266 Stories served.  38 per day.

This is actually the hardest diary to execute, and yet perhaps the most valuable because it lets you track story trends over time.  It should be a Sunday morning feature.

• Sunday 10/ 31
• Monday 11/1
• Tuesday 11/2
• Wednesday 11/3
• Thursday 11/4
• Friday 11/5
• Saturday 11/6

College Throwball, Arizona @ Stanford or Missouri @ Texas Tech.  Some premiers.

Now don’t mistake me. I’m not advising cruelty or brutality with no purpose. My point is that cruelty with purpose is not cruelty – it’s efficiency. Then a man will never disobey once he’s watched his mate’s backbone laid bare. He’ll see the flesh jump, hear the whistle of the whip for the rest of his life.

• ABC Family– Back to the Future Part II, Back to the Future Part III
• AMC– Jeepers Creepers, Jeepers Creepers 2 x 2
• Bravo– The 40-Year-Old Virgin x 2
• Comedy– Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay
• E!– Little Miss Sunshine
• ESPN– College Throwball, Arkansas @ South Carolina
• ESPN2– More College Throwball, Texas @ Kansas State
• Food– Triple D marathon
• FX– Kung Fu Panda
• History– Weed night
• Lifetime– The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Never Been Kissed
• Oxygen– The Wedding Planner x 2
• Sci Fi– The Reaping, Messengers 2: The Scarecrow
• Speed– World of Outlaws x 2 (Instapeat)
• Style– The Dish (premier)
• TBS– Dumb & Dumber x 2
• Turner Classic– Mutiny on the Bounty (South Pacific night)
• TNT– Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Kill Bill: Vol. 2
• Toon– Flubber
• USA– Bad Boys II, Street Kings
• Vs.– College Throwball, Oregon State at UCLA

Later-

• ABC Family– Dirty Dancing
• Comedy– Strange Wilderness, Richard Pryor: Live in Concert
• Oxygen– Shall We Dance?
• Sci Fi– Hallowed Ground, The Blair Witch Project
• TBS– Mars Attacks! (thought it was funny the first time)
• Turner Classic– Pagan Love Song, The Tuttles of Tahiti
• TLC– Strange Sex marathon
• USA– House marathon
• Vs.– Semi-Pro Throwball, Mountain Lions @ Locomotives

SNL- 10/9.  Big O x 2 (penultimate and Series Finale).  GitS: SAC– Barrage, Stand Alone Complex (penultimate and Series Finale Episodes)

I’ve lived my life as a newspaper reporter. I uncover the truth and write my articles. But then I learned, all too well, that a mere reporter like myself can’t ever get to the truth in this city… it’s nearly impossible. And it’s unsure! No one here is even interested in learning the truth – a truth that must be known. But I want to know! I want to learn what must be known!

…

Even without the events of 40 years ago, I think man would still be a creature that fears the dark. He doesn’t face that fear, he averts his eyes from it and acts as if he doesn’t have any memories of his past. But, 40 years is both a short time and yet, a long time. Man’s fear has withered. And even time itself tries to wither the desire to know the truth. Is it a crime to try and learn the truth? Is it a sin to search for those things which you fear? My purpose in this world is knowledge, and the dissemination of it. And it is I who is to restore the fruits of my labor to the entire world. Fear… It is something vital to us puny creatures. The instant man stop fearing is the instant the species reaches a dead end, only to sink to pitable lows, only to sit and wait apathetically for extinction. Humans who lose the ability to think become creatures whose existance has no value. Wake up! Don’t be afraid of knowledge! Think, you humans who are split into two worlds, unless you want the gulf between humans to expand into oblivian, you must think!

You know, you get bonus points for identifying the quotes.

Zap2it TV Listings, Yahoo TV Listings

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 NATO probes report rogue Afghan soldier shot foreign troops

by Lynne O’Donnell, AFP

1 hr 42 mins ago

Like any political pundit, sports commentators can hardy talk about anything except the horse race, but it’s really not as complicated as they make it seem- everyone needs an “unexpected” Did Not Finish from 1 or more of their major competitors like we saw last time in Yeongam.

At the end of the season here the chances for that are substantially enhanced as Teams are collectively starting to run out of their rationed parts (Engines, Transmissions) and replacing them results in difficult to overcome grid penalties.

