Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 EU treads uncharted waters to defend single currency

by Claire Rosemberg, AFP

2 hrs 26 mins ago

2 China, Japan sink deeper into diplomatic feud

by Harumi Ozawa, AFP

46 mins ago

3 UN seals historic treaty to protect threatened ecosystems

by Karl Malakunas, AFP

37 mins ago

4 French oil strikers go back to work as protest tide turns

by Charles Onians

Fri Oct 29, 1:11 pm ET

5 Haiti cholera deaths rise above 300

by Alex Ogle, AFP

Thu Oct 28, 6:25 pm ET

6 EU moves towards ‘limited’ treaty change

by Roddy Thomson, AFP

Thu Oct 28, 6:04 pm ET

7 Protesters block red carpet at Rome film festival

AFP

Thu Oct 28, 4:57 pm ET

8 AIA shares soar on trading debut in Hong Kong

by Joyce Woo, AFP

Fri Oct 29, 7:04 am ET

9 Judge releases Halliburton cement to government

By Anna Driver, Reuters

28 mins ago

10 First woman House speaker may be toppled

By Thomas Ferraro, Reuters

6 mins ago

11 Special Report: A Marshall Plan for America’s housing woes

By Matthew Goldstein, Reuters

Fri Oct 29, 12:46 pm ET

12 Boehner eyes taking House and taking on Obama

By Thomas Ferraro, Reuters

Fri Oct 29, 12:01 pm ET

13 Toyota secretly bought problem cars, lawsuit says

By Steve Gorman, Reuters

Fri Oct 29, 1:39 pm ET

14 Halliburton used flawed cement on BP well: panel

By Chris Baltimore, Reuters

Fri Oct 29, 9:40 am ET

15 Giants rout Rangers for 2-0 World Series lead

By Larry Fine, Reuters

Fri Oct 29, 1:22 am ET

16 U.S. not seeking to "contain" China: Clinton

By Arshad Mohammed, Reuters

Fri Oct 29, 12:47 am ET

17 Britain urges U.S. to take down extremist websites

By Jim Wolf, Reuters

Thu Oct 28, 4:40 pm ET

18 Obama rallies for a loyalist as final dash begins

By BEN FELLER, AP White House Correspondent

27 mins ago

19 Clinton denies asking Fla. Dem to drop Senate bid

By BRENDAN FARRINGTON, AP Political Writer

28 mins ago

20 Retired chaplains warn against ‘don’t ask’ repeal

By TOM BREEN, Associated Press

30 mins ago

21 Berlusconi amid scandal: ‘I love women’

By ALESSANDRA RIZZO, Associated Press

32 mins ago

22 Economy still sluggish as nation prepares to vote

By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer

12 mins ago

23 Sick of campaign ad avalanche? TV stations aren’t

By ANDREW VANACORE, AP Business Writer

Fri Oct 29, 1:19 pm ET

24 Renteria, Cain give Giants 2-0 World Series lead

By RONALD BLUM, AP Sports Writer

Fri Oct 29, 6:47 am ET

25 AP Enterprise: Local tax votes do well nationwide

By ROBIN HINDERY, Associated Press

Fri Oct 29, 6:43 am ET

26 Workplace safety rules a part of ND death probe

By TOM COYNE and RICK CALLAHAN, Associated Press

1 hr 15 mins ago

27 APNewsBreak: University posts info of 40K students

By JAYMES SONG, Associated Press Writer

Fri Oct 29, 10:33 am ET

28 SPIN METER: Despite claims, bailouts not over yet

By DANIEL WAGNER, AP Business Writer

Fri Oct 29, 6:46 am ET

29 Oops: Campaign season of gaffes and gotchas

By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press

Fri Oct 29, 11:53 am ET

30 Air Force Academy relents, releases cadet survey

By DAN ELLIOTT, Associated Press

48 mins ago

31 Navajo lawmakers turn to prayer amid investigation

By FELICIA FONSECA, Associated Press

Fri Oct 29, 4:34 am ET

(10 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

_{(all pictures are of carved pumpkins & may be clicked on to see larger)}

Sunday is Hallowe’en, a night for children to dress up & go Trick-or-Treating.

But this holiday has its origins waaaay back, back before the written word, in pagan times.

   

In ancient Ireland Samhain has great importance.

The Ulster Cycle is peppered with references to Samhain. Many of the adventures and campaigns undertaken by the characters therein begin at the Samhain Night feast. One such tale is Echtra Nerai (‘The Adventure of Nera’) concerning one Nera from Connacht who undergoes a test of bravery put forth by King Ailill. The prize is the king’s own gold-hilted sword. The terms hold that a man must leave the warmth and safety of the hall and pass through the night to a gallows where two prisoners had been hanged the day before, tie a twig around one man’s ankle, and return. Others had been thwarted by the demons and spirits that harassed them as they attempted the task, quickly coming back to Ailill’s hall in shame. Nera goes on to complete the task and eventually infiltrates the sídhe where he remains trapped until next Samhain. Taking etymology into consideration, it is interesting to note that the word for summer expressed in the Echtra Nerai is samraid.

The other cycles feature Samhain as well. The Cath Maige Tuireadh (Battle of Mag Tuired) takes place on Samhain. The deities Morrígan and Dagda meet and have sex before the battle against the Fomorians; in this way the Morrígan acts as a sovereignty figure and gives the victory to The Dagda’s people, the Tuatha Dé Danann.

The tale The Boyhood Deeds of Fionn includes an important scene at Samhain. The young Fionn Mac Cumhail visits Tara where Aillen the Burner, one of the Tuatha Dé Danann, puts everyone to sleep at Samhain and burns the place. Through his ingenuity Fionn is able to stay awake and slays Aillen, and is given his rightful place as head of the fianna.

