The Progressive Change Campaign Committee has posted this video on a page Thank you, Elizabeth Warren! that says the following:

Check out this video of Elizabeth Warren standing up for the people against big banks! Then sign the card on the right to thank her.

There have not been that many likes on YouTube for this video. You might want to click on the video’s link to YouTube and register your vote.

Talking Points Memo has the article Lindsey Graham Silent About Discredited ’60 Minutes’ Benghazi Report That He Hyped.

He told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer last week that the report filed by CBS News correspondent Lara Logan proved that “the story told by the administration about what happened in Benghazi doesn’t have an ounce of truth in it.”

If you follow the above link to the CNN transcript, Interview With Sen. Lindsey Graham, you will see the following exchange between Graham and Wolf Blitzer:

BLITZER: So even someone like Janet Yellen who’s been nominated to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve, you would hold up her nomination, the important work she needs to do in order to try to put pressure on the administration to make these people available?

GRAHAM: Yes.

BLITZER: Is that right?

GRAHAM: Yes. Why? Why? Because I just think we can’t live in a country when something bad happens, when there’s a national security failure, and the “60 Minutes'” piece and Erin Burnett, the media has done — a pretty good job basically of explaining to the fact — to the American people that the story told by the administration about what happened in Benghazi doesn’t have an ounce of truth in it.

This is the strongest piece of evidence I have seen on how much Lindsey Graham depended on the false CBS report.

See my previous post “60 Minutes” issues apology about Benghazi report, to see CBS’s retraction.  This is not the last we will hear about the CBS retraction.  I smell a rat even in the retraction.  If the CBS source explained away the discrepancy between what he was telling them and what he told his bosses at the time, you would think that CBS would seek comment from his bosses.  Furthermore, you would expect for them to have sought corroboration of their source’s story from his coworkers in Lebanon at the time.

When your source is telling you that when you fact check his story you will find discrepancies, that ought not make you feel comfortable with his upfront honesty.  That ought to make you wary, and cause you to dig much deeper.

When the CBS source told them that his bosses prohibited him from going to the embassy to try to help, you would certainly wonder why CBS would not make a big deal out of this prohibition.  There is a lot of information we are not getting, and Lindsey Graham is not helping.  He just does not have the talent (and skepticism) to do the investigative journalism that CBS missed.

The Real News Network has the video Iran nears deal with U.S. over nuclear program. This video is from PBS.

The U.S. and other world powers plan to consider reversing economic sanctions on Iran, if the nation will suspend its controversial nuclear program. The announcement comes as Iranian officials and world leaders meet in Geneva for a second round of talks. Gwen Ifill talks to The New York Times’ Michael Gordon and Margaret Warner.

This is a complement to my previous post Netanyahu Attack on Iran Deal Threatens Rift With U.S.   I hope these two stories will impress upon you the sense of urgency for telling your Senators how important it is to keep this diplomatic effort alive.  Prime Minister Netanyahu has a dream of colonizing and dispossessing people of land that is rightfully theirs.  Do not let his dreams come between us and our dreams of peace in the Middle East.  Just as South Africa’s dreams of an apartheid state proved to be untenable, so will Netanyahu’s dreams prove to be untenable.  We do not need to go through years of unrest and bloodshed in the Middle East before we realize what we can plainly foresee today.

Bloomberg has the story Netanyahu Attack on Iran Deal Threatens Rift With U.S.

Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, who has helped write sanctions legislation, said pressure will build in Congress to move ahead with added strictures against Iran because some allies consider a potential interim nuclear deal to be too weak.

‘Tough Sell’

“My sense is it’s going to be a very, very tough sell to hold off” congressional action on additional sanctions, “especially with the Israelis and the Saudis just completely freaking out,” said Dubowitz, who consults with the Obama administration and Congress on sanctions policy.

The Senate Banking Committee is preparing to discuss legislation imposing new curbs on Iran. Chairman Tim Johnson, a South Dakota Democrat, said in a statement that he hasn’t decided on timing for committee action.

“I don’t know the outcome of negotiations now under way in Geneva, and I plan to wait to hear any results of those talks from our negotiators before making a final decision on any additional sanctions,” Johnson said.

