1984 Miss Alaska beauty pageant video

Sarah Palin swimsuit video surfaces from 1984 Miss Alaska beauty pageant

You've never seen a vice presidential candidate quite like this.

Footage has surfaced of Sarah Palin - John McCain's running mate for the White House - taking the stage 24 years ago in a one-piece swimsuit for the title of Miss Alaska.

The quality is quite poor, which should be expected since it was likely pulled from a wornout VHS tape, but it apparently shows the governor of Alaska - then Sarah Heath - walking across a stage as an announcer offers tidbits of information about her.


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Bailout Bill Scoop

According to the Wall Street Journal, here's the overview of the plan:

The Troubled Asset Relief Fund:

The bill authorizes $700 billion for the fund in installments. Treasury will first get $250 billion, with an additional $100 billion immediately accessible. Congress would have the option of blocking the final installment of $350 billion by issuing a joint resolution within 15 days of any requests.

How it works:

Treasury plans to hire asset managers to determine how to buy bad loans and other ailing assets from financial institutions. Many of the details, including pricing and purchase procedures, will be worked out between those managers and Treasury. The legislation requires Treasury to set guidelines within 45 days for pricing methods and setting the value of troubled assets, as well as mechanisms for purchasing assets, procedures for selecting asset managers and criteria for identifying troubled assets to buy.

The legislation requires Treasury to purchase assets at the lowest price, and allows the government to buy through auction or direct from institutions.

Treasury expects to start buying the simplest assets first -- mortgage-backed securities, for example -- followed by more complex securities. Treasury likely will publish a list of the assets it is seeking to purchase. Banks and other institutions are expected to submit bids in a competition to sell bad loans and securities.

Executive compensation:

The legislation places restrictions on executive compensation for certain companies that sell assets to Treasury. If Treasury buys assets from a company directly -- something it would do if a firm were failing -- then all "golden parachute" exit-pay provisions would be canceled. Companies that sell assets to Treasury through an auction process will be subject to some limits. Firms that sell more than $300 million of assets to Treasury won't be allowed to make any new golden-parachute payments to top executives. A tax-deduction limit on compensation above $500,000 also will apply.

Equity stakes:

The legislation requires Treasury to receive warrants in companies that participate in the program. If a company sells its assets through an auction, Treasury will get a nominal amount of nonvoting warrants. If Treasury buys assets directly, it would get a majority equity stake.

Oversight:

The Troubled Asset Relief Fund will be overseen by a bipartisan congressional commission that will receive reports from Treasury every 30 days. The program will also be overseen by a board comprised of the heads of Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Housing and Urban Development Department and the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

The office of accountability will have an inspector-general office within Treasury.

Treasury will have to submit a written report to Congress no later than April 30 on the overall financial regulatory system and "its effectiveness at overseeing the participants in the financial markets, including the over-the-counter swaps market and government-sponsored enterprises" and recommend improvements.

Protecting taxpayers:

If after five years the government has a net loss, the president will be required to submit a legislative proposal to seek reimbursement from the financial institutions that participated.

Help for homeowners:

Treasury will buy mortgage-backed securities, mortgages and other assets secured by residential real estate. The legislation requires Treasury to use its position as the investor in those loans and securities to "encourage the servicers of the underlying mortgages" to help minimize foreclosures.

It also calls for Treasury to "identify opportunities" to acquire "classes of troubled assets" that will improve the ability of Treasury to help modify and restructure loans. The idea is that Treasury would be more patient with homeowners who have fallen behind on their payments than commercial lenders.

Insurance:

The bill would require Treasury to establish, alongside the asset-purchase plan, a program to insure mortgage-backed securities. Financial institutions that want to participate would essentially pay the government a fee and, in return, the government would insure their assets against any future losses.

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Here's a link to a pdf of the draft bill

Medieval Jewish Capital Found

 The Jews of Khazaria

This July 30, 2005 photo shows an excavation of an 11th-12th century house made of hard-burnt bricks in Itil, a Silk Road city that served as the Khazar capital, near Astrakhan, about 800 miles (1280 km) south of Moscow, The Khazars established the first feudal state in eastern Europe. A Russian archaeologist says he has found the lost capital of the Khazar empire, a powerful medieval state that once stretched from the northern shores of the Black Sea to Central Asia and whose rulers adopted Judaism as their state religion. (AP Photo/Dmitry Vasilyev)

A Russian archaeologist says he has found the lost capital of the Khazars, a powerful nation that adopted Judaism as its official religion more than 1,000 years ago, only to disappear leaving little trace of its culture.

Dmitry Vasilyev, a professor at Astrakhan State University, said his nine-year excavation near the Caspian Sea has finally unearthed the foundations of a triangular fortress of flamed brick, along with modest yurt-shaped dwellings, and he believes these are part of what was once Itil, the Khazar capital.

"The discovery of the capital of Eastern Europe's first feudal state is of great significance," he told The Associated Press. "We should view it as part of Russian history."

The Khazars were a Turkic tribe that roamed the steppes from Northern China to the Black Sea. Between the 7th and 10th centuries they conquered huge swaths of what is now southern Russia and Ukraine, the Caucasus Mountains and Central Asia as far as the Aral Sea.

Itil, about 800 miles south of Moscow, had a population of up to 60,000 and occupied 0.8 square miles of marshy plains southwest of the Russian Caspian Sea port of Astrakhan, Vasilyev said.

It lay at a major junction of the Silk Road, the trade route between Europe and China, which "helped Khazars amass giant profits," he said.

The Khazar empire was once a regional superpower, and Vasilyev said his team has found "luxurious collections" of well-preserved ceramics that help identify cultural ties of the Khazar state with Europe, the Byzantine Empire and even Northern Africa.

The Khazars' ruling dynasty and nobility converted to Judaism sometime in the 8th or 9th centuries. Vasilyev said the limited number of Jewish religious artifacts such as mezuzas and Stars of David found at other Khazar sites prove that ordinary Khazars preferred traditional beliefs such as shamanism, or newly introduced religions including Islam.

Yevgeny Satanovsky, director of the Middle Eastern Institute in Moscow, said he believes the Khazar elite chose Judaism out of political expediency — to remain independent of neighboring Muslim and Christian states. "They embraced Judaism because they wanted to remain neutral, like Switzerland these days," he said.

In particular, he said, the Khazars opposed the Arab advance into the Caucasus Mountains and were instrumental in containing a Muslim push toward eastern Europe. He compared their role in eastern Europe to that of the French knights who defeated Arab forces at the Battle of Tours in France in 732.

The Khazars succeeded in holding off the Arabs, but a young, expanding Russian state vanquished the Khazar empire in the late 10th century. Medieval Russian epic poems mention Russian warriors fighting the "Jewish Giant."

"In many ways, Russia is a successor of the Khazar state," Vasilyev said.  More.... 

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