For a very readable novel based on the Ulster Cycle i suggest reading Red Branch by Morgan Llywelyn.  

If you like this time period some other wonderful books by Llywelyn are Finn Mac Cool; Bard; Druids and Brian Boru.

Another wonderful Celtic Myth is The Mabinogion Tetrralogy by Evangeline Walton which brings together the four books of the Mabinogion Cycle: Prince of Annwn, The Children of Llyr, The Song of Rhiannon and The Island of the Mighty.

 

Todays Hallowe’en is a mash-up of catholic, roman & celtic rituals/holidays.

In the Roman Catholic church, All Souls Day is a day commemorating all the Christians believed to be in purgatory. Celebrated on November 2, it was first established by Odilo (d. 1049), abbot of Cluny, in the 11th century, and it was widely celebrated by the 13th century. The date follows All Saints’ Day, with the idea that remembering the saints in heaven should be followed by remembering the souls awaiting release from purgatory. Roman Catholic doctrine holds that the prayers of the faithful on earth will help cleanse these souls in order to prepare them for heaven. All Hallows Eve is the day before All Saints Day is spent in preparation for the holy day and praying for the dead. All Hallows Eve preceeds these two Holy days.

Halloween is All-Hallows’-Eve which is the night-before-All-Saints’- Day. Some tell me they understand that Halloween pranks were a post-Reformation contribution to plague Catholics who kept the vigil of All Saints. Now it is possible that Halloween was abused for such a purpose; nevertheless, during all the Christian centuries up until the simplification of the Church calendar in 1956, it was a liturgical vigil in its own right and thus has a reason for being.

Whether the Church “baptized” the customs of the Celts & Romans or chose this season for her feasts of the dead independent of them, their coincidence shows again how alike men are.

It was in the eighth century that the Church appointed a special date for the feast of All Saints, followed by a day in honor of her soon-to-be saints, the feast of All Souls. She chose this time of year, it is supposed, because in her part of the world it was the time of barrenness on the earth. The harvest was in, the summer done, the world brown and drab and mindful of death. Snow had not yet descended to comfort and hide the bony trees or blackened fields; so with little effort man could look about and see a meditation on death and life hereafter.

Apparently how you spent the vigil of All Saints depended on where you lived in Christendom. In Brittany the night was solemn and without a trace of merriment. On their “night of the dead” and for forty-eight hours thereafter, the Bretons believed the poor souls were liberated from Purgatory and were free to visit their old homes. The vigil for the souls, as well as the saints, had to be kept on this night because of course the two days were consecutive feasts – and a vigil is never kept on a feast.

Breton families prayed by their beloveds’ graves during the day, attended church for “black vespers” in the evening and in some parishes proceeded thence to the charnel house in the cemetery to pray by the bones of those not yet buried or for whom no room could be found in the cemetery. Here they sang hymns to call on all Christians to pray for the dead and, speaking for the dead, they asked prayers and more prayers.

Late in the evening in the country parishes, after supper was over, the housewives would spread a clean cloth on the table, set out pancakes, curds, and cider. And after the fire was banked and chairs set round the table for the returning loved ones, the family would recite the De Profundis (Psalm 129) again and go to bed. During the night a townsman would go about the streets ringing a bell to warn them that it was unwise to roam abroad at the time of returning souls.

It was in Ireland and Scotland and England that All Hallows’ Eve became a combination of prayer and merriment. Following the break with the Holy See, Queen Elizabeth forbade all observances connected with All Souls’ Day. In spite of her laws, however, customs survived; even Shakespeare in his Two Gentlemen of Verona has Speed tell Valentine that he knows he is in love because he has learned to speak “puling like a beggar at Hallowmas.” This line must have escaped the Queen.

   

The Roman version of Samhain was called Feralia and was observed on February 21. It was the public honoring of the manes, or spirits of the dead, which began with the private ceremonies of the Parentalia. Offerings of food were made at tombs by family members.

During Feralia, ancient Romans would travel to the tombs of their ancestors (called “Manes”), bringing offerings of wreathes, grain, salt, and bread soaked in wine; violets would be scattered around and in the tombs.  The wealthy families of Rome would prepare lavish public feasts at the tombs.

Unlike the rousing celebration of Day of the Dead, Feralia was considered a time of mourning.  Marriages were banned during this time and public worship of the Gods was stopped; no incense was burned on the altars and hearth fires were often left unlit.  One ancient story tells of a time when Fernalia was ignored during war time, causing spirits to rise from their graves and haunt the streets of Rome until tribute was made properly to the spirits in their tombs.

   

Samhain is the winter season of the ancient Celts.

The Celtic year began in November, with Samhain. The Celts were influenced principally by the lunar and stellar cycles which governed the agricultural year – beginning and ending in autumn when the crops have been harvested and the soil is prepared for the winter.

Samhain Eve, in Erse, Oidhche Shamhna, is one of the principal festivals of the Celtic calendar, and is thought to fall on or around the 31st of October.

ike most Celtic festivals, it was celebrated on a number of levels. Materially speaking it was the time of gathering food for the long winter months ahead, bringing people and their livestock in to their winter quarters. To be alone and missing at this dangerous time was to expose yourself and your spirit to the perils of imminent winter. From the point of view of a tribal people for whom a bad season meant facing a long winter of famine in which many would not survive to the spring, it was paramount.

Samhain was also a time for contemplation. Death was never very far away, yet to die was not the tragedy it is in modern times. Of signal importance to the Celts people was to die with honour and to live in the memory of the tribe and be honoured at the great feast (in Ireland this would have been the Fleadh nan Mairbh (Feast of the Dead)) which took place on Samhain Eve.

