Just like the Republicans to go beating up an old woman.

They’re saying the intelligence community doesn’t have the right to shape news briefs to protect CIA operations. But, of course, Republicans would have done much the same.

Republicans = hypocrites, liars, etc.

AP

The 1st Amendment right of the Press is important. But, are they willing to take personal responsibility for everything they write, including classified material which enables America’s enemies to attack us and kill Americans? If Liberals who adore the Free Press don’t also allow the government to protect us from terrorist attacks, then I have no use for them. The rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness include Life as well as the free Press.

Syria

I wonder if John McCain is still gung ho for America to enter the Syrian mess. Good thing he wasn’t elected president.

Still, it’s a run bell and the public needs to begin discussing this new thing (3-D printing). It’s bad enough we keep inventing new ways to destroy each other and the drones to deliver it, but now there’s plastic stuff. This needs a massive public debate/discussion.

The Syrian rebels who nabbed U.N. peacekeepers should be reminded that the up-coming peace U.N.-related negotiations will go better for their side if they release their hostages.

Evabody wansa be a bank. Ain’t nobody don’t neva wanna work within the laws governing banks.

Sorry, how is having money in several accounts invested TOGETHER somehow different than having money in one account/fund invested TOGETHER?

I think a $2 lawyer would rip GS to pieces in court.

P.S. Why are there always so many sheep ready for the shearing? Is it the Madoff factor(?) where people just can’t stay away from ‘a sure thing’?

It’s difficult to know how much control the ‘dear leader’ has over the military. At various times westerners have spoken with their leader and received assurances they don’t want war. Then the next day there are these apocalyptic promises we don’t want.

In any event, I hope our gov’t takes this seriously and discusses it with the S. Koreans and Japanese and Chinese and Russians. Any kind of crazy military activity in the area should receive a response which is as unified and organized as possible. Having several separate responses could be a real confusion fest.

Ideally we would simply destroy any force they put forward, be it soldiers on the ground or rockets in the air. But, realistically can that be done? This isn’t something anyone even wants to discuss after so many years of peace. But, if we’re forced to deal with it we should be fully ready.

I suppose it’s ironic that this is so similar to the Iran – Israel situation. They say Iran is ready with the bomb and they have to destroy it. We say, not yet. Now N.K. says they have the capability and we’re not sure, but we have to be ready if they do. It’s horrible.

One thing I think is not being taken into account is that Congress will continue working on the debt to reduce it and they’re planning major tax reform. This ballgame isn’t over. Of course, like baseball it IS moving along at a very very slow pace. But, aside from that stuff does happen now and then.

There is filibuster reform, tax system reform, gun violence, immigration and much more to come.

And 6,015,164 of these families are trying to survive on less $11,000. That’s more than one half of all Americans families!

In the mid-1970s the poverty level for a family of four was $10,000, so we really haven’t come far and the Right still doesn’t get that lack of consumption keeps GDP down and families on the verge of bankruptcy.

$ 633 Billion of spending and I never heard one member of Congress complain about waste or how we must cut it or America will collapse.

Isn’t that amazing?

I pity John Boehner his task. Sure sure, the job has perks, but it also has a lot of jerks.

“Chickens are people too my friends.” — Mitt ‘Chicken legs” Romulus :-)

“❖ French President Francois Hollande’s administration said they would rework, then resubmit, a proposal for a 75% tax on incomes over $1.32 million. A court overruled the tax because of inherent inequities.”

Once they cut off 75% of the body, but now the Court won’t even let them cut off 75% of the income. Oh how the French have fallen in to civilized passivity.

Is Lindsay Graham trying to show how savage Republicans can be, to force the hand of Democratic filibuster reformers? If he says he must, then they must to stop him and voila … filibuster reform. I like it. It’s insane for either party’s Executive administration to be stuck without filled offices well into their terms. It’s also pretty crazy to have so many Court nominations not even presented in hearings. There may be more argument about the internal workings of the Senate, but as far as they screw up the Court and the Executive branch it needs to stop. Forcing an end to many procedural filibusters (by announcement instead of speech) should also slow or end. The Senate is an institution which needs to debate, but not when it’s obvious obfuscation and dilatory behavior.

