Will anybody be surprised if Keiser dies in a plane crash on his way back to the States? I won't. (via B-J, via Matt Taibbi, via Zero Hedge)
Rafsanjani Makes His Move
Sully has a ton of posts up today about Rafsanjani's appearance today, and the fall-out from it.
What seems clear is that he's putting himself out there as the opposition's leader, and its public face. He wouldn't be doing this if he didn't feel he had enough support behind-the-scenes to survive a backlash.
I can't really see it as an encouraging development though. Rafsanjani is more likely to co-opt the opposition, and try to fold it back into the system, than he is to help push things towards the (inevitable?) collapse of the Republic.
If Rafsanjani tries to steer the flood, he's going to be pulled under. The best he can do is try to surf the crest, and land in a position of power when it sweeps away the old power structure.
Cassandra Needs To Shut the Hell Up
Krugman:
The American economy remains in dire straits, with one worker in six unemployed or underemployed. Yet Goldman Sachs just reported record quarterly profits — and it’s preparing to hand out huge bonuses, comparable to what it was paying before the crisis. What does this contrast tell us?First, it tells us that Goldman is very good at what it does. Unfortunately, what it does is bad for America.
Second, it shows that Wall Street’s bad habits — above all, the system of compensation that helped cause the financial crisis — have not gone away.
Third, it shows that by rescuing the financial system without reforming it, Washington has done nothing to protect us from a new crisis, and, in fact, has made another crisis more likely.
Obama's failure to even address the underlying causes of the recent shock to the global economy, and his giving ear to the parasites who benefitted, is already looking like the biggest failure of his first term.
The window of opportunity for real reform on Wall Street is slamming shut.
Mum, Dad, Don't Touch It- It's Evil!
Weird. Chrome is telling me Balloon Juice is infected with malware when I try to surf to it. Did JC get hacked, or is it just Chrome being cranky?
UPDATE: Now Chrome is telling me my own site has been infected with whatever is infecting Balloon Juice. Even though I haven't opened any page of the site today. I'm thinking 'cranky'.
UPDATIER: Not news.
Kopp's Awful Play
I'm sure I won't be the only one in awe of how terrible a train wreck this was, but last night Billy Kopp went out in 12th place in the Main Event of the WSOP by making one of the worst plays I've ever seen in any tournament of any size.
He was sitting in 2nd in chips, with over 20 million and made a classic pressure raise, bumping it from an early position with 5-3 diamonds. Nothing wrong so far. He got one caller, from a blind -- Darwin Moon, the chip leader, who was the only guy at the table who had him covered.
Flop hits K high, and three diamonds. Both players check.
Turn hits the two of hearts, pairing the board. Moon checks. Kopp bets out 2 million... and Moon check-raises to 6 million.
Now, if you're Kopp, what should your thought process be here? You flopped the baby flush, but Moon is showing some kind of strength. Maybe he has the ace of diamonds. Maybe he has a two and made trips, or something like off king-queen (or jack, or 10) of diamonds. Lots of hands that could catch up on the river. Or maybe he flopped a mediocre flush of his own. Less likely, maybe he flopped the nut flush, or hit two pair or trips on the flop, and you're now drawing dead.
Most importantly, what you should be thinking is, "This is the one guy at the table I do not want to get balls-deep with, because he's the only guy who can bust me out."
Kopp apparently never got around to that last thought.
He responded to Moon's raise by re-raising all-in. Moon called, showed QJ of diamonds, and Kopp was done.
Dude, you were three eliminations from the final table, and in great chip position. Maybe you just call the raise; possibly you come back over the top with a smallish re-raise of your own (although 'smallish', in this case, would have meant a bump to 9 or 10 million).
The absolute last thing you should be doing is pushing all your chips into the middle, against the one person with enough chips to actually call, when there is a decent chance you could be drawing stone dead.
Newz From Teh Innerwebz!
Just got an email from that Barack Obama cat... apparently there's some sort of confirmation hearing going on today for one of his judicial nominees, or something. Good to know.
I wonder if any cable news shows will mention it?
TIFF Early Peeks!
The film fest (sorry... Toronto International Film Festival) press office has started rolling out this year's slate of movies. Two probable gems from the Special Presentations programme jumped out at me immediately:
Vengeance: Johnnie To directing a reformed-hitman-revenge flick is cool enough, but the reformed hitman in question is played by... Johnny Hallyday. Sweet!
Valhalla Rising: The Best Actor in Europe, Mads Mikkelsen, re-unites with Pusher trilogy director Nicolas Winding Refn for some sort of crazy-ass Viking fantasy epic. If I'm not in the audience for the first festival screening of this it means I've up and died, and believe you me God will get an earful for yanking me off this earth before I got a chance to watch it.
In contrast, the Opening Night Gala is apparently a Darwin biopic by the guy who directed the Core, which just seems like a hilariously bad idea on a few levels.
Beyond the Veil
I'm slowly making my way through The Souls of Black Folk, and a great big idea for a short story whomped me over the head after I read DuBois' piece on going back to Tennessee to catch up on the families he'd met while he was teaching up in the hills.
Hmm. Educated man heads to rural area cut off from 'civilization'... encounters weirdness and resistance from the locals... a young girl dies... he gets out, but is irrevocably changed and haunted by his experiences...
Sounds like the basis for a Lovecraftian tale to me.
The trick will be creating the right type of Mythosy horror for young DuBois to brush up against, and to retroactively inform the rest of his life. The metaphors have to be perfect.
UFC 100
Last night's main event turned out to be Dana White's ultimate wet dream, as not only did Lesnar win but the crowd hated him. Massive boos raining down after the fight, which Brock egged on like any good, Vince McMahon-trained heel would.
The problem is, what White hasn't figured out is that a heel champ only works if you have a face challenger to take him down, and frankly there are no heavyweights in the UFC who are going to be a threat to Lesnar unless he gets lazy. He already beat up Couture. If he could handle Mir as easily as he did Noguera won't be any tougher for him to man-handle. Tim Sylvia could match his size but Lesnar's raw athleticism would make it no contest at all.
There's really only one heavyweight in MMA right now who could hang with Lesnar, and he's not even in the UFC yet. But he's got the size, strength, athleticism, speed and wrestling background to match and neutralize Lesnar's best weapons, and I can see the two of them having a series of wars than would make the Couture-Liddell trilogy look like undercard stuff. (Of course they could also have one bad fight where neither of them can ground 'n' pound effectively and they can't figure out anything else to try...)
That guy, of course, is Bobby Lashley.
How weird is it going to be for UFC fans to see two ex-WWE guys as the two most dominant heavyweight MMA fighters in the world?
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