The Hemingway Report

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Deal or no deal

Iran, world powers agree to nuclear deal

If this story is true this is a total f-ing joke! If Congress has any brains they will never ratify this. Please check the wording below in this deal.

Did we learn anything from North Korea?

Article in the ultra-liberal NYT's

Published: October 19, 1994

(I'm lying?...Click the link. Read it yourself)

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/19/world/clinton-approves-a-plan-to-give-aid-to-north-koreans.html

President Clinton approved a plan today to arrange more than $4 billion in energy aid to North Korea during the next decade in return for a commitment from the country's hard-line Communist leadership to freeze and gradually dismantle its nuclear weapons development program.

(In other words we paid them to build the bomb)

And what happened during the Bush presidency?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

On October 9, 2006, North Korea announced it had successfully conducted its first nuclear test.

And this is it.

And when it happens they'll blame Barry's successor.

In charge of everything... accountable for nothing.

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Iran and six world powers, led by the United States, reached a formal agreement early Tuesday aimed at curbing Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for billions of dollars in international sanctions relief.

Diplomats from both sides confirmed the deal had been reached after the latest 18-day round of intense and often fractious negotiations in Vienna, Austria blew through three self-imposed deadlines. A final meeting between the foreign ministers of Iran, the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia was underway Tuesday morning, with a press conference expected to follow. President Barack Obama was to make a statement on the agreement from the White House at 7 a.m. ET.

There was no immediate comment on the agreement from U.S. officials, but Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif described the accord as "a historic moment" as he attended the final session.

"We are reaching an agreement that is not perfect for anybody, but it is what we could accomplish," Zarif continued, "and it is an important achievement for all of us. Today could have been the end of hope on this issue. But now we are starting a new chapter of hope."

Federica Mogherini, the European Union foreign policy chief, called it "a sign of hope for the entire world."

The Associated Press reported that the accord is meant to keep Iran from producing enough material for a nuclear weapon for at least 10 years and will impose new provisions for inspections of Iranian facilities, including military sites.

Iran should never have a nuclear bomb period. This '10 year' statement is just asinine. This is called kicking the can down the road. Something Barry's known for.

Diplomats said Iran agreed to the continuation of a United Nations arms embargo on the country for up to five more years, though it could end earlier if the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) definitively clears Iran of any current work on nuclear weapons. A similar condition was put on U.N. restrictions on the transfer of ballistic missile technology to Tehran, which could last for up to eight more years.

Reuters reported, citing Western diplomats, that Iran had agreed to a so-called "snapback" provision, under which sanctions could be reinstated in 65 days if it violated the agreement.

I'm so happy Iran 'agreed' to some form of punishment when they break the treaty.

Washington had sought to maintain the ban on Iran importing and exporting weapons, concerned that an Islamic theoracy flush with cash from the nuclear deal would expand its military assistance for Syrian President Bashar Assad's government, Yemen's Houthi rebels, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and other forces opposing America's Mideast allies such as Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Iranian leaders insisted the embargo had to end as their forces combat regional scourges such as ISIS. And they got some support from China and particularly Russia, which wants to expand military cooperation and arms sales to Tehran, including the long-delayed transfer of S-300 advanced air defense systems -- a move long opposed by the United States.

The last major sticking point appeared to be whether international weapons inspectors would be given access to Iranian nuclear sites. The deal includes a compromise between Washington and Tehran that would allow U.N. inspectors to press for visits to Iranian military sites as part of their monitoring duties. However, access at will to any site would not necessarily be granted and even if so, could be delayed, a condition that critics of the deal are sure to seize on as possibly giving Tehran time to cover any sign of non-compliance with its commitments.

Right here is the biggest joke of all. The Muslim dogs in a show of how gracious they are..."would 'allow' U.N. inspectors to 'press' for visits to Iranian military sites as part of their monitoring duties." WOW...the fuckers are going to bend over backwards to be accommodating!

Under the deal, Tehran would have the right to challenge the U.N request and an arbitration board composed of Iran and the six world powers that negotiated with it would have to decide on the issue. Such an arrangement would still be a notable departure from assertions by top Iranian officials, including supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that their country would never allow the IAEA into such sites. Iran has argued that such visits by the IAEA would be a cover for spying on its military secrets.

This was the whole crux of the deal! The right to inspect any place, any time. So in other words they just negotiated all that away. Anybody remember how those inspections in Iraq worked out when Saadam was calling the shots?

Just by the tone of this you can see the coming storm.