Now is the time to contact your Senators to let them know that we should not blow a chance for a peaceful settlement with Iran to appease the war mongers in Israel and our own Congress.  We got rid of the likes of George Bush and Dick Cheney and did not replace them with like minded people partly on account of being sick and tired of constant war.  Why should we let Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu push us into policies that we do not want from our own elected leaders?  (If you don’t recognize the Cheney/Bush “reasoning” in Netanyahu, then you have not been paying attention.)

I sent the following message to Senator Elizabeth Warren and to Senator Ed Markey.

There is a very disturbing report in Bloomberg News, “Netanyahu Attack on Iran Deal Threatens Rift With U.S.”

It indicates that the Israeli Prime Minister is going to try to get the U.S. Congress to scuttle the diplomatic effort between our Secretary of State and Iran.  This effort will be made in the Senate Banking Committee.

Please, do not allow this to succeed.

We were happy to see the Cheney/Bush war mongers leave the scene.  We don’t need an Israeli Prime Minister to talk us into the same disastrous policies that Cheney/Bush managed to foist upon us.

CBS News has two articles, 60 Minutes apologizes for Benghazi report has the transcript of an interview.

LARA LOGAN: The most important thing to every person at 60 Minutes is the truth, and today the truth is that we made a mistake. That’s very disappointing for any journalist. It’s very disappointing for me. Nobody likes to admit that they made a mistake, but if you do, you have to stand up and take responsibility and you have to say that you were wrong. And in this case, we were wrong.

“60 Minutes” issues apology about Benghazi report has the video below.

Time will tell if the Democrats will call for Lara Logan’s head as the Republicans did with Dan Rather.

Yesterday, Foreign Policy had the story Graham Gets What He Wants on Benghazi… And Still Holds Up Government.

Another inspiration for Graham’s hold is a 60 Minutes report on Benghazi that aired last month. “The 60 Minutes piece detailed the people on the ground saw this attack coming. Has anybody been fired for letting the consulate become a death trap?” said Graham. However, the credibility of 60 Minutes’ key source, a private security contractor named Dylan Davies, has been called into question after he admitted lying to his bosses about his whereabouts the night of the Benghazi attack. (Davies maintains that the account he gave to 60 Minutes is true.)

Last Friday, Mother Jones had the story Yet Another Benghazi Story Falls Apart in which they quote Lara Logan:

….The State Department and GOP congressional aides confirmed that Davies’s Sept. 14, 2012, report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, was included among tens of thousands of documents turned over to lawmakers by the State Department this year.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for Lindsey Graham’s apology.

The National memo has the story Wendy Davis Redefines ‘Pro-Life,’ Enrages Anti-Choicers.

“I am pro-life,” she told a University of Texas at Brownsville crowd on Tuesday. “I care about the life of every child: every child that goes to bed hungry, every child that goes to bed without a proper education, every child that goes to bed without being able to be a part of the Texas dream, every woman and man who worry about their children’s future and their ability to provide for that future. I care about life and I have a record of fighting for people above all else.”

This matches what I think the definition of Pro-Life is. If you want to put a fetus, a zygote, or even an ovum on a par with a child or an adult, you have some ‘splaining to do.

Fetus: a human being or animal in the later stages of development before it is born

Zygote: a cell that is formed when an egg and a sperm combine

Ovum: a female gamete : macrogamete; especially : a mature egg that has undergone reduction, is ready for fertilization, and takes the form of a relatively large inactive gamete providing a comparatively great amount of reserve material and contributing most of the cytoplasm of the zygote

If you want to let Texans know what you think, you can go right to the article in The Valley Morning Star and make a comment. It’s about time we tried to rescue “those people” from the bubble in which they live.

I have just read two small but interesting books by Frank N. Newman, Six Myths that Hold Back America: And What America Can Learn from the Growth of China’s Economy (Dec 6, 2011) and Freedom from National Debt (May 2, 2013).

I am not saying this as a guarantee of anything, but if you look up Newman’s biography by following the links above, you might conclude that he has some very practical reasons to know what he is talking about.

The content of the two books is similar.  There was one epiphany I had in reading the second book, that I did not get in the first book, though.

First, I’ll just tell you the titles of the 6 myths.

