The Phillies hang on by the skin of their teeth which is good for Atrios (and my brackets) I suppose, me I’m all in favor of extended Baseball no matter how boring it is because compared to regular TV it’s a thrill a minute.

Maybe a minute and a half.

Junior Leaguers back at it tonight.  Phil Hughes has something to prove, but that’s usually not a predictor.  The key as always is going to be the Yankee offense which, when they hit, hit big for many runs.  That’s why they get the bling after all.  Still, even Mom (who’s a fan) was saying how old the Yankees looked this series.

1 am Qualifying @ Yeongam.

• ABC Family– Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
• AMC– Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, House of Wax (not the good Dr. Tongue’s 3D House of Stewardesses 1953 version)
• Disney– The Suite Life on Deck, Pair of Kings, Fish Hooks (premiers), Phineas and Ferb
• Discovery– Swamp Loggers (last week’s and new), Beyond Survival With Les Stroud (premier)
• E!– Coyote Ugly, The Soup (premier)
• ESPN– Heat @ Magic (more LeBron)
• ESPN2– College Throwball, South Florida @ Cincinnati x 2
• Food– New Meat and Potatoes
• FX– Joy Ride, Prom Night (the not as good remake of the horrible 1980 film)
• National Geographic– New Dog Whisperer
• Nick– Big Time Halloween (premier)
• Oxygen– The Wedding Planner
• Sci Fi– Sanctuary (premier)
• Style– Jerry Maguire
• Turner Classic– X the Unknown, Five Million Years to Earth (Hammer time)
• TLC– Say Yes to the Dress marathon (with premier)
• TNT– Tombstone
• Toon– Sym-Bionic Titan, Generator Rex, Clone Wars (premiers)
• Vs.– PBR Bullriding World Finals x 2

Later-

• AMC– Dead Silence
• ESPN– Warriors @ Lakers (Thursday game)
• Oxygen– License to Wed, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
• Sci Fi– Caprica (this week’s), Sanctuary (insta repeat), Stargate Atlantis
• Speed– Formula 1 Debrief
• TBS– The Chronicles of Riddick
• Turner Classic– These Are the Damned, The Stranglers of Bombay
• TNT– Pale Rider (come back Shane!)
• Toon– Family Guy, American Dad, Childrens Hospital, British The Office
• TV Guide– Weeds marathon (useless)
• USA– The Hitcher (not the good 1986 version)

Dave?  9/22.

Me? I’m dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly. It’s the honest ones you want to watch out for, because you can never predict when they’re going to do something incredibly… stupid.

Take what you can, give nothing back.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Jazeera: WikiLeaks papers show Iraq torture, US killings

AFP

32 mins ago

You can categorize these different ways and I don’t claim this list is is exhaustive, but inspired by Dan Froomkin I thought I’d list briefly some of the Bank Frauds that are encapsulated in what is generally called “Foreclosure Fraud”, but which I call Title Fraud.

As you read them, keep in mind that the bankster position is that all these frauds are mere bagatelles and formalities and that the only time there is a problem is when some deadbeat asshole home owner stops paying.

Appraisal Fraud

• Your house was never worth all that.  Your appraiser is paid based on the appraised value and by the bank which wants you to take the largest loan possible to maximize their fees and interest.  This is part of what caused the Bubble.  They lied to you and that is fraud.

Loan Fraud

• Low introductory rate?  Try flat out usury which used to be considered a sin by Christians (remember Jesus and the Moneychangers) which is one reason they feel justified in their anti-semitism (and they wiped out the Knights Templar too).  They lied to you about the terms of your loan to your face and buried the details in the fine print.  That is fraud.

Income Assessment

• NINJA!  No Income?  No Job?  Accept!  Loan originators encouraged people to lie on their applications so they could sell them the loan that generated the largest fees and interest.  That is fraud.

Conveyance of Title

• Thousands of years of precedent.  No shit.  We have hieroglyphics from the Egyptians and cuneiform from the Sumerians.  All of it had to be recorded in stone (or wet clay), so the proof could be produced.  Ephemeral photons not so much.  There are legal requirements and MERS lied about fulfilling them.  That is title fraud.