This was the most magical time of the year; Samhain was the day which did not exist. During the night the great shield of Skathach was lowered, allowing the barriers between the worlds to fade and the forces of chaos to invade the realms of order, the material world conjoining with the world of the dead. At this time the spirits of the dead and those yet to be born walked amongst the living. The dead could return to the places where they had lived and food and entertainment were provided in their honour. In this way the tribes were at one with its past, present and future. This aspect of the festival was never totally subdued by Christianity.

Samhain marked the end of the harvest, the end of the “lighter half” of the year and beginning of the “darker half”. It was traditionally celebrated over the course of several days. Many scholars believe that it was the beginning of the Celtic year. It has some elements of a festival of the dead. The Gaels believed that the border, the veil between this world and the otherworld became thin on Samhain; because some animals and plants were dying, it thus allowed the dead to reach back through the veil that separated them from the living.

   

some more on samhain in video form….

   

So what of these Hallowe’en traditions we celebrate, where do they come from?

Bonfires played a large part in the festivities celebrated down through the last several centuries, and up through the present day in some rural areas of the Celtic nations and the diaspora. Villagers were said to have cast the bones of the slaughtered cattle upon the flames. In the pre-Christian Gaelic world, cattle were the primary unit of currency and the center of agricultural and pastoral life. Samhain was the traditional time for slaughter, for preparing stores of meat and grain to last through the coming winter.

With the bonfire ablaze, the villagers extinguished all other fires. Each family then solemnly lit its hearth from the common flame, thus bonding the families of the village together. Often two bonfires would be built side by side, and the people would walk between the fires as a ritual of purification. Sometimes the cattle and other livestock would be driven between the fires, as well.

Costumes and Masks worn by the Gaels, was an attempt to copy the evil spirits or placate them. In Scotland the dead were impersonated by young men with masked, veiled or blackened faces, dressed in white.

Candle lanterns (Gaelic: samhnag), carved from turnips were part of the traditional festival. Large turnips were hollowed out, carved with faces, placed in windows to ward off evil spirits.

Guisers – men in disguise, were prevalent in 16th century in the Scottish countryside. Children going door to door “guising” (or “Galoshin” on the south bank of the lower Clyde) in costumes and masks carrying turnip lanterns, offering entertainment of various sorts in return for food or coins, was traditional in 19th century, and continued well into 20th century. At the time of mass transatlantic Irish and Scottish immigration that popularized Halloween in North America, Halloween in Ireland and Scotland had a strong tradition of guising and pranks.

Divination, or fortune-telling, is a common folkloric practice that has also survived in rural areas. The most common uses were to determine the identity of one’s future spouse, the location of one’s future home, and how many children a person might have. Seasonal foods such as apples and nuts were often employed in these rituals. Apples were peeled, the peel tossed over the shoulder, and its shape examined to see if it formed the first letter of the future spouse’s name. Nuts were roasted on the hearth and their movements interpreted – if the nuts stayed together, so would the couple. Egg whites were dropped in a glass of water, and the shapes foretold the number of future children. Children would also chase crows and divine some of these things from how many birds appeared or the direction the birds flew.

   

(10 am – promoted by ek hornbeck)

LOL It looks like the Tea Party backed candidates are too nuts for Conservative, Libertarian Bob Barr. Barr, former conservative congressman and 2008 libertarian presidential candidate, endorsed Sen. Russ Feingold, (D-WI) for re-election over his Tea Party backed opponent, Ron Johnson.

What I look for in Washington are folks in the Senate and the House who put the Constitution first. Not the “R” or the “D”, not partisan politics but the Constitution. And what you have in Russ, and I have worked closely with him over a number of years to try to rein in the Patriot Act, to try to rein in the government surveillance and so forth – this is a man who understands the Constitution, who supports and fights sometimes against his own party to defend the Constitution in the Congress of the United States in ways that are much more consistent and much more proactive than a lot of Republicans

Barr also attacked the Republican Senate candidate, Ken Buck, who is running against incumbent Democrat, Michael Bennett.

Who says that Republicans don’t criticize Republicans?

As David Weigel notes:

If Russ Feingold loses his Senate seat, it will hit Democrats harder than almost any other 2010 setback coming their way on Tuesday. . . .

If Feingold leaves the Senate, there is no storm-the-barricades opponent of war on terror spying, or advocate of campaign finance reform. There are Democrats who’ll go along with it, but there’s no one else who relishes casting a lone vote or has the media profile to attempt it and get the press to care about it. . . .

If you can’t vote for Russ Feingold at least send him $5 or whatever you can afford. We need him in the Senate.

Donate for Russ @ Act Blue

(4 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

This past Wednesday “Barack Obama was a guest on The Daily Show, thereby becoming the first sitting president to appear as Jon Stewart’s guest. (In July, Obama became the first sitting president ever to appear on The View.) In the half-hour-long interview, Stewart quizzed his grizzled guest about health-care reform, the financial crisis, and the midterm elections.”

“Stewart’s most combative query concerned National Economic Council director Larry Summers-in particular, Obama’s hiring thereof. ‘We can’t expect different results with the same people,’ Stewart said, referring to Summers’s previous stint as treasury secretary under Bill Clinton. He continued, ‘Larry Summers … that seems like the exact same person.’ Obama, inadvertently quoting his imminently quotable predecessor, replied, ‘Larry Summers did a heckuva job.’ Stewart, somewhat shocked, advised him, ‘You don’t wanna use that phrase…'”

This morning at GRITtv Laura Flanders talked with journalist and Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer, who reminds that “Summers was the chief architect of Clinton-era policies that created the economic crisis in the first place, and that Obama’s appointment of him to get us out of it was never going to result in anything but more money being thrown at Wall Street.”

