If you want to you can watch Kentucky Derby coverage from 11 am ET (on Vs. where it actually started on Wednesday) until 7 pm (on NBC, where they spare you the pre-race hype until 4).

I suppose this is good thing since you can hardly be expected to follow Horse Racing unless you’re a tout or plunger in one of the few forms of gambling deemed socially acceptable (as opposed to Poker, which is not gambling at all) and 2 year olds don’t have much of a record to handicap.

Ice Cream.  Get your Tutsi Frootsie Ice Cream.

It’s really mostly an excuse to wear hats that would be rejected from a 5th Avenue Easter Parade or Royal Wedding and get tanked up on Bourbon that is best sipped with a soda chaser and not muddled up with mint.

Mint Julep

Ingredients

• 4 cups bourbon
• 2 bunches fresh spearmint
• 1 cup distilled water
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• Powdered sugar

Directions

Post Time is 6:24 pm ET.

In Europe (yes, Turkey is a part of Europe) for the first time this year after a 3 week layoff.

There are some off track developments.  Ecclestone turned down a buyout bid saying that Formula One is not for sale, yet.  At least not to Murdoch’s News Corp.

Tomorrow will be the first race of the GP 2 season.  They keep them in Europe to reduce the travel expenses.  I can hardly keep the teams and drivers of Formula One straight, but it you have an interest they kick off Speed’s coverage at 6 am ET.  The actual race starts with the hype at a relatively civilized 7:30 am ET with the green flag at 8 and a repeat at 1:30 in the afternoon, so Richard can sleep in if he wants to (Dad seldom does the 3 am thing like I do anyway).

This break is traditionally used by the teams for technical development, so the cars you see in Europe are hardly the ones you saw in Asia at all, but with the new rules designed to make things “fairer” they’re not allowed to do as much of that any more.  Most teams have tweaked their aero, but they do that all the time anyway, the big news is Scuderia Marlboro UPC’s hydraulic dampeners.

You see Red Bull has been making everyone else (except McLaren) look pretty slow and apparently a big reason for that is their front wings flex a little closer to the track improving downforce.  Red Bull has been subjected to extensive ‘scrutineering’ and found legal because there are rules about how close to the ground you can get.  It’s tough to tell because their system is totally mechanical and it’s difficult to duplicate race conditions.

Marlboro UPC is attempting to counter with a hydraulic system to ensure they don’t exceed the limits and spent a long time at the end of practice getting examined.  I say it’s just something else heavy that can break so I see no real advantage, but the orders from Maranello are to start winning or they’ll take their toys and go home.

Frankly, outside of Vettel, Red Bull doesn’t look nearly as dominant as they did last year anyway and he hard parked during the second practice tearing up everything except the tub.  Not that it makes much difference, if they can’t fix it he’ll just have to drive the spare.

It rained heavily during the first practice and a lot of other people parked too.  McLaren never made it out of the pits because of clutch problems.

Istanbul Park is known for the 3 or 4 apex Turn 8, but most of the twisted metal yesterday was at Turn 11.  The surface is very rough so there will be lots of tire wear and again we are hearing rumors of back markers running unorthodox tire strategies.  They took over 1000 pounds of rolled up rubber off the track in China, Mark Weber has been changing tires more than anybody with little to show for the effort.

It’s also a Turn Left circuit, one of 4, but at least you have the 151 feet of elevation change to keep you amused.

As usual I’ll note the surprising developments, if any, below.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Kadhafi regime hits out over rebel war chest

by W.G. Dunlop, AFP

1 hr 2 mins ago

Not that anyone noticed much, but last night Britain held local elections.  Guess who took a “Shellacking”?

Ed Miliband: Voters have withdrawn permission for Clegg to back Tory policies

Labour leader says people do not want ‘relaunch of coalition’ as desperate night for Lib Dems leaves them with only 15% of vote in local elections

Polly Curtis, Whitehall correspondent, guardian.co.uk

Friday 6 May 2011 13.21 BST

The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, indicated that the coalition had lost its mandate to govern after the Liberal Democrats suffered a disastrous night in the local elections, seeing their vote collapse across the north of England, Scotland and Wales.