Tax and Fee Cheating

• Why did they do that with the thousands of years and all?  Well it’s really about the next item in my list, but a not insignificant second reason was to avoid billions in fees to State and Local governments.  Tax cheating is fraud.

Collateralized Debt Obligations

• Here’s the real money and motivation.  It’s not about the property, it’s about the income stream and if I can package them in a way the promises a certain rate of return on investment I can sell it like bonds.  The problem is that if I don’t have title to the underlying asset and lie to you about the income stream and your ability to collect from it (Brooklyn Bridge) that’s fraud.

Debt Rating Agencies

• Part of the way I lie to you is I pay some purported “independent expert” to come in and repeat my lies, just like I did with the appraiser.  That is fraud.

Multiple Sales of the Same Asset

• Since all you care about is the general performance of the income stream to produce the revenues I promised, it really doesn’t matter if I include some “assets” that I know are guaranteed failures as long as the overall performance passes fictitious muster.  As long as I’m servicing my Ponzi Scheme no one will ever know.  This is fraud.

Credit Default Swaps

• In order to convince you I’m a fair dealer, I offer to take the worst parts of the pie myself.  Then I turn around and buy insurance against them failing for pennies on the dollar from a company that doesn’t have the money to pay off the policy when I need to collect.  This is Insurance Fraud (hello AIG and back door bailouts).

Fees, Fines, and Foreclosures

• How do I make money?  Well you may think it’s off the interest, but I sold that for cash to a pack of fools who got a pile of crap in return.  But they need a Tax Farmer and Rent Collector and I’m happy to do that for a price.  And if I happen to run short I’ll just make up a penalty by holding a check and imposing it just like I do on unsecured credit cards and then siezing the property for myself if your lawyers aren’t are good as mine (and I have mighty fine lawyers, you betcha).

Accounting Fraud

• And why do I do this?  To keep the inflated assets on my balance sheet defrauding my investors so I can keep my billion dollar bonuses flowing in.  If we had mark to market every major bank in the United States would be as underwater as the most foreclosed home owner.

The problem with this story is that there are so many individual frauds that it’s hard to keep track of them and I hope this summary is helpful.

It’s Junior League travel day and at least the Yankees have spared themselves the indignity of losing in the Stadium.

Tonight we get to see the Phillies blow my brackets, a rematch of Halladay v. Lincecum that was such a boring entertaining  matchup in an inside your eyelids kind of way in Game 1.  I do hope the Phillies win so I can watch the end of the series instead of napping.

But the big news is that they’re apparently going to run Korea after all.  Hamilton is promising not to give up, but frankly he needs a couple of big DNFs from Webber.  Practice starts tonight at 1 am on Speed.  Qualifying tomorrow, also @ 1.

Broadcast premiers mostly.  Mostly.

• ABC Family–Van Helsing
• AMC– Friday the 13th Part VII — The New Blood, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan x 2
• Bravo– Real Housewives marathon (2 premiers)
• Comedy– Night of Too Many Stars 5 x 2 (where Jon and Stephen have been)
• Disney– Twitches Too
• E!– Evan Almighty (the Steve Carell one.  There’s a new The Office without him tonight you could check out instead)
• ESPN– College Throwball, UCLA @ Oregon
• Food– Dueling Alton (Cajun v. Creole and Paella), New Food Feud
• FX– It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The League x 3 (premiers)
• History– Aliens
• Lifetime– Project Runway (last week’s, Season Finale Part 1 Premier x 2)
• TBS– Family Guy, American Dad night
• Turner Classic– Algiers, Tortilla Flat (Hedy Lamarr night)
• Toon– This week’s repeats, Total Drama World Tour, Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, Regular Show, MAD
• TNT– Heat @ Hawks (is LeBron all that and a bag of chips?)
• Travel– Man v. Food marathon (thank goodness)
• TV Guide– Doc Hollywood, Weeds marathon (useless)
• Vs.– PBR Bullriding World Finals

Later-

• Sci Fi– The Final
• Turner Classic– White Cargo, H.M. Pulham, Esq. (more Hedy)
• TNT– 3:10 to Yuma (not the good 1957 version)
• Toon– Family Guy, American Dad night continues, new Delocated
• TV Guide– More Weeds marathon
• VH1– Beavis and Butt-head Do America (heh.  heh, heh, heh.)

