American Politics Thread 2013: I'm a cool Rodham grandma in the USA

damn so close

there's still time

true you can do war w iran p much whenever you want

http://i.imgur.com/nJ62VIZ.png

No retweet?

from a quick read it's not a terrible deal imho - if bibi is smart he won't protest it

oh hes smart, for instance look at this cool thing he drew

http://www.globalpost.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/gp3_small_article/bibi_bomb_graphic.jpg

bibi thinks it is smart to protest everything at all times

i guess that's what it hinges on - whether he sees the 'halting' in the deal as being sufficient to keeping iran from breakout nuke capacity. i don't have the expertise to parse all the details but they seem pretty comprehensive to me?

According to the agreement, Iran would agree to stop enriching uranium beyond 5 percent. To make good on that pledge, Iran would dismantle links between networks of centrifuges.

All of Iran’s stockpile of uranium that has been enriched to 20 percent, a short hop to weapons-grade fuel, would be diluted or converted into oxide so that it could not be readily used for military purposes.

No new centrifuges, neither old models nor newer more efficient ones, could be installed. Centrifuges that have been installed but which are not currently operating could not be started up.

The agreement, however, would not require Iran to stop enriching uranium to a level of 3.5 percent or dismantle any of its existing centrifuges.

as i understand it the breakout capacity comes from the quantity of 20% enriched -- and if this deal was executed faithfully that would eliminate that concern? (obv faithfulness not guaranteed)

inspectors are allowed to visit the site every day fwiw

now u could say that any american emperor in the world of the cold war and nsc-68 would have had all the same delusions about the possibility/necessity of victory in vietnam, plus have been under all the same institutional pressure, but even tho i'm as allergic to subjunctive jfk worship as anyone (except when delivered by donald sutherland obv) the excomm transcripts do make me believe that jfk does not think about the wider world and america's ability the way lbj does -- he's had so much time to swan about and read. johnson just scrabbles and scrabbles with his eyes fixed down and ahead until everyone who was in his way is gone (heh) and he finally has the only thing he ever wanted, and then it's over the cliff like gollum
― i want to say one word to you, just one word:buzzfeed (difficult listening hour), Saturday, 23 November 2013 03:00 (Yesterday) Permalink

It's hard to listen to the LBJ-McNamara tapes and not believe that LBJ was much more hawkish and had much more commitment to the Vietnam adventure.

http://pandodaily.com/2013/11/25/pandodaily-acquires-nsfwcorp-to-double-down-on-investigative-reporting/

The NSFWCORP brand and voice will be going away, and everything will now be under the Pando brand. The old NSFWCORP team will adapt to our audience and style, at the same time as our voice expands to cover more of tech and startups’ impact on the globe.

i liked some of their reporting but maybe this will get them to tone down the lame twitter beefs

AIPAC to the rescue?

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/11/24/2988371/gop-sanctions-iran-agreement/

i think you misread that article. it does not mention AIPAC.

more like IPECAC

because our congress is in no way influenced by aipac when it comes to our stance on the middle east

(didnt read the blog just seemed like a good joke)

“Instead of easing them, now is the time to tighten those sanctions and let’s get a long term deal to prevent them from developing a weapon,” Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) said on ABC’s This Week. “It may be that we have to pass a resolution that put sanctions on effective 3 months, 4 months, 6 months, whatever it might be. But now is just not the time to ease sanctions when they’re working.”

Thank you, President Chambliss, for being willing to steer US foreign policy with such a firm hand. To think they said you couldn't get the necessary electoral votes to win.

of all the stupid and shortsighted things that our republican representatives in congress says + does, i'm glad that we know who to blame for their middle east antics

do you guys really think labeling someone an asshole or not is at all a meaningful or insight provoking exercise

― lag∞n

ilx 2013 is about only one of these things

yeah sry not sure what i was thinking there, clearly in a 'weird' mood

it's ok when u see iran bossman friending us foreign diplomats on fb or w/e it's gonna reposition ya for a couple days

real good piece http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115688/heritage-foundations-michael-needham-tears-apart-right-wing

ha yeah. Chris Hayes noted last night that this dude is so weird he endorsed Giuliani in 2007.

silver spoon rich fucks like m needham are a great argument for communism

you mean secretariat of the central committee needham

“People on the Hill are very much rubbed the wrong way by a former Giuliani staffer who is around thirty years old, running around and determining whether they’re conservative or not.”

i love the "running around" construction

like chill out son, put a few bottles of bordeaux on the expense account, enjoy life

But the elders were wrong to dismiss Needham and Chapman. Between throws of the football, they designed a brutally effective way to activate Heritage’s base of almost 700,000 donors, as well as to harness the diffuse Tea Party fervor across the country. In nearly every congressional district, they recruited Heritage Action “sentinels,” usually ordinary citizens with a surplus of time and enthusiasm, who were trained, outfitted with information kits, and asked to recruit and organize the local faithful. When Needham sounded the alarm, the sentinels and their infantries flooded the offices of their representatives with vitriol.

irl comment box trolling, amazing

that is kinda what move-on was like tho right? w/o the top-down order of it of course, heh

its pretty standard political organizing

xp yeah but that's pressure-group politics from way back (just watched the ken burns prohibition, which is awesome! and that period was the beginning of this kind of shit, amazingly enough)

if anything it seems like congresspeople have a really low threshold for being annoyed. touchy bunch, aren't they.

their job must be so annoying tbf

that prohibition series was really good for sure

loved how prohibition improved the bar scene

especially in the Harding White House

ended up having huge affection for al smith, i need to know more about him

yes! No major bios about him; without him no FDR.

every looney tunes gangster sounded like him!

everyone who said "boids" and "woikout"

Smith turned into a Liberty League dumbass by the thirties though.

Editorial in NY Times by Senate Dems Ron Wyden of Oregon, Mark Udall of Colorado and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico,

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/26/opinion/end-the-nsa-dragnet-now.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

part of it:

The usefulness of the bulk collection program has been greatly exaggerated. We have yet to see any proof that it provides real, unique value in protecting national security. In spite of our repeated requests, the N.S.A. has not provided evidence of any instance when the agency used this program to review phone records that could not have been obtained using a regular court order or emergency authorization.

They've convinced me. NSA, stop your secret spying this instance! Also, please provide proof that you have stopped your secret spying, thanks. And just in case you try to be clever, please provide proof that you have stopped all of your secret spying, even the super double secret stuff that we don't know about.

This instant, dah. I think I have typos built into my QWERTY.

what we need is some transparency from our secret state

Grant Wahl ‏@GrantWahl 17h

Fwiw, Toronto source says they've used native son Drake to try to recruit multiple TFC targets, not just one.

sorry wrong thread lol

it isn't

Alfred, I just finished reading Didion's Miami (after reading Political Fictions upon your encouragement). I was very taken with her observations and insights into the Cuban exile community of the time (circa 1950 to 1987). To what extent do you think this book still applies to the present day politics of that community?