Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Amid bitter US election, liberal comics lead rally for sanity

by Karin Zeitvogel, AFP

1 hr 3 mins ago

2 Obama blasts Republicans, calls for cooperation

by Stephen Collinson, AFP

1 hr 38 mins ago

3 Obama slams ‘cocky’ Republicans as vote defeat looms

by Stephen Collinson, AFP

Sat Oct 30, 12:15 am ET

4 Clinton visits China to urge end to maritime rows

by Lachlan Carmichael, AFP

2 hrs 42 mins ago

5 Australia beat New Zealand in rugby cliffhanger

by Frankie Taggart, AFP

Sat Oct 30, 12:23 pm ET

6 UN seals historic treaty to protect ecosystems

by Karl Malakunas, AFP

Sat Oct 30, 8:50 am ET

7 Facebook tightens grip on user ID data

by Glenn Chapman, AFP

Sat Oct 30, 12:55 am ET

8 China gives U.S. assurances on rare earth minerals

By Arshad Mohammed, Reuters

1 hr 20 mins ago

9 Clinton urges calm after China-Japan row at summit

By Yoko Kubota and Arshad Mohammed, Reuters

Sat Oct 30, 7:48 am ET

10 Obama urges Democrats to turn out for election

By Jeff Mason, Reuters

Sat Oct 30, 1:12 pm ET

11 Tribune investors sue banks that arranged financing

Reuters

Sat Oct 30, 12:42 pm ET

12 Judge releases Halliburton cement to government

By Anna Driver, Reuters

Fri Oct 29, 4:37 pm ET

13 In election’s shadow, rally draws laughs, activism

By HOPE YEN and CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press

7 mins ago

14 Obama warns of progress reversal if GOP wins

By CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press

20 mins ago

15 Resurgent GOP closes in on House win, eyes Senate

By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent

37 mins ago

16 Clinton pressures China over territorial disputes

By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press

2 hrs 41 mins ago

17 India: Land of many cell phones, fewer toilets

By RAVI NESSMAN, The Associated Press

1 hr 3 mins ago

18 Bickering political parties share China as target

By TOM RAUM, Associated Press

Sat Oct 30, 12:06 pm ET

19 LeBron’s debut in South Beach a win for Heat

By TIM REYNOLDS, AP Sports Writer

Sat Oct 30, 7:22 am ET

20 China-Japan tensions ease with informal chat

By MATTHEW LEE and MARGIE MASON, Associated Press

Sat Oct 30, 11:10 am ET

21 Last-gasp election appeals flood voters’ mailboxes

By PHILIP ELLIOTT, Associated Press

Sat Oct 30, 11:40 am ET

22 Prosecutors doubt Vatican money-laundering pledges

By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press

Sat Oct 30, 7:21 am ET

23 McCain: Angle will help GOP seize Senate control

By CRISTINA SILVA and MICHAEL R. BLOOD, Associated Press

Sat Oct 30, 4:43 am ET

24 Obama rallies for a loyalist as final dash begins

By BEN FELLER, AP White House Correspondent

Sat Oct 30, 1:16 am ET

25 Protesters blame UN base for cholera in Haiti

By JONATHAN M. KATZ, Associated Press

Sat Oct 30, 1:16 am ET

26 Some may live in DC, but they vote somewhere else

By JESSICA GRESKO, Associated Press

52 mins ago

27 Desegregation offers lessons for gay troops debate

By RUSS BYNUM, AP Military Writer

Sat Oct 30, 12:47 pm ET

28 Artist’s study of island brings the dead to life

By ADAM GELLER, AP National Writer

Sat Oct 30, 11:07 am ET

29 Traditional NM tribe bans trick-or-treating

By SUE MAJOR HOLMES, Associated Press

Fri Oct 29, 6:11 pm ET

WHACK JOBS

Tokyo’s former chief medical examiner claimed that there are approximately 200 cases of people masturbating themselves to death in Japan each year, with 20 to 30 in Tokyo’s 23 central wards alone.

In other matters of the heart and hands, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology organized a tennis date for singles looking for a love match. Apparently it’s all “part of a project… to improve the nation through sports.”

A 33-year-old therapist from Kyoto was crowned champion of the Z-1 Grand Prix floor-wiping competition in Ehime Prefecture. Koichi Fujiwara set a new record of 18.23 seconds pushing a wet rag through a 109-meter-long hallway at the Uwa Rice Museum.

A computer armed with the “Akara 2010” system beat the top women’s shogi player, Ichiyo Shimizu, in 86 moves in a match staged at the University of Tokyo.

STATS

100

“Matchmaking cafes,” often frequented by prostitutes, across 14 prefectures in Japan, according to National Police Agency figures

47

Number of those cafes located in Tokyo

7,896

Bottles of wine stocked by the Japanese office at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, according to the Board of Audit

¥2 billion

Public funds wasted through “inefficient use of a welfare benefit system for the elderly,” also according to the audit board

NAUGHTY GIRL

Renho, the half-Taiwanese former TV presenter who is now cabinet minister for administrative reform, got the opposition boys all riled up when she posed-fully clothed-for a Vogue photo shoot in Japan’s parliament building.

A JAL flight attendant who was arrested for buying illegal drugs from her boyfriend said she did it “because I was insecure about my company’s future, and out of curiosity.”

Researchers have found what might be extraterrestrial dust particles from the asteroid Itokawa in a sample capsule from the Hayabusa probe, JAXA announced.

Princess Aiko Update: the previously traumatized only child of Crown Prince Naruhito and Crown Princess Masako took part in her school sports day, folk dancing with partners for eight minutes and running in short-distance sprints and relays.

It Wasn’t A Ball  

He Was Throwing

That White Stuff

It Wasn’t A Golf Ball

Her Boy Friends Had A Problem

Her  

Plaintiffs: Toyota bought back bad cars, via gag rule



Saturday, Oct. 30, 2010

LOS ANGELES (AP) Toyota Motor Corp. bought back cars from drivers who reported sudden acceleration defects, but the company didn’t tell federal regulators about the problem, according to court documents filed in the sprawling litigation against the automaker.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers contend Toyota compelled the owners to sign confidentiality agreements that prevented them from speaking publicly about the issues they encountered.

China says Japan distorted facts in island dispute; no meeting between Kan, Wen



Saturday 30th October, 12:49 AM JST

China issued scathing comments directed at Japan and the United States on Friday, a day after the two allies discussed a territorial dispute in the East China Sea that has plunged Sino-Japanese relations to a new low.

China’s renewed anger appeared to scuttle plans for a meeting between the two countries’ leaders.

Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Hu Zhengyue told reporters in Hanoi that Japan was making untrue statements and turning the contested islands-called Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan-into a “hot topic” on the sidelines of an Asian regional summit by talking to the media and holding discussions with other countries priorto the meeting.

Welcome to the Stars Hollow Health and Fitness weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

Lavash is a flatbread, a staple of meals in Iran, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia.

When you bake it, lavash becomes crispy on the edges. If you let it go for too long in the oven, it will be crisp all the way through, like a cracker. Despite the texture, lavash makes a great vehicle for any number of healthy toppings.

At Iranian markets, lavash is sold in sheets so big that half the bread dries out before you can finish it. As an alternative, Trader Joe’s now sells lavash in 9-by-12-inch sheets. Half of one makes a perfect serving.

Extending daylight could boost health, help planet

(Reuters) – Putting the clocks back in winter is bad for health, wastes energy and increases pollution, scientists say, and putting an end to the practice in northern areas could bring major health and environmental benefits.