No Dave, 10/4.  No Jon or Stephen at all.  No Alton.

My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.

God darnit, Mr. Lamarr, you use your tongue prettier than a twenty dollar whore.

Take this down. I want rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and Methodists.

Could you repeat that, sir?

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Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 French unions step up pressure on Sarkozy with demo call

by Charles Onians, AFP

51 mins ago

I mean, it’s only a Nobel Prize in Economics so what the fuck does he know anyway?

To choose austerity is to bet it all on the confidence fairy

The mystical belief is that a smaller deficit will lead to an investment boom. What Britain really needs now is another stimulus

Joseph Stiglitz, The Guardian

Tuesday 19 October 2010 22:00 BST

Lower aggregate demand will mean lower tax revenues. But cutbacks in investments in education, technology and infrastructure will be even more costly in future. For they will spell lower growth – and lower revenues. Indeed, higher unemployment itself, especially if it is persistent, will result in a deterioration of skills, in effect the destruction of human capital, a phenomena which Europe experienced in the eighties and which is called hysteresis. Lower tax revenues now and in the future combined with lower growth imply a higher national debt, and an even higher debt-to-GDP ratio.

Matters may be even worse if consumers and investors realise this. Advocates of austerity believe that mystically, as the deficits come down, confidence in the economy will be restored and investment will boom. For 75 years there has been a contest between this theory and Keynesian theory, which argued that spending more now, especially on public investments (or tax cuts designed to encourage private investment) was more likely to restore growth, even though it increased the deficit.

The two prescriptions could not have been more different. Thanks to the IMF, multiple experiments have been conducted – for instance, in east Asia in 1997-98 and a little later in Argentina – and almost all come to the same conclusion: the Keynesian prescription works. Austerity converts downturns into recessions, recessions into depressions. The confidence fairy that the austerity advocates claim will appear never does, partly perhaps because the downturns mean that the deficit reductions are always smaller than was hoped.

Well tonight you have a chance to see my other surviving bracket get 1 game away from elimination.  About all I can say is that Atrios will be disappointed.  Both teams will be pitching their 3rd best so it will be a test of offense and bullpens.

All premiers on broadcast.

• ABC Family– The Goonies, Hocus Pocus
• AMC– Friday the 13th — A New Beginning, Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives x 2
• Bravo– New Top Chef
• Comedy– South Park, Ugly Americans (premiers)
• Disney– Twitches
• Discovery– Mythbusters (2 premiers, though I don’t think Buster’s Cut should count), Storm Chasers (premier if you care)
• Food– Next (this week’s), Tailgate Warriors With Guy Fieri (Series Premier)
• FX– Deception, Terriers x 3 (premier and instant repeats)
• History– Cannibalism
• Lifetime– The Break-Up x 2
• Oxygen– A Cinderella Story x 2
• Turner Classic– Ride Lonesome (Randolph Scott!), Park Row
• Travel– Man v. Food marathon (thank goodness)
• USA– NCIS marathon
• Vs.– PBR (World Finals)

Later-

• Turner Classic– The Last Flight, All Through the Night
• TV Guide– Weeds marathon
• USA– Blood Diamond

No Dave, Jon, or Stephen; 9/9, 10/11, 10/11.  No Alton.

Boondocks– Wingmen.

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Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Police break fuel blockades in France strike

by Roland Lloyd Parry, AFP

1 hr 7 mins ago

In total there are 87 commissioned ships in the Royal Navy.

No more Falklands.  In fact, speaking as an armchair war gamer, it’s hard to see who they can beat unless you buy into the Special Ops/Single Bullet/Kentucky Rifle theory of war.  Unfortunately there are a billion Kalishnikovs out there and only so many of you.  Quantity is is its own quality, Shermans were not better than Panzer IVs, Panthers and Tiger Is and IIs, they were more (umm, arguably T-34s were better, just like Kalishnikovs).

And “insurgents” and “terrorists” live there and we’ve all seen that happen enough times that we should have learned a lesson- they are like fish in the ocean.  It is the beginning of the end of an Empire and I’m not talking about Britain.

