Wednesday Link Dump

I think once Thursday dodgeball finishes up, I may do these thrice weekly.

* AP: “Every day, the economy is becoming more and more an Obama economy.” When the AP, which couldn’t be bothered to worry much about seriously examining Obama during the campaign, is starting to look at Obama’s agenda funny, you know we’ve hit a turning point.

* All the hypocrites who were up in arms about Bush’s signing statements raise your hands if you don’t care about Obama’s. The more glaring difference (hey, change!) is that the Obama administration is coming out with, er, I suppose we’ll call them “interpretive letters,” or, as the always-articulate Robert Gibbs calls them, the “presidential signing statement except it’s not the president and it’s not a signing statement.” …right. Regardless, we have the Obama administration outright telling its agencies to ignore the law. Y’know, I’m sure every administration before Obama has done this as well. But at what point can we drop the charade that he’s any different than them? And, more importantly, why is this okay to outright do it? At least Bush had the decency to at least use the signing statements to map out his problems with what he was inexplicably signing. The best quote from Obama? “[S]uch signing statements serve a legitimate function in our system, at least when based on well-founded constitutional objections.” Translation? “Signing statements are fine, as long as I agree with the purpose.” Thanks!

* Rachel Maddow embarasses herself on the EFCA. Here’s a note, Rachel - if you “read the bill,” you get the answer you’re looking for. Happy to help.

* Scary stat of the day: “Since the beginning of the financial crisis, officials have proposed and/or implemented roughly 78 trade measures, according to the World Bank’s monitoring list of trade and trade-related measures. Of these, 66 involved trade restrictions, and 47 trade-restricting measures eventually took effect.”

* Did the federal government miscalculate the stimulus numbers? Wouldn’t be shocking if true, but the research is suggesting that the models used to calculate the possible “success” of the stimulus was wildly inflated. The study is VERY dry but very informative and pretty damn scary, which probably means it will be ignored.

* Cap-and-trade could start a trade war. But, again and again, I’m told that I shouldn’t have to worry about President Obama and trade.

* A great piece on Mark Sanford, one of the nation’s best current politicians.

* Some great, perhaps inadvertent, factchecking on various Great Depression canards by Amity Shlaes, author of the excellent book The Forgotten Man.

* Megan McArdle with the best bailout analogy I’ve seen.

* The new religion surveys are out, and the news being trumpeted all over is how much larger the “No Religion” section is getting. The problem is that the survey fails to note the difference between “atheist,” “agnostic,” and “no religious identity,” so we have no way of actually knowing the real trends until (if?) the hard results come out. I hate to break it to my godless brethren, but I doubt you’ll be happy when we do see it.

* I’m on record as not a fan of Ann Coulter, although I do find her somewhat attractive. With that said, this interview cracked me up.

* Sales of Atlas Shrugged rise in correlation to bad economic news. This isn’t shocking to me, although I’d imagine people would be better off buying The Moon is a Harsh Mistress unless they intend to sleep through the recession.

* Site of the day (Mike will probably consider this a veritable gold mine of ideas): A Brief History of the Apocalypse, which is simply a list of every doomsday prophecy that has yet to come true.

* Funny or Die’s commercial for the new nationalized Citibank. Potty language in audio form.

* Finally, still as wound up about Watchmen as I am? Want to know what the buzz is about? Try: Ten Things to Know About Watchmen, a guy takes his parents to the flick and then interviews them, and more details about the amazing intro.

Mirrored from The International House of Bacon.