The IAEA also wants the access to complete its long-stymied investigation of past weapons work by Iran, and the U.S. says Iranian cooperation is needed for all economic sanctions to be lifted. IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said Tuesday his agency and Iran had signed a "roadmap" to resolve outstanding concerns.

"This is a significant step forward towards clarifying outstanding issues regarding Iran’s nuclear program," Amano said in a statement released Tuesday. "It sets out a clear sequence of activities over the coming months, including the provision by Iran of explanations regarding outstanding issues."

The economic benefits for Iran are potentially massive. It stands to receive more than $100 billion in assets frozen overseas, and an end to a European oil embargo and various financial restrictions on Iranian banks.

A 100 billion pumped into terrorism and once they get the money they're going to say fuck you to the United States.

The overall nuclear deal comes after nearly a decade of international, intercontinental diplomacy that until recently was defined by failure. Breaks in the talks sometimes lasted for months, and Iran's nascent nuclear program expanded into one that Western intelligence agencies saw as only a couple of months away from weapons capacity. The U.S. and Israel both threatened possible military responses.

The United States joined the negotiations in 2008, and U.S. and Iranian officials met together secretly four years later in Oman to see if diplomatic progress was possible. But the process remained essentially stalemated until summer 2013, when Hassan Rouhani was elected president and declared his country ready for serious compromise.

More secret U.S.-Iranian discussions followed, culminating in a face-to-face meeting between Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the United Nations in September 2013 and a telephone conversation between Rouhani and President Barack Obama. That conversation marked the two countries' highest diplomatic exchange since Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution and the ensuing hostage crisis at the American embassy in Tehran.

Kerry and Zarif took the lead in the negotiations. Two months later, in Geneva, Iran and the six powers announced an interim agreement that temporarily curbed Tehran's nuclear program and unfroze some Iranian assets while setting the stage for Tuesday's comprehensive accord.

It took time to get the final deal, however. The talks missed deadlines for the pact in July 2014 and November 2014, leading to long extensions. Finally, in early April, negotiators reached framework deal in Lausanne, Switzerland, setting up the last push for the historic agreement.

Protracted negotiations still lie ahead to put the agreement into practice and deep suspicion reigns on all sides about violations that could unravel the accord. And spoilers abound.

In the United States, Congress has a 60-day review period during which Obama cannot make good on any concessions to the Iranians. U.S. lawmakers could hold a vote of disapproval and take further action.

Make sure you write down the name of every SOB who voted yes for this deal.

Video 128

Iranian hardliners oppose dismantling a nuclear program the country has spent hundreds of billions of dollars developing. Khamenei, while supportive of his negotiators thus far, has issued a series of defiant red lines that may be impossible to reconcile in a deal with the West.

And further afield, Israel will strongly oppose the outcome. It sees the acceptance of extensive Iranian nuclear infrastructure and continued nuclear activity as a mortal threat, and has warned that it could take military action on its own, if necessary.

If Barry's legacy deal goes through Congress it all but guarantees an Israeli attack on Iran. Interesting to see who Barry sides with.

The deal is a "bad mistake of historic proportions," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday, adding that it would enable Iran to "continue to pursue its aggression and terror in the region."

Sunni Arab rivals of Shiite Iran are none too happy, either, with Saudi Arabia in particularly issuing veiled threats to develop its own nuclear program.

This is just what we need... a proliferation of Muslim countries seeking to build a nuclear bomb.

Hey it's the thought that counts.

This deal is so bad I can smell it from here.

Monday, July 13, 2015

Barry commutes sentences of 46 convicts

So out of the 46 how many are white?

I know his track record. You know, adopting Trayvon while the Steinle family is still awaiting a phone call. And I can give you 50 other examples.

“Their punishments didn't fit the crime." “These men and women were not hardened criminals,” Obama said.

So if he is going to take a decision rendered by a court of law into his own hands why in the hell should we abide by the SC decision on ObamaCare and SSM?

His new home if Trump becomes president and conducts a full investigation... particularly the IRS scandal.

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WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama cut the prison sentences of 46 non-violent offenders on Monday, including 14 who were serving life sentences, saying "their punishments didn't fit the crime."

"These men and women were not hardened criminals," Obama said in a video released by the White House. He said the overwhelming majority of the 46 had been sentenced to at least 20 years.

The move was part of a broader effort by the administration to make the U.S. criminal justice system fairer. Obama has now issued nearly 90 commutations during his presidency, most of them to non-violent offenders sentenced for drug crimes under outdated sentencing guidelines. A commutation leaves the conviction in place, but ends the punishment.

