LTG (ret) Dave Barno and Andrew Exum recently released a CNAS report titled "Responsible Transition: Securing U.S. Interests in Afghanistan Beyond 2011." In this report, the two men outline how the US government should move from a heavy counterinsurgency operation that is led by the US military to a counterterrorism operation that supports an Afghan-led counterinsurgency operation in 2014. I'm not going to get into the report itself, other to say that I'm really not that impressed (go read Gulliver's two cents), and that I'll probably lean toward Finel's and Cohen's take. There are few options left to the United States other than to draw down and let the Afghans take over security operations, unless there is a desire by the Repub politicians to dramatically increase US forces and funding in that conflict (since I have no faith in the Dems doing anything positive or negative here).

Interestingly, Mr. Exum has returned from the faraway land of Afghanistan lately and brings back good news and bad news. The good news is that our military intel services are crackerjacks and doing great things. Counterinsurgency is going just swell at the tactical levels, at least. And the special forces guys are working well with the general purpose forces. Always a good thing.

The bad news is that we still don't have an Afghani government that can rule the provinces with any degree of confidence and the Pakistani government still lets the Taliban do pretty much whatever they want. Our government doesn't really focus on this aspect of Afghani "governance", and we're probably going to lose international support as well as that of the Afghani government. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

There was this story about how Karzai appointed a buddy for a governance position, but in 2005, the British military found that he had a little 9-ton heroin problem in his basement. He's gone, but very vocal about how he was framed. And now Karzai thinks the US government is the enemy, not his friend (more mad ranting for public consumption?). There's no indication that Pakistan is addressing its inherent challenges with the Taliban.

I still don't see why anyone would think that there are serious national security interests in Afghanistan, now that al Qaeda is in Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and probably Germany. Here's the thing about non-state actors - they don't rely on one state to thrive. They're funny like that. But Very Serious People in Washington DC will disagree and insist we continue spending more than a hundred billion a year on this operation.

My final question. So how long after 2014 will the US government be pouring billions into Afghanistan's drug lords convoy protection Dubai accounts economy? Is this another $3 billion a year investment like Egypt, Pakistan, and Israel? How many failed states are we going to keep on life support using US billions?

(D-PA) Rep. Patrick Murphy's standalone bill to repeal "Don't Ask Don't Tell" is getting a vote:

Last May, the House overwhelmingly passed an amendment by Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA) to the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2011 (HR 5136) to repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and has been waiting for the Senate to act. Last week, the Senate failed to move forward on the Defense Authorization bill with the repeal language and as a result, Senators Lieberman and Collins introduced standalone bipartisan legislation to repeal the policy. On the news of a standalone effort last week, Speaker Pelosi responded, “an army of allies stands ready in the House to pass a standalone repeal of the discriminatory policy.”

Today, Rep. Patrick Murphy introduced a standalone bill (H.R. 6520) providing for the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy saying:

The time to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has come. Already, two dozen other nations, including Israel and Great Britain, allow their troops to serve openly with no detriment to unit cohesion. As an Army veteran of the Iraq War, I’m insulted by those who claim that our troops are somehow less professional or mission-capable than the troops of these foreign nations. I’m proud to stand with the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the majority of servicemembers and the American public who all support repeal of this discriminatory policy that harms our national security and military readiness.

Leader Hoyer joined the bill as the lead co-sponsor...read on

The homophobes may win out in the end, but at least there's some fight left. If Lieberman and Collins are serious then there's still a chance:

In the wake of the death of the legislation that would have put an end to Don't Ask Don't Tell in the military, Sen Joe Lieberman, D - CT., and Susan Collins, R - ME., are putting together a stand-alone measure to address the discriminating military policy, and majority leader Sen. Harry Reif, D - NV., has promised to get it to the floor for a vote during this session of Congress.

Lieberman tweeted moments ago, "Senator Reid told me he will bring our free-standing DADT repeal up for a vote before end of session. ... he will 'Rule 14' the free-standing DADT repeal so it skips cmte (committee) and can come directly to the Senate floor."

UPDATE: DADT rule passed 232-180 and now it's on to debate. Also, new polling from the ABC/WaPo once again proves that Americans are in favor of repealing DADT:

Today’s Washington Post/ABC News poll is the latest example of strong support by Americans for a repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ From the poll:

By a 56-point margin, nearly 8 in 10 Americans say that gays and lesbians who publicly disclose their sexual orientation should be allowed to serve in the military (77 percent — 21 percent).