It’s no wonder that there is now so much irrepressible enthusiasm among the liberals and independents and progressives who tipped the balance in the democrats favor in 2006 and in 2008 to get out and vote for democrats in the 2010 midterm elections.

Attentive readers will notice new buttons on the right labeled Daily Features.  It highlights the work of mishima, TheMomCat, and I.

It’s something of an experiment, I’d expect our readership to be using a scroll mouse or the keyboard or window buttons to scroll through all of our recent content, but perhaps you have a particular favorite and want to catch up.  If you find it useful, my grand concept for future development is to add a section highlighting our weekly regular contributions and move it all out of the way of our Twitter feed.

Now it gets more meta

If you examine my body of work you’ll know I’m a nut about scheduled blogging.  Not because I like being a nag, but because it’s a convenience to the reader.  When TheMomCat and I created this blog I resolved to myself that I’d just let things set themselves up organically.  What has developed is that we put up about 8 diaries between 6 am and 8 pm on the even hours.

Translator is a regular contributor, but not daily.  He usually submits his work after 8 pm on Fridays (Popular Culture) and Sundays (Pique the Geek), though he does post at other times.  mishima posts Random Japan on Saturdays at 4 pm.  TheMomCat posts Health and Fitness News Saturdays at 2 pm.  I post Monday Business Edition on… wait for it… Monday mornings and The Week In Review on Sunday mornings when I’m not distracted by Sports blogging.

Because you may think this blog is about politics, but it’s really about Formula One and Le Tour.

Our other contributors are more muse driven, and that’s ok.  What’s important to understand is we have an aggressive promotion policy to compliment our usual content.  If you have something you’d care to draw our attention to, please do.

Soapblox blogs can run 24/7/365.

“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.

Paul Krugman: Divided We Fail

Barring a huge upset, Republicans will take control of at least one house of Congress next week. How worried should we be by that prospect?

Not very, say some pundits. After all, the last time Republicans controlled Congress while a Democrat lived in the White House was the period from the beginning of 1995 to the end of 2000. And people remember that era as a good time, a time of rapid job creation and responsible budgets. Can we hope for a similar experience now?

No, we can’t. This is going to be terrible. In fact, future historians will probably look back at the 2010 election as a catastrophe for America, one that condemned the nation to years of political chaos and economic weakness.

New York Times Editorial: No Justification

Two years ago, when a splintered Supreme Court approved lethal injection as a means of execution in Baze v. Rees, Justice John Paul Stevens made a prophecy. Instead of ending the controversy, he said, the ruling would raise questions “about the justification for the death penalty itself.” Since then, evidence has continued to mount, showing the huge injustice of the death penalty – and the particular barbarism of this form of execution.

n the case of Jeffrey Landrigan, convicted of murder and executed by Arizona on Tuesday, the system failed him at almost every level, most disturbingly at the Supreme Court. In a 5-to-4 vote, the court’s conservative majority allowed the execution to proceed based on a stark misrepresentation.

Of the 35 states that allow the death penalty, all now execute by lethal injection. Most use a sequence of drugs that is supposed to provide a painless death, but when it is administered incorrectly it causes agony that amounts to torture. Veterinarians say the method doesn’t meet the standard for euthanizing animals.

Nicholas D. Kristoff: End the War on Pot

I dropped in on a marijuana shop here that proudly boasted that it sells “31 flavors.” It also offered a loyalty program. For every 10 purchases of pot – supposedly for medical uses – you get one free packet.

“There are five of these shops within a three-block radius,” explained the proprietor, Edward J. Kim. He brimmed with pride at his inventory and sounded like any small businessman as he complained about onerous government regulation. Like, well, state and federal laws.

But those burdensome regulations are already evaporating in California, where anyone who can fake a headache already can buy pot. Now there’s a significant chance that on Tuesday, California voters will choose to go further and broadly legalize marijuana.

Robert Reich: Halliburton and the Upcoming Election

Next Tuesday Americans will be deciding whether to hand over even more of our government to corporations that have been plundering America — such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Wellpoint insurance, Massey Energy, and Halliburton, the giant oil services company.

Not every large corporation is irresponsible, of course, but plunderers that get away with it gain a competitive advantage over the more responsible, and thereby lead a race to the bottom.

Case in point: The staff of the presidential commission investigating the BP oil spill has just revealed that Halliburton executives knew the cement it was using to seal BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil well was likely to be unstable but didn’t tell BP or act on the information.

Michael Winsap: All They Ask for Is an Unfair Advantage

All they ask for is an unfair advantage. Open any newspaper, magazine or political web site and the coverage of corporate campaign largess, much of it anonymous, bedazzles the mind. There’s $75 million from the chamber, plus another $50 million or more in undisclosed donations to major conservative organizations – as reported by the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation – that include the American Action Network, Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, the American Future Fund and the 60 Plus Association.

The progressive Campaign for America’s Future reports, “Americans for Prosperity brags that they’ll spend at least $45 million on the 2010 elections, while FreedomWorks plans to throw in another $10 million.” Both organizations, backed by right-wing billionaire David Koch, are major funders of “all things Tea Party.” . . . .

All the big donors ask for is an unfair advantage. You may recall the story, usually attributed to George Bernard Shaw, of how he propositioned a fellow dinner guest, asking if she would sleep with him for a million pounds.

She agreed, and then Shaw asked if she would do the same for ten shillings. “What do you take me for?” she angrily replied. “A prostitute?”

“We’ve established the principle,” Shaw rejoined. “Now we’re just haggling over the price.”

With this election, Congress may establish once and for all that Shaw’s is the only principle left that it still embraces, as long as the price is right.

