This is your space to share your thoughts and reactions.

My prediction?  Boring Barack Blowout.  It really isn’t even as close as all that.

Poll Closings–

• 6 pm– Parts of Indiana and Kentucky (no results yet)
• 7 pm– Parts of New Hampshire and Florida (no results yet), Vermont, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, all of Indiana and Kentucky (results)
• 7:30 pm– Ohio, West Virginia, North Carolina (results)
• 8 pm– Parts of Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, Texas (no results yet), Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, D.C., Illinois, Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma, all of New Hampshire and Florida (results)
• 8:30 pm– Arkansas (results)
• 9 pm– New York, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Louisianna, all of North Dakota, South Dakota, Michigan, Kansas, Texas (results)
• 10 pm– Parts of Oregon, Idaho (no results yet), Iowa, Montana, Utah, Nevada (results)
• 11 pm– Washington, California, all of Oregon, Idaho (results)

Alaska and Hawaii close much later, but the election will be well over by then.

It’s not really about the race at the top of the ticket though, it’s how badly Romney and the Tea Party Partisans have damaged the Republican brand for the under ticket.  I’m predicting +2 D in the Senate and +23 D in the House (just short of a Pelosi Speakership).

TheMomCat and I will be trying to follow the under ticket as best we can, the final results will probably not be known until the end of the week on those races.

If you’re just sick of it and want to talk about that?

It’s an Open Thread, no subject off topic.  If I wasn’t running this myself I’d be sorely tempted to watch The Looney Toons premier, the Chopped marathon or American Pickers (anyone know what I can get for my McCain/Palin ‘Wet Start’ bumper sticker?).

Australia’s Federal Court issues landmark judgment against S&P, ABN Amro

Reuters

Mon Nov 5, 2012 4:18am GMT

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia’s Federal court issued a landmark judgment on Monday that Standard & Poor’s misled investors by giving its highest rating to derivatives that lost almost all their value in the run-up to the 2008 global economic crisis.

The Australian case marked the first time a ratings agency had faced trial over the complex financial products widely cited as one of the factors that triggered the crisis and could set a precedent for future litigation around the world.

…

“This is a major blow to the ratings agencies, which for years have had the benefit of profiting from the assignment of these ratings without ever being accountable to investors for those opinions,” said lawyer Amanda Banton of Piper Alderman, who represented the local councils.

“Today’s judgment will ultimately have the effect of ensuring ratings agencies are accountable and promoting transparency in the ratings process,” Banton added.

Monday’s ruling follows a judgment in September against Lehman Brothers Australia, which found that firm breached its legal duties when it sold collateralised debt obligations, or CDOs, to a group of charities, councils and churches that collectively lost A$250 million ($259 million).

Hero of the day, CPDO edition

Felix Salmon, Reuters

Nov 5, 2012 18:38 UTC

I’d never heard of Australian federal judge Jayne Jagot before today, but she’s my new favorite jurist, thanks to her decision in a recent court case which was brought against ABN Amro and Standard & Poors.

The coverage of the decision (Quartz, FT, WSJ, Bloomberg, Reuters) concentrates, as it should, on the hugely important precedent being set here: that a ratings agency – in this case, S&P – is being found liable for losses that an investor suffered after trusting that agency.

…

The case at heart is a simple one: 12 local councils in Australia bought a bunch of CPDOs, and they only did so because S&P had given those instruments a triple-A rating. S&P, in turn, should never have given the CPDOs that triple-A rating. So it’s S&P’s fault that the councils lost so much money – jointly with ABN Amro, which structured the things.

How does Jagot come to the conclusion that “a reasonably competent ratings agency” would never have given the CPDOs a triple-A rating? Simple: S&P used utterly bonkers assumptions in order to come to its conclusion.

…

There’s really no way of reading what S&P did, here, except that it simply massaged the assumptions it was using until it managed to find something which was consistent with the triple-A rating it wanted. When spreads are at 30bp, what makes you think they’ll average 40bp over one year and then 80bp over nine years? Especially when the index as a whole has never averaged anything like 80bp? It’s simply not a reasonable assumption, and the fact that S&P made it just goes to show how the agency was acting for its paymasters – ABN Amro – and was not putting out reliable ratings at all.

…

You’d think that a ratings agency, of all institutions, would be alive to the risk of ratings downgrades. But, it turns out, not so much. ABN Amro, in its model , simply didn’t include what’s known as “ratings migration” – and S&P, similarly, completely ignored it.

The result, in reality, was devastating. Because companies could borrow at such low rates, they were particularly vulnerable to being taken over by private-equity firms which could load them up with cheap debt, devastating their credit ratings. And that’s exactly what happened. A whole series of investment-grade companies, like Alliance Boots, Alltel, and Boston Scientific, got levered up by their new private-equity owners, and lost their investment-grade credit ratings.

…

Put it all together, and you get a very shocking view of S&P. Here’s the list:

• S&P used the wrong model input for starting spread.
• S&P used the wrong model input for volatilty.
• S&P used the wrong model input for average spread.
• S&P completely ignored ratings migration.

If S&P had just got any one of these things right, the CPDO would never have gotten that triple-A rating. If it had got them all right, the CPDO would almost certainly not even have been investment grade, let alone triple-A.