Countries across Europe, the United States, Canada and parts of the Middle East mark the start of winter by ending Daylight Saving Time (DST) and putting their clocks back by an hour — often in late October or early November — a move that means it is lighter by the time most people get up to start their day.

But this also robs afternoons of an hour of daylight, and some experts argue that in more northern regions, the energy needed to brighten this darkness, and the limits it puts on outdoor activities are harming our health and the environment.

New colon cancer test works without colonoscopy

(Reuters) – A new kind of test that finds evidence of colon cancer in the stool can also detect pre-cancerous growths, and could potentially be an alternative to colonoscopies, researchers reported on Thursday.

Exact Sciences’ new test detected 87 percent of stage I, II and III colon tumors, which can be surgically removed, and found 64 percent of the biggest pre-cancerous growths, the researchers told a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research.

“Evening types” more likely to smoke: study

(Reuters Health) – Night owls may be more likely than early birds to smoke, and less likely to kick the habit over time, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that among more than 23,000 twin pairs followed for up to 30 years, those who described themselves as “evening types” — usually alert at night and bleary-eyed in the morning — were more likely to be current smokers and less likely to quit over time compared with morning people.

In line with that lower quit rate, night owls who smoked were also more likely to fit the diagnostic criteria for nicotine dependence than their early-bird counterparts.

The findings, reported in the journal Addiction, do not necessarily mean that there is something about being a night person that raises smoking risk.

Metal pollution tied to Parkinson’s disease

(Reuters Health) – People living near a steel factory or another source of high manganese emissions are at higher risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, suggests a new study.

As many as one million Americans live with the degenerative disease, according to the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation. Pesticides from farms have long been suspected of upping the chances of developing Parkinson’s, but much less is known about the influences of city living.

“Environmental risk factors for Parkinson’s disease have been relatively under-studied, especially in urban areas where the overwhelming majority of Parkinson’s disease patients reside,” Dr. Brad A. Racette of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, told Reuters Health in an e-mail.

Pancreatic cancer grows slowly, could be caught

(Reuters) – Pancreatic cancer grows slowly, taking years and even decades to develop, a finding that offers the chance to catch it early and cure it, researchers reported on Wednesday.

They said their findings confirm that one of the most lethal cancers kills not because it spreads like wildfire, but because it does not cause symptoms until it is advanced.

“That provides a large window of opportunity to try to detect the presence of these cancers in the first 20 years of their existence, before they become lethal,” said Dr. Bert Vogelstein of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who helped lead the study.

Test shows no health risk to food from spill

(Reuters) – Testing has helped confirm that chemicals used to disperse oil from the BP spill have not made their way into fish, crabs, shrimp or oysters from the Gulf of Mexico, U.S. officials said on Friday.

Tests of more than 1,700 samples show that fewer than 1 percent had any trace of chemicals at all, and the ones that did had extremely low levels, the officials from the Food and Drug Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

I am printing this with a strong caveat. Until there are independent and unbiased reports about the safety of the Gulf seafood,especially the shellfish, I would eat it with extreme caution and would not allow my children or a pregnant woman to eat it.

Pfizer recalls more U.S. lots of smelly Lipitor

(Reuters) – Pfizer Inc is recalling two more lots of Lipitor, the world’s largest selling prescription drug, after chemicals used in wooden pallets were found in some bottles that had an “uncharacteristic odor.”

The drugmaker said on Friday that customer reports about the odor prompted the recall of about 38,000 bottles. Pfizer recalled other lots of its flagship drug in August and October.

Airbags protect the kidneys during a crash

(Reuters Health) – Airbags not only protect people from head and chest injuries during car accidents, they may also protect individual organs – particularly the kidneys.

In a new study that reviews data collected from people injured during serious crashes, researchers found that those with front airbags were 45 percent less likely to suffer severe kidney trauma.

Specifically, among those injured during car accidents, 3.4 percent of people with front airbags experienced kidney trauma, versus 7.5 percent of those without front airbags, Dr. Bryan Voelzke and colleagues report in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

Vaccine panel expands whooping cough coverage

(Reuters) – An independent U.S. advisory panel is amending its recommendations for booster vaccines to prevent whooping cough and expand protection from the disease that has made a comeback in several U.S. states.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted on Wednesday to allow adolescents or adults whose vaccine history is not known to get a booster shot of the “Tdap” vaccine for tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis, or whooping cough, as soon as possible.

The committee, whose advice is usually followed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also recommended that adults over 65 be given the vaccine to help prevent transmission to infants under a year old, who are too young to be vaccinated.

UK study shows H1N1 killed 70 children in 9 months

(Reuters) – Scientists studying swine flu have found that 70 children died from it in England in a 9 month period during the H1N1 pandemic and death rates were worst among ethnic minority children and those with other health problems.

In a study in the Lancet medical journal, Liam Donaldson, the former Chief Medical Officer for England, said children from the country’s Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities had much higher mortality than white British children, as did children with serious pre-existing illnesses — especially chronic neurological diseases such as cerebral palsy.

NY bedbug epidemic spreads to the United Nations

(Reuters) – New York City’s bedbug epidemic has spread to yet another landmark in the city that never sleeps — the United Nations, officials at the world organization said on Wednesday.

The pests appeared at places like the Empire State Building and Bloomingdale’s before reaching the city’s center of international diplomacy on the East Side of Manhattan.

CDC panel votes to add meningitis booster dose

(Reuters) – A panel of federal vaccine experts narrowly voted to add a booster dose of a meningitis vaccine to teens at age 16.

Double polio vaccine holds promise for ending virus

(Reuters) – A new double-strain polio vaccine is more effective than triple and single vaccines and will be a potent weapon in the battle to eradicate the crippling virus, World Health Organization (WHO) scientists said on Tuesday.

In a study in the journal the Lancet, WHO experts said a study on the bivalent oral polio vaccine, known as bOPV, found it induced a “significantly higher immune response” than triple vaccines.

Therapy for women prone to miscarriage questioned

Reuters Health) – Blood-thinning treatments for pregnant women with an inherited condition that makes them susceptible to blood clots may do more harm than good, Danish researchers report.

Their study was designed to investigate the cause of repeat miscarriages in women with hereditary thrombophilia, a tendency to form blood clots, not the safety of particular treatments

Sexual problems? It’s probably not low testosterone

(Reuters Health) – If you believe the ads from drugmakers such as Solvay Pharmaceuticals, you might well think that getting a testosterone prescription is the key to save a faltering sex life in middle age.

But a new study adds to evidence that men’s levels of the hormone can vary quite a bit without causing sexual problems like impotence and decreased libido.

“Testosterone replacement therapy has become a very common thing,” said Dr. Michael Marberger, who heads the urology department at the University of Vienna Medical School in Austria, and led the new study.

Experts wrestle with vaccinating boys for HPV

(Reuters) – U.S. vaccine advisers are weighing whether boys and young men should be vaccinated against the human wart virus that causes a number of cancers, but some worry the vaccine is too costly to justify its use.

Merck & Co’s Gardasil vaccine is approved for boys, safe and it would be cost-effective, CDC researchers and vaccine experts told a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on Thursday.

Some men would also benefit from the vaccine, including homosexuals and bisexuals, who are at risk of developing anal cancers and other conditions caused by the human papillomavirus, or HPV, the experts said.

Stunting tall men tied to lower testosterone

(Reuters Health) – Being tall may not seem like a big problem to most teen boys, but in Europe a few still choose to have their growth stunted by hormone injections.

