What You Don’t Know about "Mortgagegate" Could Crush the U.S. Banking System

By Shah Gilani, Contributing Editor, Money Morning

October 15, 2010

(T)he odds that a financial tsunami will result from Mortgagegate are building each day. If this storm strikes with its full fury , it could be the kind of credit-crisis aftershock that undermines the tentative handhold that the U.S. recovery is so desperately clinging to.

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Here’s the problem. In creating MERS, these institutions actually changed the land-title system that this country – for much of its history – has relied upon to determine legal ownership status of land titleholders.

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MERS is facing class-action lawsuits and civil racketeering suits around the country and their members are being individually named in all these suits. One suit alleges that MERS owes California a potential $60 billion to $120 billion in unpaid land-recording fees.

How Wall Street Hid Its Mortgage Mess

By WILLIAM D. COHAN, The New York Times

October 14, 2010, 7:30 pm

This is where things got interesting. Clayton provided the inquiry commission with documents that summarized its findings for the six quarters between January 2006 and June 2007, when mortgage-underwriting standards were arguably at their worst and the housing bubble was inflating rapidly. Of the 911,039 mortgages Clayton examined for its Wall Street clients – a sample of about 10 percent of the total mortgages that the banks intended to package into securities – only 54 percent were found to meet the underwriting guidelines. Standards deteriorated over time, with only 47 percent of the mortgages Clayton examined meeting the guidelines by the second quarter of 2007.

So, did Wall Street throw all those mortgages back into the pond as being too risky for securities they were going to sell to clients? Of course not – many were packaged right into their product. There were degrees of nefariousness: Some Wall Street firms were better about including higher-quality mortgages in their mortgage-backed securities than others. For instance, at Goldman Sachs, 77 percent of the nearly 112,000 mortgages reviewed met the guidelines, while at Citigroup only 58 percent did. At Lehman Brothers, which later filed for bankruptcy, 74 percent of the mortgages sampled and then packaged up as securities met underwriting guidelines.

In fact, the banks probably weren’t disappointed at all by the shaky status of many of these loans: in part because they could use the information that some of the mortgages were rotten to get a discount from the mortgage originators on the price paid for the entire portfolio. The people who should have been concerned were the investors who bought the securities from the Wall Street firms. But the amazing revelation of the Sacramento hearing was that the investment banks did not pass this very valuable information on to their customers.

The Mortgage Morass

By PAUL KRUGMAN, The New York Times

Published: October 14, 2010

Now an awful truth is becoming apparent: In many cases, the documentation doesn’t exist. In the frenzy of the bubble, much home lending was undertaken by fly-by-night companies trying to generate as much volume as possible. These loans were sold off to mortgage “trusts,” which, in turn, sliced and diced them into mortgage-backed securities. The trusts were legally required to obtain and hold the mortgage notes that specified the borrowers’ obligations. But it’s now apparent that such niceties were frequently neglected. And this means that many of the foreclosures now taking place are, in fact, illegal.

This is very, very bad. For one thing, it’s a near certainty that significant numbers of borrowers are being defrauded – charged fees they don’t actually owe, declared in default when, by the terms of their loan agreements, they aren’t.

Beyond that, if trusts can’t produce proof that they actually own the mortgages against which they have been selling claims, the sponsors of these trusts will face lawsuits from investors who bought these claims – claims that are now, in many cases, worth only a small fraction of their face value.

And who are these sponsors? Major financial institutions – the same institutions supposedly rescued by government programs last year. So the mortgage mess threatens to produce another financial crisis.

But always remember that as large as the problem is for the banksters your proximate problem is that you may not have clear title to your property if it’s registered with MERS and not the town, city, county, or state.

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

This Day in History: October 16 October 16 is the 289th day of the year (290th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 76 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1916, Margaret Sanger opened a family planning and birth control clinic at 46 Amboy St. in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, the first of its kind in the United States. It was raided 9 days later by the police. She served 30 days in prison. An initial appeal was rejected but in 1918 an opinion written by Judge Frederick E. Crane of the New York Court of Appeals allowed doctors to prescribe contraception.

This was the beginning of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Sanger founded the American Birth Control League in 1921,  which changed its name to Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. in 1942. Since then, it has grown to 850 clinic locations in the United States, with a total budget of approximately US$1 billion, and provides an array of services to over three million people.

Dealing with sexuality, the organization is often a center of controversy in the United States. The organization’s status as the country’s leading provider of surgical abortions has put it in the forefront of national debate over the issue. Planned Parenthood has also been a party in numerous Supreme Court cases.

In scanning through the articles on Margaret Sanger, I found this bit of trivia quite amusing

In 1926, Sanger gave a lecture on birth control to the women’s auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan in Silver Lake, New Jersey. She described it as “one of the weirdest experiences I had in lecturing,” and added that she had to use only “the most elementary terms, as though I were trying to make children understand.” Sanger’s talk was well-received by the group and as a result “a dozen invitations to similar groups were proffered.”

 56 – Magister militum Ricimer defeats Emperor Avitus at Piacenza and becomes master of the Western Roman Empire.

1384 – Jadwiga is crowned King of Poland, although she is a woman.

1590 – Carlo Gesualdo, composer, Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, murders his wife, Donna Maria d’Avalos, and her lover Fabrizio Carafa, the Duke of Andria at the Palazzo San Severo in Naples.

1780 – Royalton, Vermont and Tunbridge, Vermont are the last major raids of the American Revolutionary War.

1781 – George Washington captures Yorktown, Virginia after the Siege of Yorktown.

1793 – Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI, is guillotined at the height of the French Revolution.

1793 – The Battle of Wattignies ends in a French victory.

1813 – The Sixth Coalition attacks Napoleon Bonaparte in the Battle of Leipzig.

1834 – Much of the ancient structure of the Palace of Westminster in London is burnt to the ground.

1841 – Queen’s University is founded in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

1843 – Sir William Rowan Hamilton comes up with the idea of quaternions, a non-commutative extension of complex numbers.

1846 – William TG Morton first demonstrated ether anesthesia at the Massachusetts General Hospital in the Ether Dome.

1859 – John Brown leads a raid on Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia.

1869 – The Cardiff Giant, one of the most famous American hoaxes, is “discovered”.

1869 – Girton College, Cambridge is founded, becoming England’s first residential college for women.

1875 – Brigham Young University is founded in Provo, Utah.

1882 – The Nickel Plate Railroad opens for business.

1905 – The Partition of Bengal in India takes place.

1906 – The Captain of Kopenick fools the city hall of Kopenick and several soldiers by impersonating a Prussian officer.

1916 – Margaret Sanger founds Planned Parenthood by opening the first U.S. birth control clinic.

1923 – The Walt Disney Company is founded by Walt Disney and his brother, Roy Disney.

1934 – Chinese Communists begin the Long March; it ended a year and four days later, by which time Mao Zedong had regained his title as party chairman.

1939 – World War II: First attack on British territory by the German Luftwaffe.

1940 – Benjamin O. Davis Sr. is named the first African American general in the United States Army.

1940 – Holocaust: The Warsaw Ghetto is established.

1945 – The Food and Agriculture Organization is founded in Quebec City, Canada.

# 1946 – Nuremberg Trials: Execution of the convicted Nazi leaders of the Main Trial.

1949 – Nikolaos Zachariadis, leader of the Communist Party of Greece, announces a “temporary cease-fire”, effectively ending the Greek Civil War.

1949 – The diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic are established.

1951 – The first Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, is assassinated in Rawalpindi.

1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis between the United States and Cuba begins.

1964 – The People’s Republic of China detonates its first nuclear weapon.

1964 – Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Aleksey Kosygin are inaugurated as General Secretary of the CPSU and Premier, respectively.

1968 – United States athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos are kicked off the USA’s team for participating in the 1968 Olympics Black Power salute.

1968 – Kingston, Jamaica is rocked by the Rodney Riots, inspired by the barring of Walter Rodney from the country.

