The Other Side: As Ugly As It Gets

President Obama's speech defending the Iranian nuclear deal last week contained some hard words for the deal's opponents and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in particular, and some of those opponents, realizing the deal is going to pass Congress at this point, are resorting to accusing the president of all but antisemitism. Case in point: Power Line's Scott Johnson.

Obama has a thing about Israeli opposition to the deal. He harps on it both in his American University speech and following it in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria to be broadcast today, reported on here by the Times of Israel.

Obama has Jews on the brain. He resents the opposition of America’s organized Jewish community to the deal. In a meeting on Tuesday before the speech, he made the Jewish leaders in attendance an offer he hoped they couldn’t refuse. See this report carried by Jewish Journal. Lee Smith also picked up on the meeting in an excellent column for Tablet. Obama had the assembled Jewish organizations and leaders he convened on Tuesday in mind in this unsavory passage of his speech on Wednesday: 

Between now and the congressional vote in September, you’re going to hear a lot of arguments against this deal, backed by tens of millions of dollars in advertising. And if the rhetoric in these ads, and the accompanying commentary, sounds familiar, it should — for many of the same people who argued for the war in Iraq are now making the case against the Iran nuclear deal.

Obama has jammed this deal down the throats of the American people. With the mechanics of the Corker bill in place and Obama’s Democratic adherents reliably in line behind him, Congress will present no serious obstacle to the deal. Obama’s Jew-baiting is the gratuitous act of an extraordinarily vindictive and, to give him the benefit of the doubt, misguided man. It should be nevertheless be recognized for what it is.

Obama’s real problem is not with Israel or Jews, but rather with the American people. They have the number of Iran’s regime and its Supreme Leader. They know that this deal is good for the Iranian regime and rightly suspect that it is bad for us.

It's amazing how given the fact that opponents of the deal are not going to be able to muster the 67 Senate votes and 290 House votes to override President Obama's veto of the GOP disapproval measure on the Iran deal that Johnson turns to the old anti-Semite canard.  But then again, Power Line has on multiple occasions accused the President of racism, stoking racial tensions, and wanting to start a race war, so charges of antisemitism are actually somewhat of a change of pace in the Obama Derangement rotation for them.

He.s The Heavy, He's My Brother

Of all the problems of his own making that plague Kansas GOP Gov. Sam Brownback (like a state economy disintegrating under tax cuts for the rich, vice tax for the poor, and basic government services like public school districts that can't pay their bills to keep the lights on and can't pay teachers enough to keep them working) the most interesting problem may be his asshole brother Jim.

Undulating fields of crops and livestock-dotted pastures are the domain of a trigger-happy bully who brags about a political cloak of invincibility keeping him beyond reach of the law in faithfully conservative Linn County. 

Adversaries say he has woven a liquor-infused tapestry of fear colored by intimidation, abuse and lies. The saga features stalking, death threats, trespassing, drive-by gunfire, massive explosions, cattle theft, loan defaults, hit-and-run driving and marital strife. Linn County Sheriff’s Department files bulge with complaints about him. 

There is trepidation among acquaintances to speak freely, a point accentuated by the number expressing nervousness about reprisal if they were candid. There is genuine fear. 

Descriptions of events offered by those willing to speak out converge to reveal a potentially lethal menace. Neighbors allege some in law enforcement responded to cries for help with degrees of indifference or favoritism. 

Locals aware of the dynamics shake their head in dismay. In a place where people honor the Second Amendment and revere the self-defense castle doctrine, there is astonishment no one has been gunned down. 

Folks in direct path of this prairie hellion pray for an end to what some coined “neighborhood terrorism.”

So far, their nemesis has found no reason to relent. 

Not when your name is Jim Brownback and you are a brother to Sam, the most powerful politician in Kansas.

I swear, this story reads like a Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child, or an episode of Longmire. Farm pigs mauled by dogs, a keg of nails scattered on the driveway, drunken shotgun drive-bys, blowing up stuff in the middle of the night to wake the neighbors, cattle unleashed to devour crop fields, frightened insurance adjusters, and good ol' boy shitkicker cops that won't touch the governor's brother.

Jim Brownback is possibly the second biggest asshole in the entire state, next to his brother. It's terrorism by a cartoon bully and nobody can put a leash on this guy.

Least of all the governor of the great state of Kansas. What Jim is doing to his neighbors on the Kansas plains, Sam is doing to the entire state.

Bullies all around, doing what they do best, has always been the way.

A Gradual Berning Curve

Bernie Sanders is starting to pay attention to his critics of color and to his credit, is addressing issues of racial inequality.

A day after being interrupted by Black Lives Matters protesters at a campaign event in Seattle, Washington, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) released a detailed platform on combating racial inequality. 

Sanders' campaign posted the platform on his website on Sunday, and he addressed the issue of racial justice that evening in front of more than 20,000 supporters in Portland, drawing his largest crowd yet along the campaign trail. Nearly 12,000 people attended Saturday’s event in Seattle.

