Warren Appointment: Encouraging, But a Big
Incomplete

This "interim director" position became an option because of how Dodd-Frank was written, but it's somewhat incomplete. It allows for Treasury to have all the powers of the director (specifically the Treasury Secretary), which he can delegate. But the[...]

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ncomplete/

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The Venal, Vile and Occasionally Vulnerable Newt
Gingrich Presses On

BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH

These are good times for Gingrich who is in demand as a speaker, recently produced an anti-Islam film with his third wife, has taken to religion and is palling around with some of the more extremist Christian conservatives in the country, and is raking in the dough through his American Solutions for Winning the Future.

He?s everything you might think he is and more; venal, vile and occasionally vulnerable. He has voracious appetite for political power, rhetorical flourishes and for wanting to be thought of as the smartest guy in the room. He?s become more ?religious? as time passes, embracing, and in turn being embraced by, some of the more hard-line Christian conservatives in the country. He?s got a lot of money at his beck and call. And, he?s running for president of the United States in 2012; maybe!

Ultimately, "That's up to God and the American people," he recently told Esquire magazine?s John H. Richardson.

He?s Newt Gingrich and despite the ever-apparent smugness that has made him one of the most unpopular politicians in the American public?s minds eye, never-the-less he is ever in demand.   

In the wide-ranging Esquire profile titled ?Newt Gingrich: The Indispensable Republican," Gingrich, the disgraced former Speaker of the House, author, lecturer, filmmaker, Fox News Channel political commentator, is captured traipsing around the country gathering chits for 2012; speaking wherever (meetings, rallies) and to whomever (GOP/Tea Party supporters). In part what makes Gingrich a potentially viable presidential candidate is that he has become the master of his own domain; garnering big money in support of a series of Gingrich-inspired initiatives and websites.

One of the most formidable of these fund-raising jackpots is called American Solutions for Winning the Future, or American Solutions for short. On its website, the organization describes itself as ?a tri-partisan citizen action network of over 1.5 Million members. Our goal is to create the next generation of solutions that will ensure that the United States remains the safest, freest, and most prosperous country in the world.?  

Then, there?s Gingrich Productions, which recently released a new film called ?America at Risk,? which is hosted by Gingrich and Calista Gingrich, the young congressional aide who became his third wife. A two-minute promo for the film is available at You Tube, where nearly 28, 000 views have been recorded. While that number doesn?t indicate a Gingrich Productions? blockbuster, another Gingrich You Tube video, titled ?Gingrich: I?m Deeply Worried? ? an excerpt from a Gingrich appearance at the National Press Club -- has been viewed nearly 1.8 million times. 

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Famed Civil Rights Photographer Ernest Withers
Doubled As An FBI Informant

TONY PEYSER FOR BUZZFLASH

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A home run for our side

I have beaten up on the Obama White House enough that I'm no longer very welcome by many of the top[...]

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The rich don't spend tax cuts

There's excellent political reasons for bringing some fairness back to tax policy and ending the Bush/Republican massive tax cuts to the rich. But there's also smart policy reasons, beyond the massive chunk of the deficit they comprise. The evidence is actually pretty sound that tax cuts to the wealthy just don't stimulate the economy, despite what Republicans would have you believe.

The CBO says so.

[E]conomic research suggests that tax cuts, though difficult for politicians to resist in election season, have limited ability to bolster the flagging economy because they are essentially a supply-side remedy for a problem caused by lack of demand.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office this year analyzed the short-term effects of 11 policy options and found that extending the tax cuts would be the least effective way to spur the economy and reduce unemployment. The report added that tax cuts for high earners would have the smallest “bang for the buck,” because wealthy Americans were more likely to save their money than spend it.

The office gave higher marks to the proposal, now embraced by President Obama, to allow small businesses to write off 100 percent of their investment costs.

Then there's Moody's:

Tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 under President George W. Bush were followed by increases in the saving rate among the rich, according to data from Moody’s Analytics Inc. When taxes were raised under Bill Clinton, the saving rate fell....

When tax legislation was signed by Clinton in 1993 -- raising the top tax rate to 39.6 percent from 31 percent -- the saving rate fell from 12.1 percent in the second quarter to 9.5 percent in the first quarter of 1994. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rose 1.9 percent from July through September, after little change the previous three months.

When the first Bush tax cuts were signed into law in June 2001, pushing the top rate down to 35 percent, the wealthy boosted savings. The saving rate climbed to 2.8 percent in the first quarter of 2002 from minus 2 percent in the second quarter of 2001. The increased savings coincided with a 1.1 percent decline in the S&P 500 index.

Saving is good, but now on the part of the people with all the income, anyway. More money in middle class folks' pockets creates more spending, creating more demand, creating more jobs. That's also true of unemployment benefits.

In addition to continuing the massive tax breaks for the very wealthy, what Congress needs to do to address the economy is extend the cuts for the middle class, create a 5th Tier of unemployment benefits for the millions of people whose benefits have run out, and save a quarter of a million existing jobs by extending TANF funding.

That's how to keep the economy moving.

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Too bad blowing shit up isn't foreign policy

Drone attacks across the Afghan border into Pakistan are way up. Way, way up. Yesterday the U.S. hit their third target in one 24-hour period. It was the 12th attack in 13 days. This September is by far the busiest month of the entire war for drone attacks, and there is still a lot of month left.

Too bad that blowing shit up and raining firey death from above doesn't constitute a foreign policy. If it did, Waziristan would be Shangri-fuckin'-la by now.

