2015 American Politics Thread: The 114th Congress Is in the House!

"including" doesn't even come into the part of the sentence you think you're parsing. " If you abandon your dangerous nuclear program, support for terror, and threats to Israel, there will be meaningful incentives... If you refuse, we will ratchet up the pressure." The including is the kind of meaningful incentives there will be. He wasn't saying that if the things they agree to include abandoning etc. this is basic reading skills you're deliberately fucking up on to make a silly argument.

unless we're just done w/ this whole separation of power thing and the executive is going to be in charge of all decisions from now on

― Mordy, Tuesday, April 14, 2015 5:44 PM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

congress has gleefully been ceding authority to the executive for a couple decades now

using "including" to preface the "meaningful incentives" listed oh why do I bother

"Instead, we will present a clear choice:" You can choose between the following two things.
"If you abandon your dangerous nuclear program, support for terror, and threats to Israel, there will be meaningful incentives." If you do these three things, A, B, and (not 'or') C, there will be meaningful incentives.
"— including the lifting of sanctions, and political and economic integration with the international community." The kinds of meaningful incentives include lifting sanctions, political and economic integration.
"If you refuse," to do the things we listed above
"we will ratchet up the pressure."

i don't know why you bother tbh. just say that obama was lying to get elected and he never really believed it. stop w/ the innovative syntactical interpretation.

I read that statement to indicate "you do some of these things = you get some of these things" but it doesn't get any more specific than that i.e. if Iran does a subset of the former the implication is they'll get a subset of the latter, it's not an all-or-nothing statement.

anyway I'm done with this let's move on...

btw, ratchetting up the sanctions in lieu of a deal that contains these provisions is also bibi's position. bibi today + obama in 2008 agree!

fwiw I don't think he was lying there really (altho everyone lies to get elected) as much as he was laying out a general strategy and not something that could reasonably be interpreted as a specific, firm commitment

xxp

But if someone in 2015 agrees with 2008 Obama are they dishonest liars trying to jettison any deal? Whose position has evolved here exactly

I didn't call anyone a dishonest liar

GOP is v clear that they don't want a deal

(altho yeah I wouldn't hesitate to call Bibi a dishonest liar, cf his pre-re-election comments)

In the end it's probably just a sideshow. If State can't even get agreement from Iran for the framework deal provisions that they supposedly had a breakthrough on what's the chance a final deal will happen?

They don't even have a framework deal.

More likely Iran installs the Russian missile defense system and then tells O to fuck off

we are the dishonest truthtellers! goodnight bowling green!

If anything I feel like congress is giving political cover to Obama for when shit falls through bc then he can blame them

Obama saying he will sign this bipartisan deal = yeah you are probably right

blech

although I kinda doubt that was Corker's intention lol

But if they get a deal and Dems had backed O, this is what he had wanted constitutionally, without needing Congressional approval

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/03/10/executive-agreements-and-senate-disagreements/

treaties serve as a tiny fraction of international agreements. From the vantage of the White House, this makes perfect sense: Achieving a 2/3 vote authorizing ratification has become increasingly implausible no matter what treaty is under discussion. ....

more than 18,500 executive agreements have been entered into since 1789: more than 17,000 of them from 1939 on. By the mid-1920s, the number of executive agreements had started to outpace the number of treaties, a trend vastly accelerated by World War II; between 1953 and 1972, more than three-quarters of significant military commitments abroad were conducted via executive agreement rather than by treaty. These included, in the mid-1960s, major commitments to the defense of such nations as Ethiopia, Thailand and Spain. In the last case, the U.S. pledged to protect Spain (which did not join NATO until 1982) against attack in exchange for the right to use Spanish soil for military bases.

iran agreeing to reduce threats to israel isn't the same thing as agreeing to recognize israel

what is the 'reduced threat to israel' going to mean anyway, beyond curtailing the nuclear program itself? like, that's what the whole thing is for. reducing support for assad? or hamas? why not demand they bring the shah back while we're at it.

if you want to get a deal in place it's probably better to not mention israel at all. the iranians won't even admit the program is for war anyway, right? or if they want nuclear power, it's purely defensive? demanding they say 'israel is a legitimate state' is not only a few bridges too far it seems kind of pointless.

shakey otm, an attempt to include language of recognition is an attempt to torpedo the whole thing.