I know Republicans want to cut spending and it’s irritating to them Democrats “only” want to fix some things to avoid ‘falling off the fiscal cliff’. Maybe they should’ve taken up the president’s offers to cut spending last year and this. But, I don’t really believe them. If they really really wanted spending cuts they wouldn’t complain about the level of the sequester cuts.

Still, we do need to work on shrinking gov’t spending (beyond ending wars) to get the percent of GDP for revenues close to the spending percent and to get the economy going more strongly (which will raise revenues too.

So, stop the middle-class & poor from suffering higher tax rates or don’t? Which will help the economy? Republicans have said for some months now it was all about the economy. I can’t imagine raising rates on the 98% will help. As to the other 2% it can’t be debated and the president has offered $400K instead of $250K as a cut-off pt. Seems reasonable. How many small-revenue small businesses would be hurt by the $400K rate increase?

I prefer simply holding all the other tax rates & things as they are except to go ahead and fix the very simple ones like the AMT and ‘doc fix’ as has been done many times before. If we’re going to see real tax reform in the early part of the new year the other things will be gotten to very soon anyway.

There is a major disagreement on ‘entitlement spending’ and I don’t see how that can be addressed, or how it should be addressed, in December. We’ve already had major reform with the PPACA and we need to see how that works. Doing more without knowing what is in the works is a bit reckless and perhaps just wasting time on fixing something that will soon be in good shape. Social Security is a stand-alone issue, pretty much by Law.

So, fix the immediate things, do tax reform, immigration reform and keep talking about holding down or cutting spending in the up-coming budget and state-of-the union. It’s a big issue and isn’t going away any time soon.

If you want a democracy you’ve got to have majority rule. The only question after that is whether you have that majority rule vote on every single thing the Senate does or just on final passage of a bill.

Details details details.

The cost of labor’s health,education and preparation for the work force has also gone up. What has capital investment done over that time period: gone up, stayed the same or gone down?

Clearly labor needs more if consumption is to stay high.

Another way to look at committee assignments is this — Where will near future legislation be done?

Since Dodd-Frank is done it might not be Banking.

With budgeting, taxing and the debt always at issue it might be Baucus-city — Finance.

BTW, is this what the Libs meant by Mo Betta Dems?

Obama, Silver, Grayson, Judd!!!!

That’s a list representing the present, the near-term future and potential. I like it.

Isn’t it amazing how Dems won Senate seats when all the pundits & polls were showing we might lose the Senate altogether?

Aside from long long lines and slow ballot counting there is also the problem of Gerrymandering. Dems won more popular vote for House races and yet we didn’t win all that many seats. We need some more challenges taken to the Supreme Court to eliminate objectively unfair district lines.

It will be interesting to see if the House Republicans can come to agreement, at least a significant number of them, to pass legislation to avoid the cliff’s edge. But, if they don’t they will get ALL the political blame. I’m certain they don’t really want that either.

What may give them an opportunity is to pick & choose and shape said legislation instead of just doing everything at once.

If we could ‘fall off the fiscal cliff’ and survive, then that means there is some inbetween legislation which they might prefer to either ‘falling’ or ‘fixing it all’.

At this point we’ve seen the president’s ideas, so it’s up to the Republicans to present their position. If they are willing to do something, then there can be negotiations around that.

I think it would be best to have a complete path in mind, from dealing with the ‘cliff’ issues to future legislation. Then people would know the plan, schedule and politics of the whole course.

It was a result of Congressional interests not wanting them to be too independent.

Re: mortgages

Since Ed DeMarco doesn’t want to ‘play ball’, but he does want BoA to buy back some bad mortgages from F&F there is an opportunity for Treasury to make a side deal with banks willing to buy back mortgages to offer them TARP funds to cover some portion of their loss due to the current market value of those. Instead of going through DeMarco & F&F Treasury could just go around them to make it work.

It’s not the same as really fixing the mortgages or getting them off the books by conversion to rentals, but it’s something.