Medium has published Congressman Jerrold Nadler Statement on the P5+1 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

I bring to my analysis the full weight of my responsibilities as a member of Congress, and my perspective as an American Jew who is both a Democrat and a strong supporter of Israel.

With this background information it is easy enough to recognize there is enough mendacity in the full statement to sink a battleship. It is all pro-Israel, anti-Iran mendacity.

In the last 15 years, Iran has unfortunately made substantial progress in its nuclear program. Prior to the Interim Agreement in 2013, Iran had progressed to the point where it was only 1 month away from producing enough fissionable material for a nuclear bomb. The Interim Agreement forced Iran to get rid of its 20 percent enriched uranium, moving the “breakout” timeline — the length of time it would take Iran to produce enough fissionable material for a nuclear weapon — to 2–3 months. That is where Iran is now — at the threshold of developing a nuclear bomb.

As if having the fissionable material is tantamount to having a bomb and being able to deliver it. As if being able to deliver a single bomb would make any rational sense when Iran’s opponents have thousands of more bombs than Iran will ever have. Maybe i should call it hysteria rather than mendacity.

Nevertheless, Rep. Nadler comes out in favor of the Iran Nuclear deal. Imagine how well he could support the deal if he were able to think about it, Iran, and Israel more rationally.

What is truly amazing is that this statement by Nadler is mentioned in the article of my previous post Propaganda and the Iran-Nuke Deal as an example of a thoughtful analysis.

A gold standard for such education and explanation was set by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the New York Democrat who last week accompanied his announcement of support for the agreement with a remarkably thorough 5,200-word statement giving the reasons for his decision. The statement is one of the most insightful analyses of the relevant issues to come out of Congress or anywhere else, and it is very useful reading for any citizen looking for guidance and education on the subject. Not every member of Congress can be expected to be as thorough and diligent as Nadler has been, but he has shown what can be done along this line.

Consortium News has the article Propaganda and the Iran-Nuke Deal.

For years, the anti-Iranian propaganda in the U.S. media has been unrelenting, at times aided by the idiocy of certain Iranian officials. That one-sided presentation and the ignorance that it has engendered are now adding to the public confusion about the Iran nuclear deal, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar describes.

I post this for my own records when anybody questions my assertion about falling for propaganda against Iran. I don’t care so much how many others don’t even realize the lies they have been told and are currently still believing. If they don’t read this, there is nothing I can do about it.

Here is an interesting excerpt from the article.

The tactic also has repeatedly surfaced with what became the “24-day” issue on inspections. The provision in the agreement that was seized upon in that case has nothing whatever to do with inspection of Iran’s declared nuclear facilities, which will be subject to continuous monitoring. Even with undeclared, non-nuclear facilities the required advance notice is 24 hours, not 24 days.

As one who is quite aware of the propaganda campaign in this country to go to another war with Iran (the 1954 one wasn’t officially called a war), even I was caught up in the above propaganda a tad. I figured that the the meme had to be a misrepresentation, but I never suspected that the propagandists could make such a blatant lie as to claim 24 “days” instead of 24 “hours”.

I have subsequently read the statement touted in this article.

A gold standard for such education and explanation was set by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the New York Democrat who last week accompanied his announcement of support for the agreement with a remarkably thorough 5,200-word statement giving the reasons for his decision. The statement is one of the most insightful analyses of the relevant issues to come out of Congress or anywhere else, and it is very useful reading for any citizen looking for guidance and education on the subject. Not every member of Congress can be expected to be as thorough and diligent as Nadler has been, but he has shown what can be done along this line.

See my subsequent post on this Congressman Jerrold Nadler Statement on the P5+1 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. It is amazing that a guy who says:

For years, the anti-Iranian propaganda in the U.S. media has been unrelenting

thinks this is a gold-standard of insightful analysis as opposed to some thoughtful analysis in a pit of mendacity and hysteria. This and my falling for 24 “days” that was really 24 “hours” shows how pernicious this propaganda is, even to the wary.

Consortium News has the article The Case for Pragmatism by Robert Parry.

There is always a fixation about getting rid of some designated “bad guy” even if the result is some “far-worse guys.” This has been a pattern repeated over and over again, from Libya to Sudan/South Sudan to Ukraine/Russia to Venezuela (just to name a few). In such cases, we see the neocons/liberal hawks release a flood of propaganda against some unpleasant target (Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi/Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir/Ukraine’s Viktor Yanukovych/Russia’s Vladimir Putin/Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez or Nicolas Maduro) followed by demands for “regime change” or at least punishing economic sanctions.

There is an awful tendency of the opposition party in this country to look at a bad situation, and demand that the party in power “do something”. As long as the party in power does not “do something”, they are under constant pressure from the other party. I think this is what leads to the driving force for “doing something” even if it is worse than “doing nothing”. Until a better idea is presented, sometimes “doing nothing” is exactly the something that needs to be done.

Parry also brings up some information that seems to have been neatly wiped from people’s minds in this country.

Toss into this volatile mix of a Europe seemingly close to explosion the Obama administration’s “neocon/liberal interventionist” policies toward Ukraine, where neocon holdover Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland helped orchestrate a 2014 coup to remove democratically elected President Yanukovych after he was demonized in the U.S. mainstream media as corrupt.

