He just threw his name into the hat for RNC chair.

South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Katon Dawson told supporters Monday he will seek the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, pledging to help rebuild the party after devastating losses on Election Day.

[...]

In his Monday statement, he touted his “aggressive” approach to fundraising, and Republican success in maintaining control of political offices in his state. He also noted that Republicans “made outreach to non-traditional Republican voters a priority” specifically the state GOP’s selection of an African-American to serve as an RNC member and the election of a black Republican to the General Assembly. Diversifying the Republican Party is a hot topic of discussion — one of Dawson’s rivals for the nomination is former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, who is African-American.

All I know about him is that he's an egomaniac, if the South Carolina GOP homepage is any measure.

Oh. That Was Fast: Vinty at DPUD is not impressed. Apparently there's a country-club membership involved. Hmmm.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 08:35 AM | Comments (77)
Post contains 180 words, total size 1 kb.

As usual, no list, you have to click through each page (it's an advertising thing). Still, mildly diverting.

Four of the top five characters are villains, reinforcing the idea that Evil is Cool. Two out of the top six are characters played by Harrison Ford (Han Solo, Indiana Jones). For that matter, two out of the top four are from Star Wars, which is a good indication that fanboys dominated the selection.

My own choice for Greatest Movie Character (and also Greatest Film Hero) is at number nine. Yes, in all four films, even the bad one. more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 06:57 AM | Comments (160)
Post contains 407 words, total size 3 kb.

On Wednesday Iraq's parliament will vote on the Status of Forces Agreement which sets a 2011 deadline for withdrawal, but provides for long-term cooperation and an American presence in Iraq. The security pact is highly contentious and some folks are voting the only way they know how:

Ahmed al-Sayyid, 23, was waiting in line with friends at the entrance to the Green Zone when a woman in black robes approached the checkpoint.

"Suddenly, she blew herself up about 50 meters from where I was standing. I was horrified and I ran away. But seconds later, I returned to the explosion site, which was filled with smoke, and I could see some wounded people and pieces of flesh," al-Sayyid said.

Iraq's intelligence service said the bomber had targeted the checkpoint where its workers enter the Green Zone to go to work at the agency's headquarters, which is inside the fortified area. The service said female employees, including a pregnant woman, were killed and some of its guards were injured.

Kindi hospital said two women were among those killed in the blast.

The U.S. military said the bombing near the Green Zone occurred between 8:30 a.m. and 9 a.m. and killed two Iraqi army members and three civilians. One civilian was injured, it said.

The deal could still fall apart. Maliki needs agreement from the Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites so all can claim political cover. Any one pulls out and the deal will have to be put off until after the holidays. After parliament the deal has to survive President Talibani's veto pen.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 06:41 AM | Comments (6)
Post contains 277 words, total size 2 kb.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:52 AM | Comments (29)
Post contains 8 words, total size 1 kb.

I was going to do one of those misleading headlines like "Calender Features Enormous Naked Hooters" but seems unnecessarily cruel. Maybe if we'd won the election.

The Sun article, with one nude (no actual naughty bits, but it's obviously distasteful):

The gay 29-year-old from Memphis, USA, is so proud of his size, he has posed nude in a series of 'sexy' shots.

...

"I feel sexy and attractive so that's the way I act," says Mikey. "I don't see why I can't pose up for photos like any other male model.

...

"It was very liberating actually," says Mikey who is posed on all fours (August), as an angry bull (May) and with a Christmas hat (December).

The site's here; light content warning. Again, no actual penis, as it's discretely hidden under multiple rolls of undulating he-tits.

Heh: Bruce Lee playing table tennis. With nunchuks, naturally.

Posted by: Ace at 12:28 AM | Comments (58)
Post contains 166 words, total size 1 kb.

Discuss.

See you next Open Blog, and 24: Redemption was a t.v remake of Tears of the Sun.

I liked them both, btw.

G'night, morons.

Posted by: Open Blog at 09:47 PM | Comments (17)
Post contains 29 words, total size 1 kb.

