Bird Dog's blog

TARP has worked...somewhat


The CBO reported that the cost of TARP will be $109 billion, which isn't a bad price to pay for weathering the worst financial crisis this side of the Great Depression. But with the big banks taken care of, more or less, I'd like to see a leg up for the smaller banks. On a local note, Frontier Bank is but one example.

Gosh deem it, Nancy! [Update: And the little Constitution, too!]


The self-executing rule has been self-executed before, but...

...although never [used] to pass legislation as momentous as the $875 billion health-care bill. It is one of three options that Pelosi said she is considering for a late-week House vote, but she added that she prefers it because it would politically protect lawmakers who are reluctant to publicly support the measure.

In other words, her fellow Democrats have the political courage of...

Kelo on steroids


The Guardian has an interesting piece on large agricultural land acquisitions in Africa. The buyers are mostly corporations and wealthy investors. Sheldon Richman calls it a corporate land grab, but to me, that's only partly true. The respective governments had to do the grabbing first.

A Bibi bubu [Update: It was a BIG bubu]


The Obama administration made clear its concerns about the expansion of Jewish settlements, so it was insulting to Joe Biden to arrive in Israel and--less than day later--hear the Israeli government announce the approval of 1,600 new homes in East Jersalem. SecState Clinton was understandably peeved. Jeffrey Goldberg:

Right


Desmond Tutu is right about the ill treatment of gays in African nations.

Bruce Carroll is right about gay-bashing in America and elsewhere. In Iran, being gay can you hanged, but Tutu's focus is elsewhere.

Honduras update: Situation self-corrected


Secretary of State Clinton announced that the U.S. is restoring $37 million in aid to Honduras and is normalizing relations with the small nation.

The fifty-plus-one full flop


Could it be that Glenn Beck has a point?

"In fact, you know, one of the big people that was really outspoken on reconciliation, said it was a really big mistake, especially using it for health care, you can't use the 50-plus-one option and still govern. That person was Barack Obama."

Then Beck played a clip of Obama:

Another Truther


Juan Cole notes that the president of the Iranian de facto police state has proclaimed the 9/11 attacks were a "big lie", joining the ranks of the Truthers. Quote:

"September 11 was a big lie and a pretext for the war on terror and a prelude to invading Afghanistan," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by state TV. He called the attacks a "complicated intelligence scenario and act."

White Orphanage


"Success has many fathers while failure is an orphan."

Or something like that. It looks like there is a growing number of parentless Obama White House aides, both current and former. Rahm Emanuel is looking more and more beleaguered, despite Dana Milbank's best efforts to rehabilitate him. The NYT:

Blogging in fives


John Hawkins has five ugly truths, and they are:

(1) Entitlements must be cut.
(2) Our military is going to weaken.
(3) Taxes are going up.
(4) Economic growth is going to stagnate.
(5) We will have a world where the United States isn't a super power.

I take issue on #5, because I think we'll have a world where the US isn't the only super power. The first four sound about right.

Support The Forvm

Powell's Books

Amazon.com

Help support the Forvm by buying items through our links. All proceeds go to defraying our hosting costs.

Links

Conservative
Liberal
Moderate/Mixed/Non-Partisan
Non-Political/Reference

Related Sites

Polisci Applied (Aaron)
Intrepid Liberal Journal (Intrepid Liberal)
Obsidian Wings (Bird Dog)
Open Hand/Open Eye (locutas)
Red State (Bird Dog)
Swords Crossed (brendanm98)
Wagster Speaks (Wagster)
WatchingAmerica (BlaiseP)
The Social Pathologist (TSP)

Foreign Affairs

Abu Aardvark
'Aqoul
American Footprints
Council on Foreign Relations
CSIS
Democracy Arsenal
Intel Dump
The Fourth Rail
War and Piece

Politics

Ace of Spades HQ
Andrew Sullivan
Balloon Juice
Belgravia Dispatch
Captain's Quarters
Crooked Timber
Curmudgeonly & Skeptical
Daily Kos
Democracy Arsenal
Eschaton
Firedoglake
Glenn Greenwald
Global Guerrillas
Hugh Hewitt
Instapundit
Jawa Report
Lawyers, Guns and Money
Liberals Against Terror
Matt Yglesias
Michael J. Totten
Michelle Malkin
Moon of Alabama
New America
OxBlog
Patterico
Political Animal
Political Wire
Publius Pundit
QandO
Reality Based Community
Talking Points Memo
The Agitator
The Belmont Club
The Corner
This Modern WorldTruman Project
Winds of Change.net

War

Counterterrorism Blog
Iraq the Model
Jihad Watch
Small Wars Journal Blog

Economics and Business

Angry Bear
Brad DeLong
Daniel Drezner
Mahalanobis
Marginal Revolution
Roubini Global Economics
The Big Picture

Science and Tech

Bad Astronomy
New Scientist
Real Climate
Science Blogs
Scientific American
The Panda's Thumb

Legal

Balkinization
Conglomerate
Ideoblog
Jurisdynamics
Law and Letters
Overlawyered
ProfessorBainbridge
ScotusBlog
Talk Left
The Becker-Posner Blog
Volokh Conspiracy

Sports

Baseball Crank
Baseball Musings
Baseball Reference.com
ESPN.com
NFL.com
Only Baseball Matters
The Sports Economist

Film and Music

They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?
Internet Movie Database
All Music Guide

News and Aggregators

Asia Times
Boingboing
CNN
Digg
English Russia
Fark
Memeorandum
MSNBC
Politico
Poynteronline
Slashdot

Dead Tree Media
The New York Times
The Washington Post
Los Angeles Times

References

Wikipedia
Your Dictionary