S&P was not doing its job, and as a result a bunch of Australian municipalities lost a great deal of money. Jagot has found S&P liable, as she should. Good for her.

Australian Court: Standard and Poor’s Liable for Bad Ratings on Securities

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Monday November 5, 2012 12:26 pm

This will get approximately no attention today, but a federal court in Australia ruled that Standard and Poor’s, the credit rating agency, lied to investors when they awarded their highest, triple-A rating to derivative securities that lost their value within two years of purchase.

…

Further rulings of this type in this very new area of case law would be devastating to the rating agencies. They would also be correct. Rating agencies, paid by the banks whose securities they rate, simply failed to model the potential for a collapse in value of a basket of securities, particularly mortgage backed securities during the housing bubble. This led a host of investors to trust the ratings and buy the products, only to have their values collapse. While the banks got bailed out, the investors did not; they were collateral damage in the financial crash. And when I say “investors” I also mean municipal and union pension funds.

Those who want to defend the system argue that investors should have done their own due diligence before deciding on purchasing these structured finance products. The Australian court didn’t agree. They argued that the rating agencies are culpable for their work, and that their failures amounted to fraud. Rating agencies have never been held accountable for the ratings they assign, and this ruling, if replicated, would completely upend that expectation. The first place we could see further action from investors would be in Europe. The US has seen some case law in this area, and by and large the rating agencies have gotten off scot-free, using both disclaimers in their written materials and Constitutional protections on freedom of speech, believe it or not. There are some outstanding cases, however.

But Mr. Market certainly took notice of this ruling, dropping the stock of S&P’s parent company, McGraw-Hill, over 5%. Other rating agency stocks fell as well. And that’s appropriate, because the money that Standard and Poor’s will now have to pay the local councils in Australia outstrips the money the councils lost on the securities. There’s massive exposure here.

Let me start by saying that this is not an endorsement of any particular party, candidate, or course of action.  For one thing it would be awfully presumptuous of me to think that anything I could do or say would influence you more than stark reality, the thing about truth is that it’s unpersuadable- it doesn’t change because of the excellence of the argument or the eloquence of the presenter.

Likewise you have no expectation or entitlement to know anything at all about me like what I had for breakfast (a spinach quesadilla) or especially what I choose to do in a voting booth unless I tell you and at that I’ll likely lie my ass off unless my answer is inconsequential and then I’ll probably lie just for sport.

I’m not your mommy or daddy, or your child.

I’ll also repeat this just in case it’s slipped out of your consciousness-

DocuDharma and The Stars Hollow Gazette are explicitly non-partisan.  You may freely express your support for any candidate.  They are also public so if you publish an unpopular sentiment or inconvenient truth only your discretion and the obviously mean spirited nature of cross blog stalking protect you from consequences and suppression in other forums.  Nor are your ideas immune from criticism and discussion here, but you won’t be sanctioned for anything except violating the normal rules of behavior.

Another thing that I don’t think people ‘get’ about me politically is that I’m really pretty conservative.  Sure I’m in favor of confiscatory wealth taxes; strict environmental, fraud, business and financial regulation including criminal imprisonment of guilty managers, officers and directors in the general population just like any common cut purse; transaction taxes, punitive tariffs and currency controls; and dismantlement of the corporate welfare system including carbon energy, genetically modified agriculture and factory farming, and the military industrial complex including the subsidized National Security Theater, Prohibition Morality Police, and Privatized Prisons.

But I’m generally against changes to our Constitution.  I like the Electoral College and filibuster because I think they help preserve minority and regional rights.

And yes, I do realize that the filibuster is not “Constitutional” except that part which says that Article One institutions (the House and Senate) get to establish their own rules.

On the other hand I am in favor of Article Three Court packing because the exact number of Justices is nowhere enshrined even nearly as well in our founding document or its amendments and has been set by legislative precedent (a power explicitly given to the Legislature by the Constitution and subject to Executive Veto) at various configurations between 6 and 10 (see, no historic preference for odd numbered tie breaking either).

FDR was right.

The nature of evil

The Republican Party is composed of 30% of the population who are either avaricious scoundrels or hopelessly bigoted or both.  They propose policies, and enact them if possible, that reflect their evil nature.  I am not one to sugar coat the stark inhumanity of their souls and while I admire the idealism of those missionaries who think they can educate them away from their willful ignorance I find them fundamentally foolish, their energy misguided, their faith misplaced.

Ignorance does not equal stupidity.  They are cunning, ruthless, and resourceful and they look upon you as naive rubes, mere marks to be exploited and harvested like sheep.  The trouble with Kansas is that there are so many Kansans in it and they are happy being evil, not that they are dumb.

And of course they’re not limited to Kansas, would that they were.  The War of Northern Aggression was primarily motivated by the fact that northern states aggressively didn’t recognize the obvious moral superiority of the South and it’s peculiar institution of race slavery and instead condemned it as hateful and uncivilized.  This itself was not was not without a class economic component as over half the wealth of the entire United States was held in the value of human cattle, its breeding, and labor.

Representative Democracy

“The past is never dead.  It’s not even past.”