1970 – In response to the October Crisis terrorist kidnapping, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau of Canada invokes the War Measures Act.

1973 – Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1975 – The Balibo Five, a group of Australian television journalists based in the town of Balibo in the then Portuguese Timor (now East Timor), are killed by Indonesian troops.

1975 – Rahima Banu, a 2-year old girl from the village of Kuralia in Bangladesh, is the last known person to be infected with naturally occurring smallpox.

1975 – The Australian Coalition opposition parties using their senate majority, vote to defer the decision to grant supply of funds for the Whitlam Government’s annual budget, sparking the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis.

1978 – Pope John Paul II is elected after the October 1978 Papal conclave.

1978 – Wanda Rutkiewicz is the first Pole and the first European woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

1984 – Desmond Tutu is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1986 – Reinhold Messner becomes the first person to summit all 14 Eight-thousanders.

1986 – Ron Arad, Israeli Weapons System Officer, is captured by Lebanese Shi’ite militia Amal.

1991 – Luby’s massacre: George Hennard runs amok in Killeen, Texas, killing 23 and wounding 20 in Luby’s Cafeteria.

1993 – Anti-Nazi riot breaks out in Welling in Kent, after police stop protesters approaching the British National Party headquarters.

1995 – The Million Man March occurs in Washington, D.C.

1995 – The Skye Bridge is opened.

1996 – Eighty-four people are killed and more than 180 injured as 47,000 football fans attempt to squeeze into the 36,000-seat Estadio Mateo Flores in Guatemala City.

1998 – Former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet is arrested in London on a warrant from Spain requesting his extradition on murder charges.

2002 – Bibliotheca Alexandrina in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria that was lost in antiquity, is officially inaugurated.

2006 – A magnitude 6.7 earthquake rocks Hawaii, causing property damage, injuries, landslides, power outages, and the closure of Honolulu International Airport. See 2006 Hawaii Earthquake.

For foreclosure processors hired by mortgage lenders, speed equaled money



By Ariana Eunjung Cha and Zachary A. Goldfarb

Washington Post Staff Writers

Saturday, October 16, 2010; 12:57 AM

Millions of homes have been seized by banks during the economic crisis through a mass production system of foreclosures that was set up to prioritize one thing over everything else: speed.

With 2 million homes in foreclosure and another 2.3 million seriously delinquent on their mortgages – the biggest logjam of distressed properties the market has ever seen – companies involved in the foreclosure process were paid to move cases quickly through the pipeline.

What makes a masterpiece?

Five experts explore the genius behind some of the world’s greatest works of art, from Sri Lanka’s reclining Buddha to Caravaggio’s momentous supper

By Paul Joannides, art historian Saturday, 16 October 2010

Botticelli’s picture was almost certainly painted to celebrate a marriage. “The Birth of Venus” was a subject frequent in antique and, very occasionally, medieval art. But Botticelli’s treatment is quite new and demonstrates a powerful visual intelligence. The painting’s size demanded breadth and clarity. It is magical theatre: at the left, Zephyr and Chloris’ conjoined silhouette is that of a looped-up canopy and the receptive cloak on the right doubles as a curtain withdrawn to reveal Venus’ beauty. Botticelli’s display, inspired by the curtaining of altarpieces, may, in turn, have prompted Raphael’s exploitation of the motif in the Sistine Madonna, with its majestic vision of thecloud-borne Virgin.

USA

G.I.’s Accused in Deaths Were Isolated From Officers  

 

By ELISABETH BUMILLER and WILLIAM YARDLEY

Published: October 15, 2010

WASHINGTON – Soldiers in an American Army platoon accused of murdering Afghan civilians for sport say they took orders from a ringleader who collected body parts as war trophies, were threatened with death if they spoke up and smoked hashish on their base almost daily.

Now family members and the military are asking a central question: How could their commanders not know what was going on?

“I just don’t understand how this went so far,” said Christopher Winfield, the father of Specialist Adam C. Winfield, one of the platoon members charged with murder. “I’ve been in management for 20 years; you know what your people are doing.”

FBI was warned of Mumbai plotter’s terrorism ties

Agents investigated wife’s claims in 2005, three years before attack  

By Sebastian Rotella

Three years before Pakistani terrorists struck Mumbai in 2008, federal agents in New York City investigated a tip that an American businessman was training in Pakistan with the group that later executed the attack.

The previously undisclosed allegations against David Coleman Headley, who became a key figure in the plot that killed 166 people, came from his wife after a domestic dispute that resulted in his arrest in 2005.

Europe

De Wever set to submit proposal for power-sharing

The Irish Times – Saturday, October 16, 2010

ARTHUR BEESLEY European Correspondent

HARDLINE FLEMISH nationalist Bart De Wever is making a fresh attempt to break four months of political paralysis in Belgium with a new power-sharing proposal to the country’s linguistically divided leaders.

Charged with a 10-day mission of “clarification” by King Albert II late last week, Mr De Wever will submit a power-sharing proposal to seven political parties tomorrow in anticipation of a response by noon on Monday.

The country has been in the charge of a caretaker government since elections in June which followed the collapse of a five-partycoalition in April.

France meets deadline to reply to EU over Roma deportation bill

France has met a deadline to submit a reply to a challenge by the European Commission over recently passed immigration legislation that has seen hundreds of ethnic Roma deported to Romania and Bulgaria.

IMMIGRATION | 16.10.2010

France has sent its reply to the EU executive on the deportation of ethnic Roma, meeting a midnight deadline in order to avoid legal action over the controversial expulsions.

“We received the French documents, we will analyze them during the weekend,” European Commission spokesman Matthew Newman said.

Newman would not give any details of the French reply, but French Immigration Minister Eric Besson had earlier signaled that President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government was prepared to adapt the immigration legislation “to comply with European law” and to have it drawn up to be presented to parliament by December.

Middle East

Palestinians furious at Israeli plan to build more homes in east Jerusalem

Palestinians accused Israel on Friday of doing everything it could to scupper peace talks in an angry response to the announcement of a fresh batch of homes for Israeli settlers in contested east Jerusalem.

By Mark Weiss in Jerusal

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, accused Israel of “killing” opportunities to revive peace talks, which have stalled over the issue of settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Israeli officials said the announcement of 238 new housing units in the east Jerusalem neighbourhoods of Ramot and Pisgat Ze’ev was part of a wider housing plan. They said the number of new apartments planned for east Jerusalem had been cut following criticism from Washington. According to the Israeli officials the US protest had been mild.

US military’s Iraq death toll lags behind other counts



Lara Jakes

October 16, 2010

BAGHDAD: An official US military tally puts the death toll of Iraqi civilians and security forces at almost 77,000 between January 2004 and August 2008 – the darkest chapter of Iraq’s sectarian warfare and the US troop surge to quell it.

The little-noticed body count is the most extensive data on Iraqi war casualties ever released by the American military. But the tally falls short of the estimated 85,694 deaths of civilians and security officials between January 2004 to October 31, 2008, as counted last year by the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry.

Asia

Nazarbayev Dictates a Bright Future for Kazakhstan

Dreaming of Snow Leopards

By Erich Follath and Christian Neef  

It’s one of those mild, cloudless summer nights in Astana, when the sky over the surrounding steppe won’t get completely dark.

A stage has been set up in Lovers’ Park behind Kazakhstan’s huge, triumphal-arch-like Ministry of Oil and Gas. Kazakhstan’s top artists are performing scenes from the history of the nomadic country, Italian tenor Andrea Boccelli is singing and the guests in the VIP stand are applauding with delight. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has traveled here along with his Turkish counterpart, Abdullah Gül, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Jordan’s King Abdullah. They have also been joined by the heads of state of Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Ukraine.

Wen’s push for open China makes splash in popular press



John Garnaut

October 16, 2010

BEIJING: The bold campaign for political reform being led by the Premier, Wen Jiabao, is finally spilling over into the mainstream Chinese media, as the Communist Party leadership wrestles over the country’s future behind closed doors.