Two examples from Scuderia Marlboro UPC.  Alonso is running a used engine this race because of a rule that doesn’t allow him to run his last unused one.  Massa is running a new engine (his last), but parked during practice because of a transmission failure.  I have no idea whether Massa will get a penalty for that but I expect he might.

Xtrac Transmissions are falling into the same suspect category as Ferrari Powerplants and I suppose were I a better and more engaged reporter I’d bore you with the details of all the most recent technology and driver deals.  You’ll hear enough about them from the commentators because for the most part nothing has changed.  The Red Bulls are fastest with McLaren and Scuedria Marlboro evenly matched.  I will mention that it is uniformly reported that Vettel and Webber are hardly on speaking terms despite Red Bull’s assertions to the contrary.

Interlagos is hard on engines because of the many changes in elevation, especially from Turn 13 to Turn 1 which is fast, up hill, and presents one of the few overtaking opportunities.

Petrov had a crash during the 1st Practice because of a stuck F-Duct.  F-Duct enabled cars have a distinct advantage because of numerous fast sections where you want less downforce.  Softs are extremely short lived under dry track conditions, lasting only 1 or 2 laps with full fuel.  The expectation is that because of a tiny speed advantage teams that are in final Qualifying will start on Softs because they can’t change tires after the Qualifying session, but we may see some strategizing around that if someone posts a particularly fast lap.

But we could do this on Wets as rain was expected after the Practice and forecast during today’s Qualifying.

Race coverage starts tomorrow at 10:30 am.  I’ll have my race diary up at 10:15.

Because she fucks with the Villagers’ heads.

How Pelosi’s determination could hamper Obama

Dan Balz, The Washington Post

Saturday, November 6, 2010

The question is whether she has significantly complicated life for Obama as he prepares to deal with the Republican majority in the House and Senate Republicans led by someone who spent the week hurling thunderbolts at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. From outside reports, the White House was conflicted about whether it wanted her to stay or go, torn between loyalty to the speaker for all she did during the past two years and its own political needs in the wake of Tuesday’s loss.

Pelosi would be a symbol of resistance and liberal opposition to the Republicans. If Obama wants a House leader who will help draw bright lines of distinction with the new House majority, Pelosi could be exactly the right person to lead House Democrats. If he wants more room to maneuver, to make deals with Republicans as well as confront them, she might not be at all what he wants.

…

A Democrat with wide experience in the House agreed that Pelosi’s decision to stay on could cause problems for the president. “The problem for the party and the president is that Obama needs someone in Congress who can help him get things done and reposition himself,” this Democrat said. “She will be there to stoke up the left, and that’s what he doesn’t need.”

…

“A Pelosi-Clyburn team, with Steny Hoyer out, would mean a click to the left by a caucus already perceived as too liberal,” former Republican representative Vin Weber said. “I don’t think this president can triangulate against his base. If this is what happens, it will be the same as stimulus and health care. The progressive Democrats are doubling down once again.”

That is a huge risk for Obama, given what the voters seemed to be saying Tuesday. If the vote was not a clear embrace of the Republican agenda, it was at a minimum a call to check the Democrats’ impulses to keep enlarging government’s cost and reach. With Pelosi still at the helm in the House, voters may wonder what’s changed with the Democrats.

So yesterday I highlighted Black and Wray’s counter response to Bank of America and today Part 2 is available, but before I get to that I’d like to provide some context.

You’ll remember that PIMCO, Blackrock, Freddie Mac, and The Federal Reserve Bank of New York had requested that Bank of America repurchase some $47 Billion Mortgage Backed Securities that violated the performance and disclosure provisions of the contracts they were sold under.  You might also recognize these names as financial players every bit as big and powerful as Bank of America itself.

Well, yesterday BoA rejected that request.  As Atrios says- It’s On.

But you shouldn’t think that Bank of America is the only one with these problems.  Although it is the biggest, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Wells Fargo & Co, Citigroup Inc, US Bancorp and PNC Financial Services Group have $43 Billion or more in exposure to the same types of losses.

While some of Black and Wray’s Part 2 touches on that exposure, what it’s mostly about is the story of Bank of America’s purchase of Countrywide Financial.

An interesting factoid about BoA’s purchase of Countrywide (from the Jonathan Weil, Bloomberg article cited yesterday)-

Here’s how Bank of America allocated the purchase price for that deal. First, it determined that the fair value of the liabilities at Countrywide exceeded the mortgage lender’s assets by $200 million. Then it recorded $4.4 billion of goodwill, a ledger entry representing the difference between Countrywide’s net asset value and the purchase price.