The findings from this poll mirror earlier data reflecting broad support for repeal—as the Washington Post writes:

That’s little changed from polls over the two years, but represents the highest level of support in a Post-ABC poll. The support also cuts across partisan and ideological lines, with majorities of Democrats, Republicans, independents, liberals, con

servatives and white evangelical Protestants in favor of homosexuals’ serving openly.

As expected, the Senate passed the much discussed Tax Cut deal with overwhelming support, 81-19.

The Senate on Wednesday approved a sweeping tax package negotiated by the White House and congressional Republicans, and House leaders - who were looking to amend the measure in a way that would satisfy liberals without unraveling the deal altogether - said a House vote could follow as soon as Thursday. The Senate's approval of the bill came after three amendments were decisively rejected. One, sponsored by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), would have permanently extended all of the Bush tax cuts. Another, introduced by Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.), would have excluded the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans from the tax-cut extension....read on

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Credit: Economic Policy Institute

Move over, welfare queens, IRS agents and trial lawyers. The Republican Party has a new bogeyman: the public employee. With a sluggish U.S. economy, cash-strapped states and under-funded pension programs, Tim Pawlenty, Sarah Palin and other leading lights of the GOP are scape-goating government workers and their unions for the nation's woes. Of course, there's only one problem with Rush Limbaugh's claim that public sector employees are "freeloaders" and the charge from Indiana Governor and GOP White House hopeful Mitch Daniels that they are a "new privileged class in America."

Like so much other conservative mythmaking, it's simply not true.

But that didn't stop outgoing Minnesota Governor and 2012 Republican presidential contender Tim Pawlenty this week from pretending otherwise. In a Monday Wall Street Journal op-ed titled "Government Unions vs. Taxpayers," Governor Pawlenty echoed half-term Governor Sarah Palin by targeting "unionized public employees [who] are making more money, receiving more generous benefits, and enjoying greater job security than the working families forced to pay for it with ever-higher taxes, deficits and debt."

How did this happen? Very quietly. The rise of government unions has been like a silent coup, an inside job engineered by self-interested politicians and fueled by campaign contributions.

Pawlenty repeated his charge to Fox News on Monday:

"You have public employees making more than their private-sector counterparts. They used to be under-benefited and underpaid. Now they're both over-benefited and overpaid...it needs to stop."

Sadly for would-be President Pawlenty, the charge - whether at the federal, state or local level - is false.

That's the conclusion of a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute. Just one of many recent analyses debunking Republican charges about government workers and their unions, EPI found that "on average, state and local government workers are compensated 3.75% less than workers in the private sector." (See the table above for details.) The report by Labor and Employment Relations Professor Jeffrey Keefe of Rutgers University revealed that public employees are undercompensated compared to similarly skilled private sector counterparts:

The study analyzes workers with similar human capital. It controls for education, experience, hours of work, organizational size, gender, race, ethnicity and disability and finds that, compared to workers in the private sector, state government employees are undercompensated by 7.55% and local government employees are undercompensated by 1.84%. The study also finds that the benefits that state and local government workers receive do not offset the lower wages they are paid.

The public/private earnings differential is greatest for doctors, lawyers and professional employees, the study finds. High school-educated public workers, on the other hand, are more highly compensated than private sector employees, because the public sector sets a floor on compensation. The earnings floor has collapsed in the private sector.

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For the second time in less than a week, the Fox News Washington managing editor has been caught trying to "slant" the news.

In an e-mail obtained by Media Matters, Bill Sammon told his staff to downplay the importance of climate science that showed the world was getting warmer.

"Given the controversy over the veracity of climate change data... we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question," Sammon wrote.

Sammon issued the instructions less than 15 minutes after Fox News correspondent Wendell Goler noted that the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization announced that 2000-2009 was "on track to be the warmest [decade] on record."

"2000 to 2009 [is] expected to turn out to be the warmest decade on record," Goler reported during the 2009 Copenhagen climate change summit. "2009 itself was about the fifth warmest year. There was extreme drought in Africa, extreme heat in India and northern China."

"But it's the decade trend that has scientists concerned because 2000 to 2009 [is] warmer than the 1990s, warmer than the 1980s," he said.

