Drum & Waldman on the Political Risks of the Iran Deal

Paul Waldman writes about the asymmetric political risks that Democrats and Republicans face over the Iran nuclear deal:

If the agreement proves to be a failure — let’s say that Iran manages to conduct a nuclear weapons program in secret, then announces to the world that they have a nuclear weapon — it will indeed be front-page news, and the Democrats who supported the deal might suffer grave political consequences. So in order to vote yes, they had to look seriously at the deal and its alternatives, and accept some long term political peril.

By contrast, there probably is less long term risk for Republicans in opposing the deal.

...If the deal works as intended, what will be the outcome be? Iran without nuclear weapons, of course, but that is a state of being rather than an event. There will be no blaring headlines saying, “Iran Still Has No Nukes — Dems Proven Right!”...

In a way, it's actually worse than this. Even if Iran doesn't get nukes there will be endless opportunities to raise alarms that it's going to happen any day now. Israeli leaders have been warning that Iran is three months away from a nuclear bomb for over two decades. There will always be new studies, new developments, and new conflicts that provide excuses for hysterical Fox News segments telling us we're all about to die at the hands of the ayatollahs.

...So have no worries. Iran could be nuclear free in 2050 and Bill Kristol's grandkids will still be warning everyone else's grandkids that the ayatollahs are this close to getting a bomb. It's kind of soothing, in a way, like a squeaky door that you'd miss if you ever oiled it.

Kevin Drum on the political risks of the nuclear deal with Iran.

He's right in the short-to-medium term of course, but if the West genuinely does manage to normalise relations with a peaceful non-nuclear Iran (still a very dubious prospect), my guess is that Bill Kristol's progeny will have found a new go-to bogeyman long before 2050, with the Iranian nuclear affair a curious historical footnote.  Here's hoping.

Jade Helm 15

So, years of the GOP and the right-wing media in the United States fomenting irrational fears about the Federal government and Barack Obama, led some of their followers to actually believe that a routine training-exercise by the US military represented some sort of threat of invasion/illegal takeover by the Federal government.  To the degree that actual sitting Congressmen expressed concern publicly, and the actual Governor of Texas, ordered the State Guard to monitor the activity, being carried out by...the military of the United States of America.

Sounds crazy, doesn't it.  But what could actually go wrong ?

Other than shots being fired by two white guys in a pickup, at soldiers in training.

Or a bunch of anti-government nuts hoarding guns and making explosives, to use apparently in defence against said non-existent federal takeover.

And the exercise isn't even halfway over yet, so who knows what more might be in the pipeline ?

Not that the conclusion of the exercise in September with the US somehow miraculously not under martial law will do squat to ease the paranoia of the nuts in question (ie, a huge swath of the GOP's electorate).  'No', they'll say, 'what really happened is that we spooked 'em.  We showed Obama and those other UN New World Order-types that we knew what they was up to and they warn't gonna mess with Texas**.  You wanna come here, 'n' take our, guns, then suck on this !'  Followed by the explosive sound of a gunshot as one of them accidentally blows off their own head, or that of their dog, or their child.  But they died free, see, and that Commie Muslim Kenyan interloper didn't get 'em after all.


* I didn't intend to say a word on this idiocy, but it...just...won't...go away...And now we're getting close to people actually being killed over this nonsense.

** I know, I know, these two cases in question weren't in Texas...Oh that it were only the population of one state that had gone batshit-insane.

That Is All

DefundPlannedParenthoodSanctuaryCitiesHillaryClintonsEmailKatesLawISISCrossingtheMexicanBorderSellingFetalBodyPartsJadeHelmObamaTakingAwayYourGunsCreepingSocialismIRSPersecutingTheTeaPartyObamaIsNevilleChamberlainWorseThanSlaveryWorseThantheHolocaustDeathPanelsAmeroDemocratsBetrayingIsraelFomentingClassWarfareDenyingAmericanExceptionalismMostDangerousPlaceforaBlackBabyisintheWombVinceFosterSecuretheBorderFirstSoonPeoplesWillBeMarryingAnimalsCriminalizingChristianityFakeBirthCertificateSolyndraAcornReverendWrightBillAyersDemocratsaretheRealRacistsEricHolderGroundZeroMosqueSecretMuslimObamaAteDogsFastandFuriousVAScandalObamaPlanningIllegalThirdTermGroverNorquistisaMuslimSpyWhiteyTapeSecretFEMAReeducationCampsBlackPanthersResetButtonCommunityOrganizerSaulAlinskyObamaBowingSurrenderingtoIranLoveChildofMalcolmXMichelleObamaRuinedMySchoolLunchRulesforRadicalsWhyDoesObamaHateAmericaForcedtoMakeGayWeddingCakeWorstPresidentEverGlobalWarmingisaHoaxSupportingCubanDictatorsChristianNationStandwithIsraelWorsethanHitlerWhichSymbolKilledMoreBlackBabiesShariaLawinAmericaBadDealBenghazi!!!!!