That’s right. Countrywide’s goodwill supposedly was worth more than Countrywide itself. In other words, Bank of America paid $4.2 billion for the company, even though it thought the value there was less than zero.

Since completing that acquisition, Bank of America has dropped the Countrywide brand. The company’s home-loan division has reported $13.5 billion of pretax losses. Yet Bank of America still hasn’t written off any of its Countrywide goodwill.

What genius!  Surely these Masters of the Universe are worth every penny they’re paid, but, it being a free market capitalist system and all, I can’t help myself from pointing out that I personally am willing to lose $17.7 Billion for a much more reasonable rate of compensation.  Since they’re great believers in the efficiency of markets I expect an offer any time.

Let’s Set the Record Straight on Bank of America, Part 2: Eliminating Foreclosure Fraud

William K. Black and L. Randall Wray, The Huffington Post

Posted: November 5, 2010 01:23 PM

Bank of America did not purchase Countrywide for the good of the public. It purchased a notorious lender to feed the ego of their CEO, who wanted to run the biggest bank in America rather than the best bank in America. They certainly knew at the time of the purchase that is was buying an institution whose business model was based on fraud, and it had to have known that a substantial portion of Countrywide’s assets were toxic and fraudulent (since Bank of America’s own balance sheet contained similar assets and it could reasonably expect that Countrywide’s own standards were even worse). The response does not contest the depth of the bank’s insolvency problems should it be required to recognize its liability for losses caused by its frauds.

…

Bank of America’s response to our articles ignores its foreclosure fraud, which we detailed in our articles. News reports claim that the bank sent a 60 person “due diligence” team into Countrywide for at least four weeks. The Countrywide sales staff were notorious, having prompted multiple fraud investigations by the SEC and various State attorneys general. The SEC fraud complaint against Countrywide emphasized the games it played with the computer system. Countrywide had a terrible reputation for its nonprime lending. Nonprime loans were already collapsing at the time of the due diligence, the FBI had warned about the epidemic of mortgage fraud, and the lending profession’s anti-fraud firm had warned that liar’s loans were endemically fraudulent. Is it really possible that Bank of America’s due diligence team missed all of this and that the CEO thought even months later that the Countrywide lending personnel and Countrywide’s computer systems were exceptionally desirable assets?

…

As we explained, fraud begets fraud. Bank of America created over $4 billion in “goodwill” and placed it on its books as an asset when it paid money to acquire Countrywide at a time when it was deeply insolvent on a market value basis. Instead of acquiring an asset, they got thousands of fraudulent employees and officers, a failed computer system and catastrophic losses. So, we have a question for Bank of America, its auditors, and the SEC: why haven’t you written off that entire goodwill account?

And why aren’t people in jail or bankrupted by shareholder and bondholder lawsuits (yet)?

Obama’s Problem Simply Defined: It Was the Banks

James K. Galbraith, The Huffington Post

Posted: November 5, 2010 04:16 PM

(O)ne cannot defend the actions of Team Obama on taking office. Law, policy and politics all pointed in one direction: turn the systemically dangerous banks over to Sheila Bair and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Insure the depositors, replace the management, fire the lobbyists, audit the books, prosecute the frauds, and restructure and downsize the institutions. The financial system would have been cleaned up. And the big bankers would have been beaten as a political force.

Team Obama did none of these things. Instead they announced “stress tests,” plainly designed so as to obscure the banks’ true condition. They pressured the Federal Accounting Standards Board to permit the banks to ignore the market value of their toxic assets. Management stayed in place. They prosecuted no one. The Fed cut the cost of funds to zero. The President justified all this by repeating, many times, that the goal of policy was “to get credit flowing again.”

…

With free funds, the banks could make money with no risk, by lending back to the Treasury. They could boom the stock market. They could make a mint on proprietary trading. Their losses on mortgages were concealed — until the fact came out that they’d so neglected basic mortgage paperwork, as to be unable to foreclose in many cases, without the help of forged documents and perjured affidavits.

But new loans? The big banks had given up on that. They no longer did real underwriting. And anyway, who could qualify? Businesses mostly had no investment plans. And homeowners were, to an increasing degree, upside-down on their mortgages and therefore unqualified to refinance.