Peter White Foreclosuregate Explained: Big Banks on the Brink

In the wake of mounting public outrage, attorneys general of 50 states and the District of Columbia have launched a joint investigation into what financial writers are calling “Foreclosuregate.” Industry spokespersons have downplayed the controversy surrounding foreclosure mills and “robo-signers.” Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase are conducting internal reviews of thousands of foreclosures, but say they believe all the underlying facts in their foreclosures are true and that any potential issues will be quickly addressed. . . .

Meanwhile, investigations are underway not only by the states’ attorneys general, but also by federal banking regulators, the US Justice Department and the Securities Exchange Commission. A number of lawsuits have been filed in Ohio, Kentucky, Mississippi, and other states, and all this attention may force banks to renegotiate their loans with more affordable terms for borrowers.

But banks are not heading down that path, instead, they are redoing questionable foreclosure papers they hope will pass muster in court. . . .

Only time will tell how the foreclosure scandal plays out. Federal regulators say their investigation won’t be completed before the end of the year. And several foreclosure experts agree with Madigan that the fight over foreclosures is just beginning.

Howard Fineman: Inside The Democrats’ Post-Election Strategy For Congress

With the enemy at the gates, and facing heavy casualties, Democrats in Congress are preparing to do what any beleaguered army does: head for the hills and leave booby-traps behind. The bigger the margin Republicans pile up next Tuesday, the less likely it is that the Democrats will be able to — or want to — do much when Congress reconvenes. They will want to do the minimum, pushing the toughest decisions on taxes, spending and debt forward to a newer, presumably more Republican, 112th Congress. It may be the only fun they’re going to have.

Eugene Robinson: Restore sanity? Too late for the Tea Party

With their “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” this weekend, political satirists Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are late to the party. This weird campaign has been Comedy Central all along.

The main source of hilarity has been the Tea Party movement and its candidates, quite a few of whom give every indication of being several sandwiches short of a picnic. Whether they win or lose – and yes, there remains the possibility that some might actually be elected – they leave us with mondo-bizarro moments that may require years of psychoanalysis for our collective political psyche to purge.

Cenk Uygur: What Obama Is Missing

Now, the reason I’m writing a piece critical of Obama at this point is because I just saw an excellent interview Jon Stewart had with him on The Daily Show. In fact, I thought it was the best interview of the president I have ever seen (my detailed analysis of the interview is here).

Stewart got him to address real, substantive criticism of his record for the first time. Almost everyone else that has interviewed him has either wildly misstated the case or challenged him from the right. Stewart asked all of the right questions. And the answers were very informative. This is what I learned.

Unfortunately, Obama doesn’t get it. He’s not alone; almost the entire Washington media doesn’t understand what the hell we’re talking about when we say change. . . .

The real issue isn’t whether you changed some provisions and didn’t change others; it’s whether you changed the system or not. That’s the change we were looking for.

Dana Milbank: On the Daily Show, Obama is the last laugh

On Comedy Central, the joke was on President Obama Wednesday night.

The president had come, on the eve of what will almost certainly be the loss of his governing majority, to plead his case before Jon Stewart, gatekeeper of the disillusioned left. But instead of displaying the sizzle that won him an army of youthful supporters two years ago, Obama had a Brownie moment.

The Daily Show host was giving Obama a tough time about hiring the conventional and Clintonian Larry Summers as his top economic advisor. . . .

Obama wore a displeased grin as Stewart diagnosed, with high accuracy, the administration’s condition: “The expectation, I think, was audacity going in there and really rooting out a corrupt system, and so the sense is, has [the] reality of what hit you in the face when you first stepped in caused you to back down from some of the more visionary things?”

“My attitude is if we’re making progress, step by step, inch by inch, day by day,” Obama said, “that we are being true to the spirit of that campaign.”

“You wouldn’t say you’d run this time as a pragmatist? It wouldn’t be, ‘Yes we can, given certain conditions?'”

“I think what I would say is yes we can, but — ”

Stewart, and the audience, laughed at the “but.”

Obama didn’t laugh. “But it’s not going to happen overnight,” he finished.

Try shouting that slogan at a campaign rally, dude.

So tomorrow is Jon and Stephen’s big show and almost every estimate says that they’re going to blow Glenn Beck out of the water on crowd size.

Which is unsurprising to me because this whole ‘silent majority’ thing is bullshit.  Republicans represent the 24% of the most racist, reactionary, and ignorant Americans and the ‘Tea Party’ is it’s most fascist, Bircher, paranoid, delusional fringe.

Except for the .01%ers, the plutocrats who run it.

But they run the Democratic Party too, you can’t kid yourself, and their performance with historic majorities has been horrible.

You know, from an “electoral victory” kind of standpoint.

If you can’t fucking summon enough enthusiasm from your party base because your policies suck you deserve to lose your phony baloney jobs you miserable failures at the one thing you’re supposed to be good at- politics!

I have no sympathy at all for anyone who’s going to lose a prime Capitol Hill parking spot for their BMW.

You are watching the meltdown of the elites.  Our “best” and most prestigious Universities have produced a generation of morons who are simply not good at their jobs.

We need to fire them.

I’d like to draw your attention to this excellent diary by Translator about the melt down at a local party event in Kentucky.  My local runs projects way more complicated 6 times a year with a skeleton crew.

It is not rocket science.  If this is the best a “community organizer” can do…

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

October 29 is the 302nd day of the year (303rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 63 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1787, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera “Don Giovanni” makes its debut in Prague at the Estates Theater. It is an opera in two acts with the music by Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It is about a “young, arrogant, sexually prolific nobleman who abuses and outrages everyone else in the cast, until he encounters something he cannot kill, beat up, dodge, or outwit.” The opera is sometimes characterized as comic because it combines comedy, drama and the supernatural. It is among the top 20 operas performed in North America.