…

Miliband told reporters in Gravesham, a key council in the south won by Labour: “The Conservative party does not have a majority in parliament and has only been able to govern because of the Liberal Democrats’ willing participation in a Tory-led government.

“People who once voted Liberal Democrat have withdrawn permission for Nick Clegg to back Tory policies on the NHS, on living standards and cuts that go too far, too fast.

“People do not want a relaunch of the coalition but real change. David Cameron and Nick Clegg must listen to the people.”

But will they listen?

Coalition ministers insisted the Lib Dem-Conservative government would refocus on its work – next week Clegg and David Cameron will launch a coalition document marking its achievements in the year since it was formed.

…

Coalition ministers vowed to plough on with their plans after a desperate night for the Lib Dems left them with just 15% of the local election vote – their lowest for nearly three decades – and came ahead of the AV referendum result, which they have acknowledged is almost certain to go against them.

The American people have voted for change in the last 3 elections- 2006, 2008, and 2010.

And we’ll keep on voting until we get some.

It’s awfully hard to get excited about an event that AP will not cover at all and Reuters will pay scant attention because of restrictions that Faux Noise and the Republican Party have placed on it to avoid making their candidates look stupid.

Sorry, that Taggart Transcontinental has already left the station.

Still, at 9 pm ET in the grossly misnamed (at least on this occasion) Peace Center in Greenville, South Carolina, the 5 dimmest bulbs in the half candlepower constellation that is the Republican field this cycle- former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain, former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, Representative Ron Paul, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, will take the stage.

It would be a lot more fun pointing and laughing if it weren’t for the fact we already have a Republican President.

I’ll be watching Stanley Cup action (Canucks @ Predators), King of the Hill, or napping, all of which are far more restful on the eyeballs, but if you care to comment there’s a space for that below.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Hundreds of millions pledged for Libya rebels

by Francoise Kadri and Christophe Schmidt, AFP

26 mins ago

Keith’s new show, Countdown, appears June 20th on Al Gore’s Current TV.  This Special Comment is from Friends of Keith.

A year on, flash crash didn’t prove transformative

By Jonathan Spicer, Reuters

Thu May 5, 2011 8:55am EDT

In the hours and days after last year’s “flash crash,” it seemed like Wall Street’s high-tech marketplace was in for big changes.

…

Yet a year later, little has changed — suggesting that while the flash crash was historic, it was not transformative.

…

With Europe’s debt crisis keeping markets on edge on May 6, 2010, a big futures sale sparked a cascade of selling in the stock market. The high-frequency algorithmic traders that now supply much of the market’s orders started bailing out, leaving nothing to stop the stampede to sell at any cost.

The Dow Jones industrial average plunged nearly 700 points in minutes that afternoon, eliminating $1 trillion in paper value before rebounding nearly as quickly. Blue-chip stocks hit record lows while others such as Accenture Plc traded for a penny, prompting thousands of trade breaks and wrecking havoc on investments.

…

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has so far made only one structural adjustment to markets: trading pauses known as circuit breakers. The regulator also made some noncontroversial nips and tucks around the edges and is mulling further changes, but for now at least, an overhaul is nowhere on the horizon.

“Not enough has been done,” said Andrew Brooks, head of U.S. equity trading at T Rowe Price, a big Baltimore-based asset manager.

“Do we know who trades all the large stuff? Do we know the nature of the counterparties in the marketplace today? The answer is no, and it’s crazy.”

So much for free, efficient, and transparent markets.

The solution is a transaction tax.  Not only would it force high churn traders to reconsider their gambling bets “investment” decisions, but it would also solve our revenue (not deficit) problem at a stroke.

What we have to do structurally is make it impossible (or prohibitively expensive) to gamble ‘on the house’ by using leverage as a money multiplier unless you are prepared to pay off your private debts when you lose.

I have no sympathy at all for those who sold Accenture at a penny.  You were fucking stupid to let a computer make your decisions for you.  Master of the Universe my ass, you’re a con man with a gambling addiction, a moron, and you deserve to be kicked to the gutter penniless and homeless like your Randian philosophy demands.