Steve's Politics Blog

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.

YouTube has this propaganda piece from Dennis Prager The Iran Nuclear Deal.

I responded to one of the comments on the video.

+Tom DeChaine

What you think you know about Iran and the “terrorist” organizations they “sponsor” is much the product of propaganda campaigns that have been successful in you being so sure of half truths and even false hoods.

The United States of America has made it plain that it will do anything it feels like to any Democracy that doesn’t do our bidding. The only thing that seems to stop us is having a nuclear capability. Look at North Korea and Pakistan as cases in point. So is it any wonder that Iran has wanted to at least keep us guessing about whether or not they have nuclear capability?

In Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s being so coy about WMD was an attempt to walk the thin line between keeping his neighbors afraid of him, and keeping the U.S.A. out of his country. The lesson most countries probably took away from this is that he would have been safer if he actually had the WMD. Is this the lesson we want to teach?

Some leaders in Iran seem to be willing to take a chance on making their peaceful nuclear ambitions clear, if that is what they are. Why are we so afraid to take a chance on peace that we aren’t even willing to take what seems like a yes answer to our demands?

If we refuse this deal, it will only confirm to the Iranian hard-liners that they were right to assume that having nuclear weapons is the only thing that will protect them from the hostile intentions of the USA and Israel, another supposed nuclear power. The Iranians won’t be the only people in the world that will take note of this proof of the need for their own nuclear weapons.

I can’t see why so many people in this country cannot open their minds to the obvious situation I have just laid out.

See my subsequent post Kim credits nukes for deal with South.