 539 BC – Cyrus the Great entered the city of Babylon and detained Nabonidus.

437 – Valentinian III, Western Roman Emperor, marries Licinia Eudoxia, daughter of his cousin Theodosius II, Eastern Roman Emperor in Constantinople unifying the two branches of the House of Theodosius

969 – Byzantine troops occupy Antioch Syria

1268 – Conradin, the last legitimate male heir of the Hohenstaufen dynasty of Kings of Germany and Holy Roman Emperors, is executed along with his companion Frederick I, Margrave of Baden by Charles I of Sicily, a political rival and ally to the hostile Roman Catholic church.

1390 – First trial for witchcraft in Paris leading to the death of three people.

1422 – Charles VII of France becomes king in succession to his father Charles VI of France

1467 – Battle of Brustem: Charles the Bold defeats Liege

1618 – English adventurer, writer, and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh is beheaded for allegedly conspiring against James I of England.

1658 – Action of 29 October 1658 (Naval battle)

1665 – Battle of Ambuila, where Portuguese forces defeated the forces of the Kingdom of Kongo and decapitated king Antonio I of Kongo, also called Nvita a Nkanga.

1675 – Leibniz makes the first use of the long s  as a symbol of the integral in calculus.

1787 – Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni receives its first performance in Prague.

1792 – Mount Hood (Oregon) is named after the British naval officer Alexander Arthur Hood by Lt. William E. Broughton who spotted the mountain near the mouth of the Willamette River.

1859 – Spain declares war on Morocco.

1863 – Eighteen countries meeting in Geneva agree to form the International Red Cross.

1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Wauhatchie – forces under Union General Ulysses S. Grant ward off a Confederate attack led by General James Longstreet. Union forces thus open a supply line into Chattanooga, Tennessee.

1886 – The first ticker-tape parade takes place in New York City when office workers spontaneously throw ticker tape into the streets as the Statue of Liberty is dedicated.

1901 – In Amherst, Massachusetts nurse Jane Toppan is arrested for murdering the Davis family of Boston with an overdose of morphine.

1901 – Capital punishment: Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of US President William McKinley, is executed by electrocution.

1918 – The German High Seas Fleet is incapacitated when sailors mutiny on the night of the 29th-30th, an action which would trigger the German revolution.

1921 – The Link River Dam, a part of the Klamath Reclamation Project, is completed.

1921 – Second trial of Sacco and Vanzetti in USA.

1921 – The Harvard University football team loses to Centre College, ending a 25 game winning streak. This is considered one of the biggest upsets in college football.

1922 – The King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III, appoints Benito Mussolini as Prime Minister.

1923 – Turkey becomes a republic following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.

1929 – The New York Stock Exchange crashes in what will be called the Crash of ’29 or “Black Tuesday”, ending the Great Bull Market of the 1920s and beginning the Great Depression.

1941 – Holocaust: In the Kaunas Ghetto over 10,000 Jews are shot by German occupiers at the Ninth Fort, a massacre known as the “Great Action”.

1942 – Holocaust: In the United Kingdom, leading clergymen and political figures hold a public meeting to register outrage over Nazi Germany’s persecution of Jews.

1944 – The city of Breda in the Netherlands is liberated by 1st Polish Armoured Division.

1945 – Getulio Vargas, president of Brazil, resigns.

1948 – Safsaf massacre

1953 – BCPA Flight 304 DC-6 crashes near San Francisco, California. Pianist William Kapell is among the 19 killed.

1955 – The Soviet battleship Novorossiisk strikes a World War II mine in the harbor at Sevastopol.

1956 – Suez Crisis begins: Israeli forces invade the Sinai Peninsula and push Egyptian forces back toward the Suez Canal.

1956 – Tangier Protocol is signed: The international city Tangier is reintegrated into Morocco.

1957 – Israel’s prime minister David Ben Gurion and five of his ministers are injured when a hand grenade is tossed into Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.

1960 – In Louisville, Kentucky, Cassius Clay (who later takes the name Muhammad Ali) wins his first professional fight.

1961 – Syria exits from the United Arab Republic.

1964 – Tanganyika and Zanzibar unite to form the Republic of Tanzania.

1964 – A collection of irreplaceable gems, including the 565 carat (113 g) Star of India, is stolen by a group of thieves (among them is “Murph the surf”) from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

1966 – National Organization For Women is founded.

1967 – London criminal Jack McVitie is murdered by the Kray twins, leading to their eventual imprisonment and downfall.

1967 – Montreal’s World Fair, Expo 67, closes with over 50 million visitors.

1969 – The first-ever computer-to-computer link is established on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet.

1980 – Demonstration flight of a secretly modified C-130 for an Iran hostage crisis rescue attempt ends in crash landing at Eglin Air Force Base’s Duke Field, Florida leading to cancellation of Operation Credible Sport.

1980 – Mark David Chapman, John Lennon’s murderer, leaves for New York from his home in Hawaii.

1983 – Over 500,000 people demonstrate against cruise missiles in The Hague, Netherlands.

1985 – Major General Samuel K. Doe is announced the winner of the first multi-party election in Liberia.

1986 – British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher opens the last stretch of the M25 motorway.

1991 – The American Galileo spacecraft makes its closest approach to 951 Gaspra, becoming the first probe to visit an asteroid.

1994 – Francisco Martin Duran fires over two dozen shots at the White House (Duran is later convicted of trying to kill US President Bill Clinton).

1998 – Apartheid: In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission presents its report, which condemns both sides for committing atrocities.

1998 – Space Shuttle Discovery blasts off on STS-95 with 77-year old John Glenn on board, making him the oldest person to go into space.