…

To counter calls for more action, Team Obama produced sunny forecasts. Their program was right-sized, because anyway unemployment would peak at 8 percent in 2009. So Larry Summers said. In making that forecast, the Obama White House took responsibility for the entire excess of joblessness above eight percent. They made it impossible to blame the ongoing disaster on George W. Bush. If this wasn’t rank incompetence, it was sabotage.

Remember “Recovery Summer(s)“?  Nothing has changed.  And until people go to jail for their fraud and the “To Big To Fail” Banks are placed into FDIC Receivership, their incompetent management tossed out on their asses, and broken up, nothing will.

Barack Hussein Obama and the Democratic Party have no one to blame but themselves.

No Friday Night Thurber tonight, or maybe ever again.  As you’ve no doubt heard by now Keith is suspended indefinitely because he made 3 campaign contributions.  On the other hand racist Nazi loving Patrick J. Buchanan who, as Atrios points out, made no less than 5 is still on the air.  If you need proof Craig Crawford is a total asshole I’m sure you’ll find it.

Premiers across the board.

• AMC– Cabin Fever, The Walking Dead (Series Premier Repeat)
• Bravo– Ocean’s Twelve x 2 (again and again)
• Disney– The Suite Life on Deck, Pair of Kings, Fish Hooks (premiers)
• Discovery– Swamp Loggers (last week’s and new), Snow People (premier)
• E!– The Soup (premier)
• ESPN– Hoopies, Bulls @ Celtics, Clippers @ Nuggets
• ESPN2– College Throwball, Central Florida at Houston
• Food– Outrageous Foods (Series Premier)
• FX– Alvin and the Chipmunks, Kung Fu Panda
• National Geographic– Dog Whisperer (premier)
• Nick– Big Time Rush (premier)
• Oxygen– 50 First Dates x 2
• Sci Fi– Sanctuary (premier)
• Turner Classic– The Bridge on the River Kwai
• TLC– What Not To Wear marathon (2 premiers)
• TNT– Shooter, Four Brothers (Mark Wahlberg night)
• Toon– Sym-Bionic Titan x 2, Generator Rex, Clone Wars (premiers)
• True– Conspiracy Theory With Jesse Ventura marathon (with premier)

Later-

• A&E– Teach: Tony Danza (premier)
• AMC– 28 Days Later
• Oxygen– Definitely, Maybe
• Sci Fi– Stargate Universe (this week’s), Sanctuary (Instapeat)
• Speed– Formula 1 Debrief
• TBS– Grosse Pointe Blank
• Turner Classic– This Happy Breed
• Toon– Childrens Hospital (penultimate repeat)
• USA– Bad Boys

Dave hosts Steve Martin and the Punch Brothers, Emily Deschanel.  Jon out rated Leno and Letterman, but only in the key demo.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Suicide attack at Pakistan mosque kills 61

by Lehaz Ali, AFP

1 hr 3 mins ago

As a follow up to yesterday’s CBS News Exit Polling

Greg Sargent–

(The Progressive Change Campaign Committee) set to release new polling from the respected Dem firm Public Policy Polling that is meant to buttress this case (“that indys who backed Obama in 2008 stayed home, because they were unsatisfied with Obama’s half-baked reform agenda, while McCain-supporting indys turned out in big numbers”). The Progressive Change Campaign Committee commissioned the poll and sent some results my way.

The key finding: PPP asked independents who did vote in 2010 who they had supported in 2008. The results: Fifty one percent of independents who voted this time supported McCain last time, versus only 42 percent who backed Obama last time. In 2008, Obama won indies by eight percent.

That means the complexion of indies who turned out this time is far different from last time around, argues Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. His case: Dem-leaning indys stayed home this time while GOP-leaning ones came out — proof, he insists, that the Dems’ primary problem is they failed to inspire indys who are inclined to support them.

“The dumbest thing Democrats could do right now is listen to those like Third Way who urge Democrats to repeat their mistake by caving to Republicans and corporations instead of fighting boldly for popular progressive reforms and reminding Americans why they were inspired in 2008,” Green says.

Note: Sargent doesn’t endorse this view, merely reports it.

Taylor Marsh quotes The Wall Street Journal–

Union households, a key Democratic voting bloc, turned out in force last night and accounted for a quarter of the vote in the battlegrounds of Pennsylvania and Ohio, exit poll showed.

The problem: They didn’t always vote for Democrats, despite six-figure ad campaigns and get-out-the-vote efforts by their unions encouraging them to do so.