A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided.  It will become all one thing or all the other.  Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new – North as well as South.

Mr. Lincoln’s argument goes something like this- At the beginning of 1854 race slavery was legislatively excluded from more than half the United States.  With the incorporation of Kansas and Nebraska that legislation was superseded by mandate for a local plebiscite and the Supreme Court subsequently found in Dred Scott that the property right to own, work and breed human cattle for profit once granted to a citizen under that laws of any State must be equally enforced in all States in the absence of Federal legislation which was impossible to achieve due to bi-partisan acquiescence in the institution of slavery.

Lesser Evilism

Remember the Whigs!  In 1852 the party fractured along pro and anti slavery lines and was never again a national political force.  By contrast the Democrats were the party of slavery uncontested and united.

Does that mean loyal Whigs should have supported Millard Filmore?

I guess that depends on whether you think it would have delayed or prevented the War of Southern Rebellion and that “compromises” such as compensating the owners of slave wealth and shipping their Cain marked property back to Africa like the inhuman savages they were was less evil.

Wesley Culp died assaulting the hill named after his Uncle defending slavery and compromise after all.  I’m sure his family and dog loved him and missed him terribly.

Greater Evilism

I suppose you expected me to talk about War Crimes.  About torture and ovens and extermination.  When I was younger I used to wonder what could bring an entire nation to such depths of depravity that they could condone and ignore aggressive war.

Now, unfortunately, I know.

And the question is what I must do.

Out there is a hill with my family’s name on it and when I visit it will not be to compromise or defend evil of any sort.

I will wear a white rose.

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism has pointed out an important new study for defenders of the social safety net, specifically Medicare and Medicaid (anyone claiming that Social Security contributes to the deficit is simply a liar and a thief).

The name of the paper is An Examination of Health-Spending Growth In The United States: Past Trends And Future Prospects (.pdf) by Glenn Follette and Louise Sheiner.  As she points out the first important thing to recognize about it is who it comes from.

(T)he authors are uniquely qualified to make this critique. Follette is chief of the Fed’s fiscal analysis section. Sheiner, a fellow member of that group, has worked for both the Treasury and the Council of Economic Advisers previously. In other words, the sort of analysis they have made here is the core of what they do on a daily basis.

Fed Budgetary Experts Demolish CBO Health Cost Model, the Lynchpin of Budget Hysteria

Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism

Sunday, November 4, 2012

(C)onventional wisdom is that Medicare does have a long term cost predicament, but the problem is not demographic, but that of the steep rise of health care costs in general.

The fundamental beef of Follette and Sheiner with the CBO model is that it naively assumes past growth in health care spending as the basis for its long-term projections. The result is that it shows that trees will grow to the sky. One of the things anyone who has build forecasting models will tell you is you come up with assumptions that look reasonable and then sanity check the output (for instance, does your model say in year 10 that your revenues will be 3x what you can produce given your forecast level in plant and investment? If so, you need to make some revisions). The Fed economists point out numerous ways that the model output flies in the face of what amounts to common sense in the world of long term budget forecasting.

…

The CBO assuming public health care spending will sustain its growth rate of the last 50 years for as long as they do (see further discussion below) with no policy changes is like budget analysts in 1946 assuming that military spending will grow at the same rate it did during World War II without any policy changes. Yet they further assume that, having reached this crushing level, Medicare costs in 2082 will still be growing faster than GDP!

The underlying issue is that nothing that is a large portion of GDP can exceed the growth rate of GDP forever, or even for all that long; that’s how we’ve gotten in the insane position of having health care reach 16% of GDP. The term of art is “excess health care spending growth” which as noted above, they define in relationship to per capita incomes.

…

The CBO’s performance on this front looks like malpractice. The Fed economists note telling irregularities, such as the substitution of scenarios, as opposed to the use of confidence band analysis, as the CBO employed in its Social Security forecasts. And this would not the first time that CBO has apparently allowed political considerations to interfere with its pretense of objectivity. First we have the case of CBO analyst Lan Pham, who was fired for attempting to incorporate the impact of foreclosures and chain of title issues on home price and property tax forecasts. Second, we have the instance of Tom Ferguson and Rob Johnson of alerting the CBO to a significant omission in their deficit analysis, that of failing to include financial assets in their debt-to-GDP ratio calculation. CBO staffers have not disputed the accuracy of the Ferguson/Johnson research but nevertheless will not change their projections. Now we have what is demonstrably an overly aggressive set of assumptions driving health policy debate, with two Federal Reserve analysts sufficiently taken aback by the model as to publish a serious takedown of it.

The CBO’s independence is, like its output, treated as above question. It’s time to subject both to harsh scrutiny.

The thing about ‘trees to the sky’ is that they all grow to the sky, but they do not grow indefinitely or at a constant rate.  Assuming that they do is at best naive and at worst disingenuous.

So, stupid or evil?

The Left Wing Case Against Obama and Obama’s Next Term

by Ian Welsh

2012 November 3

The key thing to realize is that Obama is the President who normalized Bush’s Republic.  He normalized routine civil liberties violations, normalized anti-immigrant raids, normalized the eternal war on terror, pushed executive power even further than Bush with a unilateral war against the wishes of Congress in Libya and by arrogating for himself the right to kill any American.  He made sure the rich not only stayed rich, in the face of a financial collapse which he could have used to break their power, but has increased inequality significantly.  The wealth and wages of ordinary Americans have dropped, the portion of the country’s income going to the wealthy has increased, and the US is well on its way to becoming a corrupt petro-state.  Nothing is more hilarious than Mayor Bloomberg endorsing Obama because of climate change, when Obama has quite deliberately overseen a huge increase in hydrocarbon production and openly embraces so-called “clean” coal.   Obama may agree that Global Warming exists, and Romney may pretend that it doesn’t, but the policies of the two are functionally identical and the money Obama spent on renewables was so horribly misspent as to do nothing but discredit the industry.

The argument for “who cares” is simple enough.  Yes, Romney will be worse than Obama in certain respects, but if Obama is not in charge, then the Democrats are far more likely to oppose both civil liberties absuses and efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Let me tell you how Obama’s second term will play out.

1) He will appoint a milquetoast “liberal” to the Supremes.  You’ll keep the remains of Roe vs. Wade, but he’ll keep doing things like overruling Plan B as an over the counter medicatin, because he doesn’t really believe that girls impregnated by their fathers have a right to an abortion.  And every case that enshrines oligarchy, like Citizens United or HCR, will go for oligarchy (you aren’t stupid enough to think that Roberts switched his vote for any reasons other than to give insurance companies their bailout and gut Medicaid, I hope.)

2) The economy will struggle along till he gets his grand bargain, then it will absolutely crater.  You’ve got a couple years of lousy but not awful economy at most, use it, because years 3 and 4 are going to be awful.

3) He will make a Grand Bargain.  Winning by only a small margin of the popular vote will help with this.  The rich will pay slightly more, but most of the money will come from cutting Social Security, Medicare and other such programs.  The Republicans will give him just enough votes to pass it, so that it will be the Democrats who have gutted SS and Medicare.

4) The Republicans will nominate a right wing crazy in 2016.  He will stand a good chance of winning, because the Democrats, having cut SS and Medicare will now stand for nothing other than “fear the Supreme Court!”  In fact, the Republicans will run as the defenders of SS and Medicare.

Because the Republican Congress is now extremely far right wing, in fact reactionary, when they get their President, they will be able to do almost anything they want.  And all they will need is the House and 51 votes in the Senate, because they will not play stupid games about the filibuster, they’ll pass under reconciliation or just do it with 51 votes and tell everyone to go fuck themselves.  There will be no nonsense about super-majorities.  HCR will, at that point, be removed or gutted.  The court decision making Medicaid optional, however, will remain the law of the land.

Reelecting Obama does mean a better economy for the next couple years.  It does mean that people who can afford health care with mandated issue, and who must have it to make the bridge to Medicare, will get that.  It means nothing else.  It will gut the Democratic coalition, it will make a reactionary right wing president far more likely, it will kick the restructuring of the economy which is needed down the road further, making it more difficult when, or rather if, it ever occurs.  It will make the Grand Compromise, meaning SS and Medicare cuts, far more possible than if Romney were in power and Democrats were opposing the bill.  And yes, poor women will still be able, at least theoretically, to get abortions (upper middle class women are always able to get them, since they can travel.)

Why is the left defending Obama?

Matt Stoller, Salon

Saturday, Nov 3, 2012 10:00 AM EDT

The 2012 election is next Tuesday. We face a choice between Barack Obama, a candidate whose Presidency we can examine and evaluate, and Mitt Romney, who is a dangerous cipher. My argument – made last week in “Progressive Case Against Obama“, is that progressives should evaluate these risks honestly, with a clear-headed analysis of Obama’s track record.This piece sparked a massive debate that has had both Obama loyalists and Republicans resort to outlandish name-calling, evidently as a result of their unwillingness or inability to address the issues raised.

It is remarkable to see the level to which Obama defenders have sunk. Let’s start with a basic problem – why is Obama in a tight race? Mitt Romney is more caricature than candidate, a horrifically cartoonish plutocrat whose campaign is staffed by people that allow secret tapings of obviously offensive statements. The Republican base finds Romney uninspiring, and Romney has been unable to provide one good reason to choose him except that he is not the incumbent. Yet, Barack Obama is in a dog fight with this clown. Why? It isn’t because a few critics are writing articles in places like Salon. The answer, if you look at the data, is that Barack Obama has been a terrible President and an enemy to progressives. Unemployment is high. American household income since the recovery started in 2009 has dropped 5%. Poverty has increased substantially. Home equity – the main store of wealth for the middle class – has dropped by $5-7 trillion, in contrast to the increase in financial asset values held by Obama’s friends and donors. And this was done explicitly through Obama’s policies.

Obama came into office with a massive mandate, overwhelming control of Congress, hundreds of billions of TARP money to play with, the ability to prosecute Wall Street executives and break their power, and the opportunity for a massive stimulus. Most importantly, the country was willing to follow – the public believed his calls for change. Yet, instead of restructuring the economy and doing obvious things like hardening infrastructure against global warming, he entrenched oligarchy. This was explicit. Obama broke a whole series of campaign promises that would have helped the middle class. These promises would have reduced household debt, raised the minimum wage, stopped outsourcing, and protected workers. He broke these promises for a reason – Barack Obama uses his power for what he believes in, and Barack Obama is a conservative technocrat. Obama sided with Wall Street. He probably made the foreclosure crisis worse with a series of programs designed to help banks but marketed to help homeowners. These were his policies, they reflected the views of his most valued advisors like Robert Rubin and his Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. Moreover, he’s proud of this record – the only mistake he cites in his first term is inadequately communicating how effective he has been, focusing too much on getting the policy right.

And the result is inequality in income gains that is higher than that under George W. Bush. Most of Obama’s defenders refuse to acknowledge Obama’s role in this policy mess. He deserves credit for the auto bailout, but when it comes to the bank bailouts, hey he’s just one man. What could we possibly expect? Yet, reelecting this man to a Presidency that is hamstrung by the system is the most important thing in the world. In other words, just as they’ve been arguing for years, Obama is both entirely powerless and utterly essential.

…

In other words, as Glen Ford put it, Obama is not necessarily the lesser of two evils, he may be the “more effective evil“. He puts the left to sleep (whether by defunding progressive groups or allowing the destruction of Occupy encampments), and the left is where the resistance to imperial tendencies currently resides. It is this problem, of how to organize large groups of people into a political force for justice, that should concern us. Otherwise, under Bush or Obama, inequality would continue to increase. And with this, I’d bring us to the argument I made about leverage points, most notably, that policy leverage is apparent during a crisis.

Consider that there is a crisis right now, in the Frankenstorm, Sandy. Parts of lower Manhattan are still without power, and much of the Eastern seaboard will never be the same. Late night comedians, NBC, and even Businessweek are jumping up and down and screaming that this catastrophic storm is a result of climate change. Yet, on Monday, no major environmental groups except Bill McKibben’s 350.org featured Sandy on its home page. These groups, from the Sierra Club to the Environmental Defense Fund – focused instead on the safety of chemicals, saving the Osprey, voting for Obama, or other such problems. As Brad Johnson noted, almost every left-wing journalist or advocate was equivocating as to whether climate change was the cause. This is the moment of leverage, when an organized advocacy space should have been arguing for a massive emergency mitigation and adaptation efforts. Tens of billions of dollars will flow into the Northeast, this money could be used for rebuilding unsustainable Con Ed, or for powering the New York with entirely renewable and robust energy. Instead, the right-wing, including Democrats like MSNBC contributor Ed Rendell, are working to undermine environmental, labor rules in the reconstruction while privatizing rebuilt infrastructure.

…

Progressives are obsessed with reelecting Obama instead of governing, so there is silence in response to a massive leverage point (except on CNBC, where the anchors are screaming for more refining capacity in response to Sandy). We the people need to protest and demand the solutions that might have a chance at saving our civilization from the many Sandy’s to come. Indeed, global warming fueled Hurricane Katrina killed 3000 people, and we did nothing except allow the privatization of the New Orleans school system. But as we see now, this is not just because of George Bush, it is because our theory of change, of looking to right-wing politicians entrenched in the Democratic Party as an answer, was an utter failure. It is the politics of self-delusion, and catastrophe. Voting third party is a way of indicating, to yourself and your community, that you will not be party to this game any more. Voting third party is a way of showing, to yourself and your community, that you consider Barack Obama an opponent, and that you oppose his policy. This is a profound admission, and it creates the space for real opposition, for real resistance.

Well, you know, so many of them have web infrastructure in New York and are experiencing service disruptions until after the election.

After 35,000 hours what’s a mere 170 or so between “friends?”

(h/t Naked Capitalism)

Surprise!

Vettel thrown out of qualifying

EurosportAsia

11/4/12, 16:18

Stewards stripped the 25-year-old of third place on the grid after post-qualifying checks on Saturday showed there was an insufficient quantity of fuel in the car for sampling purposes.

…

Red Bull’s decision to start from the pitlane – rather than the back of the grid – means it will be able to make some changes to Vettel’s car’s set-up ahead of the race, and the driver himself remained positive.

So, what will this change?  Umm… virtually nothing.

It will be irony or divine justice to see Vettel race from the back, but he’s done that before and as Schumacher (who’s underqualified all season) has shown us what’s likely to happen is he’ll cut through the field until he gets to the Force India cars at least and probably all the way until he starts mixing it up with Lotus (who may have a new primary sponsor next season) and Mercedes.

Then it will will be a matter of how much car he’s used up, pits, and accidents/breakdowns as to whether he  finishes 6th or higher which is all he and Red Bull will need to continue their march of dominance.

Part of that is the track.  What idiot thinks that Monaco with its low speeds and complete lack of passing opportunities is a good model?  The answer to that question is Hermann Tilke who’s designed or re-designed 15 of the 20 current tracks and made them uniformly boring and slow.

Even notorious safety Nazi Jackie Stewart hates him.

But Bernie and Hermann don’t really care about racing per se, it’s all about the bottom line which is not filling infield with ordinary Red Barrel-swilling football hooligan red necks.

