First of all they’re preening pits of political hackery dominated by Radical Racist Republicans and Moronic Teleprompter Readers none of whom have any idea what it is to be a “real” American because they’re privileged pampered  assholes.

And also we will have “insightful analysis” like this, helpfully telegraphed by Jon Walker at Firedog Lake–

I find this memo from Third Way (PDF) to be comically poorly timed. No surprise they mine any and all data points to claim the need for Democrats to move to the right, but they also claim the path to victory this November is not rallying the liberal base, but winning over the moderates-despite the fact that Democrats have already won over moderates:

…

The irony is that, right now, Democrats are facing massive losses this November and they are actually doing extremely well with self-described moderates. According to Tom Jensen at Public Policy Polling, Democrats are winning over moderates by a two-to-one margin:

…

Winning over moderates has not saved the Democratic party this year. Despite the false narrative that is almost assured to follow this election, the problem is not that the Democratic party has moved too far to the left. Voters who consider themselves moderates overwhelming prefer Democrats. The problem is that voters that support Republicans are extremely excited to vote while the Democratic party has not made the moderates and liberals that support them excited about keeping them in.

…

(O)n a policy front, the country is dramatically to the left of what dominates Washington, DC, thinking. A health insurance public option, prescription drug re-importation, ending “don’t ask, don’t tell,” closing the hedge fund managers’ tax loophole-and more-all have the support of huge majorities of the American people despite the idea that these are supposedly “too leftist” to get passed by the Democratic party in Washington. Hell, a plurality of the country actually wants a distribution of wealth resembling socialist Sweden.

Almost every economist will now admit that progressives were right when they said the stimulus was too small. With 9.6 percent unemployment and jobs being the top issue for almost all voters, there should be little doubt that Democrats would be better off politically if they had been more liberal and pursued a larger stimulus. Democrats are not being punished this election for ideology, they are being punished for incompetence in the face of a economic crisis.

This Third Way memo is just the first in what is sure to be a wave of advice from corporatists about how midterms prove Democrats suffered from liberal overreach, and so need to move to the right (i.e. more tax cuts for the rich). Just remember this: moderates actually prefer Democrats to Republicans. The problem this election year is that Democrats didn’t give their supporters, regardless of ideology, a strong reason vote for them.

Well, you see normally I’d have some pretty tables below the fold laying out the Starting Grid and Standings, but it’s not like that today.  Everything got washed out and for all I know it’s still raining and the crews are still sending paper boats floating down the gutters of pit lane (which is not nearly as original as the commentators are trying to make it appear since it’s happened at least twice this season already).

There was some talk about sending them off in numerical order which would be a big advantage for Hamilton, Button, and McLaren, but I doubt the rules are really that stupid and I expect that there’s some fallback based on Practice times (again, this is not the first race where Qualifying has been threatened by inclemency and you’d think people being paid for their purported “expertise” would be a trifle less ignorant and hide their Ferrari Fanboy worship just a little better).

I expect whatever the conditions and starting order that we’ll have some racing today because Formula One doesn’t have graceful Monday fallback plans like the PGA does (not that the plans are all that graceful, you lose most of your volunteers, audience, and TV time).  Indeed it’s even more unlikely that they’ll simply scrub it because the next race in Korea is problematic too.  They just laid down the track asphalt (or McAdam as they call it in Old Blighty) and 2 weeks is about the minimum curing time for a new surface unless you wish to court Daytona Debacles (remember the 2 hour Red Flag?).

All in all this is shaping up to be the Commonwealth Games period of the Formula One season and makes me wonder just a bit if they aren’t trying to expand their franchise a little too far, too fast.  Lack of testing time has definitely hurt the quality of the cars and hasn’t introduced any competitive balance at all.  Formula One Racing is the most boring racing to watch except for the Turn Left Bumper Cars that Inbred Brain Dead Bumpkin America calls Football.

Now with Starting Grid.

Not sure where these disappeared-

• F1 Official Site
• Speed Racecast

So, how are our brackets working out?  The only team underperforming at this point is the Braves while the Rangers and Yankees are poised to close out.  Tonight’s Divisional Playoffs on TBS are Rays @ Rangers and Twins @ Yankees.

In broadcast College Throwball you have Florida State at Miami or USC at Stanford.

Starting at 11 pm Formula 1 Debrief, Japanese Grand Prix- Qualifying, Japanese Grand Prix (yup, the real live jive race- if they’re able to hold it.  mishima says it’s supposed to rain until noon.).