In the Pennsylvania Senate contest, for example, exit polls showed that 44% of union household members who voted Tuesday picked Republican Pat Toomey, rather than Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak. Mr. Toomey narrowly won, 51% to 49%, according the latest numbers from the Associated Press.

What’s going on? Nearly half, 45%, of Pennsylvania’s union household voters said someone in their house had been laid off in the past two years. President Barack Obama carried this state by 10 points in 2008, and campaigned there repeatedly this fall. But on Tuesday, 36% of the state’s electorate said they voted to register their discontent with Mr. Obama.

Marsh’s conclusion?  “You think this is bad? Just wait until Pres. Obama cuts a deal on education.”

Finally John Aravosis cites this Yahoo News analysis–

Exit polling commissioned by the major cable news networks has found that 31 percent of people who identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual voted for Republicans on Election Day. That represents a big uptick from the 24 percent of gays who voted for the GOP in 2006 and from only 19 percent who did so in 2008. The trend appears to bear out pre-Election Day predictions from gay rights organizers that gay voters were angry and disenchanted with Democrats for not delivering on promises to the community.

…

After reviewing the full data, Sherrill says there was a disproportionate drop in Democratic support among LGB voters compared to Hispanic, black, and young voters. Though the sample size is still very small and thus there’s a large margin of error, Sherrill now says the drop may be attributed to “dissatisfaction with the pace of change on LGB rights over the past two years.”

Which John correctly identifies as validation for his initial data set–

The best comparison is from one mid-term election to the next mid-term election, since turn out is usually lower in the off years.  Gay voters went from 75% Democratic in the 2006 House races to 68% Democratic in 2010 – i.e., a 7 point drop in gay support for Democrats (and a 7 point increase in support for Republicans), which translates to a 9.3% change.  It was an even greater drop if you look at the percentage of the gay vote that went Democratic in the 2008 House races, 80%, as compared to 68% this year.  That’s a 12 point drop, which translates to a 15% decrease.

My conclusion?  Pissing off your base loses elections.  Duh.

Anyone who claims to care about “electoral victory” is a LIAR!

Update: Amanda Terkel

So a couple of weeks ago I highlighted 2 posts by Bill Black and Randall Wray on how Title Fraud, Securities Fraud, and Accounting Fraud (which they call Control Fraud) had the potential to force Bank of America into receivership and contending that was the proper course of action.

Bank of America has issued a response (also on The Huffington Post) and today Black and Wray published the first part of a 2 part counter-response.

I thought it might be of interest.

Let’s Set the Record Straight on Bank of America: Open the Books!

William K. Black and L. Randall Wray, The Huffington Post

Posted: November 4, 2010 06:06 PM

The demands by investors that Bank of America repurchase loans and securities sold under false “reps and warranties” may cause exceptional losses if those making the demands document the broader fraud by the lenders. The article “Bank of America Resists Rebuying Bad Loans” shows that Bank of America’s potential loss exposure to Fannie and Freddie is staggering: “[Bank of America] said it sold $1.2 trillion in loans to the government-controlled housing giants from 2004 to 2008 and has thus far received $18 billion in repurchase claims on those loans.”

…

As argued in a recent article by Jonathon Weil, the bank is nearing a “tipping point” as markets recognize it is “cooking the books,” vastly overstating the value of its assets as it refuses to recognize the true scale of losses on its purchase of Countrywide. Ironically, it still carries on its books $4.4 billion of fictional “goodwill” value created by overpaying for Countrywide (a notorious control fraud), as well as $142 billion of home equity loans that are worth far less. A more honest accounting of “good will” and of the value of home equity loans would take a big bite out of Bank of America’s market capitalization ($116 billion), which has lost 41 percent of its value since April 15. The markets are moving ever closer to shutting down the institution, but Moynihan is not “putting up with” the demand by investors for Bank of America to come clean on its fraudulent practices.

…

The bank’s response primarily criticizes its borrowers as deadbeats, yet the data it provides support points we have made in our prior posts, including Bill Black’s posts about the banks working with the Chamber of Commerce and Chairman Bernanke to extort the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in order to destroy the integrity of the accounting rules requiring banks to recognize losses on their bad loans. We have explained why the fraudulent officers controlling many lenders followed a strategy of making bad loans at premium yields in order to maximize (fictional) accounting income and their bonuses. This dynamic drove the current crisis. These frauds hyper-inflated the housing bubble and caused trillions of dollars of losses.