A Dutch study now shows the treatment, involving testosterone injections, might have some unforeseen effects when these boys become men.

“We saw some interesting effects on testosterone levels later in life,” said Dr. Emile Hendriks of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam. “The good news is, it doesn’t seem to affect fatherhood or fertility in these men.”

Infants’ antibiotic use tied to bowel disease risk

(Reuters Health) – Babies treated with antibiotics for middle-ear and other infections may have increased odds of developing inflammatory bowel disease later in childhood, a small study suggests.

Canadian researchers found that among 36 children with either ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease — the two main forms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) — 58 percent had been prescribed at least one course of antibiotics in the first year of life.

Burning straw, dung tied to kids’ anemia

(Reuters Health) – Households in developing countries that regularly burn wood, straw, dung and other natural materials are more likely to also contain children with anemia, a new report finds.

Families in 29 countries who burned so-called “biofuels” for cooking or heating were 7 percent more likely to include a child with mild anemia.

When the researchers from McMaster University in Canada compared national-level data, they found that the countries with more residents burning biofuels were also home to more children with moderate or severe anemia.

One in 10 sexually active teens has same-sex partners

(Reuters Health) – A new study suggests that nearly one in sexually active ten teens have same-sex partners — almost twice as many as previous research found. According to a 2002 study of Massachusetts and Vermont teens, only 5 percent to 6 percent of teens had same-sex partners.

In the new study, 9.3 percent of teens said they did.

“Clearly there’s a high rate of same-sex partners among teens, and we need to recognize any vulnerabilities that may be associated with these behaviors,” said Dr. Susan Blank, an assistant commissioner at the NYC Health Department. Blank, who was not involved with the study, was referring to a lower rate of condom use and unwanted sex among teens with same-sex partners seen in the study.

Teens lie about drug use, and so do their parents

(Reuters Health) – There is a huge discrepancy between the number of at-risk teens who admit to using drugs and the number who test positive for drug use, a new study reports.

In the case of cocaine, teens’ hair samples were 52 times more likely to test positive for drug use than teens were to admit to researchers they were using, despite being assured their answers would remain confidential.

But parents might want to hold the chiding: their hair revealed cocaine or opiate drug use more than five times as often as they did themselves.

“It’s human nature to not want to share things that you know other people will be unhappy with,” study author Dr. Virginia Delaney-Black, of Wayne State University, told Reuters Health. “I’m not surprised.”

Vitamin B12 tied to Alzheimer’s

(Reuters Health) – Vitamin B12 may help protect against Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study out Monday.

The study suggests that seniors with more of the active part of the vitamin in their blood have a lower risk of developing the disease, which eats away at the minds of one in eight Americans aged 65 and older, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.

However, the findings don’t necessarily mean that taking B vitamin supplements will stave off mental decline.

First-time dads’ age tied to kids’ schizophrenia risk

(Reuters Health) – Men who are relatively older at their first child’s birth may be more likely than younger first-time dads to have a child who eventually develops schizophrenia, hint results of a large Danish study.

Using data on more than 2 million people born in Denmark between 1955 and 1992, researchers found a link between first-time fathers’ age and the odds of any of their children developing schizophrenia.

In contrast, the connection was not seen among fathers who were relatively older only when their second- or later-born child came into the world.

The findings, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, add another layer to the relationship between parents’ age and children’s schizophrenia risk.

Healthy life could prevent 23 percent of colon cancers

(Reuters) – Getting people to eat a healthy diet, not smoke, cut down on alcohol and exercise more could prevent almost a quarter of the some 1.2 million cases of colon cancer diagnosed each year, scientists said on Wednesday.

Researchers from Denmark found that following recommendations on physical activity, waist circumference, smoking, alcohol intake and diet could reduce the risk of developing bowel cancer by as much as 23 percent.

“Our study reveals the useful public health message that even modest differences in lifestyle might have a substantial impact on colorectal cancer risk,” said Anne Tjonneland of the Institute of Cancer Epidemiology at the Danish Cancer Society, who led the study.

Brisk walkers have lower breast cancer risk

(Reuters Health) – Women who take brisk walks regularly have a lower risk of developing breast cancer after menopause — and it’s never too late to start, new study findings suggest.

Reviewing data collected from nearly 100,000 postmenopausal women, researchers found that women who scheduled at least an hour of brisk walking per day (or an equivalent amount of activity) were 15 percent less likely to get breast cancer than women who walked less than one hour per week.

And those who got little exercise but boosted their activity after menopause were 10 percent less likely to develop the disease than those who stayed inactive.

Stress may have only small impact on weight

(Reuters Health) – Despite the common belief that stress causes people to pack on the pounds, a new research review finds that, on average, stress has little long-term effect on weight.

The results are surprising, researchers say, given the widespread notion that stress – by causing people to reach for junk food or skimp on exercise, for example — is an important factor in weight gain.

Targeted training, fewer soccer injuries

(Reuters Health) – A series of 11 low-impact exercises designed specifically to prevent soccer injuries may do just that, new research shows.

A group of researchers working with the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) found that soccer coaches who implemented the 11 exercises into their warm-ups reported 12 percent fewer injuries among their players during matches and 25 percent fewer injuries during training sessions than did coaches who did not include the program.

“This is the first study ever published on a nationwide preventive program in soccer,” study author Dr. Jiri Dvorak, FIFA’s chief medical officer, told Reuters Health.

Kids benefit from strength training a few times a week

(Reuters Health) – While strength training was once doubted to benefit kids, a new research review confirms that children and teenagers can boost their muscle strength with regular workouts.

The findings, researchers say, support recent recommendations from the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) that kids strength-train two to three times a week — though only under professional supervision.

Cholesterol-lowering red yeast rice products vary

(Reuters Health) – Red yeast rice products, marketed as a natural alternative to drugs that lower cholesterol, vary widely in the amount of active ingredients they contain, and some may be contaminated, new research shows.

The study, published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine, draws on data from past studies to show that 12 different supplements had varying levels of monacolin K — the chemical in red yeast rice that is believed to lower cholesterol.

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

It now appears that in all likelihood republicans will win a congressional majority this coming Tuesday. Nate Silver’s projections of Friday October 29…

…found Republicans gaining an average of 53 seats, which would bring them to 232 total. Democrats are given a 16 percent chance of holding the House, down slightly from 17 percent on Wednesday.

Increasingly, there seems to be something of a consensus among various forecasting methods around a projected Republican figure somewhere in the 50-60 seat range.

Several of the expert forecasters that FiveThirtyEight’s model uses, like the Cook Political Report, the Rothenberg Political Report, and Larry Sabato, have stated that they expect the Republicans’ overall total to fall roughly in this range. A straw poll of political insiders for Hotline on Call found an average expectation of a 50-seat gain. And some political science models have been forecasting gains somewhere in this range for some time.

The forecast also seems consistent with the average of generic ballot polling. Our model projects that Republicans will win the average Congressional district by between 3 and 4 points.

The modeling also suggests that there is a 90% chance that after Tuesday Democrats will control at least 50 seats in the Senate, but that there is a 0% chance that Democrats will control at least 60 seats.

It’s not looking good by any stretch of the imagination.  

Nate’s modeling is also supported by other polling. For instance “Gallup’s recent tracking of the generic ballot for Congress has shown the Republicans with substantial leads over the Democrats among likely voters, in part because the underlying registered voter population leans Republican in its vote choice. Compared with previous elections, that tilt is an extraordinary positioning for the Republicans, who typically do no better than tie the Democrats among registered voters. The GOP’s position is further enhanced by the generally strong proclivity of Republicans to turn out to vote, which appears to be even greater than usual this year.”