• AMC– Cujo, Sleepwalkers
• Bravo– House marathon
• Disney– Repeats of last night’s premiers
• Discovery– Mythbusters marathon
• ESPN– College Throwball, LSU @ Florida
• ESPN2– College Throwball, Auburn @ Kentucky
• Food– Chopped marathon
• History– Swamp People marathon
• Lifetime– Because I Said So
• Oxygen– The Wedding Planner x 2
• Sci Fi– Lake Placid 3, Monsterwolf
• Spike– Without a Paddle, Stripes
• Turner Classic– Strangers on a Train, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
• TNT– Men In Black, Squeekball- Mavericks @ Suns
• Toon– Shrek
• USA– NCIS marathon
• Vs.– College Throwball, Oregon State @ Arizona
• VH1– The Lost Boys

Later-

• AMC– Pet Sematary
• Lifetime– Project Runway (this week’s)
• Oxygen– The Perfect Man
• Sci Fi– Monster Ark
• TNT– The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
• USA– Burn Notice, 16 Blocks
• Vs.– Bull Riding (this week’s)

SNL- Jane Lynch and Bruno Mars.  GitS: SAC– Lost Heritage, Captivated (Episodes 18 and 19).

Aah, gold’s a devilish sort of thing, anyway. You start out, you tell yourself you’ll be satisfied with 25,000 handsome smackers worth of it. So help me, Lord, and cross my heart. Fine resolution. After months of sweatin’ yourself dizzy, and growin’ short on provisions, and findin’ nothin’, you finally come down to 15,000, then ten. Finally, you say, “Lord, let me just find $5,000 worth and I’ll never ask for anythin’ more the rest of my life.”

$5,000 is a lot of money.

Yeah, here in this joint it seems like a lot. But I tell you, if you was to make a real strike, you couldn’t be dragged away. Not even the threat of miserable death would keep you from trying to add 10,000 more. Ten, you’d want to get twenty-five; twenty-five you’d want to get fifty; fifty, a hundred. Like roulette. One more turn, you know. Always one more.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Hungary village evacuated as new toxic flood ‘likely’

by Janos Gal, AFP

1 hr 28 mins ago

You know they’re guilty, your government said so–

Why, then, does the Obama administration seek to prosecute him in federal court? One answer might be that trials permit punishment, including the death penalty. But the Justice Department is not seeking the death penalty against Mr. Ghailani. Another answer is that trials “give vent to the outrage” over attacks on civilians, as Judge Kaplan has put it. This justification for the trial is diminished, however, by the passage of 12 years since the crimes were committed.

The final answer, and the one that largely motivates the Obama administration, is that trials are perceived to be more legitimate than detention, especially among civil libertarians and foreign allies.

…

But Mr. Ghailani and his fellow detainees at Guantánamo Bay are a different matter. The Ghailani case shows why the administration has been so hesitant to pursue criminal trials for them: the demanding standards of civilian justice make it very hard to convict when the defendant contests the charges and the government must rely on classified information and evidence produced by aggressive interrogations.

A further problem with high-stakes terrorism trials is that the government cannot afford to let the defendant go. Attorney General Eric Holder has made clear that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the 9/11 plotter, would be held indefinitely in military detention even if acquitted at trial. Judge Kaplan said more or less the same about Mr. Ghailani this week. A conviction in a trial publicly guaranteed not to result in the defendant’s release will not be seen as a beacon of legitimacy.

The government’s reliance on detention as a backstop to trials shows that it is the foundation for incapacitating high-level terrorists in this war. The administration would save money and time, avoid political headaches and better preserve intelligence sources and methods if it simply dropped its attempts to prosecute high-level terrorists and relied exclusively on military detention instead.

Well, it’s no secret I think Webber should have been black flagged at Singapore.  I haven’t seen a clearer violation since Piquet drove into the wall.  Even the talking heads are having a hard time excusing it.

McLaren has a bunch of fiddly new aero bits that kept Hamilton off the track during much of practice (well, and parking it so they all had to be replaced).  Even with only 3 races left (they’re highly uncertain about Korea) Lew has a chance to get back into it being a mere 20 points behind and all.  All you fucking Ferrari fanatics talking about Alonso’s 50 point surge should remember it only took 2 races to do. so shut your chain smoking Marlboro UPC yaps you losers.

Suzuka is considered a high downforce track so grip will be critical.  Qualifying will be replayed on Speed starting with Formula One Debrief (which I’m watching right now) at 11 pm and the race at 1 am, followed by the debrief again at 4 am and a race repeat at 2:30 pm Saturday.

If I seem a little crankier than usual it’s the lack of sleep.

Yankees have taken a commanding lead, what did I tell you?  Reds @ Phillies, Braves @ Giants tonight on TBS.  A scattering of broadcast premiers.  Qualifying in Suzuka at 1 am.  More PrIson Porn (at least it knocks Larry O’Donnell off the air).

• AMC– Aliens (by far the best of the series)
• Disney– New Phineas and Ferb, also Suite Life and Fish Hooks
• Discovery– Swamp Loggers (Season Premier), Beyond Survival With Les Stroud (premier)
• ESPN– College Throwball, Connecticut @ Rutgers (two teams that shouldn’t be playing in Division I)
• ESPN2– College Throwball, Oklahoma State @ Louisiana-Lafayette
• Oxygen– While You Were Sleeping x 2
• Sci Fi– Haven (premier)
• Turner Classic– The Plague of the Zombies, The Devil’s Bride
• TLC– Say Yes to the Dress marathon (with 2 premiers), Four Weddings (premier)
• Toon– Sym-Bionic Titan, Generator Rex, Clone Wars (premiers)

These people are here to protect you. They’re soldiers.

It won’t make any difference.

Later-

Maybe.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Hungary plays down toxic spill threat, toll rises to seven

by Geza Molnar, AFP

2 hrs 5 mins ago

I’ve tried to document in my posts on economics what a dismal position the United States is in.  I’ve tried to explain what Keynesian/Samuleson analysis predicts.  I’m Neo-Classical.

But now I’m going the full Roubini.

Title Fraud, let’s call it what it is, casts a question on the entire United States housing market- the single largest economic asset in the world financial system and leveraged up the wahzoo.  We are talking about vanishing tens of trillions of paper profits from the portfolios of the ‘stakeholders’.

This is going to cause massive economic disruption.  Easily the equal of 2008.

Welcome to shotgun and private fire department America.

Not that I’m in favor of either of those policies,  I think that even if people had minimum wage government jobs digging holes and filling them that would be about as good as anything except Food Stamps which also benefit billionaire ‘family farmers’.

There’s a ‘Jobs not Food Stamps’ program for you.

This is big.  Really, really big.

And whither CRE?  Et tu Brutus?

Ezra Klein: What’s happening here? Why are we suddenly faced with a crisis that wasn’t apparent two weeks ago?

Janet Tavakoli: This is the biggest fraud in the history of the capital markets. And it’s not something that happened last week. It happened when these loans were originated, in some cases years ago. Loans have representations and warranties that have to be met. In the past, you had a certain period of time, 60 to 90 days, where you sort through these loans and, if they’re bad, you kick them back. If the documentation wasn’t correct, you’d kick it back. If you found the incomes of the buyers had been overstated, or the houses had been appraised at twice their worth, you’d kick it back. But that didn’t happen here. And it turned out there were loan files that were missing required documentation. Part of putting the deal together is that the securitization professional, and in this case that’s banks like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, has to watch for this stuff. It’s called perfecting the security, and it’s not optional.

EK: And how much danger are the banks themselves in?

JT: When we had the financial crisis, the first thing the banks did was run to Congress and ask for accounting relief. They asked to be able to avoid pricing this stuff at the price where people would buy them. So no one can tell you the size of the hole in these balance sheets. We’ve thrown a lot of money at it. TARP was just the tip of the iceberg. We’ve given them guarantees on debts, low-cost funding from the Fed. But a lot of these mortgages just cannot be saved. Had we acknowledged this problem in 2005, we could’ve cleaned it up for a few hundred billion dollars. But we didn’t. Banks were lying and committing fraud, and our regulators were covering them and so a bad problem has become a hellacious one.

So let me tell you why foreclosure fraud is a big deal.

You see it’s not so much that banks are lying on court papers and breaking and entering houses illegally though those are a pretty big deal.

Nope.  It’s more that tens of trillions of dollars of paper valuations (an asset is only worth what you can sell it for) is now in question.

By dividing and bundling mortgages and failing to do the proper paperwork just to save a few bucks the banksters have put the entire land title chain of ownership under dispute.  This goes back to when bad King Charles the First (well, he was beheaded after all) granted a royal sanction to your stealing your land fron the Indians Natives (nor was he the first in any sense).

The point is that not only are the trillions of dollars of leveraged derivatives about to lose any value they ever had, but the underlying mortgages are going to be  uncollectible.

Insure against that AIG.

The result is not just going to be massive bank failures, but a complete lock up of all real estate transactions.

So serf, you are now bound to your land and can only sell to a boyar and a stupid one at that because he has no clear claim.

This is magnitudes worse than the market meltdown in 2008.