Now, I understand why drones are being used. Pakistan is an erstwhile ally, and long before we went storming into Afghanistan, Pakistan was playing brinksmanship with India, and we have been sucked into that game, whether we realize it or not. And because of this, all the pleading, wheedling, threatening and military aid in the world are not going to get the Pakistanis to cough up the Haqqani network.

Therefore...

The latest drone strikes have largely targeted the militant networks led by Jalaluddin and Sirajuddin Haqqani. Unnamed American officials tell the Associated Press that the attacks are part of a "hammer-and-anvil" campaign, with forces led by Joint Special Operations Command hitting the Haqqanis in Afghanistan while the drones fire off their missiles over Pakistan.

However, "neither the special operations raids nor the missile strikes on the Pakistan side of the border appear to have degraded the militants' ability to fill the ranks of the slain," the AP reports.

Reducing the Haqqanis' numbers may not be the only goal, however. And here's where the drone campaign may take a very strange turn.

The U.S., the British, and the Afghan governments are quietly, carefully looking at ways to negotiate with the various insurgent groups in the region. Hezb-e Islami leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and members of the Taliban are thought to be open to these talks. One of the biggest impediments: Pakistan, America's putative ally in the region. The Pakistanis refuse to be cut out of any deal. So they arrest Taliban leaders who might be willing to negotiate. And they back the Haqqani network, as a way to keep the insurgency boiling.

Time and time again, U.S. officials have asked their counterparts in Islamabad to go after Haqqani safe havens in Pakistani's tribal area. No dice. So instead, the U.S. uses its special operations forces and its drones to put pressure on the Haqqanis. The weaker they get, the logic goes, the more likely they will be willing to deal.

The U.S. also holds out hope that the Pakistanis will step in to broker a peace deal between the Taliban and the Karzai government, allowing the U.S. a face-saving way out of Afghanistan. But our intelligence sources tell us that the Pakistanis have quietly communicated to the Americans that they view the Haqqanis as an insurance policy against Indian influence in Afghanistan, particularly in the eastern areas where Sirajuddin's band of fanatics hang out. Degrading the Haqqani fighters is one thing; wiping them out is diplomatically problematic.

Ben Franklin famously said that doing the same thing over and over, all the while expecting a different result, is one definition of insanity. Keep that in mind when I tell you that the Haqqanis have been hit 46 times to date, and shows no signs of being weakened or bowed.

That is not a good use of our drones, which are a valuable tool when used correctly...i.e., as tools for gathering intelligence. If they were serious about using drones properly, the "pilots" wouldn't be at Nellis AFB near Las Vegas, they would be at Ft. Meade and working with the NSA. They would be part of the intelligence branch, and they would intercept, translate and analyze what the drones could gather, and we would have long ago recruited the shit out of students with linguistic aptitude and we would have filled and expanded the DLI (Defense Languages Institute) and solved our linguist shortage problem.  But you can't procure linguists like you can armaments, and in spite of knowing we had a linguist shortage years ago, nothing has been done about it, unless you count giving a private company over a billion dollars in contracts to supply interpreters to embed with troops who don't speak the Afghan languages.

Drones are ideal for intel gathering, but the way they have been used has driven SIGINT (signal intelligence) to ground. It's quite a challenge to gather intel by listening to the phone conversations of a guy who is now in little bitty pieces because a drone-launched missile landed in his lap at dinner. And once he's dead, listening to his phone calls and gleening details about what we know they are up to comes to an abrupt end, and whatever he was up to goes forward without him.  

Of course, we don't have the human components we would need to analyze the intel we aren't gathering, anyway.

The exit from Afghanistan is not going to be quick, nor is it going to be easy. I have no patience for people who, when I ask how we get out quickly, smirk "there are three ways out. By land, by see and by air."

This is a conversation ender with me, spouted by a simplistic, clueless fucking moron with no earthly idea whatsoever about the geopolitics at play, or just what the hell we are in the middle of. We leave the wrong way, and Pakistan and India - both nations have nukes, remember - are duking it out, ostensibly over Kashmir, but really over water.

Like it or not, we are in the middle of a mess the likes of which the U.S. hasn't seen in a hundred years, since the American west was being settled - back when whiskey was for drinkin' and water was for fightin' over.  


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CBS/NY Times Poll: 68% Disapprove of Republicans
in Congress; 58% of Dems

Republicans are heading into the general election phase of the midterm campaign backed by two powerful currents: the highest proportion of voters in two decades say it is time for their own member of Congress to be replaced, and Americans are expressing[...]

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ns-in-congress-58-of-dems/

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Epic Walkback

Just now on Fox News Karl Rove prostrated himself on the altar of tea party orthodoxy, having what amounts to a full conversion on Christine O'Donnell. I guess his rapprochement with the tassels on Rush Limbaugh's loafers will be next. Video soon. Karl[...]

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hp

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Behind the Music

Rachel Slajda chronciles Christine O'Donnell's evolution from college party girl to no-sex, no-masturbation crusader. Christine O'Donnell - Masturbation - Sexuality - Delaware - MTV[...]

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Biden Scolds Dem Voters for Enthusiasm Gap; Tells
Progressives to Get in Gear

Joe Biden is your cable provider screaming that they are better than the phone company, and you know they are better than the phone company, and if you don't know that, no matter what your experience, then it is your problem, you fucking idiot.[...]

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s-progressives-to-%e2%80%9cget-in-gear%e2%80%9d/

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