Gallup also reported on Thursday that “the lower proportion of swing voters this year, coupled with Republican leads in current 2010 voting preferences, is another good sign for the GOP’s chances of a strong showing on Election Day. The potential for change among swing voters may not be all that great. Past Gallup analysis using pre- and post-election panel data found that swing voters usually follow through on their initial voting preference.”

Is there a way this apparently likely seeming debacle can be turned into a positive for Democrats, and more importantly for all Americans, if it happens?

Is there going to be any way that Democrats can get progressive legislation passed in the next two years, or will Obama become another lame duck president?

For the past year and a half Obama, to put it mildly, has had a hell of a time producing anything remotely approaching good progressive results, whether he wanted to or not.

Now it looks as though it will be even less likely that Congress, after the midterms, will be able to put good progressive legislation that helps the people of the country on Obama’s desk for him to sign, without some strong political force applied to motivate them to do so.

Republicans are known for their corporatist and anti “little guy” leanings, and it is not likely they will produce any progressive legislation to send to the president for his signature at all on their own initiative.

So, where can this needed motivation for a republican controlled congress to send good progressive legislation that helps the people of the country to Obama for signing into law come from?

There is an old maxim that says every cloud has a silver lining, and another that says the best roses grow in shit.

Friday Joan McCarter posted a story about $100 million spent to fight health reform after it passed, linking in her story to a Think Progress/Wonk Room piece highlighting in it’s first paragraph that “after several Republicans suggested that the GOP would only repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act, Republican senators sought to reassure their conservative constituency of the purity of their intent by reiterating their opposition to the entire health care law.”

So republicans are making noises about repealing HCR, to drum up support among their teabagger supporters. No surprise that they would use whatever they can to wind up their base, of course.

The question it raises however, is an interesting one.

How, exactly, would a republican controlled congress be able to repeal HCR?

Repealing it, as with repealing any legislation, would require passing a bill to repeal it. To do that they would need passage by the House and by the Senate. Perhaps, if Nate Silver’s projections turn out to be reality, republicans could ram such a repealing bill through the House.

But Nate also projects a 90% probability of the Democrats holding on to at least 50 seats in the Senate.

So maybe republicans could pass an HCR repealing bill in the House, but could they get it through the Senate?

Only with help from Democrats. And therein lies the silver lining.

Only with help from the Democrats will republicans be able to put ANY legislation on Obama’s desk for him to sign, for the next two years.

In case you wondered why I have capitalized Democrats throughout this piece, but left republicans uncapitalized, it is because republicans, if they win Congress Tuesday by the margins projected by Nate Silver and by Gallup, will be helpless for the next two years without bipartisan help from Democrats to advance any of their agenda.

Let’s assume for a minute that there are enough Democrats to help the republicans get legislation like that through the Senate as well.

What then?

For the next two years any bill passed by the House and by the Senate then goes to Barack Obama for signing into law.

The same is true for all bills, and will remain true for all legislation the republicans try to develop over the next two years.

If they can even get a bill to his desk, the republicans will need Barack Obama to sign their legislation into law.

A presidential veto is the rejection of a bill passed by the majority votes of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. While Congress can vote to override a presidential veto, causing the bill to become law without the president’s approval, this is rarely done. More often than not, the threat of presidential veto is sufficient motivation for Congress to modify the bill prior to its final passage. This article provides a brief overview of procedures involved in vetoing a bill and the ways Congress can respond to a presidential veto.

The Veto Process

When a bill is passed by both the House and Senate, it is sent to the president for his signature. All bills and joint resolutions, except those proposing amendments to the Constitution, must be signed by the president before they become law. Amendments to the Constitution, which require a two-thirds vote of approval in each chamber, are sent directly to the states for ratification. When presented with legislation passed by both houses of Congress, the president is constitutionally required to act on it in one of four ways: sign it into law within the 10-day period prescribed in the Constitution, issue a regular veto, let the bill become law without his signature or issue a “pocket” veto.

Regular veto

When Congress is in session, the president may, within the 10-day period, exercise a regular veto by sending the unsigned bill back to the chamber of Congress from which it originated along with a veto message stating his reasons for rejecting it. Currently, the president must veto the bill in its entirety. He may not veto individual provisions of the bill while approving others. Rejecting individual provisions of a bill is called a “line-item” veto. In 1996, Congress passed a law granting President Clinton the power to issue line-item vetoes, only to have the Supreme Court declare it unconstitutional in 1998.

Bill becomes law without president’s signature

When Congress is not adjourned, and the president fails to either sign or veto a bill sent to him by the end of the 10-day period, it becomes law without his signature.

The pocket veto

When Congress is adjourned, the president can reject a bill by simply refusing to sign it. This action is known as a “pocket veto,” coming from the analogy of the president simply putting the bill in his pocket and forgetting about it. Unlike a regular veto, Congress has neither the opportunity or constitutional authority to override a pocket veto.

How Congress responds to a veto

When the President returns a bill to the chamber of Congress from which it came, along with his objections in the form of a veto message, that chamber is constitutionally required to “reconsider” the bill. The Constitution is silent, however, on the meaning of “reconsideration.” According to the Congressional Research Service, procedure and tradition govern the treatment of vetoed bills. “On receipt of the vetoed bill, the President’s veto message is read into the journal of the receiving house. After entering the message into the journal, the House of Representatives or the Senate complies with the constitutional requirement to ‘reconsider’ by laying the measure on the table (essentially stopping further action on it), referring the bill to committee, postponing consideration to a certain day, or immediately voting on reconsideration (vote on override).”

Overriding a veto

Action by both the House and the Senate is required to override a presidential veto. A two-thirds majority vote of the Members present is required to override a presidential veto. If one house fails to override a veto, the other house does not attempt to override, even if the votes are present to succeed. The House and Senate may attempt to override a veto anytime during the Congress in which the veto is issued. Should both houses of Congress successfully vote to override a presidential veto, the bill becomes law. According the the Congressional Research service, from 1789 through 2004, only 106 of 1,484 regular presidential vetoes were overridden by Congress.

If Mr. Obama will stand up now, and make it as clear as a club on the head to republicans that he fully intends for the next two years to sign into law only progressive bills that are good for all Americans and that the bipartisanship with batshit crazy republicans is a thing of the past that they can no longer expect, then he can demand only progressive legislation.

If the republicans, as is projected, win control of Congress Tuesday, Obama’s power to produce progressive legislation will increase dramatically.

Whether or not he’ll use it is another question altogether, of course.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Nouriel Roubini : A presidency heading for a fiscal train wreck

What has been the fiscal performance of President Barack Obama? He inherited the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, as well as a budget deficit that – after much needed bail-outs and a series of reckless tax cuts – was already close to $1,000bn. His stimulus package, together with a backstop of the financial system, low rates and quantitative easing from the Federal Reserve, prevented another depression. Mr Obama also deserves credit that the US, alone among advanced economies, currently supports a “growth now”, rather than an “austerity now” path.

But this is but one half of the picture; we must also judge his first two years on his ability to anticipate what the economy will need tomorrow. Here the picture is much less positive. Given the likely path of fiscal policy after next Tuesday’s election – with the expiration of existing stimulus and transfer payments, and even with most of the 2001-03 tax cuts being kept – the US economy will soon experience serious fiscal drag just when it needs a further boost. Problematically, the administration’s failures leave it relying on the Fed, which is bent on further QE, likely to be announced next Wednesday. But studies show this will have little effect on US growth in 2011, so fiscal policy should be doing some of the lifting to prevent a double dip recession.