The Southern Weekend, a popular newspaper, features Mr Wen on its front page this weekend and quotes him as saying the will of the people for political reform is ”irresistible”.

”I will not fall in spite of a strong wind and harsh rain and I will not yield till the last day of my life,” Mr Wen is quoted as saying.

Africa

Mugabe eyes 2011 elections

President Robert Mugabe said Friday that Zimbabwe’s unity government should dissolve within months, calling for elections next year despite stalled efforts at political reform.

By Sapa-AFP  

The 86-year-old leader, in power since independence in 1980, was forced into a power-sharing deal with his rival, current Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai in February last year.

Their arrangement was strained from the start, but tensions between them have again ripped into the open with Tsvangirai struggling to assert his authority within the power-sharing regime.

In Cape Town, a clamor for independence

A Cape Town political party is hoping to turn the differences between the Western Cape and the rest of South Africa into electoral votes and, ultimately, independence for the region.

By Ian Evans, Correspondent / October 15, 2010  

Cape Town, South Africa

Cape Town, South Africa

Residents of the Western Cape have long seen themselves as different from the rest of South Africa.

With its more laid-back lifestyle, wine estates, white beaches and predominantly white and Cape Coloured population, it’s less African than the eight other provinces. It’s difference is highlighted by the hold that opposition party Democratic Alliance has on provincial and Cape Town politics.

But while the DA taps into disillusionment with ruling African National Congress central governance, a fledgling party in the Cape is hoping to turn that disenchantment into full-blown independence and aseparate state.

Latin America

Supporting cast leaves the stage at end of the greatest show on earth

All week, millions watched the rescue of ‘Los 33’. Now the site of the miracle is just another hole in the ground. Guy Adams bids farewell to the San Jose mine

Saturday, 16 October 2010

Alfonso Avalos spent yesterday morning folding up the last of his Chilean flags, and attempting to squeeze an eclectic selection of his worldly goods into the suitcases he had first carried up the rocky hillside that was to become Camp Hope more than two months ago.

Fitting two tents, along with a wide-ranging selection of pots and pans, into the available space was proving to be quite a challenge. So he took a break from his labours to sing a final folk song with some of the neighbours who have shared the ups and downs of an extraordinary vigil.

Ignoring Asia A Blog  

It seems that I get the most response from this series, which I enjoy writing immensely.  However, entertainment is sort of trivial compared to science, so I urge everyone to read the series about science and technology that I post on Sunday evenings, Pique the Geek.  No matter.  The Who are one the most important bands to release music, and I am glad to write about them.

I suspect that many of you will not recognize this excellent piece of music, since it was first released in 1966, before The Who became a sensation with the release of Tommy in 1969.  However, Pete Townshend always called it the parent of Tommy, and I think that it is just wonderful.

To make my point about how much influence that The Who have had in popular music, I have included several covers that many consider to be important bands these days.  Many of those are good, but no one could do it better than The Who did in the day, or even later.  In case you do not know, I will give you a lineup of the band from the first video.

The original studio version was never released as a single or as an EP (ask if you do not know about EPs).  Rather, it was released in the UK in December of 1966 on the vinyl album named, interesting enough, A Quick One. The US agents did not like the suggestive title, and chose to release essentially the same album with the title Happy Jack in May of 1967.  In addition to losing the suggestive title, the single Happy Jack was a pretty big hit in America, so they made the business decision to link them.  Since Happy Jack was on the album, it made some sense.

This one is from the rarely seen The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, from 1968.  Notice that Keith Richards himself introduces The Who.  This may just be the very best live performance of A Quick One, While He’s Away ever done, although the one from the record Live at Leeds is also excellent.  On the far left is John Entwistle, arguably the very best rock bass guitar player who ever lived.  If Sir Paul, another very good bass player, is reading this, I suspect that he would agree.  Even if he does not, I would love to hear from him as to why not.

Of course, Roger Daltry with curly blond hair is the lead singer, and Peter Townshend is the one with the guitar in his hands.  This particular piece does a good job of getting Keith Moon’s face in the picture, along with Entwistle.  Most of the videos just have Townshend and Daltry in them for the most part, and those omissions fail to capture the full flavor of The Who.  My metaphor is that Moon was the soul of the band, Townshend the brain, Daltry the voice, and Enwistle the glue that held them together.  After Moon died in 1978, they lost their soul, and never really got it back.  They also lost their sound and did not regain it until the brilliant Zak Starkey semiofficially joined the band.  Interestingly, Zak is the son of Richard Starkey, aka Ringo Starr.  Moon used to visit and help Zak put puzzles together and play with him when Zak was just little.  He was like an uncle, but not Ernie.  Those of you familiar with Tommy will get this little joke.  Interestingly, Entwistle wrote Uncle Ernie and sang it on the original record, but Moon did play him in the movie.

None other that Keith Richards introduces them, and they do a WONDERFUL job with the song.  Note the good video of both Enwistle and Moon, often neglected when people filmed them performing.  Just as a thought, have any of us EVER been that young?

This was not the first iteration of A Quick One.  The original is on a vinyl album is I already indicated.  It has a charm that the live versions do not have, but the live ones “rock” a bit more.  By the way, if you listen to A Prairie Home Companion, the background music for the cowboy segment bears a suspicious resemblance “We’ll Soon be Home.”  

Here is the story behind it.  Kit Lambert (their producer) wanted Pete to write songs that would top the charts, to make the band, and especially  Kit, money.  Pete was getting tired of writing what he called “a story in two minutes 30”, and wanted to do something more serious.  He finally agreed to write something that could be sort of disassembled to make one or more hits.  Thus it came to be.  Kit was a pretty good producer, and loved the money.  Pete and Kit came to actual fighting later, and The Who left him with hard feelings.  As far as I know, they never made up and Kit fell down a staircase to his death in an alcoholic trance several years later.  Kit also had a narcotics addiction, but in the end it seems that it was the alcohol that finished him.

The genius of Kit Lambert can not be overemphasized.  The band had had a few fairly minor hits with Peter Meadon and Shel Talmy, but neither of them had the drive that Lambert did.  Actually, he was looking to make a film about new bands and recognized the potential.  He knew how to make that band perform at the top of their ability.  Without Lambert, The Who would have been relegated to the dustbin of rock.  He was the hammer that forged them into a real power.  Later, they sort of self produced (although they always credited producers), but at the time the band were babes in the woods insofar and real musical production went.

But in 1967, Kit and the band were rocking.  They released I Can See for Miles, one of the very best songs that Pete ever wrote, still their biggest chart topper in the US.  Pete actually had written it a couple of years earlier, and kept it in his hip pocket for the proverbial rainy day, since he was sure that it would be a really big hit.  It was finally released on the following record album, The Who Sell Out, which is one of the very first concept albums.

Unfortunately, none of the individual songs in A Quick One were big chart toppers, but the work in toto is wonderful.  Most people who are not really huge fans of the band do not realize that their choral work, especially in the early days, was outstanding.  One of the finest examples of this appears in the opening lines, “Her man’s been gone for nearly a year…”.  All four of them were singing, in perfect harmony.  Pete’s writing obviously had a lot to do with that, but it goes even deeper.  Three of the four actually could sing very well, but Moon had an extremely limited range.  Pete wrote later that Moon had the sweetest voice in the band, but that his range was so limited that he (Pete) has to write very carefully so that Keith could actually hit the notes.

Drummers and usually not known for singing.  Off of the top of my head, the only drummer who became lead singer was from Genesis, after their lead singer left.  Peter Gabriel, their first singer quit the band and Phil Collins took over the vocals for the most part.  My editor reminded me the Levon Helm also fill the bill.

I guess that I am getting extremely analytical, but that is the nature of The Geek.  Thus, we shall examine the entire work in some detail.

It starts with the choral work, and then there is Pete on guitar with the opening licks.  Then there is a little more choral work, and Daltry starts to sing the story.  Enwistle and Moon also begin to play, and the whole thing begins to, well, rock.  It is the setup for the whole thing, and talks about how the girls on a particular street were well known as being “easy”, and more than a little inviting.  The setup is a little vague, but later movements indicate that one of those little girls was lonely because her boyfriend was away from her.