Only last week, Media Matters published another e-mail where Sammon asked his news department to refer to the health care reform public option as the "government run option."

Sammon sent the request after Republican pollster Frank Luntz said that polls showed the "government option" was opposed by the public.

According to the report at Media Matters, in August of 2009 after Fox News' Sean Hannity used the term "public option," Luntz encouraged him to say "government option" instead.

"If you call it a 'public option,' the American people are split," Luntz said. "If you call it the 'government option,' the public is overwhelmingly against it."

In October, sources told Media Matters that since joining Fox News, Sammon's pressure to "distort" and "slant news" had made some in the newsroom uncomfortable.

"Since Bill Sammon assumed the role of Washington managing editor and vice president of news at the beginning of the Obama Administration, pressure from Fox management to produce stories that lean toward a conservative agenda, and distort news in some cases, has found its way into coverage," the sources said.

The text of Sammon's email follows:

From: Sammon, Bill
To: 169 -SPECIAL REPORT; 036 -FOX.WHU; 054 -FNSunday; 030 -Root (FoxNews.Com); 050 -Senior Producers; 051 -Producers; 069 -Politics; 005 -Washington
Cc: Clemente, Michael; Stack, John; Wallace, Jay; Smith, Sean
Sent: Tue Dec 08 12:49:51 2009
Subject: Given the controversy over the veracity of climate change data...

...we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies.

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I know there are differing opinions on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks around the blogosphere, but what's shocking to me is how the media has taken on such a hostile attitude against a man that they should be rallying around and who essentially is the new-age Daniel Ellsberg. There are differences, of course, but the fact that Assange has been targeted by Big Business is shocking. What's at stake? The freedom of the press, that's what. Here's a great piece by Michael Lacy of The Village Voice echoing the same sentiments:

WikiLeaks Betrayed by Amazon, Visa, Mastercard -- and, Worst of All, the Media (h/t LA Weekly)

The outrageous behavior of Amazon, Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal directed at WikiLeaks represents a much greater threat to America than any of the alleged security breaches from Julian Assange.....Amazon, Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal set themselves up as judges, juries and executioners.

And perhaps more troubling is that while the mainstream media happily regurgitated, repurposed and -- in the case of The New York Times -- reported the context of the released diplomatic cables, they have been noticeably silent as web conglomerates reshaped the First Amendment. Or, as in the case of The Washington Post and The Washington Times, they've joined the ninnies calling for Assange's head. The chief enabler is Barack Obama's Attorney General, Eric H. Holder who announced that the Justice Department and the Pentagon were in the midst of "an ongoing criminal investigation."

The key word is "investigation." The Attorney General has yet to charge anyone, let alone bring the case.

This is the same Attorney General who has investigated Arizona's Sheriff Joe Arpaio -- the sadistic and brutal jailer who flouts the Constitution in pursuit of Mexicans. The FBI and the Justice Department have had Arpaio under investigation, on a variety of fronts, since 2008. The Sheriff's jails have been declared "unconstitutional" by the same Justice Department since 1996.

Have banks or credit card companies seized Sheriff Arpaio's home because he is under investigation? Did any internet company deny Sheriffi Arpaio access to his extensive, online marketing empire? No, that has not happened. But, with the patriots in Congress howling, Amazon and the others moved to isolate and strangle WikiLeaks.

And the press does not speak out when the single largest document dump in the history of the media results in financial institutions determining when the flow of information will stop?

PayPal's president, Osama Bedler, explained his action by pointing out that the State Department claimed WikiLeaks' dissemination of cables was illegal in a November 27 letter to Assange.

And so they did. And so what? The State Department is not a judicial body. It is part of the Executive branch -- and furthermore, they were the target of the revelations.

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"Your rights on the internet are only as strong as the will of companies to let you have it," observed Hofmann. In such an anarchic environment, is it any wonder that anarchists have responded with the only weapons left? Congressional hearings are now scheduled for this Thursday, December 16. The House Judiciary Committee will not, I predict, worry much about the First Amendment.

No good will come to free speech in such a political forum.

I expected the State Department to speak out against WikiLeaks, but why have the media been so hostile to WikiLeaks and so passive about the people trying to silence his operation without a shred of evidence of him being guilty of a crime?

I wonder if they are afraid that either they or their friends might show up in some of these leaked cables in an unfavorable light. Yesterday on MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell was discussing Assange's bail in the UK and seemed afraid that he might have access to the dreaded "Internet" and destroy the world.