Britain takes axe to armed forces in savings push

by Katherine Haddon and Alice Ritchie, AFP

Tue Oct 19, 3:31 pm ET

LONDON (AFP) – Britain announced Tuesday it will shrink its armed forces and scrap key assets like its flagship aircraft carrier, in a defence review that forms part of stinging cuts across the whole public sector.

…

As part of eight percent cuts to the 37 billion pound (42 billion euro, 58 billion dollar) Ministry of Defence (MoD) budget, the Royal Navy’s flagship HMS Ark Royal aircraft carrier is also being scrapped immediately along with Britain’s fleet of Harrier jets.

…

The changes in the defence review suggest that in the long-term, Britain could not engage in wars such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It assumes the armed forces will only be equipped to send 6,500 troops for a long-term operation and a maximum of 30,000 troops for a short-term conflict.

…

Cameron insisted Britain’s defence budget would remain the fourth largest in the world and would meet NATO’s target for members to spend more than two percent of GDP on defence.

UK’s Cameron announces military austerity plan

By DAVID STRINGER, Associated Press Writer

Tue Oct 19, 6:28 pm ET

Outlining the first defense review since 1998 – intended both to sweep away strategies crafted before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. and to help clear the country’s crippling national debt – Cameron said 17,000 troops, a fleet of jets and an aging aircraft carrier would all be sacrificed.

…

The numbers were stark. Naval warships, 25,000 civilian staff and a host of bases will also be lost, while the country’s stockpile of nuclear warheads will be trimmed from 160 to 120.

Two new aircraft carriers will be built at a cost of 5 billion pounds ($8 billion) – but one will effectively by mothballed and another won’t have any British fighter jets to transport until 2019.

Instead, Britain will invest in its much admired special forces and develop expertise on cyber threats to secure the country’s status as a major global power, Cameron said.

Defence and security review: Groping for a strategy

The Guardian

Wednesday 20 October 2010

There will be no carrier at sea with British jets on it for the next 10 years as a result of the decision to decommission the Ark Royal and retire the Harrier jump jet. One of the new carriers will have no aircraft on it for at least three years, while costing £1bn a year, and will then be mothballed or sold, and the second carrier will be adapted with catapults and arresting gear to take French and US planes. One bright day Britain will have both a carrier and planes to put on it, but not for some time yet. Even by the low standards of defence procurement, the continued muddle is madness. Rather than fashioning defence forces around real needs, Britain continues to pretend it is capable of providing the full spectrum of military roles.

Pinstripe fans seem disappointed today, but it was Cliff Lee, the Rangers’ Ace, and he went 120 pitches so you don’t have to worry about him for the rest of the series.  What you should be worried about is the bullpen implosion.  Six runs in the 9th?

I’d bring back CC on short rest tonight so that if he’s good and you need it he can pitch the 7th game too.  If he struggles then you have AJ to pick up the pieces.  Evidently Joe disagrees.

I understand a Senior League sporting team is also engaging in athletic competition today.  I think they should strive to succeed so they get their away split in the bag, but so far thei offense has been lacking.

And there are other things you can watch, mostly premiers on broadcast.

• AMC– Friday the 13th Part 3, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter x 2
• Disney– Under Wraps
• Discovery– Dirty Jobs (Season Premier)
• E!– Knocked Up
• Food– Private Chefs of Beverly Hills (premier)
• FX– Cloverfield
• SciFi– Stargate Universe, Caprica (premiers)
• Turner Classic– Design for Living, Middle of the Night (Fredric March night)
• Toon– Tower Prep, Sym-Bionic Titan, Clone Wars (this week’s)
• Vs.– Bruins @ Capitals

Later-

• SciFi– Stargate Universe, Caprica (instant repeats), Friday the 13th: The Series
• Speed– Monster Jam
• Turner Classic– The Barretts of Wimpole Street (more March)
• TV Guide– Weeds marathon (just means it will be useless)

No Dave, Jon, or Stephen, 10/7, 10/13, 10/13.  No Alton.

Boondocks– The Return of the King (an excellent and surprising episode)

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