In this movement, called “We Have a Remedy”, her hopeful lover tries to convince her that he would do anything to get her and her boyfriend together again.  Obviously he has ulterior motives, but he is persistent.  Written in very optimistic and encouraging themes, it seems that her resistance is, if not gone, wearing down quickly.

The next movement, “Ivor the Engine Driver” allows us to see who is trying to seduce the girl.  He tells her that he knows her boyfriend very well, and that neither he or her boyfriend would ever lie to her, and then asks her to “have a smile for an old engine driver”, certainly a reference to a locomotive engineer.  Evidently she submits, but this comes later.  The brilliance of this piece is the almost supernatural drumming by Keith, using his cymbals to imitate a steam powered train’s sound.  That was Kit Lambert’s idea.  Keith almost never used a high hat (he hated them), but I think that I have at least one very early clip showing him using one.

The next movement, “He’ll Soon be Home”, is almost country and western.  This is the one that is so reminiscent to the tune used by Garrison Keillor for The Lives of the Cowboys segment for background music in A Prairie Home Companion to this day.  In my way of thinking, it combines the thoughts and longings of both principals of the story, each of them longing to be back with the person that he or she loves.

The last movement, “Reunion”, is just hard to describe.  Incidentally, I am writing these words at the same instant that the first Chilean miner was brought safely to the surface after over two months’ confinement.  The words, “I can’t believe it!  Do my eyes deceive me?  Am I back in your arms?  Safe away from all harm!  It’s like a dream to be with you again!….”  I think that the scene from the news could be an excellent candidate for that part of the work.  But it does get a little darker on the song.

It turns out that the female DID have relations with Ivor.  Interestingly, Ivor was the only named character in the whole work.  But there is also forgiveness.  After she confesses to him that she had been unfaithful, he sort of implies that he a had also had been, but then the song sort of develops into a post modern doowop, with “Cello, cello, cello…” starting it.  As it finishes, they both forgive each other (although I have not been able to find the second, personal forgiveness statement except on the studio original) and, I suppose, live happily ever after.

Well, that is my explication of the work.  It only occupies around seven to nine minutes (depending on the version), but it stimulated Pete to write Tommy, and many other great works.  Without Kit Lambert, none of the music that we take for granted now would have been possible, because he made The Who into the band that we now remember.  The next time that you lift a glass, think about Kit, Keith, and John.

Here are a few videos that I found to be nice renditions of them, in no particular order.  The first one is from the Monterrey Pop festival in California in 1968.  Note that both Pete and John were using Fender instruments.  I can not make out the brand of Keith’s drums, so anyone with better knowledge would be welcome in a comment.  He liked Premier drums, but I do not think that those are Premiers.  I assume that they were still using Marshall amplifiers in this era.

Here is the original studio version.  Note that with the advantage of the technology at the time (probably eight tracks of feed, but possibly more), it was possible to overlay both voice and instrumental tracks.  At the time, it was still all analogue and on what we would now call very crude tape.  The result was a more polished, if not as raw, sound as on the live renditions.  I like this very much.  I am sorry that no video is available, and I am not sure that any even were taken at the studio.  This version is the one that I first loved, and still do.  I hope that you like it as much as do I.

The version from the concert at Leeds is excellent.  Sorry, no video, but you can hear that they got a bit more sharp with it, and since no multiple tracking was possible, it was just the four of them.  This was before they started touring with musicians to fill in the voids of their studio work, particularly keyboard work.  Please enjoy.

I really like that take on the song.  But it is more important than just for them.  It is possible to argue that this was the very first “rock opera”, if one exists, and that it was the germ of the idea for the “concept album”, and those certainly do exist.  I am not alone in thinking that this is a masterful work.  Look at a few who have covered this.

How about Green Day?  They were pretty popular, and this short clip was all that I could find.  They did a pretty good version, as well as I can tell.

Now, if this were not important to other bands, why would Eddie Vedder whilst playing with My Morning Jacket play it?  And they did a pretty good take, very faithful to the original.  I appreciate them for that.

There have even videos that try to play it out without any particular band showing.  This one is typical, and not too bad.

There are many more covers, and many more versions from The Who.  I shall leave you with this one, fairly recent by Pete himself, on acoustic guitar.  It is nice.  I do not who the ladies around him are, but that is of no consequence.

It is interesting that his voice is sort of degraded, but his guitar is perfect.  Thus are the tolls that the years take on one.  He is lucky to be alive, considering the era that he not only endured, but helped to form.

Well, I guess that this is all about this topic for now.  I hope that the many minutes listening to the music to which I have linked add, rather than detract, from your life experience.  In mine, The Who have added much more than they have detracted.  If I get enough encouragement, I shall write about some of their other earlier material next week.

The Who have contributed significantly to the genre of rock and roll.  I believe that the test of time will look favorably on them, as it will on several other bands and individuals.  I suspect that those music services that offer Bach, Beethoven, and the like will include The Who in their offerings a century from now, except that everything is now online and for free.

Please feel free to contribute video or sound clips that you have found that pertain to this topic.  I would ask that you limit it to A Quick One, because there is so much material that we can get off topic very quickly.  I appreciate your input.

Warmest regards,

Doc

Crossposted at Docudharma.com and at Dailykos.com

Yankees @ Rangers.  Their aces aren’t going to pitch against each other unless the series goes deep and then the Rangers will be on short rest.  The Yankees will look to get an easy away victory tonight so they can close out at home.  I predict Yankees in 5 because their offense is clearly superior.  My offensive observation is I don’t think their pitchers are any better than the Phillies (with the exception of Rivera) and like all Junior League clubs they’re longball prima donnas who were never taught how to put to put together an inning with base hits and running nor stop one with their glove work.

Designated hitter my ass.

There are other things on TV but why would you want to watch them?

• AMC– Deep Blue Sea, Ghost Ship
• Disney– Suite Life, Wizards, Fish Hooks (premiers), Phineas and Ferb (Wizard of Oz)
• Discovery– Swamp Loggers (last week’s and new), Beyond Survival With Les Stroud (premier)
• ESPN– College Throwball, Cincinnati at Louisville
• ESPN2– Turn Left Racing, Dollar General 300
• Food– New Meat and Potatoes (get a wiki accout you lazy bastards)
• FX– Big Momma’s House, Big Momma’s House 2 (oh joy)
• Lifetime– Reba marathon
• National Geographic– Dog Whisperer (premier)
• Nick– Big Time Rush (premier)
• Oxygen– Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous x 2
• Sci Fi– Season Premier of Sanctuary (actually fabulous!)
• Turner Classic– The Mummy, The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb
• TLC– Say Yes to the Dress marathon (with premier)
• TNT– The Holiday, Two Weeks Notice
• TrueTV– Conspiracy Theory With Jesse Ventura marathon (with premier)
• USA– House marathon
• Toon– Sym-Bionic Titan, Generator Rex, Clone Wars (premiers)

Later-

• AMC– Virus
• Bravo– Real Housewives marathon
• Disney– Mostly Wizards, with a repeat of Phineas and Ferb
• FX– It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia ], [The League (yesterday’s premiers)
• Oxygen– Rumour Has It
• Sci Fi– The Event marathon (incuding Series Premier)
• Turner Classic– The Mummy’s Shroud The Mummy’s Shroud], [Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb
• TNT– Runaway Bride
• Toon– Childrens Hospital (this week’s), The Office (the good British one)

Dave has David Duchovny and Amy Sedaris.