Obama wrote a personal letter to each of the 46 individuals to notify them of their commutation.

In a letter to Jerry Bailey, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison for conspiracy to violate laws against crack-cocaine, Obama praised Bailey for showing the potential to turn his life around.

"Now it is up to you to make the most of this opportunity," Obama wrote in the letter, which was sent to Bailey's address at a federal correctional facility in Georgia,. "It will not be easy," Obama said, "and you will confront many who doubt people with criminal records can change."

Obama's lawyer, White House counsel Neil Eggleston, predicted the president would issue even more commutations before leaving office in early 2017. But he also said that Obama's powers to fix the problem were limited, adding that "clemency alone will not fix decades of overly punitive sentencing policies."

Obama this week is devoting considerable attention to the criminal justice system. He plans to lay out ideas for how to improve the fairness of the system during a speech to the NAACP in Philadelphia on Tuesday. And on Thursday, he is to become the first sitting president to visit a federal prison when he goes to the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution outside of Oklahoma City. While there, he will meet with law enforcement officials and inmates.

And those that stood?

Illegal loving climate changing 2nd Amendment hating atheist OWS vegetarians driving blue Volvos to ribbon cutting ceremonies at abortion clinics.

(aka assholes)

Tomorrow's news today

For the sake of argument lets say Scott Walker is our next president. This will be the chain of events:

Barry appears on 60 minutes.

155 homicides (and counting) in Baltimore this year

I bet the vast majority of those killed were black but the only one who really mattered was Freddie Gray.

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Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake speaks at a press conference.

Baltimore's mayor grapples with crime and police

BALTIMORE — On the day after Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake fired her police commissioner last week, a man was doing a brisk business selling DVDs from a folding table in front of a Baptist church in West Baltimore. A block away, a CVS Pharmacy stood as a reminder of riots in April, its windows still boarded with plywood, its red brick stained by black smoke.

But the talk at the DVD stand was of the latest trauma here: a surge in killings that has mothers keeping their children indoors. And the consensus, in that riot-scarred neighborhood at least, is that the mayor, and not the ousted commissioner, Anthony W. Batts, is to blame.

"Batts was made to be the fall guy. To save herself, the mayor fired him," declared Woody James, 50, a burly out-of-work deliveryman, as he perused the movies for sale. At that, the DVD salesman, Tony Morse, a city worker on his day off, chimed in: "Fire her, too!"

Ms. Rawlings-Blake, 45, a Democrat, learned long ago that being black does not insulate her from criticism in this majority black city. Even before the death of Freddie Gray, whose fatal spinal cord injury in police custody set off the April unrest, she walked a fine line in trying to repair what she has called the "broken relationship" between residents and the police.

Now the surge in violent crime — as of Wednesday there had been 155 homicides in Baltimore this year, up from 105 in the same period last year — has made the mayor's balancing act even trickier: Can she rein in a Police Department with a long history of aggressive, sometimes abusive behavior and at the same time bring crime under control?

Ms. Rawlings-Blake, who last month became the first black female president of the United States Conference of Mayors, is hardly the only American mayor facing this question. While the deaths of unarmed black men after confrontations with the police over the past year have spurred debate over police use of force around the country, violent crime has also been ticking up in many places.

Homicides are higher than a year ago in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, St. Louis and other cities. In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti recently announced a 12 percent increase in overall crime, though killings were down slightly.

But unlike most of those cities, Baltimore bears fresh physical and emotional wounds of unrest. So the challenge for Ms. Rawling-Blake, who faces re-election in 2016, is all the more complex.

"I think her biggest challenge is that she has to demonstrate that Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is the leader of the city of Baltimore, and that she can manage the city," said Edward Reisinger, the City Council vice president, who called for Mr. Batts's ouster on Wednesday hours before she fired him. "As far as I'm concerned, she was doing a good job, but with the civil unrest, I think it lowered her stock."

Ms. Rawlings-Blake says she has already proved that she can make the city safer and improve police-community ties; in 2011, on her watch, there were 197 killings in Baltimore — the lowest number in a decade — and, her office says, brutality complaints dropped. She frames her challenge another way.

"The challenge is rebuilding the hope and the spirit of a traumatized community," she said in a brief interview Thursday after attending a night basketball league game that featured police officers and firefighters shooting hoops alongside teenagers.

The vitriol directed at her does not surprise her, she said. "There are scars. There's anger. We have been through a very rough time."