This is slightly amusing, but this type of thing always gives me a deck chairs on the Titanic vibe.

Details about the suit are here.

That page mentions the Holy Land Foundation trial (Warning: rather blatant media bias in the report). Actually, the retrial, which has been in jury deliberations for seven days now. Holy Land Foundation is believed to have funneled $12 million to Hamas. The reason for the first mistrial and probably the endless deliberations in this one is proving that the defendants intended that the money go to Hamas, rather than charity.

Both sides are already claiming vindication ahead of a verdict. The defendants say their "patent persecution" has strengthened their resolve and the resolve of their allies like CAIR (in other words, their unindicted co-conspirators). The government says that merely shining a light on these little scumsuckers has helped stop their terrorism financing, regardless of the actual outcome of the trial.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:27 PM | Comments (17)
Post contains 171 words, total size 2 kb.

They are getting clever in their desperation and it's going to take some time to untangle the newest mess devised by Citigroup, Treasury, the FDIC, and the Fed:

Treasury has agreed to inject an additional $20 billion in capital into Citigroup under terms of the deal hashed out between the bank, the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Treasury officials will charge a higher interest rate for the capital injection -- 8% for the first few years -- than it has charged to dozens of other banks now borrowing money under the government's the $700 billion rescue package approved by Congress last month.

In addition to the capital, Citigroup will have an extremely unusual arrangement in which the government agrees to backstop a roughly $300 billion pool of its assets, containing mortgage-backed securities among other things. Citigroup must absorb the first $37 billion to $40 billion in losses from these assets. If losses extend beyond that level, Treasury will absorb the next $5 billion in losses, followed by the FDIC taking on the next $10 billion in losses. Any losses on these assets beyond that level would be taken by the Fed.

Citigroup would also agree to work to modify -- if possible -- troubled mortgages held in the $300 billion pool, using standards created by the FDIC after the collapse of IndyMac Bank.

The government is not expected to require any management changes, as that was seen as potentially being too destabilizing.

This is the fifth type of bailout in the past three months. We started with a fairly typical bailout for AIG (as typical as bailouts are, I mean) in the form of loan. Then came Paulson's Panic and the TARP to be applied across the financial sector. This was a rather pointed solution to a specific problem. But that wasn't good enough, so next came capital injection in lieu of the TARP. The $350 billion set aside for that has almost been exhausted. And then AIG got a new deal, in which the taxpayer was forced to assume the risk for AIG's bad investments.

This new bailout adopts some features of all of the prior bailout deals; it includes a loan with the likelihood of capital injection and the taxpayer gets to guarantee Citigroup's bad investments. Perhaps these strategies will be more successful in concert than they were alone, but I'm not holding my breath.

While I'm thinking about it, does Treasury, FDIC, and the Fed have the authority to make this deal? I mean as a constitutional and statutory matter.

Click over and read the whole article, as it has too many gems for me to steal. This should get some attention:

In Citigroup's case, the government's arrangement likely will be able to accommodate only a sliver of the company's more than $3 trillion in assets, including its holdings in off-balance-sheet entities. Jitters about such "hidden" assets helped trigger the nose-dive in Citigroup's stock last week. Among the off-balance-sheet assets are $667 billion in mortgage-related securities.

...

Last Monday, Mr. Pandit said an a meeting with employees that Citigroup was scrapping plans to try to sell about $80 billion in risky assets. Investors and analysts interpreted the move as a sign that Citigroup either was unable to sell the assets, or would have had to incur hefty losses in the process.

Two days later, Citigroup announced it was buying $17.4 billion in assets from its structured-investment vehicles -- complex entities whose holdings included risky mortgage-linked securities -- and faced a $1.1 billion loss due to their diminished values.

Congratulations, Citigroup. You have now achieved the coveted "too big to let fail" status. It is to weep.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 08:48 PM | Comments (47)
Post contains 649 words, total size 4 kb.

It's on in fifteen minutes on the East Coast (8 pm).