Digby:

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Mitt Romney's editorial in USAToday is absurd on many levels, but it's a shrewd political move for a guy who wants to pull the Tea Party away from Sarah Palin's grip. Among the more ridiculous things he says:

In this, as in so many other arenas of government policy, unemployment insurance has many unintended effects. The indisputable fact is that unemployment benefits, despite a web of regulations, actually serve to discourage some individuals from taking jobs, especially when the benefits extend across years.

Let me translate: The unemployed are lazy, on-the-dole idiots who won't work as janitors at McDonald's. I refer him to Susie Madrak's pointer to Slacktivist's elegant and passionate retort as evidence of how wrong he is.

In order to twist his way out of the pickle he's in, he suggests "individual unemployment savings accounts". No, really. He does.

To remedy such problems we need a very different model, perhaps establishing individual unemployment savings accounts over which employees would exercise direct control when they lose their jobs, or putting in place financial incentives for employers to hire and train the long-term unemployed.

Let me see if I have this right. In order to prevent government spending on the unemployed he is proposing...government spending in the form of tax incentives? And this will somehow save money how? Of course it won't and he knows that, but it plays like a waltz with the Tea Party who is all about individual responsibility and the like.

There's more nonsense there, but you get the idea. In order to be viable, Romney will have to run sharply right to cut Sarah Palin and her fans off. He will likely succeed. He will present himself in 2012 as an intelligent, well-spoken candidate and possibly co-opt the faith community in an effort to minimize his Mormonism, which hurt him badly in the 2008 election. He will count on sustained Tea Party anger, mostly whipped into a frenzy by the likes of Judson Phillips, FreedomWorks, and the architects of manufactured outrage as a basis for snagging media minutes and sound bites.

And if he is elected, he will disappoint them all while doing enough harm to this nation that it may not be reparable.

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The system is also not designed for a flexible economy like ours in which some employees move from job to job for short periods, and are therefore ineligible for unemployment compensation when they are faced with a protracted spell without work.

To remedy such problems we need a very different model, perhaps establishing individual unemployment savings accounts over which employees would exercise direct control when they lose their jobs, or putting in place financial incentives for employers to hire and train the long-term unemployed. One thing is certain: While we cannot rebuild our flawed system overnight, we are surely not required to borrow the funds to pay for it. In spending $56.5 billion to extend benefits, the deal is sacrificing the bedrock Republican principle that new expenditures be paid for with offsetting budget cuts.

That last sentence is the most hilarious pile of horses*** I've read in a long, long time. Let's go through some of the wonderful Republican initiatives over the past decade and see if they were offset by budget cuts:

• The cost of extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich for the next two years will be $79 billion, or more than $20 billion more than the cost of extending unemployment benefits. Mittens sees no need to pay for these.

• The Iraq war has cost us close to $750 billion. Did the GOP try to offset those costs with tax increases or budget cuts? Pffffffft!

• And then there's TARP, the $700 billion bank bailout that had no guarantee of seeing any return on investment. Again, did the GOP insist on making cuts or raising taxes to pay for this? Nope.

So in Romney's world, government spending is only reckless if it benefits people who have lost their jobs. If it involves pointless wars, bank bailouts or tax cuts for Paris Hilton, though, it doesn't need to be offset by anything since all of those things are free. Why anyone takes this clown seriously -- or why Useless, Eh? Today felt the need to print his scribblings without the least bit of fact checking -- is beyond me.

Let's look at the rest of today's economic news:

• First, some happy news:

  New government data released Tuesday bolstered retailers' hopes that consumers are shaking off the recession and pulling out their wallets just in time for the most critical sales months of the year.

  The Commerce Department reported a 0.8 percent increase in retail sales in November from the previous month, with big gains at clothing stores, sporting goods chains and department stores. It also revised its estimate for October upward, from a 1.2 percent gain to 1.7 percent.

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The Baseline Scenario: The Modertate Republican Stimulus

Prose Before Hos: Why the Salvation Army doesn't deserve your money

TakeMyCountryBack: NYT: "Ron Paul comes in from the cold" - Who left the damn door open?

They gave us a republic: The Nightowl Newswrap

cab drollery: The eye of a needle just got larger

Where's the Outrage?: Us Versus Them, We Don't Count

From Mark Fiore. Open Thread below...