Breitbart's Cuban Butthurt

Surely, more like a victory for common sense, abandoning a long-standing decades-long policy of isolation, that, multiple dead US Presidents later, was still failing to bring about regime-change in Cuba ?  This, on top of other accomplishments by Obama in the last couple of years, his continuing support of the right-wing capitalistic establishment aside, is making it harder and harder for me to maintain my disapproval of the guy.  I may still not agree with the guy 100%*, but compared to Dubya...or worse still, the lunatics even further to Dubya's right ?...

And yet, I get the impression from Breitbart that I'm meant to be outraged, incensed even over the idea of the flag of a 'communist dictatorship' flying in DC...

Former ambassadors, murderous guerrilla icons, and even folk singers have descended upon Washington, D.C. today to celebrate the raising of the Cuban flag over the newly-minted embassy of the communist dictatorship in America.

Cuban state media is treating the event, which has no analog at the American embassy in Havana, as a victory over the American people.

Erm, is the People's Republic of China, which has agents online and in person infilitrating US' governmental agencies and businesses left, right, and centre, not a communist dictatorship ?  A country that bullies the US' allies and has nuclear weapons pointed at the US.  And even Vietnam, for that matter, are they not considered a communist dictatorship ?  Oh, and that last line is bullshit, as the raising of the US flag in Havana is specifically planned to coincide with the visit of, I believe, John Kerry, in the country.

The State Department has raised the Cuban flag over the new embassy in Washington, D.C. while the American embassy remains barren in Havana, though operating officially as an embassy. It released its first press release today as an official embassy and not the Office of American Interests. It will be run by interim head Jeffrey DeLaurentis as Congress gears up to oppose the appointment of any ambassador to the communist dictatorship so long as the Castro regime continues to flagrantly violate human rights.

So the PRC doesn't violate human rights ?  How about Saudi Arabia ?  How about unquestionable Israel, the ultimate third rail of American politics ?  You would be willing to shut down the Israeli embassy over criticism of treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank ?

Granma, the official propaganda outlet for the Cuban government, is treating the ceremony as a victory for the communist revolution. In an article quoting the various members of the delegation to D.C., a number of them described the flag-raising ceremony as analogous to a military victory against America. Pez Ferro, who participated in the 1953 attack on the Moncada military barracks that made Fidel Castro a nationally-recognized terrorist, told Granma that the flag-raising ceremony proves the communists “were in the right.” “This confirms that former policies were a failure,” he states, as well as “the recognition of the resistance of a country that did not cede to pressure despite not being a great power like its rival.”

Well, as for a communist victory, obviously they're fantasists.  They have a point regarding the failure of US policies towards Cuba, but, either way, why so much butt-hurt ?

I suppose, ultimately, it's a similar case as with Viet Nam.  Right-wingers in the US can never get over the idea that they were legitimately defeated, almost exactly as the British were defeated by their ancestors, via the guerrilla tactics of the ordinary populace.  A narrative has to be adopted, that somehow, the media were to blame, lefty liberals like Jane Fonda, traitors in the established political parties with insufficient will to crush the...'enemy.'  The 'enemy' who happened to be pawns on one side of the political chessboard than the other, and the same 'enemy' who are today coveted 'allies'.

Once, and perhaps future, ally of the US, Cuba, was condemned and demonised for similar reasons as other 'Communist' countries of the 'fifties and 'sixties, most of which are today, whether they nominally identify as Communist or not, eagerly courted and fêted by the West.  I suspect that a decade from now, right-wingers in the US will be talking about Cuba, much as they would talk today about Vietnam, and with their own current hyperbole conveniently forgotten.


* Well, not even close to that.

The Arquettegate Intersectionality

So, Patricia Arquette made some comments backstage at the Oscars, à propos of her call for pay-equality for women, that were perhaps not best calculated, and apparently people took it badly, and argued about it on Twitter, as people will.  Whatever, don't care, move on.  Having read a transcript of Arquette's comments, and not following Twitter, I naively assumed that the cause of offence was the implication that somehow the fights for equality for racial minorities and the 'gay community' were already and fully won, and that now it was the time to focus on women.  But, no.

Being fool enough to listen to a certain podcast (rhymes with rib lime), I am reliably informed that the problem was 'Intersectionality'.  Okay, let's take a look-see on the old wiki, and ah, fuck me.  Scroll, scroll, scroll...'a Marxist-feminist critical theory'...ugh.  I'm remembering now why I never liked liberals when I was younger.  Yeah, I get it, the experience of a black lesbian is different from that of say a black man or a white woman, and people can be oppressed along multiple axes of identity.  Yeah, no shit.