Zap2it TV Listings, Yahoo TV Listings

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Sarkozy sends in riot police to break fuel blockade

AFP

43 mins ago

2 Champagne flows as Chile miners return home

by Maria Lorente and Gael Favennec, AFP

2 hrs 56 mins ago

3 Chile miners consider future after epic rescue

by Marc Burleigh, AFP

Fri Oct 15, 9:23 am ET

4 China says yuan must not be ‘scapegoat’ for US woes

by Fran Wang, AFP

Fri Oct 15, 8:41 am ET

5 NESV seal acrimonious Liverpool takeover

by Steve Griffiths, AFP

Fri Oct 15, 1:23 pm ET

6 Liverpool takeover finally set to go ahead

AFP

Fri Oct 15, 11:13 am ET

7 After industry, Germany exports lifestyle to China

by Mathilde Richter, AFP

Fri Oct 15, 10:15 am ET

8 DR Congo troops accused in new rape atrocities

AFP

Thu Oct 14, 5:37 pm ET

9 Reform calls mount as China’s all-powerful Communists meet

by Dan Martin, AFP

Fri Oct 15, 1:11 pm ET

10 US Fed ups talk of intervention to salvage recovery

by Andrew Beatty, AFP

Fri Oct 15, 12:00 pm ET

11 World’s longest tunnel completed under Swiss Alps

by Peter Capella, AFP

Fri Oct 15, 11:28 am ET

12 Dollar under pressure before Bernanke speaks

AFP

Fri Oct 15, 8:26 am ET

13 Bernanke sees case for more Federal Reserve easing

By Kristina Cooke, Reuters

1 hr 29 mins ago

14 U.S. backs off in currency dispute with China

By Doug Palmer, Reuters

29 mins ago

15 Chile’s 33 miners head for home as celebrities

By Cesar Illiano and Terry Wade, Reuters

1 hr 13 mins ago

16 U.S. inflation slows, keeping pressure on Fed

By Corbett B. Daly and Emily Kaiser, Reuters

1 hr 30 mins ago

17 Bernanke sets up for easing amid currency worries

By Pedro Nicolaci da Costa, Reuters

1 hr 32 mins ago

18 Judge lets states’ healthcare suit go forward

By Tom Brown, Reuters

Thu Oct 14, 7:14 pm ET

19 Pakistan says it’s willing to assist Afghan talks

By David Brunnstrom, Reuters

Fri Oct 15, 12:27 pm ET

20 Wall St blames homeowners in foreclosure fiasco

By Joe Rauch. Reuters

Thu Oct 14, 3:16 pm ET

21 Politics trumps loyalty in Democratic House effort

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, Associated Press Writer

1 min ago

22 Soldier says ordered to delete Fort Hood videos

By ANGELA K. BROWN and MICHAEL GRACZYK, Associated Press Writers

21 mins ago

23 Factory involved in Hungary sludge flood restarts

By PABLO GORONDI, Associated Press Writer

25 mins ago

24 Joyous Swiss celebrate longest tunnel breakthrough

By FRANK JORDANS, Associated Press Writer

1 hr 26 mins ago

25 Feds oppose Calif. Prop 19 to legalize marijuana

By MARCUS WOHLSEN and PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer

10 mins ago

26 Fed plan for short-term fix brings long-term risks

By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer

3 mins ago

27 Chile miners do not disclose ordeal details

By FRANK BAJAK, Associated Press Writer

1 hr 31 mins ago

28 Reds unite with Red Sox: Boston buys Liverpool

By ROB HARRIS, AP Sports Writer

28 mins ago

29 Bernanke: Fed wrestles with size of aid program

By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer

Fri Oct 15, 2:36 pm ET

30 States linking prescription databases, fight abuse

By EMERY P. DALESIO, Associated Press Writer

Fri Oct 15, 9:26 am ET

31 AP Enterprise: Tea party still here – and strong

By MICHAEL R. BLOOD, AP Political Writer

Fri Oct 15, 1:52 pm ET

32 Foreclosure freeze could undermine housing market

By MICHELLE CONLIN, AP Real Estate Writer

Mon Oct 11, 8:48 am ET

33 Gov’t: No increase for Social Security next year

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writer

2 hrs 28 mins ago

34 Cancer bracelets raise debate over school codes

By BOB MOEN, Associated Press Writer

Fri Oct 15, 5:24 am ET

35 Fla. pastor wins car for canceling Quran burning

By BETH DeFALCO, Associated Press Writer

Fri Oct 15, 2:37 pm ET

36 After peace prize, China targets winner’s friends

By CARA ANNA, Associated Press Writer

Fri Oct 15, 10:10 am ET

37 Reid and Angle disagree – on everything

By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent

Fri Oct 15, 11:45 am ET

38 ADWATCH: With campaign ads, don’t trust, verify

By LARRY MARGASAK and CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writers

Fri Oct 15, 6:01 am ET

39 CVS fined for problem in sales of meth ingredient

By GREG RISLING, Associated Press Writer

Fri Oct 15, 4:28 am ET

40 Prosecutor calls Pa. collar bomb suspect ‘twisted’

By JOE MANDAK, Associated Press Writer

15 mins ago

41 Experts: Gang taboos fueled NYC gay bias attacks

By COLLEEN LONG, Associated Press Writer

27 mins ago

42 Former Wis. prosecutor sued by woman he ‘sexted’

By RYAN J. FOLEY, Associated Press Writer

57 mins ago

Shadow Elite: The "Inside Job" That Toppled Iceland’s Economy

Robert Wade and Silla Sigurgeirsdóttir

Posted: October 14, 2010 07:12 AM

Iceland’s flex net operated on the edge of and partly in opposition to a traditional elite, a bloc of some 14 families known popularly as the Octopus, which dominated Icelandic capitalism from the start. In the early 70’s, some university students took over a journal called The Locomotive  to promote free-market ideas–and, not least, to open up career opportunities for themselves, rather than wait for Octopus patronage. The two future PM’s, Oddsson and Haarde, were members.

They were devoted to neoliberal policies, and privatized publicly-owned enterprises, to the benefit of their Locomotive cronies. In 1991 Oddsson began his reign–not too strong a word–as PM, explicitly invoking Reagan and Thatcher as models and drawing on the same ideas of “New Public Management,” which sanctioned large-scale outsourcing of government work to private actors. Then he set in motion the dramatic growth of Iceland’s financial sector, before installing himself as Central Bank Governor in 2005. Finance Minister Haarde took over as PM shortly after.

…

With near-exclusive access to information, power brokers can also brand it for the media and public to suit their own purposes, with only a few able to counter them. The Oddsson and later Haarde government proved masterful at this. They relied primarily on the banks’ research departments for economic analysis. Iceland’s National Economic Institute had built a reputation for independent thinking and, at times, published unwelcome reports, warning that the economy’s management was going haywire. Oddsson abolished it in 2002. Statistics Iceland, the public data agency, was notably cowed into suppressing unfavourable information. And the University of Iceland bowed to pressures to make its Economic and Social Research centres self-funding–that is, to rely on finding buyers for commissioned research–with the convenient result that they no longer published big-picture reports with a critical edge.

…

Even Parliament’s recommendation last week to indict Geir Haarde is a letdown for those demanding real accountability: the parliament voted to charge Haarde, but not three others facing similar charges. The former ministers who prescribed the policies of the bubble economy, i.e. David Oddsson and his then partner in a coalition government, face no charges whatsoever because of a 3 year statute of limitations. Meanwhile the current leadership is unable to avoid one thing: popular outrage – misleadingly directed at it rather than at the previous leaders responsible. The Guardian reported that politicians had to flee 2,000 angry protestors at the recent Parliament opening. Polls show that “trust in parliament” is running at about 10%. One can hope that those responsible for Iceland’s implosion will face more consequences than hurled eggs, but Geir Haarde, for one, is undaunted at the prospect of being the first world leader indicted for economic mismanagement. He told Bloomberg News two weeks ago that he will be “completely vindicated”, and called the charges “absurd.”

“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.

Dahlia Lithwick: Privacy Rights Inc.  

Your right to personal privacy is shrinking even as Corporate America’s is growing.

Look. Nation. You can go ahead and anthropomorphize big corporations all you want. Pretend that AT&T has delicate feelings and that Wal-Mart has a just-barely-manageable phobia of spiders. But before we extend each and every protection granted in the Bill of Rights to the good folks at ExxonMobil, I have one small suggestion: Might we contemplate what’s happened to our own individual privacy in this country in recent years? That the government should have more and more access to our personal information, while we have less and less access to corporate information defies all logic. It’s one thing to ask us to give up personal liberty for greater safety or security. It’s another matter entirely to slowly take away privacy and dignity from living, breathing humans, while giving more and more of it to faceless interest groups and corporations.

Paul Krugman: The Mortgage Morass

The story so far: An epic housing bust and sustained high unemployment have led to an epidemic of default, with millions of homeowners falling behind on mortgage payments. So servicers – the companies that collect payments on behalf of mortgage owners – have been foreclosing on many mortgages, seizing many homes.

But do they actually have the right to seize these homes? Horror stories have been proliferating, like the case of the Florida man whose home was taken even though he had no mortgage. More significantly, certain players have been ignoring the law. Courts have been approving foreclosures without requiring that mortgage servicers produce appropriate documentation; instead, they have relied on affidavits asserting that the papers are in order. And these affidavits were often produced by “robo-signers,” or low-level employees who had no idea whether their assertions were true.

David Swanson: Rule of Law Is Alive and Well Outside the United States

The World Justice Project on Thursday published a “Rule of Law Index,” and there’s no easy way to say this. Let me put it this way: as when rankings on education, infant mortality, work hours, lifespan, retirement security, health, environmental impact, incarceration rates, violence, concentration of wealth, and other measures of quality of life come out, it is time once again for we Americans to shout “We’re Number One!” more loudly than ever. Because, of course, we’re not. . . .

New York Times Editorial: Dithering on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’

The Obama administration professes to oppose the odious and misguided policy of banning gay soldiers from serving openly in the military. So it was distressing to hear that the Justice Department plans to appeal a federal court order that the military immediately stop enforcing the law that is used to drum out gay service members once their sexual orientation becomes known. We believe the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law was wrong from the day it was passed 17 years ago. But, in any case, circumstances have changed radically. As Judge Virginia Phillips pointed out when she ruled it unconstitutional, the original premises for the policy have been proved wrong, and there is no longer any good reason for continuing to ruin people’s lives by enforcing it.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the policy should not be lifted abruptly because there are unresolved questions like whether straight and gay soldiers should share barracks and whether the military should pay benefits to partners of gay service members.

He said he wanted to wait until a review of practices and policies was submitted on Dec. 1.

There is no need to wait. The answer to both questions is: Yes. It would be a disaster if the military replaced this misbegotten policy with official segregation and discrimination.

 David Sirota: Why It’s So Hard to Slash the Bloated Pentagon Budgets

Beware the sophistry of budget talking points — especially those seeking to deter any criticism of defense spending.

That’s the lesson of these last few weeks, as Establishment Republicans desperately try to thwart both progressives and tea party conservatives who are pressuring Congress to reduce Pentagon bloat.

The latest talking point du jour has been around in one form or another for years. It asks us to forget that A) America spends more on defense than every other major nation combined and B) the Pentagon, whose annual budget is now approaching World War II levels in inflation-adjusted terms, has lost track of trillions of taxpayer dollars. In light of those troubling truths, we are nonetheless urged by Beltway Republicans to focus on the fact that defense spending is “4.9 percent of our gross domestic product, significantly below the average of 6.5 percent since World War II,” as a recent Wall Street Journal editorial proclaimed.

That widely circulated article, aimed squarely at grassroots conservatives, was jointly written by three of the most influential Republican think tanks in Washington — the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and the Foreign Policy Initiative. And like clockwork, the “percentage of GDP” nugget went from their pen to the GOP’s well-oiled media machine.

Joe Conason: A Generation of Termites

When American politicians talk about the legacy we are leaving to the next generation, their usual theme is financial deficits, as if there were no other kind. Figured on a per capita basis, the real and imputed debt that today’s children will assume someday as taxpayers can seem daunting. But what our political leaders rarely even attempt to calculate is the other debt that we are leaving to our heirs-a decayed and inadequate infrastructure that doesn’t deserve to be compared with what earlier generations bequeathed to us.

The best recent estimates by civil engineers and government experts indicate that we would have to spend well over $2 trillion during the next five years on roads, bridges, airports, railways, transit, sewers, waterways, ports, dams, parks and schools simply to maintain them in decent condition. Such estimates do not include the kind of modernizing improvements that the United States requires to remain competitive with other nations or to protect the global environment from disaster. But the political momentum appears to favor politicians who have no will to preserve-let alone better-the national inheritance that we have allowed to fall into sorry disrepair.

E.J. Dionne, Jr.: ‘Crazy Carl’ and the Limits of Anger

NEW YORK-Having long been one of the proud tough guys of New York politics, Andrew Cuomo, the state’s attorney general, finds himself with a Republican opponent in this year’s governor’s race who makes him look like St. Francis of Assisi.

To call Carl Paladino brash and a loudmouth understates the case. The New York Daily News has taken to referring to the Republican nominee as “Crazy Carl,” and his latest series of outbursts demonstrated why.

Appearing before a group of Orthodox rabbis in Brooklyn on Sunday, Paladino declared that he didn’t want children “brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option-it isn’t.”

Then, in trying on the “Today” show on Monday to make things better, he made them worse. He spoke of how “disgusting” he had found a gay pride march he had seen, in which marchers “wear these little Speedos and they grind against each other.”

The venerable tabloid Daily News couldn’t resist the headline: “Carl Rages Against Guys in Speedos, Gay Grinding.”  

American politics has come to this?

Stanley Kutler: The Bipartisan Politics of Fear

Mercifully, the midterm election cycle is nearing its end. Both parties, we learn, are planning their “postmortem assessments.” The Daily Beast’s recent headline is a sign of the times: “Why Obama Can’t Lose in 2012.” Plan ahead.

For the past year, the media, reflecting disenchantment with Barack Obama, their very own rock star, have “predicted” huge Democratic losses for 2010. Like blackbirds who fly off the line (as Eugene McCarthy once said), the media follow in lock step. We have heard ad nauseam that Democratic losses are inevitable-the governing party always suffers a setback in the midterm elections-or so we are told. But it is not always so; and further, we can ask if the Democrats’ troubles are not so much about what they did, but rather, what they did not do.

The Rule of Law Index looks at 35 nations around the world, including seven in Western Europe and North America.

Joshua Holland: How Come Right-Wingers Aren’t Up in Arms About Wall St’s Assault on Private Property?

The Right will continue to defend the bankers, even if they undermine one of conservatism’s most cherished principles.

Ever since the financial crisis hit, conservatives — at places like the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation, joined by some prominent Tea Party groups — have fought tooth-and-nail to deflect new regulation of Wall Street’s wheeler-dealers. (In my new book, The Fifteen Biggest Lies About the Economy, I note that the Right, following the advice of conservative message-maker Frank Luntz, derided new regulations that Wall Street was fighting hard to kill as a “second bailout” of the big banks. It was a lie so bold that one couldn’t help but be impressed with their chutzpah.)

So there’s a certain amount of irony in new revelations that the banks, in their quest for easy profits, appear to have undermined one of the Right’s most important principles: the sanctity of property ownership.

“If you own something,” George W. Bush explained in a 2004 speech, “you have a vital stake in the future of our country. The more ownership there is in America, the more vitality there is in America, and the more people have a vital stake in the future of this country.”

Naomi Prins: Why Is the White House Against Freezing Foreclosures in the Face of Rampant Fraud?

Treasury and Obama are facing huge financial pressure.

At first, there was a deafening silence from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke on the foreclosure front. It was as if they: 1) didn’t read the news; or 2) were afraid someone would notice afresh their incompetence in dealing with the ongoing housing crisis and deteriorating economy, while convincing everyone that the bank bailouts and subsidizations were good for us.

