Blackbirds and owls

When I opened the door to our house there was a huge sound of squawking in the air: a huge flock of blackbirds had settled in the trees all around our house. Saw other large flocks throughout the morning. I remember seeing these "flocks that block out the sky" a fair amount growing up in SE PA, but they gradually became rarer and rarer as the area was built up. Its nice to see them again, perhaps one of the benefits of living near a state forest.

I also heard two owls hooting at one another in our cul-de-sac last night. Neat!

The TARPII $500,000 "salary cap"

Jim Jubak writes that Obama's $500,000 cap on executive pay for corporations taking federal TARP money sounds good, but upon close examination of the actual terms, finds is it'll be fairly easy to for executives to circumnavigate around and still get huge bonuses while taking taxpayer bailouts.

Analysis of the surge strategy in Iraq

via a WaPo chat session on the topic.
( Analysis of why the surge in Iraq worked )

This jives with something I've thought for a while, that the driving factor behind the insurgency was that the Sunnis who had thrived under Saddam, especially the Tikritis of Saddam's tribe, just weren't ready to accept that they had lost the war, and with that their privileged place in Iraqi society, especially to the Shia who they had always dominated. Until they realized that there was the real prospect of mass ethnic cleansing at the hands of Shia looking for payback after what Saddam had put them through, no accommodation was possible.