Sorry for the late reminder -- I forgot myself. Larwyn reminded.

Posted by: Ace at 03:45 PM | Comments (88)
Post contains 28 words, total size 1 kb.

Hot off the presses: The Chief Culprit, by Viktor Suvorov ($25 hardcover, available at Amazon and elsewhere). It's a synthesis of several of his previous books in Russian, including The Icebreaker, M-Day, The Cleansing, The Suicide, and The Last Republic (only the first of which was ever translated into English). The author, whose real name is Vladimir Rezun, is a GRU (Soviet military intelligence) agent who defected to Britain in 1978. (One of the blurbs is by Vladimir Bukovsky, in case that name means anything to anybody.)

His goal is to disprove the conventional wisdom about the origins of WW2.

His smaller claim: Stalin was planning to invade Germany in early July of 1941, a few days after Germany instead invaded the USSR. His argument is simple: the USSR was well-prepared for war, but it was not prepared for a defensive war; so what does that leave? He cites lots of sources (which, having a full-time job and being lazy besides, I haven't personally verified) to the effect that the Soviet military was trained, equipped, and, in June of 1941, positioned for an offensive war. (E.g., huge masses of Soviet troops, equipment, ammunition, and other supplies were stationed right by the border, or on their way there; most Soviet airplanes were not designed, and their pilots not trained, for dogfights, but rather for a Pearl-Harbor-style surprise attack on enemy airfields, and complete control of the skies afterwards; most Soviet tanks were designed for fast travel on well-built foreign roads, rather than for slow-but-sure movement on their native territory; and so on.) This would explain the tremendous losses suffered by the USSR in the first hours and days of the war: you can be positioned either for offense or for defense, but not both. The proximity to the border which made the Soviet army ready to suddenly attack simultaneously made it extremely vulnerable to a sudden attack from the other side.

His larger claim: this was all part of Stalin's grand design to conquer Europe (and, eventually, the entire world). He helped Hitler re-arm the German military, expecting him to attack Western Europe, thus acting as "the icebreaker of the revolution"; signed the 1939 non-aggression pact, which was supposed to allay Hitler's fears of being attacked by Stalin, while also creating a common border where there was none before; waited for Hitler to invade Poland first, so that Hitler would be forever known as the villain who started the war; then, he was to strike at Hitler from behind, defeat him, and "liberate" all of Europe (i.e. install Communist puppet regimes throughout, or perhaps even annex it). Hitler somehow got wind of this, and, out of desperation, attacked the USSR first; but he really had no chance of winning anyway, so -- despite the huge initial advantage -- he still lost (but as a result, Stalin only managed to get half of Europe rather than all of it, and his hopes of world-wide conquest were pretty much dead).

Yes, Stalin had received several warnings of a coming German invasion, but refused to believe them -- mostly because Germany had no credible chance of defeating the USSR, so why would it try to do so? (esp. as part of a two-front war); and also because his intelligence services told him that Germany hadn't even taken any of several necessary steps towards such an invasion (e.g., providing its army with warm clothing, producing lubricating oil that wouldn't freeze at cold temperatures, and so forth.) Germany's only hope was for a successful blitzkrieg, before winter came (i.e. about 3-4 months) -- but how can you conduct a blitzkrieg against a country that spans eleven time zones? So the war naturally turned into one of attrition, which Germany couldn't possibly win.

(And don't give me any crap about how Hitler almost captured Moscow. Napoleon, in 1812, did capture it -- and ended up having to flee. Even in the early 19th century, it became clear that victory is only achieved by destroying the enemy's army and other military potential; capturing cities, even capitals, is almost pointless.)

It's a first edition, so there are some typos, and somelineswhichlooklikethis. Worse, it's a very condensed version, written (or translated) in a very dry style; gone are most of the sarcastic rubbings-in that made the Russian books such fun to read. In this book, Suvorov usually just cites stats, makes his point, and moves on.

Still, highly recommended.

Posted by: Open Blog at 03:12 PM | Comments (97)
Post contains 759 words, total size 5 kb.