Last week, while Senator Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others in Congress were dispensing irate pre-election sound-bites, attorneys general across the country were gearing up for investigations. Banks were reluctantly announcing foreclosure moratoriums because it’s quarterly earnings season and uncertainty is bad for stock prices, and Geithner was defending TARP and mixing it up with China over the dollar. Meanwhile, the Fed was gearing up to buy more Treasuries, like some kind of rapacious alien that eats its progeny, because no one else wants our debt.

But that changed when Geithner came out of hiding yesterday with a stance. (Bernanke is still in hiding, but will support Geithner’s view soon.) Unsurprisingly, Geithner chose to side with the likes of conservatives and CNBC. Thus, his response to Charlie Rose when asked whether he supported banks in declaring a foreclosure moratorium was: “No, I wouldn’t say it that way.”

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

October 15 is the 288th day of the year (289th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 77 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte begins his final exile on the Island of St. Helene.

Napoleon Bonaparte (15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821) was a military and political leader of France and Emperor of the French as Napoleon I, whose actions shaped European politics in the early 19th century.

Napoleon was born in Corsica to parents of minor noble Italian ancestry and trained as an artillery officer in mainland France. Bonaparte rose to prominence under the French First Republic and led successful campaigns against the First and Second Coalitions arrayed against France. In 1799, he staged a coup d’etat and installed himself as First Consul; five years later the French Senate proclaimed him emperor. In the first decade of the 19th century, the French Empire under Napoleon engaged in a series of conflicts-the Napoleonic Wars-involving every major European power. After a streak of victories, France secured a dominant position in continental Europe, and Napoleon maintained the French sphere of influence through the formation of extensive alliances and the appointment of friends and family members to rule other European countries as French client states.

The French invasion of Russia in 1812 marked a turning point in Napoleon’s fortunes. His Grande Armee was badly damaged in the campaign and never fully recovered. In 1813, the Sixth Coalition defeated his forces at Leipzig; the following year the Coalition invaded France, forced Napoleon to abdicate and exiled him to the island of Elba. Less than a year later, he escaped Elba and returned to power, but was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815. Napoleon spent the last six years of his life in confinement by the British on the island of Saint Helena. An autopsy concluded he died of stomach cancer, though Sten Forshufvud and other scientists have since conjectured he was poisoned with arsenic.

Napoleon’s campaigns are studied at military academies the world over. While considered a tyrant by his opponents, he is also remembered for the establishment of the Napoleonic code, which laid the administrative and judicial foundations for much of Western Europe.

 533 – Byzantine general Belisarius makes his formal entry into Carthage, having conquered it from the Vandals.

1582 – Pope Gregory XIII implements the Gregorian calendar. In Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain, October 4 of this year is followed directly by October 15.

1764 – Edward Gibbon observes a group of friars singing in the ruined Temple of Jupiter in Rome, which inspires him to begin work on The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

1783 – The Montgolfier brothers’ hot air balloon marks the first human ascent, by Jean-François Pilatre de Rozier, (tethered balloon).

1793 – Queen Marie-Antoinette of France is tried and condemned in a swift, pre-determined trial in the Palais de Justice, Paris, and condemned to death the following day.

1815 – Napoleon I of France begins his exile on Saint Helena in the Atlantic Ocean.

1863 – American Civil War: The H. L. Hunley, the first submarine to sink a ship, sinks during a test, killing its inventor, Horace L. Hunley.

1864 – American Civil War: The Battle of Glasgow is fought, resulting in the surrender of Glasgow, Missouri, and its Union garrison, to the Confederacy.

1878 – The Edison Electric Light Company begins operation.

1880 – Mexican soldiers kill Victorio, one of the greatest Apache military strategists.

1888 – The “From Hell” letter sent by Jack the Ripper is received by the investigators.

1894 – The Dreyfus affair: Alfred Dreyfus is arrested for spying.

1904 – The Russian Baltic Fleet leaves Reval, Estonia for Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War.

1917 – World War I: At Vincennes outside of Paris, Dutch dancer Mata Hari is executed by firing squad for spying for the German Empire.

1928 – The airship, the Graf Zeppelin completes its first trans-Atlantic flight, landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey, United States.

1932 – Tata Airlines (later to become Air India) makes its first flight.

1934 – The Soviet Republic of China collapses when Chiang Kai-shek’s National Revolutionary Army successfully encircle Ruijin, forcing the fleeing Communists to begin the Long March.

1938 – The District of Columbia formally adopts a design for its flag.

1939 – The New York Municipal Airport (later renamed La Guardia Airport) is dedicated.

1944 – The Arrow Cross Party (very similar to Hitler’s NSDAP (Nazi party)) takes over the power in Hungary.

1945 – World War II: The former premier of Vichy France Pierre Laval is shot by a firing squad for treason.

1946 – Nuremberg Trials: Hermann Goring poisons himself the night before his execution.

1951 – Mexican chemist Luis E. Miramontes conducted the very last step of the first synthesis of norethisterone, the progestin that would later be used in one of the first two oral contraceptives.

1953 – British nuclear test Totem 1 detonated at Emu Field, South Australia.

1956 – Fortran, the first modern computer language, is shared with the coding community for the first time.

1965 – Vietnam War: The National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam stages the first public burning of a draft card in the United States to result in arrest under a new law.

1966 – Black Panther Party is created by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale.

1969 – Vietnam War; The Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam was held in Washington DC and across the US. Over 2 million demonstrated nationally; about 250,000 in the nation’s capitol.

1970 – Thirty-five construction workers are killed when a section of the new West Gate Bridge in Melbourne collapses.

1970 – The domestic Soviet Aeroflot Flight 244 is hijacked and diverted to Turkey.

1971 – The start of the 2500-year celebration of Iran, celebrating the birth of Persia.

1973 – The diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Gabon are established.

1979 – Black Monday in Malta. The Building of the Times of Malta, the residence of the opposition leader Eddie Fenech Adami and several Nationalist Party clubs are ransacked and destroyed by supporters of the Malta Labour Party.

1987 – The Great Storm of 1987 hits France and England.

1989 – Wayne Gretzky becomes the all-time leading points scorer in the NHL.

1990 – Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to lessen Cold War tensions and open up his nation.

1997 – The first supersonic land speed record is set by Andy Green in ThrustSSC (United Kingdom), exactly 50 years and 1 day after Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier in the Earth’s atmosphere.

1997 – The Cassini probe launches from Cape Canaveral on its way to Saturn.

2001 – NASA’s Galileo spacecraft passes within 112 miles of Jupiter’s moon Io.

2003 – China launches Shenzhou 5, its first manned space mission.

2003 – The Staten Island Ferry boat Andrew J. Barberi runs into a pier at the St. George Ferry Terminal in Staten Island, killing 11 people and injuring 43.

2005 – Iraqi constitution ratification vote.

2005 – A riot in Toledo, Ohio breaks out during a National Socialist/Neo-Nazi protest; over 100 are arrested.

2007 – Seventeen activists in New Zealand are arrested in the country’s first post 9/11 anti-terrorism raids.

Tea Party set to win enough races for wide influence

Nominees have performed better than expected in many cases

By KATE ZERNIKE

Enough Tea Party-supported candidates are running strongly in competitive and Republican-leaning Congressional races that the movement stands a good chance of establishing a sizeable caucus to push its agenda in the House and the Senate, according to a New York Times analysis.

With a little more than two weeks till Election Day, 33 Tea Party-backed candidates are in tossup races or running in House districts that are solidly or leaning Republican, and 8 stand a good or better chance of winning Senate seats.

How US Nightclubs Revolutionized West German Music

G.I. Disco Revival

By Josie Le Blond

Berlin DJs Daniel Best and Kalle Kuts are reviving the spirit of 1980s West Germany with their compilation of “the Cold War’s hottest music.”The project hopes to shed light on the almost forgotten but massively influential GI clubs where US soldiers went to get a taste of life back home.

