Lunar eclipse tonight at some ungodly hour

From PBS:

The moon will begin to enter the umbra at 1:32 am EST, at which point a visible dark shadow will start creeping across the moon's face. The total eclipse begins at 2:40 am, when the moon's final edge slips into the umbra. It will stay in the shadow until 3:53 am, and should be completed by 5:02 am. Meteorologist and astronomy writer Joe Rao details the 12 stages of the total lunar eclipse in this Space.com article.

The prime time to see the eclipse is 3:17 am EST, O'Leary says. "That's when the moon will be in deepest part of the shadow."

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Haley Barbour on the segregated south: It wasn't that bad

I'm sure it wasn't, if you were a fat white guy. Read the rest of this post...

Conservatives growing uncomfortable with GOP opposition to 9/11 health bill

Where is Rudy Giuliani, Lord God Defender of all things 9/11? Oh that's right, it's not an election year.

From Greg Sargent:

With Senate Democrats upping the pressure for passage of the bill giving health benefits to sickened 9/11 responders, it's going to get increasingly hard for GOP Senators to maintain their opposition. That's because even right-leaning commentators and political operatives are growing mighty uncomfortable with the Senate GOP's stance.

Case in point: This morning Joe Scarborough ripped into GOP opponents of passing the bill, which is called the Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act. He said Republicans were taking a big risk, and the crucial point Scarborough made is that this should be a national issue, not a New York one:

"Why wouldn't we take care of their health care? It's just like taking care of veterans' health care," Scarborough wondered aloud. "It can't be a good move for Republicans to oppose a bill for the firefighters and the cops on 9/11."

"How did this become a New York issue?" Scarborough continued. "That is like Pearl Harbor becoming a Hawaii issue in 1951. It's ridiculous."

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McCain and Graham won't help on arms control treaty because they're miffed about DADT passing

Way to risk the lives of 330m Americans in a nuclear war because you didn't succeed in legislatively bashing the gays. (And Senator Graham, you're not fooling anyone.) Read the rest of this post...

Taibbi on the fall of Ernst & Young

Chris in Paris has noted the coming civil fraud charges against the Ernst & Young accounting firm by NY prosecutors. That post well describes the allegedly fraudulent use of the Repo 105 accounting technique in its handling of the books at Lehman Brothers.

Now Matt Taibbi weighs in. Taibbi has been covering the Wall Street scandals since forever, it seems, and will have more in a coming Rolling Stone piece. His blog site contains an excellent explanation of what Repo 105 is, how it was used to sweeten the stink at Lehman, and what the fate of E&Y; is likely to be:

Crisis Dominoes Start Falling With Lehman Auditor

It took more than two years, but there might finally be some capital sentences handed out for crimes committed during the financial crisis. That’s metaphorically speaking, of course. Like the accounting firm Arthur Anderson, whose head was sacrificed during the Enron debacle, the once-proud financial auditing firm Ernst and Young now looks poised to take a spin down the toilet of history thanks to its role in the Lehman Brothers debacle. ...

The short version of what happened goes something like this. Lehman Brothers, like all the other big banks on Wall Street in those years, was nearing insolvency and desperate for cash. In advance of its quarterly reports in 2007, the firm executed a series of something called Repo 105 transactions in an attempt to make their balance sheet look healthier than it was.

These Repo 105 transactions are just loans that Ernst and Young and Lehman Brothers conspired to book as revenue from sales.

This is just the start of a very tasty post. He then explains how Repo 105 was actually used, in a hypothetical example transaction involving "Knicks tickets" and "your worthless puke-stained lava lamp". Only Taibbi; please read.

The closing is a nice summing of "where we are now":

My guess is that this suit is the beginning of the end for Ernst and Young and, who knows, may be the beginning of a series of investigations that ultimately take down the auditors and ratings agencies that made the financial crisis possible. Without accountants and raters signing off on all the bogus derivative math and bad bookkeeping, a lot of this mess would never have happened. Zero Hedge has an excellent piece detailing all the ass-covering and finger-pointing going on at Ernst and Young; check it out if you have time.

Sacrificial lambs, all corporate; none of the fleshy perps will see time, or their end of days. But still, metaphorical capital sentences for crimes committed with capital is not nothing these days.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Send us your Christmas photos (Hannukah works too)

Hannukah works too. Just send us a great photo of your holidays, and we'll post it in the box in the upper right corner of the blog. If you're photo-savvy, send a jpg or gif that's at most 500px wide. I can resize them (so send them anyway if you don't know how to shrink them down), but it's easier if you do.

So send your Christmas (and Hannukah, and/or "holiday") photos to:
photos AT americablog DOT com
And it goes without saying, feel free to add some context to the photo, explaining the circumstances, the time, a funny story (or a sad one), and old photos are always welcome too.

NOTE: By sending us your photos you are granting us permission to publish them on the blog, and you are attesting to the fact that you have rights to the photos. Please only send us YOUR photos. Thanks, JOHN Read the rest of this post...

Biden: Assange is a 'high tech terrorist'

If anyone wants to go there, let's have a quick review again of some of the "terrorist" WikiLeaks reports and then decide who is the actual problem. This is only a small portion of the material. Let's think about what country has decided to pressure businesses such as Visa, MasterCard and PayPal to halt payments despite the lack of any charges against WikiLeaks. And let's not forget about the government censorship in China US.