I’m fed up with being treated like sheep. What’s the point of going abroad if you’re just another tourist carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Coventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors, complaining about the tea – “Oh they don’t make it properly here, do they, not like at home” – and stopping at Majorcan bodegas selling fish and chips and Watney’s Red Barrel and calamaris and two veg and sitting in their cotton frocks squirting Timothy White’s suncream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh ‘cos they ‘overdid it on the first day.’ and being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellvueses and Continentals with their modern international luxury roomettes and draught Red Barrel and swimming pools full of fat German businessmen pretending they’re acrobats forming pyramids and frightening the children and barging into queues and if you’re not at your table spot on seven you miss the bowl of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup, the first item on the menu of International Cuisine, and every Thursday night the hotel has a bloody cabaret in the bar, featuring a tiny emaciated dago with nine-inch hips and some bloated fat tart with her hair brylcreemed down and a big arse presenting Flamenco for Foreigners and then some adenoidal typists from Birmingham with flabby white legs and diarrhoea trying to pick up hairy bandy-legged wop waiters called Manuel and once a week there’s an excursion to the local Roman Ruins to buy cherryade and melted ice cream and bleeding Watney’s Red Barrel and one evening you visit the so called typical restaurant with local colour and atmosphere and you sit next to a party from Rhyl who keep singing ‘Torremolinos, torremolinos’ and complaining about the food – “It’s so greasy here, isn’t it?” – and you get cornered by some drunken greengrocer from Luton with an Instamatic camera and Dr. Scholl sandals and last Tuesday’s Daily Express and he drones on and on and on about how Mr. Smith should be running this country and how many languages Enoch Powell can speak and then he throws up over the Cuba Libres and sending tinted postcards of places they don’t realise they haven’t even visited to “All at number 22, weather wonderful, our room is marked with an ‘X’. Food very greasy but we’ve found a charming little local place hidden away in the back streets where they serve Watney’s Red Barrel and cheese and onion crisps and the accordionist plays ‘Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner’.”

No sirree.  It’s all about fat greasy .001 percenters taking their clients to an air-conditioned suite where they can watch any kind of satellite TV they want as long as it’s not that god-awful screaming race outside and mix with coked up semi-celebrities and D-Listers who now ply their fading fame as high priced whores while discretely vomiting bulemic Chardonnay and indifferently prepared crudites soaked in curdled sour cream that may once have been placed next to a jar labeled caviar but which was really salmon roe on the peons and serfs below while they scam their next Pozi scheme on a bunch of brown rag heads who’ve accidentally been born with money and try to ignore the stone faced ‘personal security experts’ with automatic weapons who escort them back and forth to the hotel through the rabble so they don’t suffer a puncture on their armored SUV from inconvenient bone fragments or IEDs.

Singing ‘Torremolinos, torremolinos.’

Not Just a Race for the Rich: Welcome to the F1 FanZone

By BRAD SPURGEON, The New York Times

November 3, 2012, 7:00 pm

The two elements of the FanZone that really fired my excitement were the activities themselves and the business model. The business model is, in a word, brilliant.

“A lot of the people in this part of the world cannot afford to buy tickets for the race, especially for a family,” said Boutagy in an interview. (Tickets for good seats can run 400 euros, or more than $500, though some venues, like the Canadian Grand Prix, are cheaper.) “It all started with the fact that people here weren’t really educated in Formula One. Now people know what it is.

“It is really a family oriented event, and it’s all free,” he said of the FanZone. “Any other sport has this: FIFA Fan Fest, NFL, NHL.”

Indeed. For a sport that is often criticized as elite, costly, not for the average family’s enjoyment – and not fan-friendly – the F1 FanZone operates entirely on sponsorship. The gates are open to anyone, and all the attractions are free. Boutagy’s company consists only of four people, and when he runs an event, he hires local staff – more than 30 of them – to run the rides and deal with the public. He makes his money and runs the event entirely with money from Formula One sponsors, such as Pirelli Tires or Vodafone, and with local sponsors.

People are not really educated in Formula One.  There’s so much to learn and it’s all so complicated.

Welcome to the United States.  We’re exceptional.

Interactive Tracks

• Formula One Official Site Yas Marina
• Guardian Interactive Track

Yas Marina

• New York Times History
• Yas Marina
• Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
• Yas Marina Qualifying

Official Sites

• Formula One Official Website
• Speed Racecast

Pretty tables soon.

Though mentioned by Benjamin Franklin in 1784, the modern idea of daylight saving was first proposed in 1895 by George Vernon Hudson and it was first implemented during the First World War.

Thus proving that not every idea is as good as bi-focals (Wait.  Bi-focals are a good idea?).

An alternate view-

What?  Too soon?

In any event I think this means that we will be joining the action from Yas Marina at a time that is actually legally 8 am but which will seem like 9 am to your body and any clock you haven’t adjusted.

Since my clocks are set 2 hours in advance anyway I’m not quite sure what they’ll say.

I find it hard to express my contempt for the Sunday morning gas bags and that’s saying a lot because I have an on-line thesaurus and know how to use it.

One of the things I’m trying to do with our sites, DocuDharma and The Stars Hollow Gazette, is find some alternative programming for our readers so that they’re not tempted to gouge out their eyes like Gloucester (Act III, Scene 7).