David Sirota: It’s the Stupidity, Stupid

Redistributionist-as epithets go, the moniker is so mild, so … 2008. Today, we’re hammered by screeds against Democrats’ alleged socialism and President Barack Obama’s supposed Marxism. The class war is clearly on-the paranoids and royalists of the world have united, seizing the means of propaganda production in these waning days of this year’s election campaign.

The onslaught, of course, is predictable. After all, this is an election season-which inevitably evokes Red-baiting crusades by the plutocrats. Less predictable is this crusade’s traction. As Wall Street executives make bank off bailouts, as millions of Americans see paychecks slashed and as our economic Darwinism sends more wealth up the income ladder-it’s surprising that appeals to capitalist piggery carry more electoral agency than ever.

What could cause this intensifying politics of free-market fundamentalism at the very historical moment that proves the failure of such an ideology? Two new academic studies suggest all roads lead to ignorance.

Michael Moore: A Boot to the Head …from Michael Moore

There she was, thrown to the pavement by a Republican in a checkered shirt. Another Republican thrusts his foot in between her legs and presses down with all his weight to pin her to the curb. Then a Republican leader comes over and viciously stomps on her head with his foot. You hear her glasses crunch under the pressure. Holding her head down with his foot, he applies more force so she can’t move. Her skull and brain are now suffering a concussion.

The young woman’s name is Lauren Valle, but she is really all of us. For come this Tuesday, the right wing — and the wealthy who back them — plan to take their collective boot and bring it down hard on not just the head of Barack Obama but on the heads of everyone they simply don’t like.

Rinku Sen: The Most Racist Campaign in Decades, and What It Demands of Us

If the election of 2008 was a referendum on race, the midterms are feeling like a recount. The dominant political discourse of 2008 centered on an improbable question: Could a black man overcome decades’ worth of conservative fear mongering about scary, criminal, lazy black people and win a majority of voters? Today, things have changed. Now, the question is whether invoking scary, criminal, lazy Latinos and Muslims can incite enough conservative voters to reverse the Democrats’ 2008 gains.

Across the country, candidates are competing for the title of Best Immigrant Basher and Most Opposed to Mosques. Republican candidates have vowed that, if they win, they will turn these campaign-trail memes into congressional hearings and use them to block reforms critical to all Americans in the midst of an ongoing economic crisis. Democratic candidates, for their part, have been deafeningly silent on the subject and have vowed-well, nothing. Today’s political landscape is as frightening as 2008’s was hopeful.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: [Katrina vanden Heuvel Washington State’s ‘Robin Hood’ Tax]

In an electoral development that must have Ayn Rand rolling in her grave, voters in Washington State will decide next Tuesday on I-1098, a.k.a. the “Robin Hood Initiative.” With no state income tax, Washingtonians currently suffer under what the Seattle Post-Intelligencer calls “the least fair tax code in America,” a schedule that sees the poorest 20 percent of Washington families pay 17.3 percent of their income in state taxes. Washington’s wealthiest 1 percent enjoy a rate of 2.5 percent, while the richest 0.1 percent, according to I-1098 supporter Nick Hanauer, pay “something like three-tenths of one percent.” The ballot measure would reform this regressive tax structure.

Hanauer, a Seattle venture capitalist who is actually a part of that richest 0.1 percent, sees Washington’s system, and the trickle-down, Reaganomic wisdom behind it, as “hogwash…. Where rich people don’t pay their share,” as he said in a conference call on Tuesday. “It’s a hellhole.” Arithmetically, he says, a tax code like Washington’s is ultimately unable to sustain a capitalist democracy.

William Rivers Pitt: The Downhill Run

The 2010 midterm elections go down on Tuesday, for good or ill. The pollsters, news people and bloggers have been going full bore for months covering the thing. Even the weather people have gotten into the act; word has it most of the country is going to get rained on come election day. Except for get-out-the-vote efforts, a final blizzard of campaign ads and perhaps one last scandal before the polls open, we are into the downhill run of this thing, and all that’s left is the voting and the counting.

And the beatings, of course. Par for the course these days. It’s hard to know what’s more disturbing: the fact that Tea Party activists are beating up women in public, or the fact that acts like this are not terribly surprising anymore.

John Nichols The Tea Party Constitution Versus the Thomas Jefferson Constitution

If O’Donnell, Johnson and their Tea’d-Off compatriots were even minimally serious about adhering to the founding document, they would all be thoughtful critics of the undeclared wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ardent foes of the Patriot Act and steady opponents of free trade deals that remove the authority of Congress to represent and serve the interests of American workers, farmers and communities. But then they would be Russ Feingold, and it goes against the Tea Party narrative-at least as it has been framed by the movement’s corporate paymasters and messaging consultants-to regard a progressive Democrat as the most ardent defender of the American experiment.

So it should be understood that O’Donnell, Miller, Angle, Buck, Johnson and the rest of the Tea Partisans who might be senators are talking about the Constitution as it was written or as the founders intended it. Rather, they are talking about the Constitution as they would like to see it rewritten and reinterpreted-with the help of the most activist Supreme Court in American history. While their intents are radical, their prospects must be seen in light of the fact that Chief Justice John Roberts and his conservative majority have already reinterpreted the First Amendment’s free speech protection in a manner that extends the natural rights that the founders reserved for human beings to multinational corporations

(11 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Just some photos from this week.

Windows of the World.

Swamp thing.

The Central Park Drive.

How about a little gothic bridge?

Penny for your thoughts.

The Central Park Lake at sundown

Not a bad week for a photo buff.  

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

October 30 is the 303rd day of the year (304th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 62 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1938, Orson Welles scares the nation.

The War of the Worlds was an episode of the American radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on October 30, 1938 and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated by Orson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds.

The first two thirds of the 60-minute broadcast were presented as a series of simulated “news bulletins”, which suggested to many listeners that an actual alien invasion by Martians was currently in progress. Compounding the issue was the fact that the Mercury Theatre on the Air was a ‘sustaining show’ (it ran without commercial breaks), thus adding to the program’s quality of realism. Although there were sensationalist accounts in the press about a supposed panic in response to the broadcast, the precise extent of listener response has been debated. In the days following the adaptation, however, there was widespread outrage. The program’s news-bulletin format was decried as cruelly deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast, but the episode secured Orson Welles’ fame.

 758 – Guangzhou is sacked by Arab and Persian pirates.

1137 – Battle of Rignano between Ranulf of Apulia and Roger II of Sicily.

1226 – Tran Thu Do, head of the Tran clan of Vietnam, forces Ly Hue Tong, the last emperor of the Ly dynasty, to commit suicide.

1270 – The Eighth Crusade and siege of Tunis end by an agreement between Charles I of Sicily (brother to King Louis IX of France, who had died months earlier) and the sultan of Tunis.

1340 – Battle of Rio Salado.

1470 – Henry VI of England returns to the English throne after Earl of Warwick defeats the Yorkists in battle.

1485 – King Henry VII of England is crowned.

1501 – Ballet of Chestnuts – a banquet held by Cesare Borgia in the Papal Palace where fifty prostitutes or courtesans are in attendance for the entertainment of the guests.

1831 – In Southampton County, Virginia, escaped slave Nat Turner is captured and arrested for leading the bloodiest slave rebellion in United States history.

1863 – Danish Prince Wilhelm arrives in Athens to assume his throne as George I, King of the Hellenes.

1864 – Second war of Schleswig ends. Denmark renounces all claim to Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg, which come under Prussian and Austrian administration.