- US irritated by EU privacy laws.
- Bank of America bans WikiLeaks payments despite no charges. They simply disagree with the message, which is a new chapter in the American system of politics.
- Taxpayer money used for child sex slavery in Afghanistan.
- US oil giant Chevron discussed oil drilling in Iran despite US laws which forbid such agreements.
- BP had oil well blowout like Deepwater in Azerbaijan months earlier.
- Failed UK bank directors "failed to live up to their duties"
- Vatican pressured Ireland to grant immunity to priests in child rape cases.
- Pfizer used "dirty tricks" in Nigeria in attempt to avoid prosecution.
- US conspired with China to block environmental reform in Copenhagen.
- Saudi Arabia is a "terrorist ATM"
- Senior Chinese Politburo member involved in Google hack
- Yemen offered US "open door" for missile attacks.
- Afghan VP arrived in Dubai with $52 million (possibly US taxpayer money)

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NY to file civil fraud charges against Ernst & Young

Much like the ratings agencies, the accounting firms also played their role in the economic collapse. That industry also played an important role in previous failures such as Enron. While all of this is good news, it's still annoying to see the central players (Wall Street) walking away unscathed. It goes to show you how deep their ties are into the political decision making process. That's also why it's called a Wall Street government.

The lawsuit stems from Lehman's use of a controversial accounting technique called Repo 105, the paper said.

Lehman's court-appointed examiner, Anton Valukas, has said that the use of Repo 105, which dated back to 2001 and was used without telling investors or regulators, gave the appearance that Lehman was reducing its overall leverage levels in 2008 when it was not.

Lehman used Repo 105 to temporarily remove $50 billion of assets from its balance sheet in 2008, according to his report released in March.

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Food Safety Bill passes Senate

Not a bad surprise after years of failure in Washington on the issue of food safety. ABC News:

In an unexpected move, the Senate today passed a sweeping food safety bill by unanimous consent, sending the bill back for a vote in the House before it will move on to President Obama’s desk.

“Very very important for our country,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said this evening on the Senate floor. “Perfect legislation? No. But a broad broad step in the right direction. We haven’t done anything in this regard for more than a hundred years for our country. With all the changes in processing food, it’s so very important. I’ve spoken to the Speaker tonight and this will pass the House when they come back Monday night or Tuesday.”

The surprising development is only the latest bizarre twist for the measure. Just a few days ago the food safety bill was seen as dead on Capitol Hill, but the Senate this weekend modified it to resolve a revenue technicality and managed to pass it.

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Monday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

The President doesn't have anything on his public schedule today.

The Senate is still debating the START Treaty. It's astounding that supposed grown ups, who are elected to lead and protect the nation, are having hissy fits because DADT was repealed. For that, some might not vote for a nuclear treaty? They're acting like fifth-graders.

I'll admit, I haven't focused on many other issues besides DADT, of late. But, holding up the funding for 9/11 responders, too? Wow.

Last night, news broke that Media Matters for America is setting up a new entity, Equality Matters, which will be led by Richard Socarides and Kerry Eleveld. They'll be creating "a war room for gay equality." We need it. Yes, it's great that DADT was repealed. But, the other top priority for this session of Congress, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) didn't even get a committee vote. Right, not even a vote in the House Labor and Education Committee despite languishing there for over a year. So, lots of work to do.

And, I believe Christmas is in five days. Yikes... Read the rest of this post...

Report: Karl Rove assisting in Assange prosecution attempt

So besides dragging down the US and the Middle East, Rove is set to deliver his destruction to yet another country. Huffington Post:

Rove has advised Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt for the past two years after resigning as Bush White House political advisor in mid-2007. Rove's resignation followed the scandalous Bush mid-term political purge of nine of the nation's 93 powerful U.S. attorneys.

These days, Sweden and the United States are apparently undertaking a political prosecution as audacious and important as those by the notorious "loyal Bushies" earlier this decade against U.S. Democrats.

The U.S. prosecution of WikiLeaks, if successful, could criminalize many kinds of investigative news reporting about government affairs, not just the WikiLeaks disclosures that are embarrassing Sweden as well as the Bush and Obama administrations. Authorities in both countries are setting the stage with pre-indictment sex and spy smears against WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange, plus an Interpol manhunt.

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Snow in Europe continues to disrupt travel

Another morning and yet another fresh cover of snow over here. Winter weather like this is extremely unusual in places like Paris and London. Because it's unusual, cities don't have the equipment to clear the roads so the end result is chaos. Grocery stores are clearly missing food from deliveries in what is traditionally a very strong period, as shoppers buy food for the holidays. Thankfully the weather is warming up a few degrees here in Paris so it should turn to rain in the coming days though London is a few degrees cooler, so they still have another day or two of snow. Crazy.

Heathrow planned to cancel all arrivals Sunday, but later said it might allow three planes to land. A dozen long-haul flights are scheduled to take off Sunday night, spokesman Andrew Teacher said. He did not say which ones.

Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris told travelers to expect two-hour delays and cancellation of a quarter of flights. One in five flights was being canceled at the French capital's second airport, Paris-Orly, with delays of an hour expected, Aeroports de Paris said on its website.

Germany's Frankfurt airport said at least 500 of a planned 1,300 flights would be scrapped Sunday.

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IMF planning upgrade to 'already opulent' offices

Did they hire John Thaine of Merrill Lynch? What are they thinking?

An IMF spokesman said the work was an essential overhaul of the 40-year-old premises and compared it to the need to put a new engine in a 20-year-old car. "This is about the heating, the ventilation, the air-conditioning," he said. "This is work that can't be postponed."

Pressure groups greeted the news with scepticism, pointing out that eight years ago the fund spent $150m on a second building, complete with external waterfall, after saying its original site – known as HQ1 – was no longer big enough for its staff of highly-paid international officials.

They said the fund was now flush with cash after selling some of its stock of gold and extracting fees and interest payments from troubled countries such as Ireland and Greece.

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