Ms. Rawlings-Blake grew up around civil rights and politics; her father, Howard Rawlings, known as Pete, was a civil rights activist and one of the most powerful men in the Maryland legislature. At 25, with his help, she became the youngest member of City Council in Baltimore history.

In 2010, when Mayor Sheila Dixon was forced out by scandal, Ms. Rawlings-Blake, who was the Council president, became mayor. She kept the job after winning an election in 2011. But the populist Ms. Dixon is trying to stage a comeback and has just announced that she would challenge the mayor in the Democratic primary next year.

A little something on Dixon from Wikipedia:

On January 9, 2009, Dixon was indicted on twelve felony and misdemeanor counts, including perjury, theft, and misconduct. The charges stem partly from incidents in which she allegedly misappropriated gift cards intended for the poor.

On December 1, 2009, the jury returned a "guilty" verdict on one misdemeanor count of fraudulent misappropriation and Dixon received probation provided she resign as mayor as part of a plea agreement, effective February 4, 2010. She was succeeded by the Baltimore City Council president, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, on February 4, 2010.

By December 2012, Dixon had completed all of the terms of her probation. The case expected to close by the end 2012. In March 2013, Dixon was said to be considering a return to Baltimore politics. On July 1, 2015, she announced a plan to run again for mayor of Baltimore City.

Why am I bringing this up? Because If she pulls this off can the return Jesse Jackson Jr be far off?

Ms. Rawlings-Blake dismissed any potential threat — "She's not going to be able to run away from her record," she said of Ms. Dixon — but here in West Baltimore, support for Ms. Dixon runs deep. Partly that is because Ms. Dixon is regarded as more of a woman of the people. But people blame the mayor for a slow police response to the riots, and for urban blight and persistent poverty, problems that predate her time in office.

"Look at the streets," said Jackie Washington, 54, a chiropractic assistant, waving an outstretched arm to take in a littered thoroughfare. "It's a mess. It's depressing to come here, to see the things that you see — people getting shot in broad daylight."

This is not the reaction Ms. Rawlings-Blake envisioned in 2012 when she brought in Mr. Batts, a former chief in Oakland and Long Beach, Calif., who likes to call himself "a change agent." He was hired over the objections of one of the mayor's closest allies, City Councilman Brandon M. Scott. Mr. Scott preferred Anthony E. Barksdale, who had overseen the department's operations when crime was declining. Mr. Barksdale retired last year.

With his tough approach to internal discipline and community-minded initiatives—he called for officers to wear body cameras — Mr. Batts, who is also black, rankled the rank and file. But his support in the community began to erode after the riots; an alliance of prominent ministers quickly called for him to resign. "That's not going to happen," he said then.

Even as homicides ticked up — almost half the killings in Baltimore this year have happened after May 1 — the mayor stood by him. But pressure on her built in recent weeks.

On Monday, The Baltimore Sun sparked an uproar with an opinion article by a man who had been mugged while riding his bicycle and found his local police station closed overnight when he arrived to report the crime. Mr. Reisinger, the Council vice president, called it "stupid with a capital S."

On Wednesday morning, a community coalition called for Mr. Batts's head. The City Council began circulating a letter asking the mayor to oust him. The police union issued a report calling the riots "preventable." By afternoon, Mr. Batts, 55, was gone.

Ms. Rawlings-Blake said Mr. Batts had become "a distraction" that hindered the more pressing imperative to fight crime. Some critics wonder what Mr. Batts's removal will really change.

"I'm going to be frank with you: I think this looks like a desperate move," said Delores Jones-Brown, a former New Jersey prosecutor and founder of the Center on Race, Crime and Justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. She predicted that it would be hard to replace Mr. Batts with someone equally as community-minded, "who will try to change the crime situation, but who won't be heavy-handed or brutal."

Ms. Rawlings-Blake says she is convinced she can do both; she spent part of Thursday visiting Baltimore police commanders with her interim commissioner, Kevin Davis. A day earlier, he told reporters that, for him, "it's all about the crime fight, and it's all about the relationship with the community."

Councilman Nick Mosby — to the husband of Marilyn J. Mosby, the prosecutor who brought charges against six officers in the death of Mr. Gray — said Ms. Rawlings-Blake had learned, perhaps the hard way, a lesson that all mayors ultimately learn.

"I don't care what race you are or how old you are, I don't care if you are the mayor of New York City or the mayor of Mayberry," said Mr. Mosby, who is often mentioned as a possible mayoral candidate. "Public safety is paramount in the way people judge effectiveness. It's one of the sole barometers of: Is this person a leader or not."