theforvm

TARP has worked...somewhat

Bird Dog — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:16:47 +0000

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.

Friday Open Thread

Model 62 — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:28:05 +0000

"But it's only Thursday," they say.

"Yes," he says, "Here it's only Thursday. But somewhere, it's Friday already."

On Fine Liquor #2

HankP — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 05:16:40 +0000

Here it is, my next installment of a series that will probably generate more hits than any ten diaries about politics. The sacrifices I make for this site ...

I have to mention one incident that I experienced recently. Several weeks ago my family and I were in Hawaii, and noticed that there was a Costco. Since we're members, we popped in to see if there was anything worth picking up. What I saw could make a grown man cry (and I nearly did) - 1.75 liter bottles of fine scotch and bourbon for the same price (or less) than I pay for 750 ml bottles in Washington State. It just ain't fair.

The McCain/Lieberman Abolish The Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Fourteenth Amendments Act

Jordan — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 20:03:42 +0000

Among other things, this short piece of legislation would allow (or really, require) the President to lock up unprivileged combatants – including US citizens – in military custody, prevents DOJ from bringing any prosecution against such persons, and allow such persons to be detained and interrogated "for the duration" (without defining whose discretion would determine that limit). That this monstrosity doesn't have a prayer in hell of surviving a SCOTUS challenge is about the only comfort here.

If you think we should stay in Afghanistan...

vinteuil — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:36:41 +0000

...for another micro-second, than you really need to listen to Matthew Hoh:

How to Pass Health Care Reform the Chicago Way

Jordan — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:32:00 +0000

Amid all the complaints of common procedures like "deem-and-pass" and reconciliation (now demonized as a process of "ramming legislation through Congress" with a majority vote, it might be helpful to step into the Wayback Machine and see how a prior Congress handled Health Care Reform.

The year is 2003. Congress, firmly in Republican control, is working on passing a trillion dollar prescription drug benefit for Medicare, the largest expansion of health entitlements in four decades.

Unhinged: the Laudantes attacks Tom Hanks.

BlaiseP — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:28:18 +0000

Précis: Tom Hanks has been lionized in Time Magazine as America's Historian . He has also become the latest target of Right Wing anger for remarks concerning American racist attitudes directed against the Japanese during WW2. Here is what Hanks said:

“Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”

Honor is rare enough among today's Conservatives. So few of them served in war. The wars they've fought have not gone well and their historians fallen into disrepute for rah-rahing those wars. It has all been seen before.

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

Bird Dog — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:22:37 +0000

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...

To form a more perfect union....

Bernard Guerrero — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:40:19 +0000

...just ditch the Greeks. :^)

The political message of the Schäuble plan is that Greece will be the last bail-out ever. As preparations for a bail-out reach an advanced stage, the German public reaction has become progressively more hostile. If the Schäuble plan had already been in place, Greece would already have headed to the exit. It is hard to conceive of a situation under the plan where a country simultaneously fulfills the criteria for aid, and needs it.

God Help Us Open Thread

Model 62 — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:44:16 +0000

A SPECIAL MESSAGE TO THE CHILDREN OF THE WORLD

Hello. This website is not DGamer. This is Wired.com, a news website where we write articles about videogames. For example, the article below is about DGamer.

You cannot sign up for DGamer by commenting on this article, as at least ten of you have tried, every day, for the past two years.

You CAN sign up for DGamer by going to Disney’s official DGamer website and clicking the button that says “Register.”

Barack Obama indifferent to murders of three consular staff in Mexico.

Desidiosus — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:29:22 +0000

Enough already.

Suspected drug cartel "hit teams" gunned down an American consular employee and her husband in a Mexican border city and killed a co-worker's Mexican husband in a separate attack, a US official said Sunday.

The victims -- two Americans and a Mexican -- came under fire in separate locations as they were driving Saturday through Ciudad Juarez after earlier attending the same social event, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Kelo on steroids

Bird Dog — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:07:20 +0000

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.

Who is setting up the March madness brackets? OPEN Thread...

Davinci — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:04:10 +0000

Monday morning open thread ..... Anyone have time to set a site pool? I would but am pretty busy early this week... I am game if anyone has time....

What else is on your minds that is going on in our world.....

