris time and the results will be reported here Sunday afternoon around 2 PM EDT.

Well, then do us all a favor and quit you incompetent assholes!

Pre-recession unemployment rate is out of reach

A new report authored by a Federal Reserve president says unemployment cannot fall to pre-recession levels without an inflationary impact. So get used to high unemployment.

By Nin-Hai Tseng, Fortune

May 4, 2012: 11:50 AM ET

On Thursday, John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, suggested that perhaps Americans should lower their expectations given the challenges workers faces. A research note co-authored by Williams estimated that the lowest level of joblessness that can be reached without leading to inflation could be 6.5%. Before the recession, the unemployment rate was generally at around 5%.

…

In early 2009, eligibility for unemployment benefits was extended from 26 weeks to up to 99 weeks.

While such benefits reduce hardships for the unemployed, they might also “reduce the incentive of the unemployed to seek and accept less desirable jobs,” according to the report.

…

If workers are latching on to any hope that the economy has turned a corner, perhaps they’d be more realistic by hoping for a little less.

Don’t let the door hit you, you lazy useless gits.

“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.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Paul Krugman: Plutocracy, Paralysis, Perplexity

Before the Great Recession, I would sometimes give public lectures in which I would talk about rising inequality, making the point that the concentration of income at the top had reached levels not seen since 1929. Often, someone in the audience would ask whether this meant that another depression was imminent.

Well, whaddya know?

Did the rise of the 1 percent (or, better yet, the 0.01 percent) cause the Lesser Depression we’re now living through? It probably contributed. But the more important point is that inequality is a major reason the economy is still so depressed and unemployment so high. For we have responded to crisis with a mix of paralysis and confusion – both of which have a lot to do with the distorting effects of great wealth on our society.

Eugene Robinson: Afghanistan, For the Long Haul?

Show of hands: Does anybody really understand the U.S. policy in Afghanistan? Can anyone figure out how we’re supposed to stay the course and bring home the troops at the same time?

I’m at a loss, even after President Obama’s surprise trip to the war zone. The president’s televised address from Bagram air base raised more questions than it answered. Let’s start with the big one: Why?

According to Obama, “the United States and our allies went to war to make sure that al-Qaeda could never use this country to launch attacks against us.” I would argue that U.S. and NATO forces have already done all that is humanly possible toward that end. [..]

From Glen Ford at the Black Agenda Report

President Obama must fire Federal Housing Finance Agency acting director Ed DeMarco because he “has flatly refused to do any kind of principal reduction for the millions of ‘underwater’ homeowners that are suffering, that are drowning in debt because of how the banks crashed the economy,” said Tracy Van Slyke, co-director of New Bottom Line. The coalition of faith-based and community organizations demand a “minimum of $300 billion in principal reduction.” Van Slyke claims New Bottom Line and other Occupy Wall Street-related efforts have “moved the administration far along from where they were. We have moved the dial.”

The Obama administration has repeatedly refused to spend moneys a set aside for distressed homeowners and communities. Why? Because banks have refused to cooperate with such programs, fearing that intervention in the housing market “would threaten to upset the bankers’ carefully calibrated market manipulations.” They would rather continue rigging the game. “The banks have been carefully dribbling out houses for sale, attempting to artificially stabilize prices with the goal of pumping up another bubble.”

The Obama administration’s failure to spend almost any of the $7.6 billion in TARP housing money set aside for the neediest regions of the country seems counterintuitive [..]

The Hardest Hit Fund was specifically targeted to homeowners in areas most seriously impacted by unemployment and falling home values – a formula tailor made for Black and Latino communities devastated by massive foreclosures and layoffs. [..]

The problem was, Obama’s people resisted putting the program into effect. [..]

The problem begins at the top. Obama has consistently protected bankers’ rights to deal with homeowners as they please.

AS reported in the Washington Post: Fannie Mae had seen benefits to lowering some home loans, documents indicate:

Officials at government-backed mortgage giant Fannie Mae concluded years ago that the company could “reduce its losses substantially” by lowering loan amounts for some troubled borrowers, according to internal documents cited Tuesday by the top Democrat on the House oversight committee.

The new insights into Fannie Mae’s analyses about the potential benefits of so-called principal reduction surfaced in a letter from Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) to Edward J. DeMarco, the acting director of the independent agency that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Since being appointed head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) in 2009, DeMarco has refused to allow Fannie and Freddie to write down loan balances, in part because he worries that some homeowners would stop paying their mortgages to get relief, ultimately costing taxpayers more money. He has been steadfast in his disapproval in recent months despite growing pressure from Obama administration officials and House Democrats to allow principal reductions.

Those “internal documents” led to accusations that DeMarco, a Republican career public servant appointed by Obama to head the FHFA, withheld information from Congress about the findings:

“This just adds to the pile of evidence that calls into question how sincere DeMarco is about treating this issue seriously,” said Ian Kim, director of campaigns for Rebuild the Dream, a progressive advocacy group that has been urging a principal reduction program.

Supporters of principal reduction argue that it would reduce foreclosures by lowering the monthly payments for underwater homeowners and giving them hope they would one day have more equity in their homes.

Opponents counter that reducing the principal on mortgages owned or backed by Fannie and Freddie could increase their losses and encourage homeowners who are making payments to fall behind in order to lower their debt.

The new documents contradict DeMarco’s congressional testimony in November that analyses by Fannie and Freddie concluded that other forms of homeowner assistance were less costly to taxpayers, the lawmakers said. [..]

The failure to launch a principal reduction program “was not merely a missed opportunity, but a conscious choice that appears to have been based on ideology rather than Fannie Mae’s own data and analyses,” the lawmakers said.

It’s time for DeMarco to go and the Obama administration to stop protecting the bankers who won’t support him ever.

Art valuation datapoints of the day

Felix Salmon, Reuters

May 3, 2012 11:11 EDT

As you have no doubt heard by now, The Scream sold at Sotheby’s for $120 million yesterday, prompting Mark Gongloff to wax apocalyptic about “the big squeaky speculative bubble in the art world”. He’s absolutely wrong: whether there’s a bubble or not, this purchase was not speculative.

…

Remember the Card Players which sold for $250 million? Or, for that matter, the Jeff Koons Rabbit I wrote about earlier this week, which is probably worth the same amount of money as The Scream, more or less? The three artworks all have something in common: they’re editions, broadly speaking. There are four Screams, five versions of the Card Players, and four Rabbits. And in each case, the value of any given work goes up, not down, as a result of the existence of the others.

That’s because what people are buying, when they buy one of these pieces, is a cultural icon, something instantly recognizable. As Clyde Haberman says of the Scream, “if you’ve never seen a tacky facsimile of it, there’s a chance that you have also never seen a coffee mug, a T-shirt or a Macaulay Culkin poster”. And truth be told, it’s not exactly Good Art.

…

The real value of the Scream, then, the reason that a pastel on cardboard sold for $82 million more than the price of the oil-on-canvas Vampire, lies precisely in all those mugs and t-shirts and Home Alone one-sheets. Whatever was being bought, here, it wasn’t really art, in any pure sense. It was more the result of a century’s worth of marketing and hype.

…

Or, to take another example, an old porcelain bowl, roughly the size of your hand, and looking like nothing so much as the thing which lives by the door where you keep your keys, sold for $27 million at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong last month. It might be a trophy, but it’s not an obvious, branded trophy in the way that the Scream is.