Buried in with today’s news was this story about one of our secret wars, this time in Somalia. It appears that now we’re using African proxies to fight Al Shabab there.

The Obama Administration has finally started to do something relatively serious about the housing crisis by using the tool of executive authority it has over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Unfortunately, the plan seems to depend heavily on enriching large corporate middlemen.

Current TV/Countdown’s guest host David Shuster interviewed Bradford Wells and Anthony John Makk on Wednesday to discuss their immigration situation.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi made her selections for the Super Congress with the choices of Nancy Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi, and Nancy Pelosi.

“My appointees: @Clyburn @RepBecerra @ChrisVanHollen They’ll focus on economic growth & job creation–which reduces deficit/”

Elizabeth Warren, back in Massachusetts after a stint in Washington getting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau up and running, posted a diary at the state progressive blog Blue Mass Group today that comes close to saying, without expressing specifically, that she’s about to enter the Senate race against Scott Brown.

You thought you were paying excess FICA so there would be money when you retired. No. You were paying excess FICA so rich people and their corporations could have massive tax cuts. S&P should have limited its downgrade to the bonds in the Social Security Trust Fund. Those are never going to pay off.

President Obama’s overall job approval numbers, while not great, remain decent in the latest Washington Post poll. The poll found that 44 percent approve of his job performance while 46 percent disapprove. While the total level of support remains little changed, the intensity of that support has dropped significantly.

James Clyburn has just been appointed to the Super Congress Catfood II Commission, and will now have powers above those or an ordinary member of Congress when it comes to determining the future of Social Security and Medicare. So I thought it would be a good time to re-run Mike Stark’s interview with Clyburn from May of 2010 regarding Clyburn’s support for cutting Social Security benefits.

The only thing worse than Washington being foolishly swept up in unnecessary deficit hysteria when our political leaders should be focused on jobs, is that all these so called “deficit hawks” entirely ignore the actual best solutions to shrink our long term deficit. That is why it is encouraging to see more regular exposure of the fact that adopting Medicare for All is the best way to address our long term deficit concerns.

We could see the statement by the President calling on Bashar al-Assad to step down as early as this week. There’s no question that the horrific actions of Assad’s government, including the murder of thousands of protesters, has sapped at his legitimacy. But Juan Cole, interestingly enough, says that a Presidential statement would be misguided