1998 – ATSC HDTV broadcasting in the United States is inaugurated with the launch of STS-95 space shuttle mission.

1998 – While en route from Adana to Ankara, a Turkish Airlines flight with a crew of 6 and 33 passengers is hijacked by a Kurdish militant who orders the pilot to fly to Switzerland. The plane instead lands in Ankara after the pilot tricked the hijacker into thinking that he is landing in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia to refuel.

1998 – Hurricane Mitch, the second deadliest Atlantic hurricane in history, makes landfall in Honduras.

1998 – The Gothenburg nightclub fire in Sweden claims 63 lives and injures 200.

1999 – A large cyclone devastates Orissa, India.

2002 – Ho Chi Minh City ITC Inferno, a fire destroys a luxurious department store where 1500 people shopping. Over 60 people died and over 100 are missing. It is the deadliest disaster in Vietnam during peacetime.

2004 – The Arabic news network Al Jazeera broadcasts an excerpt from a video of Osama bin Laden in which the terrorist leader first admits direct responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks and references the 2004 U.S. presidential election.

2004 – In Rome, European heads of state sign the Treaty and Final Act establishing the first European Constitution.

2005 – 29 October 2005 Delhi bombings kill more than 60.

2008 – Delta Air Lines merges with Northwest Airlines, creating the world’s largest airline and reducing the number of US legacy carriers to 5.

Bill Clinton Urged Florida Democrat to Quit Senate Bid



By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and JEFF ZELENY

Published: October 28, 2010

WASHINGTON – Former President Bill Clinton last week almost succeeded in persuading Kendrick B. Meek, the Democratic nominee for the Senate in Florida, to drop out of the three-way race – but Mr. Meek changed his mind at the last minute, a spokesman for Mr. Clinton said Thursday evening.  

Matt McKenna, Mr. Clinton’s spokesman, said the former president had concluded that Mr. Meek’s candidacy was struggling and was urging him to drop out and endorse Charlie Crist, the state’s Republican governor, who is running for the Senate as an independent.

Jon Stewart’s ‘Daily Show’ has exploded beyond its humble late-night comedy roots



By Dan Zak

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, October 29, 2010

Springsteen detonates from above. Red and blue lights somersault. The drumbeats and guitar riffs of “Born to Run” flood the theater. The audience quakes while Jon Stewart leans over his desk for a last-minute powwow with a trio of writer-producers on Tuesday.

“Tell them to keep the pace up,” Stewart says, his voice inaudible over the roar in the theater but carried clearly through his microphone to the giant white production truck on Sixth Street NW. Inside the truck, in front of a flickering wall of switchboards and video feeds that looks like a mini NORAD, the crew gets the message. This is a 22-minute song-and-dance. Nothing more, nothing less.

USA

Yes we can, Obama said. But can he?

US gets ready for a new kind of presidency

By Rupert Cornwell in Washington Friday, 29 October 2010

For barack Obama, the past is mere prologue. From January 2011, the President will be part of an entirely new political play in Washington. Unless every poll in these last days of the mid-term election campaign is wrong, next week’s vote will force him to deal with a world in which Republicans have a majority in the House and near-parity in the Senate – and in which his plans for the presidency will have to take quite a different tack. For Mr Obama’s first term, at least, the time of sweeping political change is at an end.

And yet, just possibly, a Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections could be the makingof the President.

Tests showed unstable cement in gulf oil well before explosion



By Steven Mufson

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, October 29, 2010; 12:01 AM

A cement mixture intended to temporarily seal BP’s Macondo exploration well repeatedly failed lab tests before the April 20 blowout, a presidential commission investigating the oil spill said Thursday.  As early as February, oil-field service giant Halliburton was getting poor results in lab tests of the recipe for the cement it was planning to use, according to evidence collected by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling.

Three separate tests suggested that the mixture would be “unstable,” according to a commission staff letter released Thursday.

Europe

Angela Merkel struggles to win support for EU bailout rules at Brussels summit

Eleven countries speak out against vote sanction as Cameron fails in effort to freeze £107bn budget

Nicholas Watt and Ian Traynor in Brussels The Guardian, Friday 29 October 2010  

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, was struggling last night to win widespread support across Europe for a major revision of EU law to underpin the multibillion pound bailout of Greece.

A series of countries spoke out at last night’s EU summit in Brussels against Merkel’s demand for voting rights to be withdrawn from member states that fail to meet strict eurozone fiscal rules.

The opposition, which came as David Cameron abandoned a campaign for a freeze in the EU’s £107bn budget for next year, means that Merkel is expected to win only a small revision of EU law.

Russia’s hungry bears dig up graves



October 29, 2010

Famished bears in northern Russia have resorted to digging up graves in cemeteries – and reportedly eating at least one body – after a scorching summer destroyed their natural food sources of forest berries and mushrooms, officials say.

The brown bears’ grisly habit is forcing locals in the Arctic Circle region of Komi to mount 24-hour patrols, protecting their families and livestock out of concern that the bears might get a taste for fresher human flesh, said Pyotr Lobanov, a regional spokesman for the Emergencies Ministry.

Middle East

Iran will be back in the frame

 

By Victor Kotsev  

TEL AVIV – As of late last month, the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have practically been on life support, in a vegetative state. United States President Barack Obama tried to keep them going, but was stonewalled and opted instead for a delay in pronouncing them dead – until after the mid-term elections on November 2. Then, the predominant narrative goes, he could put more pressure on Israel [1]. Rising tensions with Iran and its allies, however, could interfere with this projection.

While, as many analysts have argued, for the duration of the mid-term-elections campaign Obama needed badly some semblance of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in order to shore up his foreign policy record and to help his fellow Democrats get re-elected to the United States Congress, it is not entirely clear what will happen after the elections.

Hezbollah urges Hariri case boycott

Hassan Nasrallah warns against Lebanese co-operation with investigation into 2005 assassination of Rafiq Hariri.

Last Modified: 28 Oct 2010 23:12 GMT  

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Hezbollah movement, has urged all Lebanese to boycott a UN-backed investigation into the murder of Rafiq Hariri, Lebanon’s former prime minister.

In a televised address on Thursday, he warned that the country had reached “a very dangerous point”.

“I call on all Lebanese, citizens and politicians alike, to boycott this tribunal and end all co-operation with its investigators.

“Any further co-operation with the tribunal is equal to an attack on the resistance,” Nasrallah said, referring to his predominatly Shia Muslim movement.

Asia

Hopes fade for Indonesian tsunami survivors

Hopes are fading for more than 300 people still registered missing after Monday’s tsunami in Indonesia, as the death toll climbs to 394.

The BBC 29 October 2010  

Disaster official Ade Edward says the 3m (10ft) surge is likely to have carried many of the missing out to sea, or buried them in the sand.

The first major aid ships reached the worst-hit Mentawai Islands on Thursday.

The government has pledged millions of dollars for the relief effort, but relief workers say more is needed.

Aid agencies said people on the islands still urgently needed food and shelter, three days after a 7.7-magnitude undersea earthquake triggered the tsunami.

Afghan warlord’s private army trained in Australia

EXCLUSIVE

Rafael Epstein

October 29, 2010

SENIOR militia fighters loyal to a notorious Afghan warlord have been flown to Australia to train with elite special forces as part of a covert strategy to strengthen military operations against the Taliban.

The six fighters are allied to Matiullah Khan, a powerful Oruzgan warlord with whom Dutch forces refused to work because of his alleged connections to murder and extortion.

Advertisement: Story continues below The government did not reveal that the men were in Australia, even though their trip coincided with the parliamentary debate last week on the Afghan war.

Africa

Hero of ‘Hotel Rwanda’ is declared enemy of the state

Man who saved Tutsis during the genocide says ‘the government is coming after me’  

By Daniel Howden, Africa Correspondent Friday, 29 October 2010

The man made famous by the film Hotel Rwanda and credited with saving more than 1,200 Tutsis during the 1994 genocide said yesterday that he fears for his life after the country’s President made him “an enemy of the state”.

Paul Rusesabagina, a former hotel manager currently living in Brussels where he says his home has been repeatedly ransacked, will be charged in Rwanda with links to a terrorist group.

Rwanda’s chief prosecutor said this week that Mr Rusesabagina has been financing commanders in the FDLR, a rebel army across the border in the Democratic Republic of Congo made up from ethnic Hutus responsible for the 1994 genocide.

Somalia’s Shebab executes two girls for ‘spying’  



By Sapa-AFP

A firing squad shot the pair in front of hundreds of local residents Wednesday afternoon, in the first known instance of such an execution over spying charges against women.

“These women were spying for the enemy and were arrested by mujahideen (holy warriors)” last week, Sheikh Yusuf Ali Ugas, the insurgent group’s regional commander, told the crowd after the execution.

“After a long investigation, they confessed to their crimes,” he added.

Ignoring Asia A Blog  

I went to the Democratic Hoedown this evening (Thursday) in Richmond, KY.  Most all of the candidates were there, and the sheriff even gave me a chicken wing.  Folks have asked me to comment on it, so we shall start with that.

I guess that it is just rural Kentucky, but it was horrible.  No people speaking, no one identifying herself or himself as a candidate.  I did see Conway and our county executive, but they did not talk, at least as long as I stayed.

I got there on time at 5:30 PM, and the place was filling.  The sound system, as it was, was playing MPG country music, very twangy.  Most of  you that read me know that I am not fond of twangy.  At least it was not too loud, considering that acoustics of the hall consisted of all floors and ceilings being just flat, polished surfaces.  Actually, the acoustics got better as more people came inside.

But there is not much that one can do with a single Fender amplifier about the size of a very small suitcase and two freestanding speakers about the size of my computer screen, maybe half again as large.  It was horrible.

Looking over the audience, I saw that I, at 53 years old, was one of the younger people there.  I really looked at the crowd of about 350 to 400 people, and never saw an Asian or Hispanic person.  I DID see perhaps 15 black folks, but at least eight of them were working for the firm that catered the less than excellent food.

There were no candidates speaking, just anonymous faces with buttons.  I did recognize the sheriff who gave me a piece of fried chicken.  If I had been a candidate, I would have put on a big name tag saying who I was and to ask for your vote.

Perhaps it got better later, but I left after an hour.  The horrible acoustics got to me, sort of making my head reel.  If this is a rally, may something else help us out better.

I did get a Conway can hugger, and will probably just keep it for posterity.  If that was a get out the vote function, Paul will win.

I still will go to my polling place Tuesday and vote for Conway.  But this exercise did not impress me.

What I do not understand is why it was not more professionally coordinated.  If a professional had been running it, there would have been Bourbon (this IS Kentucky) at first, then someone to announce all of the candidates, and very short statements from each of them, along with the announcer telling people where their polling places will be Tuesday.  Instead, it was sort of like a church potluck dinner, with the assumption that everyone knows each other.  Out of around 400 people, I found ONE person that I knew, since I used to work with her.  She is retired now, but is a very dedicated Democrat, so I was not surprised to see her there.  We spoke for about 45 seconds, just trading niceties.  After the hour, I just went back to the house.

That is no way to run a function.  Bad food, bad music, extremely bad acoustics, and no plan is not the way to gain votes.  Please tell me what your think.

Warmest regards,

Doc

Crossposted at Docudharma.com and Dailykos.com