The letter sent to Iran’s leadership by 47 Republican Senators was both condescending and idiotic. It recalled to mind our erstwhile president George W. Bush, an obvious dumb-ass who had an irritating habit of talking down to you. It’s a bit gob-smacking to think of the likes of Tom Cotton schooling Iran’s government ministers – most if not all of whom earned degrees at universities in the west – on the American constitution, but that’s exactly what he and his colleagues attempted. Based on the negative response on this side of the ocean, more than a few of the signers have backed away kind of rapidly. “I sign a lot of letters,” said John McCain. Per Daily Kos, others have suggested this was some kind of big joke. Funny, huh?
The mainstream media portray this as a kind of battle royale between the President and Congress, Democrats and Republicans, extreme left and extreme right. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the one-party state we call politics, there is a remarkable consensus on the topic of Iran. Both factions – Democrats and Republicans – consider Iran an outlaw state, both insist that it can have no nuclear technology, both blame it for the abysmal state of relations between our countries, both condemn it as a supporter of international terrorism, both repeat the mantra that “all options are on the table” with respect to Iran (a thinly veiled threat that is in itself a violation of the U.N. charter), etc., etc. What separates the two sides is nothing more than nuance.
There are a few real issues that bear on the Iran nuclear negotiations. They’re detailed in the ANSWER coalition’s open letter to Iran, which I have signed and which I encourage you to sign as well. As a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran is entitled to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. As cosignatories, we are obliged to respect that and to work towards the ultimate goal of arms reduction. We are doing the exact opposite, investing heavily in the “modernization” of our nuclear arsenal (under a Democratic administration, no less).
What ANSWER’s letter doesn’t go into is the degree to which we have tortured Iran for decades on end, from the overthrow of their democratically elected regime back in 1953, to our 25-year support for the Shah’s murderous reign, to our backing of Saddam’s war against Iran in the 1980s, and on and on.
If this is a dispute, it’s a pretty paltry one. Let’s turn this whole relationship around, finally.
luv u,
jp
Right, well … I was just talking to our mad science adviser Mitch Macaphee via Skype, and it seems he has a problem. And when Mitch has a problem, frankly, we all have a problem. That’s the thing with mad scientists. One day they’re inventing something dumb and innocuous, like Marvin (my personal robot assistant). The next they’re assembling the elements of some plane-smashing behemoth or a diabolical extreme weather machine (though I think that last one has already been invented by the mad “scientists” we call America’s Oil and Natural Gas Industry).
Now, technical issues like this have historically been corrected by an act of Congress. This was the case with many major pieces of legislation, such as Medicare. But because our Congress is ideologically driven and dysfunctional in the extreme, this is not even a remote possibility. So it is left to the courts, thanks to the determination of many on the right to hobble and destroy the ACA, as well as many thousands of families who depend upon it. It’s manifestly obvious that disallowing subsidized coverage through the federal exchange will dramatically drive up the cost of health insurance in the affected States, crashing the system and throwing 9 million subscribers into chaos. Just as bad, it will initiate a death spiral of rising rates and canceled policies that will affect many millions more.
I guess I could blame our slowness on the cold, like everyone else, but hell, we were born into this frozen hellscape, raised in its nurturing embrace, and will likely finish out our days frozen to the ground from whence we rose. In other words, yeah, hell … it’s sure cold outside!
So, once again, we are on the verge of creating another catastrophe in Iraq, the predictable consequences of which will be a further radicalization of the Sunni community, just as our 2003 invasion gave rise to Al Qaeda in Iraq, the precursor of ISIS. Same story, over and over again, and we somehow expect a different ending. Our imperial foreign policy is an enemy manufacturing machine, as the past sixty years have amply demonstrated. Quite an efficient system; one generation is caught up with fighting the jihadists spawned by the one that preceded it.
Well, right or wrong, I like to think that you’ve been wondering about a couple of things with regard to the band Big Green, denizens of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill and the alien intelligence behind this skimpy little blog. One is, well, when the hell are we going to release another album? I mean, it’s been nearly 18 months since we put out 
Okay, that’s all good. But as the president lists all of the horrors Islamic extremists have unleashed onto the world, there’s one question that begs to be asked: is ISIS responsible for more death than we are? How many Muslims have we dispatched over the last 15 years? Sure, ISIS is a bunch of crackheads, thugs, and killers. But they are bush league next to us. As all of these war-fevered pundits and Congresspeople run around fulminating over the “death cult” that is ISIS, do they give even a passing thought to our own 70 year history of threatening the entire planet with nuclear destruction? That’s not a “death cult”?
Of course, we’re building them stick by stick, using the usual bailing wire, string, tape, toothpaste, and whatever else is handy. And, well … they sound it. These are homespun recordings, my friend. We’re not riding over to the Record Plant and laying down some serious tracks. No, sir … we march straight down to the hammer mill basement and bang on those pots and pans. We tune up the tired old strings on Matt’s Rickenbacher bass and start thumping along, hollering into distressed old condenser mics, cupping my superannuated headphones to our ears. Not a lot of nuances, friends. Not hardly.
That said, our President is on the brink of another useless military adventure. As this is debated, will anyone in Congress ask, “When has this ever gone well?” Kosovo? Don’t say Kosovo. We made the killing worse, predictably. Afghanistan? Just as ungovernable as ever, only now with more dead people. Iraq? Please! Libya? Now divided between two hostile governments; a failed state shedding refugees by the thousand. Now the conversation is centered not so much on whether we should fight in Iraq / Syria, but rather how heavily we should get involved. I hear a lot of T.V. talkers advocating for a ground war. They should consider whether they would want their kids to fight it. Or if maybe they’d want to fight it themselves. Anything short of that is just talk.