This piece comes to us courtesy of The Real News and their YouTube Channel and features Bill Black, Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri Kansas City

Part 1

Part 2

The Great Betrayal – and the Cynicism of calling it a Grand Bargain

William K. Black, The Real News

Tuesday, 30 October 2012 14:10

Wall Street’s greatest desire is privatizing Social Security. Wall Street stands to make scores of billions of dollars annually in additional fees should it ever buy enough politicians to privatize Social Security. The Republican Party’s greatest goal is unraveling the safety net. They always wish to attack the most successful and popular programs introduced by the Democratic Party. Their problem is that they know it is toxic for Republican candidates to try to destroy the safety net. Only Democrats, through a “Great Betrayal” can give Republicans the political cover they need to unravel the safety net.

…

Because unraveling the safety net is unnecessary, harmful, and politically insane for a Democrat and politically suicidal for Republicans, the proponents of these terrible policies have long failed in their efforts. Republicans, however, have now found a fifth column within the Democratic Party who they hope will open the door to attacking the safety net. This would provide the political cover that Republicans could use to unravel fully the safety net.

The Republican Party’s approach to convincing Obama to commit the Great Betrayal cleverly exploits three human weaknesses. First, Obama wants to be considered a “centrist.” Second, Obama yearns to be considered “bipartisan.” These first two weaknesses are forms of vanity. The siren song is “do this and you will become known as the President who acted as a statesman to cut across Party and ideological divides and make the hard choices essential to allowing America to continue to be a great nation – while ‘saving’ the safety net.”

The third weakness that the Republicans seek to exploit is fear – and the death of alternatives. The mantra of European austerity proponents is “there is no alternative.” The only choice is between austerity and collapse, and that means there is no real choice. The Republican strategy is to create a series of “moral panics.” As the name implies, this involves the creation of a special form of panic falsely premised on immorality. (Think: “Reefer Madness” or Professor Hill causing River City, Iowans to believe that the arrival of pool hall demonstrated the imminent moral collapse of their children.) The Great Betrayal can only occur if Obama succumbs to mindless (and innumerate) panic.

The Democratic wing of the Democratic Party has to lead the effort to save America from the Great Betrayal. It is essential to focus on the self-destructive nature of austerity.

…

(T)he Rubin-wing of the Democratic Party that has been seeking to create the moral panic, but even he admits that “austerity now” “will slow the economy, cut jobs, and increase deficits.” The Great Betrayal of the safety net will begin if Obama is able to deliver the “grand bargain” imposing austerity that would “slow the economy, cut jobs, and increase deficits” and unravel the safety nets – the four horsemen of the economic apocalypse.

Obama is telling the media that the Great Betrayal is his first, and overarching, priority should he be re-elected. We are forewarned and we must act now to make clear that we will block the Great Betrayal and crush at the polls any member of Congress who supports it.

Do not concede the phrase “grand bargain” to the proponents of the betrayal. We should heed Camus’ warning that it is essential to call a plague by its real name if one is to resist it – and it is essential to resist the pestilence. “[W]hen you see the suffering and pain that it brings, you have to be mad, blind or a coward to resign yourself to the plague.” We must refuse to resign ourselves to being betrayed by Democratic leaders. Our actions must make it clear that we are not mad, blind, or cowards. We refuse to fall for their faux moral panics. It is our leaders who are all too often mad, blind, and cowards.

Liberals fear grand bargain betrayal if President Obama wins

By CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN, Politico

11/2/12 4:26 AM EDT

He wants a large-scale deficit deal. But it would inevitably mean making concessions to Republicans that infuriate the Democratic base that spent the past two years and tens of millions of dollars trying to return him to the White House. Progressives worry about which Obama will show up after Election Day: the pragmatist who offered benefit cuts to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in the 2011 debt ceiling talks or the partisan chastened by a failed deal to slice into prized Democratic programs.

“The base is not going to be happy with ham and egg justice” that requires disproportionate sacrifice from all but the wealthy, said Van Jones, Obama’s former green jobs czar and founder of Rebuild the Dream, a progressive advocacy group. “It is a fiscal showdown. We’re not going to blink. There is no reason in the world why the pillars of middle-class security, the earned benefits that our parents fought for, should be on the chopping block.”

…

Obama, if he wins, will assert that voters had a choice – and his vision on taxes, entitlements and the deficit prevailed.

“If I’ve won, then I believe that’s a mandate for doing it in a balanced way,” Obama said this week in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “We’ve already made a trillion dollars worth of cuts. We can do some more cuts. We can look at how we deal with the health care costs in particular under Medicare and Medicaid in a serious way. But we are also going to need some revenue.”

…

Obama signaled last week that he could revive the offer he made to Boehner, which was a mix of new revenues, reduced federal spending and entitlement benefit cuts such as raising the Medicare eligibility age and lowering the cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients

…

Administration officials say the range of options that Obama has considered in the past are well known, so it shouldn’t be a surprise if they are resurrected.

But progressive leaders don’t want Obama to go back there. Privately, they use words like “debacle” and “betrayal” to describe the backlash that would ensue. They are far more measured in their public statements ahead of the election.