frankly i don't see why hawks aren't ok with putting some dumb deal in place; given what they think of the iranians, it won't take long before they are found breaking the deal and then presto, we have a more legit casus belli (because they are fanatics and paranoids is why not)

oh my god

http://hillaryis44.com/

this blog is still going

and it is REALLY going

motherfucker is just flying right now

a quote from a Hillary hating article from a Hillary Hater at the Hillary Hating All White Republic:

so much hatin

Inspired by Clinton’s “pragmatic centrism”

lol I can't think of many things less inspiring than the phrase "pragmatic centrism"

dogmatic censusism

"George W. Bush"

"18-1/2 months more of this shit"

don't expect an improvement in month 19

my historical memory is shorter than others, or maybe it's experiencing more of this thru twitter this time around, but i feel like the level of already-sick-of-this-shit cynicism is remarkable

don't u feel like already-sick-of-this-shit cynicism is an eternal condition?

hey guys, the cynics are the ppl putting on the fucking circus.

The right wingnuts have a few wingnut-pandering candidates to excite them. Everyone to the left of the right wingnuts has a big bowl of lukewarm gruel to look forward to.

i suspect that historically we [the public], and more of us, probably have more input into the political process than almost any other time in history. maybe there's a relationship between a low level of participation in politics and cynicism - bc if you have no participation, there's no reason to get hopeful in the first place. but a little bit is enough for you to believe politics should be serving you, and become cynical + disappointed when it doesn't. or maybe historically political cynicism always existed. "death & taxes" dates at least back to 18th century and has a bit of that cynical resigned tone in it.

all i really know is that hagar the horrible complains about his local governance a lot

The Kochs just spend lots of money

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vGJpg3cZfmI/VS6J4O0zZYI/AAAAAAAAYXM/TA9je2owoL4/s1600/Screenshot%2B2015-04-15%2Bat%2B8.52.38%2BAM.png

sliiiiiiightly ambiguous coming from the GOP.

they didn't even try to rephrase or delete it either

A dismal letter: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/15/letter-dismal-allies-us-left?CMP=share_btn_fb

"Believe me, a lot of us already know most of the dimples on the imperial derriere by now"

Solnit wrote that back in 2012--is it going around again in response to the seeming inevitability of the Clinton nomination?

"Can you imagine how far the civil rights movement would have gotten, had it been run entirely by complainers for whom nothing was ever good enough? "

O_o

That guy hangs out with the wrong people. There are lots of part-time amateur activists out there who are working toward practical goals. They tend to cluster around local issues more than national ones, so maybe he doesn't notice them or maybe he doesn't care, but imo complaining about the complainers doesn't exactly constitute a step ahead.

this whole tpp thing is shady as fuck

http://www.thenation.com/blog/204569/now-congress-fast-tracking-tpp-fast-track

Im actually shocked schumer is opposing fast track

It must be for the wrong reasons.

Looks like O and the business types may be able to win over Schumer, and they're trying to win over other dems

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/17/business/obama-trade-legislation-fast-track-authority-trans-pacific-partnership.html

Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the third-ranking Democrat, said he will demand the inclusion of legislation to combat the manipulation of currency values, especially by China. “China is the most rapacious of our trading partners, and the stated goal of this deal is to lure these other countries away from China,” Mr. Schumer said. “It’s not at all contradictory to finally do something with China’s awful trade practices.”

But Mr. Obama’s enthusiasm was tempered by the rancor the bill elicited from some of his strongest allies. To win over the key Democrat, Mr. Wyden, the Republicans agreed to stringent requirements for the deal, including a human rights negotiating objective that has never existed on trade agreements.

And the Loretta Lynch nomination looks like will get a vote, thanks to a compromise that looks like more shadowplay:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/senate-leaders-clear-way-for-vote-on-loretta-lynch-as-attorney-general-1429627789

human rights addition sounds good, I wonder if it really has any teeth tho

I don't fully understand the details of the TPP but if it's like NAFTA etc (and I don't see any indication that it's not) then I'm just against it in principle

i'm not sure that anyone fully understands the details of TPP at this point

so wait, prosperity didn't trickle down in kansas? did they just not cut taxes hard enough?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/21/vwelfap/?tid=sm_tw

Hillvetica is now a font

http://www.gofundme.com/rvtcu8