Free kibbles

TAX AND SPEND:

Obama to charge banks fees for TARP funds. The Constitution forbid Congress from passing laws after the fact, but since Congress has transferred so much of its power to the president, Obama doesn't need to bother with that little restriction. I don't have a problem with this per se. The problem is government took money from Americans by force and bailed out these companies. They made a deal with the devil knowing full well they were asking the devil to steal from taxpayers and give them the money, and they can suffer the consequences for all I care.

WAR:

This article discussing the motives of terrorists is part right and part wrong.

"If it is taboo to discuss how America's actions in the Middle East cause Terrorism -- and it generally is -- that taboo is far stronger still when it comes to specifically discussing how our blind, endless enabling of Israeli actions fuels Terrorism directed at the U.S. An article in yesterday's New York Times examined the life of Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, the Jordanian who blew himself up, along with 7 CIA agents, in Afghanistan this week. Why would Balawi -- a highly educated doctor, who was specifically recruited by Jordanian intelligence officials to infiltrate Al Qaeda on behalf of Western governments -- want to blow himself up and murder as many American intelligence agents as possible?"

There's no doubt that explaining that US policies invite terrorist reprisal is considered taboo to discuss. It's stupid and self-destructive to shout down or dismiss people who point that out, but that's where we are in the US. On the other hand...

"The article provides this possible answer:

He described Mr. Balawi as a "very good brother" and a "brilliant doctor," saying that the family knew nothing of Mr. Balawi’s writings under a pseudonym on jihadi Web sites. He said, however, that his brother had been "changed" by last year’s three-week-long Israeli offensive in Gaza, which killed about 1,300 Palestinians."

What were the Israelis supposed to do? Palestinians had been lobbing rockets into Israel from Gaza every day for years. It's not sane for Israelis to sit there and take that. No rational people in the world would sit idly by while their neighbors fired rockets at them every day for years. The Israeli people were stupid and their government irresponsible to suffer it for so long. The only reasonable response Israel had to stop those rockets was to disarm the people firing them and that meant invading Gaza. And it worked. Rocket attacks have dropped off precipitously. Better late than never, I guess. To the extent that legitimate self-defense such as the Israeli invasion of Gaza inspires terrorists, we have to deal with that.

But the US invasion of Iraq was not based on self-defense. The ongoing US war in Afghanistan is not based on self-defense. We had a legitimate, self-defense purpose for invading Afghanistan, but that ended in 2002. Since then our wars have been wars of aggression, not self-defense, and they have invited millions of Muslims to retaliate. We should never blur that line in action or examination.

POLITICS:

Man I would love it if a Republican won Kennedy's Senate seat. After all the damage that guy did to the country, it would be a karmic return, especially since it would sink Obamacare.

MEDIA:

I'm not surprised Sarah Palin joined Foxnews. Fox knows how to make money. If CNN had been smart, they would have snatched her up, used her to market a transition to being more balanced and tried to win over some of Fox's viewers. The mainstream media is dying because those companies are putting ideology before smart business.

MISC:

Grotesquely muscled dog admits to second biggest bite of man ever, but everybody already knew it anyway and nobody cared. I hope Mark McGuire got to some kind of catharsis from this announcement, but it's a dog bites man story and not news any more than Tiger having affairs is news. Unfortunately I doubt ESPN has the good sense to ignore it and stick to covering interesting sports news.