1864 – Helena, Montana is founded after four prospectors discover gold at “Last Chance Gulch”.

1894 – Domenico Melegatti obtains a patent for a procedure to be applied in producing pandoro industrially.

1905 – Czar Nicholas II of Russia grants Russia’s first constitution, creating a legislative assembly.

1918 – The Ottoman Empire signs an armistice with the Allies, ending the First World War in the Middle East.

1920 – The Communist Party of Australia is founded in Sydney.

1922 – Benito Mussolini is made Prime Minister of Italy.

1925 – John Logie Baird creates Britain’s first television transmitter.

1929 – The Stuttgart Cable Car is constructed in Stuttgart, Germany.

1938 – Orson Welles broadcasts his radio play of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, causing anxiety in some of the audience in the United States.

1941 – World War II: Franklin Delano Roosevelt approves U.S. $1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Allied nations.

1941 – 1,500 Jews from Pidhaytsi (in western Ukraine) are sent by Nazis to Belzec extermination camp.

1944 – Anne Frank and sister Margot Frank are deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

1945 – Jackie Robinson of the Kansas City Monarchs signs a contract for the Brooklyn Dodgers to break the baseball color barrier.

1947 – The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which is the foundation of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), is founded.

1950 – Pope Pius XII witnesses “The Miracle of the Sun” while at the Vatican.

1953 – Cold War: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally approves the top secret document National Security Council Paper No. 162/2, which states that the United States’ arsenal of nuclear weapons must be maintained and expanded to counter the communist threat.

1960 – Michael Woodruff performs the first successful kidney transplant in the United Kingdom at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

1961 – Nuclear testing: The Soviet Union detonates the hydrogen bomb Tsar Bomba over Novaya Zemlya; at 58 megatons of yield, it is still the largest explosive device ever detonated, nuclear or otherwise.

1961 – Because of “violations of Lenin’s precepts”, it is decreed that Joseph Stalin’s body be removed from its place of honour inside Lenin’s tomb and buried near the Kremlin wall with a plain granite marker instead.

1965 – Vietnam War: Just miles from Da Nang, United States Marines repel an intense attack by wave after wave of Viet Cong forces, killing 56 guerrillas. Among the dead, a sketch of Marine positions is found on the body of a 13-year-old Vietnamese boy who sold drinks to the Marines the day before.

1970 – In Vietnam, the worst monsoon to hit the area in six years causes large floods, kills 293, leaves 200,000 homeless and virtually halts the Vietnam War.

1972 – A collision between two commuter trains in Chicago, Illinois kills 45 and injures 332.

1973 – The Bosporus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey is completed, connecting the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosporus for the first time.

1974 – The Rumble in the Jungle boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman takes place in Kinshasa, Zaire.

1975 – Prince Juan Carlos becomes Spain’s acting head of state, taking over for the country’s ailing dictator, Gen. Francisco Franco.

1980 – El Salvador and Honduras sign a peace treaty to put the border dispute fought over in 1969’s Football War before the International Court of Justice.

1983 – The first democratic elections in Argentina after seven years of military rule are held.

1985 – Space Shuttle Challenger lifts off for mission STS-61-A, its final successful mission.

1987 – In Japan, NEC releases the first 16-bit home entertainment system, the TurboGrafx-16, known as PC Engine.

1991 – The Madrid Conference for Middle East peace talks opens.

1993 – Greysteel massacre: The Ulster Freedom Fighters, a loyalist terrorist group, open fire on a crowded bar in Greysteel, Northern Ireland. Eight civilians are killed and thirteen wounded.

1995 – Quebec sovereignists narrowly lose a referendum for a mandate to negotiate independence from Canada (vote is 50.6% to 49.4%).

2000 – The last Multics machine is shut down.

2002 – British Digital terrestrial television (DTT) Service Freeview begins transmitting in parts of the United Kingdom.

2005 – The rebuilt Dresden Frauenkirche (destroyed in the firebombing of Dresden during World War II) is reconsecrated after a thirteen-year rebuilding project.

UK and US probe terror risk after Yemen cargo finds

The US and UK are investigating the extent of a terror threat after explosives were found in two packages bound for the US from Yemen.

The BBC 30 October 2010  

The packages were found in the UK and Dubai on two overnight cargo planes in transit from Yemen on Friday.

President Barack Obama said the devices were a “credible terrorist threat”.

UK Home Secretary Theresa May said experts were trying to establish whether the package found in Britain was “a viable explosive device”.

Mr Obama’s top counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan said: “The United States is not assuming that the attacks were disrupted and isremaining vigilant.”

Rescued from the shredder, Carlos the Jackal’s missing years

Stasi documents fill the hole in terrorist’s biography – and reveal his charmed life in East Germany while a fugitive from the West

By Tony Paterson in Berlin Saturday, 30 October 2010

In the West he was for decades one of the world’s most wanted leftist terrorists, but in communist East Berlin, Carlos the Jackal was given a headquarters with 75 support staff and allowed to walk the streets with an automatic pistol slung from his belt.

The extraordinary life of Illich Ramirez Sanchez – the internationally renowned terrorist now serving a life sentence in Paris for triple murder – behind the Iron Curtain began to emerge yesterday from a mass of torn East German Stasi files that are slowly being put back together by the German authorities.

USA

Divided states of America

October 30, 2010

Simon Mann looks at how the can-do country lost its way.

THE divisions that lurk in America sometimes become glaringly apparent. Mostly submerged, often papered over, they remain fissures in the great and evolving work that is the Republic of the United States.

Sometimes they are illuminated by the everyday; a trip to the baseball in the nation’s capital, Washington DC, is a case in point.

On those balmy summer evenings when the smell of hot dogs and fast food, freshly cut grass and the sweaty remains of the day waft across the expectant after-work crowd, a sense of privilege emerges long beforethe first pitch.

MGM film studio rescued from bankruptcy

Studio famous for Wizard of Oz and Singin’ in the Rain saved after creditors approve debt restructure plan

Edward Helmore in New York

The Guardian, Saturday 30 October 2010

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the legendary film studio famous for classic movies such as The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind and Singin’ in the Rain, was placed under bankruptcy protection last night after creditors approved a plan to restructure its $4bn (£2.5bn) debt and place it under new management.

Resolution of the long-running saga of the studio’s finances came after creditors rejected an aggressive takeover bid by corporate raider Carl Icahn.

Icahn, who holds as much as $800m of MGM debt, had been campaigning for Lions Gate Entertainment to take over the firm.

Europe

Going underground: Exploring the Paris Catacombs



 Saturday, 30 October 2010

Cataphiles are Parisian urban explorers who illegally wander the Catacombs, a term popularly used to describe a vast network of underground galleries, tunnels and crypts under Paris. Originally built after the French Revolution to house the remains of destroyed tombs during the expansion of the city, the Catacombs are testimony to over two centuries of the city’s historical heritage. For example, they were used as shelters by the French resistance during the Nazi occupation of Paris in the Second World War.

Beginning in the late Sixties, Parisians known as Cataphiles began restoring some of these spaces, and organising ossuaries to make way for more innovative creative spaces or themed neighbourhoods.

Turkey’s relationship with west on the line in European missile defence negotiations

Turkey’s government has been told that its relationship with the West could be seriously damaged if it rejects Nato’s request to house part of a £165 million ballistic missile-defence shield that is being built to protect Europe from nuclear attack.

By Praveen Swami, Diplomatic Editor  

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state and Robert Gates, the US secretary of defence, have held out the warning in behind-the-scenes talks with Turkish officials ahead of a Nato summit to be held in Lisbon on November 19, where a final decision is expected to be made on the missile-defence plan.

“Essentially we’ve told Turkey that missile-defence is an acid test of its commitment to the collective security arrangements it has with its western allies,” a senior US official told The Daily Telegraph.  

Middle East

Yemen Emerges as Base for Qaeda Attacks on U.S.

 

 By ROBERT F. WORTH

Published: October 29, 2010

BEIRUT, Lebanon – Not long ago, most Americans had scarcely heard of Yemen, the arid, Texas-size country in the southern corner of the Arabian peninsula.

But on Friday, as news emerged of a plot to send explosives in courier packages from Yemen to synagogues in Chicago, the world’s attention was focused once again on the threats brewing in Yemen’s lawless, strife-torn hinterlands, where American citizens appear to be helping the local branch of Al Qaeda take aim at the United States.

 Iran’s supreme leader demands support of clerics

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warns the leaders of the Shiite Muslim clergy if they embrace Western ideals or oppose President Ahmadinejad’s hard-line government, the Islamic Republic could collapse.

By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times

October 30, 2010

Reporting from Beirut – Iran’s supreme leader wrapped up an unprecedented 10-day visit to the Iranian seminary city of Qom on Friday that was widely seen as an attempt to bolster support among those in a clerical establishment either indifferent or hostile to his conservative agenda.

In a series of meetings, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned turbaned leaders of the Shiite Muslim clergy to avoid becoming excessively enamored of unorthodox, reformist and Western ideas and too unsupportive of the hard-line government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has long aroused suspicion among Iran’s clerical old guard.

Asia

Who’s Afraid of the Ruler of the Silk Road?

Appeasing the Uzbek Dictator

 By Erich Follath and Christian Neef

Some cities are tedium set in stone, joyless places where people don’t live but merely survive.

And then there are the cities whose names alone are the stuff of legend. They are places of stunning geography, impressive history and breathtaking architecture. Three of these cities are Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva, located on the legendary Silk Road in Uzbekistan in Central Asia, lined up like a string of pearls, each rising up from the shimmering heat of the surrounding deserts like mirages. These are magical places.

Their turquoise domes, madrassas decorated with mosaics and ornate caravanserai roadside inns are not only evidence of the skill of those who built them, but also of the ambitions of the ethnic groups that proudly left their mark on the region in past centuries: Persians, Greeks,Mongols and Turks.  

UN funds Cambodia’s prison of the undesirables



October 30, 2010

AID money and funds from the United Nations are being used to run a brutal internment camp near Phnom Penh, where detainees are held for months without trial, raped and beaten, sometimes to death.

The Cambodian government’s Ministry of Social Affairs says the Prey Speu ”Social Affairs Centre” 20 kilometres from the capital is a voluntary welfare centre that provides vocational education and healthcare to vulnerable people.le.

Africa

No end in sight to DRC’s violence

 

KATRINA MANSON | KITCHANGA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO  

“I have to submit as I don’t want to be raped,” she said, her baby wrapped to her back in a camp for thousands of displaced people in Kitchanga in Congo’s troubled east.

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s 1998 to 2003 conflict was known as Africa’s World War, in which more than five million people are estimated to have died from violence, hunger and disease.

Joyce is just one of over 1,27-million in DRC’s east unable to return home due to violence that continues despite the presence of the world’s largest UN peace force and a March 2009 deal meant to bring peace to thisCentral African country.

‘Serengeti highway’ threat to great migration

A project to build a road gashing through Tanzania’s Serengeti park could put pay to one of the planet’s greatest natural spectacles: the annual great wildebeest migration.

By Sapa-AFP

Millions of herbivores migrate from the Serengeti to Kenya’s adjacent Maasai Mara each year, but the construction due to begin next year of a tarmacked road could see the migration stopped in its tracks by queues of steaming lorries.

The Serengeti Highway is supposed to link Musoma, on the banks of Lake Victoria, to Arusha, cutting through a swathe of park into which giant herds of wildebeests bottleneck every summer to seek Kenya’s pastures.

Latin America

Rousseff on track to be Brazil’s first female leader

The Irish Times – Saturday, October 30, 2010

TOM HENNIGAN in São Paulo

BRAZIL’S PRESIDENTIAL election campaign drew to a close last night with the final televised debate ahead of tomorrow’s vote.

The televised set-piece provided opposition candidate José Serra with a final chance at halting the growing bandwagon behind frontrunner Dilma Rousseff.

After a wobble in recent weeks when she was caught off balance by a controversy concerning her stance on abortion, the ruling Workers Party candidate has recovered and latest polls show her powering ahead. She has extended a double-digit lead over Mr Serra and is on track to become Brazil’s first woman president.

Ignoring Asia A Blog  

One of the more influential bands to form in the late 1960s in the United Kingdom was King Crimson.  Unlike The Who, The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones, all of which formed in the early 1960s, King Crimson did not really form until 1968, about the same time that Deep Purple Mark I formed.

Also unlike the bands just mentioned, King Crimson pretty much was “owned” by Robert Fripp, contrary to disclaimers made by him from time to time, especially after their first record.  As a matter of fact, except for Deep Purple, the other bands mentioned had a remarkably stable lineup for years, only death or dissolution of the bands changing things very much.

Fripp was born in May of 1946 and is still with us.  Because of the constantly shifting lineup of the band, it has many connexions with other, better known ones.  As a matter of fact, let us hear the title track from The Court of the Crimson King before we go further.  Perhaps you will recognize the voice of the lead singer.

It is a long piece, but well worth listening to closely.  (I had a friend who was a DJ and called songs like this, Lela, Stairway to Heaven and similar long cuts s*** records because they ran long enough to go to the restroom).  From the very beginning, it is obvious that King Crimson is not just another rock band.  As many of you know, I hold The Who to be my favorite band, but this style is so different and so well done that it is hard not to appreciate it.

The lead singer is none other than Greg Lake, best known from Emerson, Lake, and Palmer.  He also was lead singer for Atomic Rooster for a while.  Both of those bands have been addressed or at least mentioned previously in this series, so if you are interested in them just look up the archives.  “Popular Culture” is a tag for every one.

The band were (note that I use the British convention of the plural for a collective noun) formed in 1969 and disbanded in 1974.  During that time, there were at least 24 members for an ostensibly five person band.  I am not aware of this much turnover for very many bands.  I shall pay particular attention to this, because the members who came and went had tremendous influence on other bands, and I find the connexions fascinating.

The first lineup had Fripp playing guitar and mellotron, and Ian McDonald playing mellotron and woodwinds and some backing vocals.  McDonald later went on to become a founding member of Foreigner.

Peter Sinfield wrote most of their lyrical parts (he was not a very accomplished musician, so he mainly wrote and did stagehand duties).  He left the band and ended up writing songs for Emerson, Lake, and Palmer for years.

Greg Lake played bass and sang lead vocals, and as we already know left to form Emerson, Lake, and Palmer.  But there are even more connections than that.  Lake played bass during a single concert for a band called Asia, Carl Palmer’s band post ELP.

Michael Giles played drums.  Giles was in a band that Fripp was also in that predated KC, called Giles, Giles, and Fripp, along with his brother Peter Giles.  Peter left after KC formed.

This lineup lasted for exactly one album.  I have glossed over many of the connexions that those founding members have with other well known bands, but I like to keep my pieces under 5,000 words of people’s eyes glaze over trying to read them.

The lead song on this first record is 21st Century Schizoid Man, a rather innovative piece.  In places it almost sounds like some of the work that the marvelous Frank Zappa did.  Here it is:

Their next record was In the Wake of Poseidon, which is a very nice album,, released in 1970.  It does sound a lot like the first one, due in part to Greg Lake singing.  However, Lake had already left to band to form ELP, but sang the studio tracks anyway (in return for the KC sound system to use for ELP).

Peter Giles (from Giles, Giles, and Fripp) replaced Lake as bass player, Mel Collins replaced Ian McDonald on woodwinds, and Keith Tippett replaced McDonald on keyboard.  Collins later went on to play with the likes of Dire Straits, Eric Clapton, and The Rollings Stones, amongst others.  Tippett later went pretty much jazz so there is not a lot of rock connections, but he has played with the likes of Phil Collins, Brian Eno, and Manfred Mann.

Here is the title track for this record:

One of the things that I really like about King Crimson is the heavy use of mellotron.  For those of you who do not know, a mellotron is essentially an extremely complex tape player activated by a keyboard.  Since the tapes can be recordings of essentially any instrument, a mellotron can sound like any instrument, except the tone is unique, so violins do sort of sound like violins, but it is easy to recognize that they were produced by a mellotron.  After you have listeded to these three pieces, you will know what I mean.

Mellotrons were extraordinarily difficult to keep in repair, and only a few bands used them.  The Moody Blues used it extensively (Mike Pindar was actually a mellotron technician), and Rick Wakeman used one a lot.  He even had one set for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir!  I wrote a piece on the Big Orange about mellotrons a couple of years ago.

Their next album was titled Lizard, and in interesting in a number of ways.  It was released in 1970 as well.  First of all, Jon Anderson from Yes sang the vocals in Prince Rupert Awakes, his only contribution to KC.  Yet another connexion with other bands.  Here it is:

This is the first movement of the title track, and here are the rest of them.  They get pretty long, but are interesting.  The next movement is Bolero:  The Peacock’s Tale:

The next part is The Battle of Glass Tears:

Lizard ends with Big Top:

As you can see, King Crimson is not your typical band.

For this record, Gorden Haskell had replaced Peter Giles on bass and Lake on vocals.  Haskell was more into jazz and did not last with the band, and went on to mainly jazz work later in life, so not too many connexions with rock after KC.

Michael Giles left after Poseidon, and was replaced with Andy McCullough on drums.  McCullough also played for Manfred Mann (a second KC member to do so), and most notably from my point of view for The Crazy World of Arthur Brown (I have covered that band in this series).  Interestingly, Atomic Rooster’s keyboard man, Vincent Crane also played for Brown, and Greg Lake performed with Crane in Atomic Rooster.

Islands was released in 1971, and includes these personnel changes.  Boz Burrell (now deceased) replaced Haskell on bass and vocals.  He had played with the core members of Deep Purple for a little while, but is best remembered as one of the founding members of Bad Company.

Ian Wallace replaced McCullough on drums for this work.  Wallace became pretty much a session drummer later and worked with just about EVERYONE.  He toured with Dylan, Clapton, Orbison, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, just to name a very few.

Here is the title track for Islands:

Larks’ Tongues in Aspic was released in 1973 and the band by then had a completely different lineup except for Fripp.  Richard Palmer-James replaced lyricist Peter Sinfield (a founding member) who had left to go with ELP.  Palmer-Jones is best remembered as a founding member of Supertramp, a hugely successful band.

John Wetton replaced Boz Burrell on bass and vocals.  Some of the more well known bands that Wetton has been associated with include Roxy Music, Uriah Heep, and Wishbone Ash.  Lots of connexions!

Bill Bruford replaced Ian Wallace on drums.  You might remember Bruford from that little known (LOL!) band Yes.  The got a second percussionist by the name of Jamie Muir.  Just after the release of the record, he entered a monastery for years.  He returned briefly to music for a short time, and now is fairly keep himself whilst he paints.

Keith Tipplet left and was replaced by David Cross on keyboards, and Cross also played violin.  He is sort of obscure, but has had several solo and collaborative projects, and many members of KC, including Fripp, have played with him.  Interestingly, he is now an academic lecturing in music education in the UK.

The title song was split into two parts, beginning and ending the record.  Note the interesting percussion effects, mostly due to Jamie Muir.  Here is part 1:

And here is part 2:

This sounds very much like a Zappa influence as well.

Their next record, Starless and Bible Black, released in 1974, is remarkable that the exact same lineup from Larks’.  Well, that is not quite true, since Muir has headed off to the monastery by then.  This is said to be a satirical work.  I shall let you make your own judgment from the title song:

This is getting a little too experimental even for me!

Their next record, Red, was released in 1974.  Ian McDonald returned for this album to play woodwinds.  Since there are no new personnel changes, there are no new connexions.  Here is the title track:

I think that this song, Starless, is a better one than Red is, but that is just my opinion.

Well, I am worn out from doing all of the research and writing necessary to produce this piece.  This is sort of a timely place to stop, at least for this evening, because Fripp disbanded King Crimson after Red.  It stayed disbanded until 1981, pretty much a record for a band to be in hiatus and then reform.  But that will have to wait until the next installment.  The pieces that I chose are some of them so long that if you listen to all of the music, it will take you some time to get through this installment.  If there is enough interest, I shall continue with KC next week.

I believe that one thing is clear:  King Crimson has had a huge impact on modern rock, and continues to have.  It is almost miraculous that only two members that formed the band from the 1968 - 1974 era have died.  I do not know if it was clean living or what, but that is remarkable.  I would enjoy your comments as well as your favorite pieces from this band.

Warmest regards,

Doc

Crossposted at Docucharma.com and at Dailykos.com

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown again?  Something is screwed up with ABC or Zap2it TV Listings.

Remember you only get the one crack at Keith and Rachel.  Friday Night Thurber.

I met him fifteen years ago. I was told there was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding, even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong. I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and the blackest eyes… the devil’s eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized that what was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely and simply… evil.

• AMC– Predator & 2
• Bravo– Legally Blonde & 2 x 2
• Disney– New Phineas and Ferb, Pair of Kings, Fish Hooks
• Discovery– Swamp Loggers (last week’s and new), Snow Men (Series Premier)
• E!– The Soup (premier)
• ESPN– Magic @ Heat, Lakers @ Suns
• ESPN2– College Throwball, West Virginia @ Connecticut
• FX– Halloween: Resurrection, Halloween H2O: 20 Years Later
• National Geographic– Dog Whisperer (premier)
• Nick– The Boy Who Cried Werewolf (not the good 1973 version)
• Oxygen– Juno x 2
• Sci Fi– Sanctuary (premier)
• Style– The Good Girl
• TBS– Catch Me if You Can x 2
• Turner Classic– The Curse of Frankenstein, The Revenge of Frankenstein (Hammer time)
• TLC– What Not to Wear (premier)
• TNT– GoldenEye x 2 (Brosnan)
• Toon– Sym-Bionic Titan, Generator Rex (premiers)
• USA– NCIS marathon

Later-

• AMC– Deep Blue Sea
• Sci Fi– Caprica (this week’s), Sanctuary (instapeat)
• Style– Pay It Forward
• Turner Classic– Frankenstein Created Woman, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (more Hammer time)
• USA– Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins, Bait Shop
• VH1– New Jack City

Dave hosts Michael J. Fox, Shaun White and Amar’e Stoudemire.  No Alton.  The Office (the good one).

Zap2it TV Listings, Yahoo TV Listings