The unions and advocacy groups have invested time and money in the battleground states pushing the message that Obama is better than Republican Mitt Romney on creating jobs, protecting the middle class and preserving Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

And if Obama wins, they say they plan to remind him who is responsible for delivering him a second term – and it won’t be a coalition of Republicans, deficit hawks or even independents, but rather a Democratic base that expects him to stand firm on key priorities.

…

“MoveOn’s 7 million members have made clear that ending the Bush tax cuts for folks earning over $250,000 and preventing any benefit cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are top priorities – that’s a key reason why MoveOn members are working so hard to reelect President Obama and elect progressive champions to Congress,” said Ilya Sheyman, campaign director for MoveOn.org Political Action. “After Election Day, our members will expect Congress and the president to focus on passing a real jobs program, instead of making job-killing cuts, even if it requires working into January or beyond.”

The AFL-CIO and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees will keep their organizers in the field well after Tuesday to pressure lawmakers as their attention turns from electoral politics to deficit deal making.

The network will hold what they’re calling a national day of action Nov. 8 and follow up later in the month with lobbying events. They’ll also release results of an election night survey by Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg on why voters went to the polls.

“It is safe to say many groups are very concerned that a grand bargain will be foisted on the Congress that goes against what Democratic candidates promised on the campaign trail,” said Roger Hickey, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future. “And it is clear the president is considering making the grand bargain that he offered to Boehner previously.”

Yup, Van Jones and MoveOn getting all outraged and stuff November 8th AFTER he no longer needs a single vote again, ever.

That will hold his feet to the fire.

(h/t Naked Capitalism)

Formula One declares war on NASCAR!

Landing Spot in America Is Elusive for Formula One

By LEO LEVINE, The New York Times

Published: November 2, 2012

The series, which awards the World Drivers and Constructors championships, has struggled to find a permanent home in the United States. There are several reasons for this, but a principal one has been lack of a suitable circuit in a good-sized metropolitan area.

…

Over the years, there have been a number of attempts to find a permanent home in the United States. Sebring, Fla., was the first in 1959, and after that came Riverside, Calif., and then Watkins Glen in the Finger Lakes region of New York. The Watkins Glen setting was much loved by drivers, teams and spectators, but it was not a financial success. And it was not a favorite of the man who has controlled the sport as head of the Formula One Constructors Association, Bernard Ecclestone.

Watkins Glen declared bankruptcy after the 1980 season, and for the last three decades Formula One racing has wandered the country, some years with two events, some with none. There have been races in Long Beach, Calif.; Detroit; Dallas; and Phoenix, and even the parking lot of a Las Vegas casino.

Flaming Chunks of Twisted Metal!

The problem with Formula One is that it is boring.  For years and years at a time drivers, at least the smart ones, try to duplicate what Sebastian Vettel did last week which is pull away at the start and pile up an insurmountable lead so they can coast to a victory.

Yawn.

NASCAR on the other hand is high speed bumper cars, tightly regulated to produce the maximum amount of crashes.  Do you want to be a TBI Throwball Star with a 4 year career or a 40 year old designated has been?  Which would you rather watch- Checkers or Chess?  King me!

Crushing victories make unexciting amusements which is why you should constantly be on the lookout for ‘horse race’ reporting, in politics as well as sports.  In most cases it’s really not as close as all that and the institutional incentive is to compose a compelling narrative.  If you can present an overwhelming favorite as a scrappy, come-from-behind underdog who’s sympathetically triumphed despite personal obstacles in a way that gives the fan the impression that if they were only a little more dedicated and disciplined they too could be a Galt-like Master of the Universe, you are not a mere facile fantasist and servile stenographer but a hard nosed reporter of Truth, Justice, and The American Way! ready to rip off those nerdy glasses and prove that you have powers and abilities far beyond those of being the fastest typist Perry White has ever seen.

Put down that pizza, I’m making a point here.

Professional Sports are entertainments, not competitions.  Bright and shiny distractions as ephemeral as soap bubbles, scripted ‘reality’ shows with a veneer of novelty in that you’re supposed to willingly suspend disbelief and embrace cognitive estrangement.

F1: Vettel dominates Abu Dhabi Grand Prix practice

7Days in Dubai

Saturday, November 03, 2012

Vettel has won the past four races to overtake Alonso at the top, and by all accounts has the fastest car on the circuit. He leads the Spaniard by 13 points with three races remaining, followed by Raikkonen who is 67 points back.

Webber is a further six points back, and Hamilton another two points back. Each of them has to practically win every race and hope Vettel doesn’t finish to have any chance.

…

The team (Red Bull) can clinch its third consecutive constructors’ title in Abu Dhabi if Vettel wins and Webber finishes no worse than eighth, or the two finish second and third. Red Bull leads Ferrari by 91 points, and McLaren was a further 10 points behind.

Red Bull, McLaren, Ferrari.  How long until that’s no longer a surprise?

Mediums and Softs on offer with a .5 second a lap advantage to the Softs.

Interactive Tracks

• Formula One Official Site Yas Marina
• Guardian Interactive Track

Yas Marina

• New York Times History
• Yas Marina
• Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

Official Sites

• Formula One Official Website
• Speed Racecast

Any (heh) surprises below.