In sum total, Robert Parry makes the case against what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promoted, and he doesn’t even mention her by name or by office. He also makes the case for a foreign policy that Bernie Sanders might get behind if it weren’t so politically dangerous to do so. Even Bernie Sanders has his limits on how much he dares tell the American public that has been infected by the oligarchs propaganda for so long.

I shouldn’t leave you hanging without at least a little taste for what Robert Parry sees as solutions.

So what can be done? As dark as the gathering economic storm may be, one silver lining could be that Americans and other Westerners will finally begin pushing back against the powerful neoconservatives and their liberal-interventionist fellow-travelers.

Perhaps, instead of President Obama’s Iranian nuclear deal being a one-off affair that may barely survive a determined neocon assault in the U.S. Congress, it could become a model for pragmatic approaches to other international crises. The core of this pragmatism would be that one doesn’t have to love or even like the leadership of another country to cooperate on global concerns, whether they are economic, geopolitical or environmental.

Bernie Sanders posted the video below on his Facebook page. ICYMI means “In Case You Missed It.”

ICYMI: What we are trying to do in this campaign, and believe me it’s not easy, is to make sure this campaign is not about Bernie Sanders, not Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump or anybody else. This campaign has got to be about you, your kids, your parents, and your grandparents. Whether the media likes it or not, that is what we are going to stay focused on.

If Bernie Sanders only accomplishment were to get the “news” media to focus on the issues, he would have done a great service to this country. Luckily for us, Bernie Sanders can do so much more than that if he is elected President.

MoveOn has the petition Remove Debbie Wasserman Schultz as DNC Chair.

As a result of a complete, and total lack of coordinated messaging and horrific dissemination of available resources all ending in the absolute failure of her mission, Debbie Wasserman Schultz must resign or be removed as DNC Chair.

This petition gives us the perfect opportunity to let the Democratic Party know that Bernie Sanders truly is at the head of a political revolution.

If it strikes fear in the heart of Chuck Schumer, so much the better.  Maybe he will relinquish any attempt to become Senate Democratic Leader, and let Elizabeth Warren be chosen as the Senate Majority Leader.  With Schultz and Schumer,  the Democrats will definitely be the minority party in the Senate after 2016.  With Sanders and Warren they could retake the majority.

Blue Nation Review has the article Wow. Just… Wow. Here Are the Dumbest Things Sarah Palin Said in Her Interview With Donald Trump.

I am still undecided if the article adds much to the video below. I wasn’t able to watch this whole video. There is only so much of this that one can take.

If you think about it, it must take some clever script writers to make it look like you want to be the friend of middle and lower income people when you are actually their worst enemy. Although, the two of them have separately built their reputations as among the best scam artists currently on the scene. Maybe they are able to do this without a script.

You can see that there is a mutual admiration between them as they each ply the same trade in their own unique ways.

Politicus USA has the article Obama Drops The Hammer On Republicans, ‘Nobody Gets To Hold The American Economy Hostage.’.

During a speech in New Orleans, LA, President Obama strongly told Republicans that he will not allow them to hold the economy hostage with another government shutdown.

Obama has so little credibility in being a tough negotiator that the following Freudian slip in the article was almost inevitable:

President Obama dropped the hammer on Republican dreams of causing chaos in September. If Republicans cause a crisis, it is clear that the President is going to get roped into their dysfunctional drama.

I think they meant to say that “the President is NOT going to get roped into their dysfunctional drama.” As I said, with his level of credibility about getting roped in, I can’t be sure if they meant what they published or it was the error that I thought it was.

The New York Times has the column Crash-Test Dummies as Republican Candidates for President by Paul Krugman.

And you can see why. “Obama is endangering America by borrowing from China” is a perfect political line, playing into deficit fetishism, xenophobia and the perennial claim that Democrats don’t stand up for America! America! America! It’s also complete nonsense, but that doesn’t seem to matter.

The phrase “deficit fetishism” comes dangerously close to Krugman’s telling the American public the truth about “deficits” in a country that creates its own money with the push of a few keystrokes. Also this is country where all government debt is denominated in the currency we freely create. And also “debt” instruments which other countries are glad to keep to the tune of trillions of dollars. What part of this picture fits any Republicans fantasies about how money works? None, that I can see.

Next thing you know Paul Krugman will actually state that he knows what Modern Money Theory is all about, and in large part it explains how money works. That’s going to be a tough one for him, though, after how dismissive of MMT he has been in the past.

iafrica.com has the article Kim credits nukes for deal with South.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un said nuclear weapons – not negotiating skills – secured this week’s “landmark” agreement with South Korea,…

I have contended for a while now that the situation with North Korea proves to the rest of the world that the only way to get respect from the USA and its allies is to have nuclear weapons. This becomes an important lesson when we think about the Iranian nuclear deal. Do we want to reject the deal and prove to Iran that they can only get our respect if they have nuclear weapons? Or do we want to prove to Iran that we can negotiate fair compromises without their need to have nuclear weapons? What lesson do we want to teach others about what it takes to deal with the USA?

See my previous post The Iran Nuclear Deal – Answer to Propaganda From Dennis Prager.

New Economic Perspectives has the article CHINA’S STOCK MARKET TUMBLE AND THE OUTLOOK FOR THE GLOBAL ECONOMY.

Interview of L. Randall Wray by Dasha Chernyshova, Moscow reporter for the Sputnik News Agency
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To put this in highly technical terms, we’re all pretty much screwed.

Wray has a way with words. But the being screwed is all of our own doing. There is a clear path out, but we won’t take it. Neither will anyone else.