1. Asian nations are bankrolling the U.S.
2. Treasuries “crowd out” financing for the private sector.
3. If everyone tries to save more, the nation will save more, and Investment, GDP, and employment will increase.
4. If the deficit is reduced, then national Saving and Investment will increase.
5. Deficits create great burdens of repayment and taxes for our children.
6. If the U.S. does not get its fiscal deficit reduced, U.S. Treasuries will face the same problem as bonds of Greece and Ireland.

If you believe any of these myths, you need to read the book(s).  I am not going to try  to repeat everything in these books.  You really  need to read them yourself.

I will explain, mostly in my own words, I think, one great insight that I got that goes a long way to explaining why all the myths are truly myths.

The first sentence in the next paragraph is my interpretation of what I read.  I do not think either book explicitly said this in exactly these words.

U.S. Treasuries that are sold to the public to finance  government operations should really be considered like bank deposits rather than debts.  We don’t get worried (sort of) when banks receive larger and larger deposits. We usually think this is what makes banks profitable.

Treasuries are like deposits in that people buy Treasuries as a safe place to put their money.  In fact Treasuries are safer than bank deposits, which is the reason people do not get (do not demand) as high an interest rate from Treasuries as they do from banks.  Treasuries are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government.  Deposits in banks are only FDIC insured up to $250,000.   The primary way that the FDIC insurance “policies” are funded is by money raised from the banks.  However, if a real disaster struck, the ultimate backing for the FDIC is the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government – the same as for Treasuries.

The interest that the Treasuries pay out is then quite similar to the interest that banks pay for the use of your deposits.

The banks earn the money to pay you interest by lending out your money to borrowers who pay higher interest than you get from the bank.

The Treasury uses the money it gets to pay what the Federal Government spends.  This puts your money right back into circulation.  It just occurred to me that instead of the Treasury earning interest from borrowers, the people who receive the money in payment from the government pay some of it back to the Federal Government in the form of taxes. The taxes the government receives is more than enough to pay the interest on all the outstanding Treasuries.

From the book, I learned that there is about a $500billion a day market for Treasuries, so Treasuries are very liquid.  The holders of the Treasuries can get their money back if they need it before the maturation of the financial instruments by selling them on the open market.  When the Treasuries come due, then the Government holds an auction to sell more Treasuries to replace the money from the ones that come due.  A very large fraction of the Treasuries held by the public are just rolled over to the new Treasuries.

Historically, for the last few hundred years ever since the Treasuries were first sold, there are more than enough buyers to buy all the Treasuries that the Government wants to auction off.  So the government never has to come up with USD money to pay off the Treasuries coming due.  It only pays out USD money if it wants to lower the amount of Treasuries outstanding by auctioning off fewer Treasuries than have just come due.

Think Progress has the article The Stunning Collapse Of Infrastructure Spending In One Chart.

“It’s also likely that much of the investment that has been forgone in the name of fiscal consolidation will have to be made eventually anyways — only it will be made when rates are higher, exacerbating the long-term fiscal outlook rather than improving it,”

Here is the chart:

This echoes a point I have been making for a long time.

If there is infrastructure spending that must be done at some time or another, why would we choose not to do it when the costs are at rock bottom? Why would we choose to do them later when the costs will be elevated?

If Republicans are really worried about government project crowding out private corporate spending, why wouldn’t we do the projects now when corporations are sitting on trillions of uninvested dollars? Why would we wait until the corporations have all of their cash fully invested?

Of course it really isn’t about the money in the crowding out case, it is about competing for resources. When the productive resources of the country are being fully used by the private sector, we don’t need government to compete and cause inflation. When resources are not being fully used, then the government won’t cause inflation by putting them to work. Such a government effort will put unemployed people to work and thus raise tax revenues without raising tax rates.

Why is this so hard to understand?

Also note my previous posts The Weak Economy and Deficit Reduction: Deniers and Terrorists and What So Proudly We Hail.  These previous posts discuss President Obama’s bragging of the deficit reduction he has achieved, when he really ought to be ashamed of allowing a reduction during a recession and very slow growth.  The Republicans will just claim that they caused the deficit reduction, no matter what Obama says.  Moreover, he ought to let them take the credit for reducing the deficit and the blame for keeping the county’s economic performance way below what it should be.