Ready For Warren has a Facebook post highlighting the Occupy Democrats‘ article House Democrat Introduces Bill to End All Government Shutdowns — Forever.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) has a solution, and he is currently seeking co-sponsors for a bill that would “shut down the shutdowns.” Grayson’s bill would “automatically extend existing appropriations levels for another fiscal year whenever Congress fails to fund agencies before their money expires,” according to the Washington Post.

The Washington Post article is Tired of shutdown battles? This bill would end them for good.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) said this week that he is seeking co-sponsors for a “Shut Down the Shutdowns Act” that would automatically extend existing appropriations levels for another fiscal year whenever Congress fails to fund agencies before their money expires.

Some people complain about what can’t be done, while others file legislation that tries to get those things done. Less complaining, and more doing might actually change something. Occupy Democrats only asked us to spread the word.

Naked Capitalism has the article Look Who is Selling the TransPacific Partnership by Yves Smith.  Her email introduction to this article said:

Some Serious Economists have signed a letter supporting the TransPacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. The missive says a lot about the discipline, and not in a good way.

The article is a call to action to counter this letter with calls to your Congress people.

By the way “serious economists” is meant, in this case, as a pejorative.  These are economists that the Lame Stream Media treats as knowledgeable, but in fact are just paid shills for the oligarchy.

I read through the list of signatories to come up with the following classification:

Not surprising
Alan Greenspan
Charles L. Schultz
Martin Feldstein
R. Glenn Hubbard
N. Gregory Mankiw
Ben S. Bernanke
Austan D. Goolsbee

Astonishing
Christina D. Romer

I’ll let you read the letter to see what organizations these people claim to be from.

The Washington Post has the article Netanyahu enters never-never land by Fareed Zakaria. Zakaria brings up some history as a way to judge whether or not even tougher sanctions would work to get Iran to capitulate.  Here is some of what he said.

We have some history that can inform us on the more likely course. Between 2003 and 2005, under another practical president, Mohammad Khatami, Iran negotiated with three European Union powers a possible deal to place its nuclear program under constraints and inspections. The chief nuclear negotiator at the time was Hassan Rouhani, now Iran’s president.

Iran proposed to cap its centrifuges at very low levels, keep enrichment levels well below those that could be used for weapons and convert its existing enriched uranium into fuel rods (which could not be put to military use). Peter Jenkins, the British representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the Inter Press Service , “All of us were impressed by the proposal.” But the talks collapsed because the Bush administration, acting through the British government, vetoed it. It was certain, Jenkins explained, that if the West could “scare” the Iranians, “they would give in.”

What was the result? Did Iran return to the table and capitulate? No, the country withstood the sanctions and, unimpeded by any inspections, massively expanded its nuclear infrastructure. Iran went from 164 centrifuges to 19,000, accumulated more than 17,000 pounds of enriched uranium gas and ramped up construction of a heavy water reactor at Arak that could be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium.

Now, I don’t think of Fareed Zakaria as an infallible interpreter of the Middle East, but his repetition of history matches what I remember of that history.  Most people seem to think the history shows Iran to be intractable and irrational.  However, I read about what the Bush administration was up to at the time it was happening.  Clearly, the Bush administration made nice on the surface, but made sure to slap Iran with the backs of their hands in private to make sure no agreement ever could be reached.  If I could read about it in the news at the time, it always mystified me how so many other people could pretend that this wasn’t happening.  When people couldn’t get it right at the time, there would be no hope that they would remember it correctly years later.