Around 500 party-goers, among them many Americans, were in the West Berlin nightclub La Belle when a terrorist bomb exploded just after midnight on Saturday, April 5, 1986. Two US servicemen and a Turkish woman were killed in the blast.

Aside from shocking the world and provoking a US attack on Libya 10 days later, the tragedy briefly drew global attention to the existence of the so-called “Ami-Club” scene associated with American troops stationed in the former West Germany.

USA

In many congressional swing districts, seniority is falling by wayside

 

By Philip Rucker

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, October 15, 2010; 12:25 AM

TRACY, CALIF. — For 14 years, Richard W. Pombo was the congressman for the San Joaquin Valley district here. In that time, he built a cowboy persona – George W. Bush dubbed him “The Marlboro Man” – and amassed power, rising to chairman of the House Resources Committee.

From that perch, he was able to steer a disproportionate slice of federal money to this sprawling agricultural and suburban district and become a fierce protector of property rights.

Countrywide’s Angelo R. Mozilo in talks to settle SEC charges, sources say

The co-founder of the mortgage lender is accused of civil fraud and insider trading. His trial is set to begin Tuesday.

 By E. Scott Reckard and Stuart Pfeifer, Los Angeles Times

October 15, 2010

Just days before his trial was to begin, Countrywide Financial Corp. co-founder Angelo R. Mozilo was in serious negotiations late Thursday to settle the government’s civil fraud and insider trading case against him, according to people familiar with the situation.

Mozilo, 71, the best-known and perhaps most vilified figure involved in the mortgage industry’s boom and collapse, faced trial on the Securities and Exchange Commission accusations starting Tuesday.

Europe

Portugal’s budget to trigger crisis for government

The Irish Times – Friday, October 15, 2010

JANE WALKER in Madrid  

WHEN PORTUGAL’S socialist prime minister José Sócrates presents his budget for 2011 today, he will open the floodgates for a political crisis which could bring down his already unpopular minority government.

Like so many other euro zone economies such as Ireland, Spain or Greece, Portugal’s is deeply troubled. The budget deficit is 9.3 per cent, its public deficit is more than 82 per cent and unemployment is at a 20-year high of 10 per cent. All of which are forcing the government to take painful measures.

“We have known for months that our economy was in trouble and our debt was among the worst in Europe. The Sócrates government has delayed too long in confronting our problems because they knew they would be unpopular and could unseat them,” said one Lisbon banker yesterday.

Budapest Experiences A New Wave of Hate

Europe’s Capital of Anti-Semitism  

By Erich Follath  

The city was always good for drama — for intrigues about life and death, for eternal love and murderous betrayal, for torture, political heroism and sexual escapades. Founded by the Romans, improved by the Mongols and oppressed by the Ottoman Turks, Budapest has reinvented itself time and again, flexible in the flux of time. It has also served as a laboratory of sorts for varying political ideologies, from National Socialism to fascism to communism.

The United Nations has named four spots in the city UNESCO world heritage sites: the panorama on the Danube River embankment, the Buda castle district, the Millennium underground railway and Andrássy Avenue.

Middle East

Robert Fisk: Israel comes face to face with the man who would wipe it off the map

Lebanon’s southern border, so often a battleground, hosted the latest leg of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s provocative tour yesterday

Friday, 15 October 2010

He looks like a shepherd, but he might have been the Shah. And there he was last night, the President of Iran, one of the triple pillars of the “Axis of evil”, scarcely two miles from the border of that holy of holies which every American president must support – the State of Israel, or the “Jewish State of Israel”, as its government claims it to be. The Shia Muslim crowds loved Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They adored him. For weeks, they had been told he was coming. Shah-like was his welcome.

For it was in Bint Jbeil – his last stop last night – that the Shia Hizbollah destroyed at least 10 of Israel’s tanks in the 2006 war, and the message was perfectly clear.

Arab League still struggles for credibility



By Sami Moubayed  

DAMASCUS – When Arab leaders established the League of Arab States during the final years of World War II, several creative ideas were placed on the table by founding fathers Mustapha al-Nahhas Pasha of Egypt, Jamil Mardam Bey of Syria and Riad al-Solh of Lebanon.

If the LAS, also called the Arab League, was ever going to get anywhere, they argued, it had to learn from the mistakes of the League of Nations, which was on its way towards extinction, having failed to prevent the catastrophic outbreak of World War II in 1939.

Asia

The ‘untouchable’ Indians with an unenviable job

On discovering that his parents cleaned latrines for a living, Bezwada Wilson began a campaign to end this degrading profession. Andrew Buncombe hears his story

Friday, 15 October 2010

There is an infectious, impassioned enthusiasm about Bezwada Wilson that is hard to ignore. He laughs, he smiles. He frowns too, but soon he is smiling again. And yet things might have been very different. When he was aged 18, he came very close to taking his own life. The thing that led him to the very edge was the discovery of what his parents really did to scrape together a living.

Growing up in a gold mining area of southern India, they had told him as a child that they mined for ore. The evening they revealed to him that they were actually “dry latrine” cleaners who spent their days covered in the filth of others, he was so horrified, so disgusted, that he came close to committing suicide at a secluded water tower.

Kim’s heir linked to plot against eldest son  



Peter Foster October 15, 2010

BEIJING: Aides loyal to North Korea’s heir apparent, Kim Jong-un, planned to attack his exiled half-brother in retaliation for his comments last year about the need for reform in the North.

The attack on Kim Jong-nam, 39, was foiled after China warned the North Koreans not to attack him on its soil, a South Korean official has said.

Kim Jong-un’s aides tried ”to do something to Kim Jong-nam, who has a loose tongue abroad”, the official said, but the plot had been firmly scotched by China.

The plan to move against Kim Jong-nam, who lives in self-imposed exile in China, was allegedly fuelled by rumours he might be used as a Chinese puppet ruler in the event of a regime collapse in North Korea.

Africa

UN could police parts of north-south Sudan border





LOUIS CHARBONNEAU | UNITED NATIONS

Their remarks came in response to a request by south Sudan President Salva Kiir during a UN Security Council trip to Sudan last week for peacekeepers to be deployed along north-south border.

“Nobody thinks it’s realistic to put Unmis [UN peacekeepers], even if we had masses more troops, along the north-south border in a country that large,” one council diplomat, who did not want to be identified, told reporters.

“But I think one thing we can and should consider … is looking at augmenting Unmis in certain hot spots along the border where a buffer presence could be established.”

More white South Africans struggle in post-apartheid economy

White South Africans are increasingly living below the poverty line as the country’s job market adjusts to a post-apartheid era, which lacks the government support for whites that it once had.

By Ian Evans, Correspondent / October 14, 2010    

Cape Town, South Africa

It was an improbable sight even 10 years ago in South Africa: white people in shacks – poor, desperate, and surviving off handouts.

But with the fall of apartheid and the transformation of the job market in favor of the majority black population, increasing numbers of white people are without work and living below the poverty line.

Recent statistics from the Bureau for Market Research show that there are 650,000 whites ages 16 or over without work, with estimates saying that total is growing by 15 percent a year.

In the National Assembly, the leader of the mainly white Freedom Front Plus party, Pieter Mulder, has questioned the government’s commitment to confronting white poverty, claiming the startling rise was being ignored.

Latin America

‘Blood pact’ suggests what went on undergound will stay there

The Irish Times – Friday, October 15, 2010  

RORY CARROLL in Copiapo and JONATHAN FRANKLIN at San Jose mine

SPEAKING FROM a hospital bed at the San Jose mine, shift foreman Luis Urzua – the man who kept the Chilean miners alive for two months – said his secret for keeping the men bonded and focused on survival was majority decision-making.

“You just have to speak the truth and believe in democracy,” said Urzua, his eyes hidden behind black glasses.

As nurses, doctors and psychologists rushed around him in a chaotic scene, the world’s most famous foreman sat in bed, his arms folded across a thick chest, and spoke about making tough decisions 700 metres below ground when all hope seemed lost.

“Everything was voted on . . . We were 33 men, so 16 plus onewas a majority.”

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