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.

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

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

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.

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:

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.

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.

Could it be that Glenn Beck has a point?

Then Beck played a clip of Obama:

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:

"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:

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.