Have a good week...

Da..........

Everything's Up to Date in Kansas City!

vinteuil — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 03:15:50 +0000

The big news lately in my neck of the woods is that they're shutting down about half of the inner-city public schools in Kansas City, Missouri.

Why is no one talking about Lehman?

catchy — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:33:06 +0000

How did an allegedly solvent firm suddenly spring a $130+ billion hole in its $660 billion balance sheet? An examiner's report was recently released:

Formidable Forvm IV: Just Say No To 96!

M Scott Eiland — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 23:24:45 +0000

*Commissioner M. Scott Eiland ascends to the podium*

We are once again approaching that blessed time when millions of people waste tens of millions of hours of productivity in guessing what men's college basketball teams will do in the upcoming event known fondly as March Madness. While many will engage in this activity with some amount of money at stake, we in the Formidable Forvm League will be doing it solely for bragging rights, with the prospect of extreme ridicule should our prognostication be less than stellar--who's up for it? ]:-)

Memoir to McGee

mplo — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 02:36:26 +0000

I'm sad to report that my beautiful, beloved pet Noble Macaw, McGee, passed over into Bird Heaven on Sunday night, February 7th, 2010, at the age of about 20. I found him dead, at around 10:30 p. m., on the bottom of his cage. It was very much of a shock, which I still haven't gotten over, but I hope it'll wear off soon.

So saying, I've decided to write a memoir of McGee. Here goes:

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

Bird Dog — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 01:57:17 +0000

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:

What's Wrong With Distributism

vinteuil — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:37:17 +0000

Distributism is, basically, the doctrine that "ownership of the means of production should be spread as widely as possible among the general populace, rather than being centralized under the control of the state (state socialism) or a few large businesses or wealthy private individuals (plutarchic capitalism)."

LOL History!

Bernard Guerrero — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 21:21:11 +0000

Viking grave discovered in London

They were 51 young men who met a grisly death far from home, their heads chopped off and their bodies thrown into a mass grave.
...
On Friday, officials revealed that analysis of the men's teeth shows they were Vikings, executed with sharp blows to the head around a thousand years ago. They were killed during the Dark Ages, when Vikings frequently invaded the region.

Right

Bird Dog — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 21:15:37 +0000

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

Bird Dog — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:38:04 +0000

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.

Open IT Bleg

Model 62 — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:35:33 +0000

A while back, a couple of you suggested a method by which one could reach one's (Ubuntu) desktop from afar, across the Internet.

All one needed was a dyndns.org domain to get around the home desktop's dynamic dns, and some port forwarding on the router. Seemed simple enough. I've managed to gain access to the desktop from within the LAN, but, so far I'm unable to do it via the Internet.

I think the problem is that I'm trying to port forward through two routers -- an ActionTec provisioned by Verizon Fios and a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 to which all my devices connect.

TGI Open Thread

stillnotking — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:27:25 +0000

Pope refuses to condemn Ugandan bill proposing execution of gays.

H.R. 4789 - Public Option Act, or Medicare You Can Buy Into Act

Username — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:19:43 +0000

Congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL) introduced yesterday H.R. 4789, a bill amending the Social Security Act Title XVIII, Health Insurance for the Aged and Disabled (Medicare). If we won't get a public option through reconciliation, if the public polls are showing overwhelming support for a public option, and if we want to avoid creating a new agency, then let's open up Medicare in its own act and make some progress regardless of what happens with the HCR mess.

The fifty-plus-one full flop

Bird Dog — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:40:29 +0000

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:

The. End.

vinteuil — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 02:35:14 +0000

Daniel Pipes writes:

"...my mood about Iraq could variously be described as depressed, despairing, despondent, dejected, pessimistic, melancholic, and gloomy.

Unz Again (Jordan: please just skip this)

vinteuil — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 01:43:01 +0000

In his response to my "Reply to Unz," Ron Unz gets one thing right, a bunch of things wrong, and simply ignores the most damning part of my reply.

(1) He begins by complaining that I argue "at great length [!] that federal inmates should be included in the incarceration estimate."

Another Truther

Bird Dog — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:03:14 +0000

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

Bird Dog — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:25:53 +0000

"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: