++Mark Kirk tweeted that Neville Chamberlain got a better deal from Hitler.
++Mark Halperin actually tweeted positive things twice. The Last was that" we got a better deal than I thought."
++Marco Rubio said the details look shaky.
++John Boehner said that the House had to vote on the agreement before the sanctions are lifted. Note: he couldn't comment on it.
++I expect full throttle backlash by the evening.
++Do you ever get the impression that America now suffers from anhedonia--the inability to feel joy.
++Obama's remarks were carried live on Iranian State Television.
++The Iranian Man in the Street was joyous at the news.
++It was a nice touch that it occurred the last day of Nowruz and on Passover and with Good Friday tomorrow so the GOP is out of town.
Showing posts with label Mark Kirk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mark Kirk. Show all posts
Thursday, April 2, 2015
Thursday, March 12, 2015
UN Discussing Listing Iranian Sanctions Once Deal Is Done
++The United Nations Security Council began discussions today about how to lift sanctions if an Iranian deal is done. State Department spokespeople said this would be binding according to international law.
++Al Jezeera today had a story about how such a deal falls under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and that it has to be cleared by the UN Security Council.
++Never to be outdone, Jennifer Rubin claims that President Obama will be breaking the Constitution if he goes ahead with this. She rants on in semi-logical ways except not to acknowledge why a multi-national agreement governed by the Security Council has weight.
++Rubin quotes Mark Kirk, another signatory to the letter,saying that Congress needs to be involved because you can't just say laws are null and void.
++What GOP lawmakers are really saying is that sanctions passed by law, need to be lifted by law. True. However, the most effective sanctions have been by executive order and also by Europe. All these can be lifted ,leaving sanctions from George W.'s time.
++I shudder to think about the ignorance being shown by the Republicans on all those matters.
++The petition now has gained 20,000 more signatures.
++Bibi is now using his speech to Congress as a campaign ad to persuade voters for smaller right-wing parties to vote Likud. Neither Bibi or Herzog will agree to a rotating Prime Ministership.
++James Baker has been invited to speak at J Street. Baker rings bells for the Israelis. Now he is an adviser to Jeb Bush.
++Al Jezeera today had a story about how such a deal falls under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and that it has to be cleared by the UN Security Council.
++Never to be outdone, Jennifer Rubin claims that President Obama will be breaking the Constitution if he goes ahead with this. She rants on in semi-logical ways except not to acknowledge why a multi-national agreement governed by the Security Council has weight.
++Rubin quotes Mark Kirk, another signatory to the letter,saying that Congress needs to be involved because you can't just say laws are null and void.
++What GOP lawmakers are really saying is that sanctions passed by law, need to be lifted by law. True. However, the most effective sanctions have been by executive order and also by Europe. All these can be lifted ,leaving sanctions from George W.'s time.
++I shudder to think about the ignorance being shown by the Republicans on all those matters.
++The petition now has gained 20,000 more signatures.
++Bibi is now using his speech to Congress as a campaign ad to persuade voters for smaller right-wing parties to vote Likud. Neither Bibi or Herzog will agree to a rotating Prime Ministership.
++James Baker has been invited to speak at J Street. Baker rings bells for the Israelis. Now he is an adviser to Jeb Bush.
Thursday, December 19, 2013
What's Up With The Resistance to the Iran Deal
++I have a well-documented history of involvement in activities protesting Iran's history of human rights violations and the nature of their political system. So I should be one against any deal with Iran over its nuclear program. But the current resistance in the United States to the interim agreement is flat out nuts.
++Jennifer Rubin writing today in the Washington Post writes about Hollande's skepticism about the prospects of a final deal and Eli Wiesel taking an ad out in the New York Times urging the "total dismantling of Iran's nuclear infrastructure" and strengthening the economic sanctions.
++Now Rubin opens her piece saying that Iran is not required to account for illegal weapons or take irreversible steps to disable them. What does that mean? What illegal weapons? This is not the case like Syria of a stockpile of chemical weapons.
++Andrew Sullivan caught the "AIPAC" bill sponsored by Charles Schumer and Mark Kirk that would rule out any deal that allows Iran to enrich any uranium at all. As Sullivan rightly points out, that would mean there would be no deal at all.
++But the bill is more proactive than that. It says that if Israel decides it is in their own national interest to attack Iran, the United States will stand with Israel and authorize the use of military force; diplomatic,military and economic aid to Israel in defense of its territory, people and existence.
++Sullivan is also right that international law does not condone attacking another country just because you don't like their programs. He is also right that this allows Bibi Netanyahu to dictate American policy and its actions.
++Remember President Obama has given Israel the latest "bunker buster" bombs and anti-missile technology. In addition, the Obama Administration gave Israel a ten-year military assistance deal.
++Luckily,neither the House or the Senate were competent enough to pass additional sanctions. Additional sanctions would have split the large coalition insisting on Iran diminishing their nuclear capability. So far,there is China, Russia,and the EU as well as Canada and the U.K. This would fall apart and there would be no deal.
++The Interim deal calls for aggressive inspection,the watering down of highest enriched uranium and actually sets their program back months.
++There is legitimate skepticism about the prospects of a final deal. The Rowhani government has a limited honeymoon period or it will face the fate of the Khatami government's overtures to the West.
++But why not give diplomacy a chance? We are talking about a government with no nuclear weapons as of yet and we might convince them not to pursue this option.
++If you are against any such deal, then please be overt in your support of a war and how you are going to pay for it? And tell me what rationale you will use. We noticed that President Obama could not get Congress to support a strike on Syria's chemical weapons so why does anyone expect the response to be any different for a more difficult target? And AIPAC lobbied like hell for the Syrian strike. There were 250 lobbyists on the House floor and they couldn't pull it off.
++The man who said he would allow Bibi Netanyahu dictate American Middle East policy lost the last election. You can see him on the new Netflix documentary "Mitt".
++As I have made plain over the years,my fears are for another Fukushima in the Persian Gulf, not nuclear weapons.
++What would happen if our allies insisted that Israel finally open up about their nuclear weapons and allow United Nations inspections of their capability?
++Jennifer Rubin writing today in the Washington Post writes about Hollande's skepticism about the prospects of a final deal and Eli Wiesel taking an ad out in the New York Times urging the "total dismantling of Iran's nuclear infrastructure" and strengthening the economic sanctions.
++Now Rubin opens her piece saying that Iran is not required to account for illegal weapons or take irreversible steps to disable them. What does that mean? What illegal weapons? This is not the case like Syria of a stockpile of chemical weapons.
++Andrew Sullivan caught the "AIPAC" bill sponsored by Charles Schumer and Mark Kirk that would rule out any deal that allows Iran to enrich any uranium at all. As Sullivan rightly points out, that would mean there would be no deal at all.
++But the bill is more proactive than that. It says that if Israel decides it is in their own national interest to attack Iran, the United States will stand with Israel and authorize the use of military force; diplomatic,military and economic aid to Israel in defense of its territory, people and existence.
++Sullivan is also right that international law does not condone attacking another country just because you don't like their programs. He is also right that this allows Bibi Netanyahu to dictate American policy and its actions.
++Remember President Obama has given Israel the latest "bunker buster" bombs and anti-missile technology. In addition, the Obama Administration gave Israel a ten-year military assistance deal.
++Luckily,neither the House or the Senate were competent enough to pass additional sanctions. Additional sanctions would have split the large coalition insisting on Iran diminishing their nuclear capability. So far,there is China, Russia,and the EU as well as Canada and the U.K. This would fall apart and there would be no deal.
++The Interim deal calls for aggressive inspection,the watering down of highest enriched uranium and actually sets their program back months.
++There is legitimate skepticism about the prospects of a final deal. The Rowhani government has a limited honeymoon period or it will face the fate of the Khatami government's overtures to the West.
++But why not give diplomacy a chance? We are talking about a government with no nuclear weapons as of yet and we might convince them not to pursue this option.
++If you are against any such deal, then please be overt in your support of a war and how you are going to pay for it? And tell me what rationale you will use. We noticed that President Obama could not get Congress to support a strike on Syria's chemical weapons so why does anyone expect the response to be any different for a more difficult target? And AIPAC lobbied like hell for the Syrian strike. There were 250 lobbyists on the House floor and they couldn't pull it off.
++The man who said he would allow Bibi Netanyahu dictate American Middle East policy lost the last election. You can see him on the new Netflix documentary "Mitt".
++As I have made plain over the years,my fears are for another Fukushima in the Persian Gulf, not nuclear weapons.
++What would happen if our allies insisted that Israel finally open up about their nuclear weapons and allow United Nations inspections of their capability?
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Snow Blind
Washington is crippled by snow today. Ok, anytime it snows in Washington we're crippled.
It is the UN Holocaust Remembrance Day. The German government finally acknowledged the extermination of the Roma or Gypsies today. American Rabbis of all parts of Judaism took today to blast Fox News through an ad in Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal for Glenn Beck and Roger Ailes constant reference to people as Nazis and their attacks on individuals misusing the Nazi analogy. Previously, Roger Ailes had joked that only liberal or left-wing rabbis were concerned with this. Today, he got the reaction of the entire spectrum. Whether anything will come of it, I'm doubtful. But it might be worth it to take the time to contemplate the real Holocaust.
For this I recommend Saul Friedlander's two volume history--"Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933-39" and "Nazi Germany and the Jews 1939-1945: the Years of Extermination." Even today in 2011, we are still finding out more details about the Holocaust and the worlds' reaction to it.
But apparently, the person who threatened California State Senator Leeland Lee, who had criticized Rush Limbaugh's mocking of Chinese, hasn't learned much about the Holocaust or hate language. He mailed to Mr. Lee a flyer that called the Senator a "Jobama Rectum-Sniffing Moron", "Fish Head Leland Lee", and said that "Rush Limbaugh will kick your chink ass". The flyer had a pickup truck with the American flag on the door pulling a noose. "Achtung". "Death to all Marxists--Foreign and Domestic". State police, who are still investigating threats against Jerry brown, now get a chance to look into this.
The police did arrest the man who threatened Washington Governor Gregoire by the internet. The man said the governor should be burned at the stake.
For bipartisan balance, Dallas police detonated a suspicious package mailed to John Cornyn's office.
Think of all the threats to politicians in the last two years. Do any of them pop right out as flagrantly obvious targets?
Having changed the political narrative in his direction,President Obama was out in Wisconsin yesterday hyping American innovation at a clean energy plant. The irony is that the new Republican governor has already shut down the high-speed rail plant, which now has moved to Illinois, and passed a law that will keep wind energy installations far away from any residences--like luxury vacation homes on the Lake.
Sarah Palin finally broke her tweeter silence by attacking President Obama's state of the Union address by saying that the Soviet Union collapsed because it invested so much in its space program. Do you put a laugh track over these remarks, ignore them or treat them as surrealism?
Mark Kirk says that Congress is in "shock" over the $1.5 trillion budget this year. He says he never knew that tax cuts actually led to an increase in the deficit.
John Boehner actually said something correct,"We're broke."
The CBO has released a study that shows that unemployment will remain around 9% for the next two years and that it will not return to "normal" until 2016. Which brings me to my old point that unless we structurally change our economy we will face about 8% unemployment for the foreseeable future.
Peter Orzag fears that we will do nothing about the national debt unless there is a fiscal crisis. John McCain's 2008 financial adviser said that our annual deficit is not worrisome it's that even if unemployment was 4.5% we would be facing a tremendous national debt. The four causes of the debt,in his opinion, are military spending, the entitlement programs and the interest on that debt, which will balloon once there is a recovery and interest rates rise.
While Republicans, including John Boehner, are backing off their attacks on Social Security, there is an insidious movement by people like Newt Gingrich to promote the idea that states should be able to go bankrupt. The idea behind this is to wipe out state obligations on pensions. So the government employed baby-boomers would be left with social security only.
One of the wackiest ideas circulating in the House is a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. In my lifetime, that has only been done three times-once by Eisenhower, once by LBJ and once by Clinton. Before that I think Calvin Coolidge did it. James Galbraith wrote a piece recently on why it physically can not be done given our interrelationship with the global economy. You might also want to consider that the states who want to declare bankruptcy also have balanced budget requirements.
The House cut the budget again today by eliminating public financing of campaigns, something that has been around since Richard Nixon. This is probably related to the House Ethics Committee dropping their investigations of about 12 members who suspiciously raised money from the finance industry before the last election.
Hell did freeze over in Washington yesterday. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO came out with a joint statement in defense of infrastructure spending. Now the Chamber, which owns the House Republicans, will have to see whether their Congress really was the best they could buy.
Government Watchdog groups are raising the issue of whether criminal charges should be brought against Chuckles Thomas. They claim that the Supreme Court Justice by not filing information about his wife's income for the last 20 years is in criminal violation of the law. The bad news for Clarence is that they cite case after case of federal officials being fined and given prison terms for the same offense. Is a Supreme Court justice above the law?
I'm relieved to hear that Sharron Angle has not ruled out a run for the presidency in 2012. We're already going to be treated to Randall Terry of Operation Rescue running as a Democrat against President Obama. Terry promises to run ads of dead babies to show Obama is a baby-killer. This should be as appealing as the anti-Muslim DVD and brown-colored flier on Bill Ayers that was sent around against President Obama here in Virginia in 2008.
If you liked the Big F...ing Deal t-shirt from OFA. You can now get "We Do Big Things" t-shirt.
I happen to believe David Axelrod's comments at a meeting with bloggers yesterday that the White House has held "no grand repositioning" meetings about tacking to the right. Actually Rachel Maddow captured this accurately when she said that Obama had defined a political middle which is based on principles. Now for some reason--unrelated--Don Imus claimed Rachel was "a gutless coward". Por que?
The army sent Lt. Choi a bill for $2,500 for his discharge on DADT. President Obama said that the military will not longer enforce DADT and Secretary of Defense Gates says DADT ends this year. lt. Choi says he is not paying the bill.
Ohio Governor John Kasich who campaigned on transparency and accountability declared that his JobsOhio program would not have to obey these principles.
The author of "O", the anonymous novel about Obama's 2012 president run that imitates without the sex the novbel about Bill Clinton, apparently was written by long-time McCain aide , Mark Salter. This we are told by good novelist turned political hack Mark Halperin. I suggest that the two Marks change vocations.
It is the UN Holocaust Remembrance Day. The German government finally acknowledged the extermination of the Roma or Gypsies today. American Rabbis of all parts of Judaism took today to blast Fox News through an ad in Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal for Glenn Beck and Roger Ailes constant reference to people as Nazis and their attacks on individuals misusing the Nazi analogy. Previously, Roger Ailes had joked that only liberal or left-wing rabbis were concerned with this. Today, he got the reaction of the entire spectrum. Whether anything will come of it, I'm doubtful. But it might be worth it to take the time to contemplate the real Holocaust.
For this I recommend Saul Friedlander's two volume history--"Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933-39" and "Nazi Germany and the Jews 1939-1945: the Years of Extermination." Even today in 2011, we are still finding out more details about the Holocaust and the worlds' reaction to it.
But apparently, the person who threatened California State Senator Leeland Lee, who had criticized Rush Limbaugh's mocking of Chinese, hasn't learned much about the Holocaust or hate language. He mailed to Mr. Lee a flyer that called the Senator a "Jobama Rectum-Sniffing Moron", "Fish Head Leland Lee", and said that "Rush Limbaugh will kick your chink ass". The flyer had a pickup truck with the American flag on the door pulling a noose. "Achtung". "Death to all Marxists--Foreign and Domestic". State police, who are still investigating threats against Jerry brown, now get a chance to look into this.
The police did arrest the man who threatened Washington Governor Gregoire by the internet. The man said the governor should be burned at the stake.
For bipartisan balance, Dallas police detonated a suspicious package mailed to John Cornyn's office.
Think of all the threats to politicians in the last two years. Do any of them pop right out as flagrantly obvious targets?
Having changed the political narrative in his direction,President Obama was out in Wisconsin yesterday hyping American innovation at a clean energy plant. The irony is that the new Republican governor has already shut down the high-speed rail plant, which now has moved to Illinois, and passed a law that will keep wind energy installations far away from any residences--like luxury vacation homes on the Lake.
Sarah Palin finally broke her tweeter silence by attacking President Obama's state of the Union address by saying that the Soviet Union collapsed because it invested so much in its space program. Do you put a laugh track over these remarks, ignore them or treat them as surrealism?
Mark Kirk says that Congress is in "shock" over the $1.5 trillion budget this year. He says he never knew that tax cuts actually led to an increase in the deficit.
John Boehner actually said something correct,"We're broke."
The CBO has released a study that shows that unemployment will remain around 9% for the next two years and that it will not return to "normal" until 2016. Which brings me to my old point that unless we structurally change our economy we will face about 8% unemployment for the foreseeable future.
Peter Orzag fears that we will do nothing about the national debt unless there is a fiscal crisis. John McCain's 2008 financial adviser said that our annual deficit is not worrisome it's that even if unemployment was 4.5% we would be facing a tremendous national debt. The four causes of the debt,in his opinion, are military spending, the entitlement programs and the interest on that debt, which will balloon once there is a recovery and interest rates rise.
While Republicans, including John Boehner, are backing off their attacks on Social Security, there is an insidious movement by people like Newt Gingrich to promote the idea that states should be able to go bankrupt. The idea behind this is to wipe out state obligations on pensions. So the government employed baby-boomers would be left with social security only.
One of the wackiest ideas circulating in the House is a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. In my lifetime, that has only been done three times-once by Eisenhower, once by LBJ and once by Clinton. Before that I think Calvin Coolidge did it. James Galbraith wrote a piece recently on why it physically can not be done given our interrelationship with the global economy. You might also want to consider that the states who want to declare bankruptcy also have balanced budget requirements.
The House cut the budget again today by eliminating public financing of campaigns, something that has been around since Richard Nixon. This is probably related to the House Ethics Committee dropping their investigations of about 12 members who suspiciously raised money from the finance industry before the last election.
Hell did freeze over in Washington yesterday. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO came out with a joint statement in defense of infrastructure spending. Now the Chamber, which owns the House Republicans, will have to see whether their Congress really was the best they could buy.
Government Watchdog groups are raising the issue of whether criminal charges should be brought against Chuckles Thomas. They claim that the Supreme Court Justice by not filing information about his wife's income for the last 20 years is in criminal violation of the law. The bad news for Clarence is that they cite case after case of federal officials being fined and given prison terms for the same offense. Is a Supreme Court justice above the law?
I'm relieved to hear that Sharron Angle has not ruled out a run for the presidency in 2012. We're already going to be treated to Randall Terry of Operation Rescue running as a Democrat against President Obama. Terry promises to run ads of dead babies to show Obama is a baby-killer. This should be as appealing as the anti-Muslim DVD and brown-colored flier on Bill Ayers that was sent around against President Obama here in Virginia in 2008.
If you liked the Big F...ing Deal t-shirt from OFA. You can now get "We Do Big Things" t-shirt.
I happen to believe David Axelrod's comments at a meeting with bloggers yesterday that the White House has held "no grand repositioning" meetings about tacking to the right. Actually Rachel Maddow captured this accurately when she said that Obama had defined a political middle which is based on principles. Now for some reason--unrelated--Don Imus claimed Rachel was "a gutless coward". Por que?
The army sent Lt. Choi a bill for $2,500 for his discharge on DADT. President Obama said that the military will not longer enforce DADT and Secretary of Defense Gates says DADT ends this year. lt. Choi says he is not paying the bill.
Ohio Governor John Kasich who campaigned on transparency and accountability declared that his JobsOhio program would not have to obey these principles.
The author of "O", the anonymous novel about Obama's 2012 president run that imitates without the sex the novbel about Bill Clinton, apparently was written by long-time McCain aide , Mark Salter. This we are told by good novelist turned political hack Mark Halperin. I suggest that the two Marks change vocations.
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