The Yankees on Letterman
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Rep. Alan Grayson Lists The Amount of People Dead Because of Lack of Health Insurance; Republics Try To Cut His Microphone
The Republic PartyRep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) is taking the extraordinary step of reading off the number of people he calculates will die as a result of lacking health insurance — in each district represented by a GOP member of Congress who opposes health care reform.
His approach: Name the district, then name of the Republican, then enumerate the number of people who will die without health insurance based on a Harvard analysis — suggesting that the members were responsible for the body count.
World Series ~ Live Streaming on Veetle ~ Tullycast
Baseball, New York Yankees, Philadephia Phillies, World SeriesNow Toyota Quits Formula One
Formula One, MotorsportSheesh…
The Auto Beat
Posted by: Ian Rowley on November 04
At a hastily arranged press conference this evening in Tokyo, Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda announced that the carmaker is the latest big player to quit Formula One motorsport. Toyota, which competed in 139 races after entering the sport in 2002, winning no races, will quit immediately. Toyoda said the company will also stop providing engines to the Williams team. “It’s a complete withdrawal” he said, citing the “the current severe economic realities”. Toyota follows Honda, which quit F1 last December, and BMW which entered its final race on Nov. 1 in Abu Dhabi. On Nov 2. Japanese tire maker Bridgestone said it would pull also out of the sport, saving $100 million a year.
While long rumored, Toyota’s decision to quit wasn’t a certainty. For one thing, since becoming CEO in June, Toyoda, a keen racer, has talked of giving Toyota a sportier image. At last month’s Tokyo Motor Show, Toyoda showed the $375,000 Lexus LFA supercar, which he a hand in developing, and the rear-wheel driver FT-86 sports concept.
What’s more, despite never winning a race, this season wasn’t all bad with several podium finishes. And, after an injury to first choice driver Timo Glock, Kamui Kobayashi, a Japanese driver who graduated from Toyota’s driver training scheme, impressed in the final two races. Toyoda said the decision had nothing to do with Toyota’s poor record in F1. Indeed, with Toyota expected to post a second consecutive annual loss this fiscal year, it is in some ways surprising Toyota took this long to quit. Running a F1 team can cost upwards of $500 million a year.
A bit like Honda last year, the decision may also make good business sense. Spending such large sums on a sport that isn’t a huge draw in the U.S. may not be the best use of limited resources, especially as F1’s heartland is in Europe where Toyota and Honda aren’t huge players. On yop of that, gas guzzling F1 cars don’t sit comfortably with Toyota’s carefully honed “green” image, while it’s hard to see their relevance to any of the company’s production cars, save the LFA. And, if all that wasn’t reason enough, F1 hasn’t covered itself in glory in recent times. In 2007, the McLaren team was fined $100 million for its part in a spying scandal. Last year, Toyota was one of several teams that put its name to a statement attacking Max Mosley, the chairman of the sport’s governing body after he became embroiled in an embarrassing sex scandal. And this season Flavio Briatore, the chief of the Renault team, was banned for life after instructing one of the team’s drivers to crash on purpose.
Just Creep-Out Baby! ~ The Curious Case of Your Oakland Raiders
Al Davis, NFL, RaidersTom Ostler
(11-02) 20:56 PST —
The Raiders quite possibly are setting up Tom Cable to walk the plank.
That would fall into the category of zany Raiders’ hijinks, like the kind in which coaches get fired by the light of an overhead projector and assistant coaches attack filing cabinets with their jaws.
But we have entered a new territory: Creepyland.
The Raiders released two statements Monday in the wake of an ESPN report in which two women accuse Cable of physical abuse.
One statement declares that the Raiders will “undertake a serious evaluation of this matter.” Ominously (for Cable), the statement immediately notes that the Raiders have dismissed employees in the past for “inappropriate conduct” and have kept the reasons confidential.
The other statement is where matters get creepy.
“ESPN’s role in this matter must be carefully examined,” the statement reads. “ESPN routinely disseminates falsehoods about the Raiders. During the last year, ESPN (working with someone who was in this organization) engaged in a calculated effort to distort the truth about the Raiders, utilizing lies and innuendo.”
The Raiders imply that the recent Cable report on ESPN just might be more of these falsehoods, lies and/or innuendo.
A couple of things here.
One, Raiders, may we please see a list of the falsehoods routinely disseminated by ESPN? And I don’t mean rumors that didn’t prove true, or crazy speculation, or mean-spirited remarks. Give the public a list of actual ESPN lies about the Raiders, several of them, or shut the darn heck up.
Two, when you use the terms “falsehoods,” “lies” and “innuendo” in referring to the ESPN report in which two women accuse your head coach of striking them, you have vaulted out of paranoia and into slime.
To be crystal clear, there is no charge in this column that the Raiders, from Al Davis down, take a casual attitude toward male-on-female abuse. The Raiders’ family will never fully recover from the 1999 strangulation murder of Tracey Biletnikoff, daughter of the Raiders’ great wide receiver, Fred Biletnikoff.
All the more reason the Raiders erred with colossal insensitivity in urging an examination of whether two women who claim Cable physically assaulted them might be part of ESPN’s so-called dissemination of lies and innuendo.
Cable’s former wife claims he punched her in the jaw two decades ago, and abused her throughout their marriage. A recent girlfriend claims Cable slapped her. We know this: Cable admits he slapped his wife 21 years ago, and she did take out a restraining order against him. No innuendo there.
The Raiders’ owner and top executives wallow in paranoia. The media is out to get them. For instance, the media dwells on the Raiders’ NFL-record run of six seasons of losing 11 or more games, while ignoring the team’s true identity, stamped in bold black letters on the cover of the media guide and on the bottom of each news release: “THE TEAM OF THE DECADES.”
Still, it’s shocking and dismaying that in the Raiders’ anger over the systematic attack from ESPN, Davis and his people can’t resist making the connection between lies/innuendo and a report of the alleged abuse of two women.
Why are the women going public now? Not that the timing matters. Some will suspect a connection with Randy Hanson and a civil suit he may file against Cable and the Raiders. It would seem to strengthen Hanson’s case if his attorney can paint Cable as a man with a history of anger and violence issues, tossed into the public arena by ESPN.
It might help persuade a jury that Randy Hanson wasn’t merely a victim of his own clumsiness.
Speaking of which: Cable shouldn’t be coaching right now. He should be on NFL suspension, because even the Napa County district attorney concedes that at some point during Hanson’s mysterious mishap in that hotel room, Cable had his hands on Hanson’s shirt, seemingly a violation of NFL rules. But that’s another matter.
What’s really bizarre in Monday’s two news releases is the juxtaposition of warnings.
In one statement, the Raiders say they’re evaluating the matter, and alert us that they have fired employees in the past for inappropriate conduct. In the other statement, they call into question the validity of ESPN’s report.
So the Raiders might wind up firing their coach over charges they suggest might be nothing but phony-baloney smears in ESPN’s attacks on the Raiders.
Creepy.
OUTFOXED ~ Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism
FOX News, Robert Greenwald, Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch, Veetle
Senate OKs $680 Billion-Dollar Spending Bill
Defense Spending, Health Care Reform, Military Industrial Complex, PentagonBy Roxana Tiron 10/22/09 04:20 PM ET
The Senate on Thursday sent the massive 2010 Pentagon policy bill to the president’s desk for signing. The Senate approved the bill authorizing $680 billion in defense spending by a vote of 68-29.
For the first time in a decade-long effort, the bill will include a provision that expands the federal hate-crimes law to cover offenses based on sexual orientation. The provision received a boost from the Democratic majority in Congress and has President Barack Obama’s backing. Democrats view the successful passage of hate-crimes legislation as a tribute to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), the champion of expanding the law.
The 2010 defense authorization bill also continues to fund an alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The Obama administration initially threatened to veto the bill if authorized funds for a second engine would seriously disrupt the overall F-35 program.
But Obama is not expected to veto the defense authorization bill. He won a big victory on it: The Senate voted to stop production of the F-22 fighter jet at 187 planes. The Senate vote had ripple effects through conference with the House authorizers and prompted defense appropriators to also scrap any plans for funding additional planes.
While Obama is not likely to veto the policy bill, he has yet to take a definitive stance over the 2010 defense appropriations bill. Senate and House appropriators are still negotiating the conference report and several lawmakers, including Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), the House Appropriations Defense subcommittee chairman, have indicated that funding for an alternate engine is likely to be in the bill.
The $680 billion defense policy bill also authorizes $130 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for fiscal year 2010, which started Oct. 1. This story was updated at 5:20 p.m.
Johnny Damon Double Steal ~ Game 4 World Series 2009
Broadcatching, John Damon, World SeriesPhish ~ Festival 8 ~ "Bathtub Gin" Halloween 2009
Broadcatching, Indio, Phish, Rock and RollHow Goldman Secretly Bet on the U.S. Housing Crash
Adjustable Rate Mortgages, Baba Booey, Bear Stearns, Citibank, Henry Paulson, TARP, Tim Geithner, Treasury, Wall Street, Washington MutualMcClatchy Washington Bureau
Sun, Nov. 01, 2009
Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers
November 01, 2009 01:17:44 AM
WASHINGTON — In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.
Goldman’s sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown, enabled the nation’s premier investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies.
Only later did investors discover that what Goldman had promoted as triple-A rated investments were closer to junk.
Now, pension funds, insurance companies, labor unions and foreign financial institutions that bought those dicey mortgage securities are facing large losses, and a five-month McClatchy investigation has found that Goldman’s failure to disclose that it made secret, exotic bets on an imminent housing crash may have violated securities laws.
“The Securities and Exchange Commission should be very interested in any financial company that secretly decides a financial product is a loser and then goes out and actively markets that product or very similar products to unsuspecting customers without disclosing its true opinion,” said Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University economics professor who’s proposed a massive overhaul of the nation’s banks. “This is fraud and should be prosecuted.”
John Coffee, a Columbia University law professor who served on an advisory committee to the New York Stock Exchange, said that investment banks have wide latitude to manage their assets, and so the legality of Goldman’s maneuvers depends on what its executives knew at the time.
“It would look much more damaging,” Coffee said, “if it appeared that the firm was dumping these investments because it saw them as toxic waste and virtually worthless.”
The New York Herald Sun 