The platform delineates policy proposals pertaining to what Sanders calls “the four central types of violence waged against black and brown Americans: physical, political, legal and economic.” 

Sanders proposes a series of police reforms, including the demilitarization of police forces, a federal program giving police body cameras, and increasing police transparency and accountability. He also calls for an end to mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent offenses and bemoans the disproportionate rate at which blacks are targeted by police. 

“It is an obscenity that we stigmatize so many young Americans with a criminal record for smoking marijuana, but not one major Wall Street executive has been prosecuted for causing the near collapse of our entire economy. This must change,” he said. “We must address the lingering unjust stereotypes that lead to the labeling of black youths as ‘thugs.’ We know the truth that, like every community in this country, the vast majority of people of color are trying to work hard, play by the rules and raise their children. It’s time to stop demonizing minority communities.” 

To combat what he calls political violence, Sanders stresses the expansion of the Voting Rights Act and restoring the Act’s “preclearance” provision, which was gutted by the Supreme Court last year. He also proposes ending laws that ban convicted felons from voting.

Again, credit where credit is due.  These are the issues that Black Lives Matter activists in Seattle wanted Bernie to address, and it didn't take him very long to do it, either.  These are all programs and reforms that I can support.  More will need to be done, but Sanders absolutely gets points here for understanding that he will need the black vote to win both the primary and the general.  My estimation of Sanders has gone up somewhat,

But the problem remains that Sanders is willing to talk about people of color, and not as much directly to us.  More needs to be done.

So two things:  Bernie Sanders is willing to learn, and activism does work.

Your move, rest of the Democratic field.

StupidiNews!

• Reports find at least two people were shot and injured late Sunday after peaceful protests marking the one-year anniversary of the death of Michael Brown turned violent.
• A accidental EPA wastewater spill from a Colorado gold mine is now estimated to have totaled three million gallons, the nearby city of Durango has declared a state of emergency.
• The US consulate in Istanbul came under gunfire early Monday and eight were killed in separate attacks as Turkey's war against both ISIS and Kurdish separatists gains momentum.
• New figures in Saudi Arabia find the number of women in the workforce has increased by half since social reforms by the late King Abdullah were set into motion in 2008.
• Astronauts on the International Space Station will chow down on space-grown veggies while on a mission for the first time.

Last Call For Finding The Problem

The Pew Charitable Trusts put out a survey last month on American household debt.  The figures are pretty shocking by generation (Gen Xers like myself owe six figures as a median point) but they are even worse by race and income.

The substantial wealth gap between white families and families of color has been well documented by researchers. According to the Pew Research Center, white families had a net worth in 2013 that was 13 times more than that of black families and 10 times higher than that of Hispanic families. Net worth comprises assets and debt, so the racial wealth gap can be understood by examining each component individually. 

Among respondents to Pew’s Survey of American Family Finances, black and Hispanic households are as likely to have debt as white households. However, white households’ median debt is more than twice as big (Table 1) and differs in important ways from that of families of color—for example, including more mortgage debt—which often helps white households build even greater net worth. 

White households also typically hold more assets than black and Hispanic households. The typical white household has nearly seven times more assets than black households and over three times more than Hispanic households. These differences are magnified among low income households: The typical white household making less than $40,000 a year has nearly 18 times more assets than black households at the same income bracket and seven times more than Hispanic households. Because of its low asset holdings, the typical lower-income black household has no net worth. At a fundamental level, the racial wealth gap is about a lack of assets in black and Hispanic households, rather than an abundance of debt. 

Let's rewind that statement.

The typical black household with income less than $40,000 has no net worth.



None.

Compare that to the typical white family with income less than $40,000, which still has a net worth of $22,200.

Your typical black person, with all levels of income included, has a net worth of just $6,000.

The system is designed to keep black America poor and always has been.

 

A Close Win For The Dems In 2016?

That's what Moody's Analytics is predicting (just not which Democrat beats which Republican) but going strictly on the parties, they find the Democrats winning a razor-thin electoral college victory in 2016.

It will be an extremely close race, but the next president will be a Democrat, according to Moody's.

This doesn't mean that Hillary Clinton is on her way back to the White House. The model that Moody's uses doesn't focus on individual candidates. Instead, it predicts which party will win in every state, so it forecasts the results of the Electoral College.

Moody's says the Democratic nominee will get 270 electoral votes -- the minimum number of votes needed to win -- while the Republican nominee will accumulate 268 votes. The model correctly predicted every state in the 2012 election and has a nearly 90% success rate in forecasting each state accurately since 1980.

It will all come down to Virginia and Ohio this time because Moody's predicts that Republicans will win Florida. At the moment, Moody's says Virginia will go Democratic and Ohio will swing Republican, but that could change.

"If President Obama's approval rating falls by any more than 2 percentage points by Election Day, Virginia will swing and the Republicans will win the president," the report says.

A race that close will be drowning in recounts, frankly, and will almost certainly go to the Supreme Court again, so who knows which party would actually win.  Florida and Ohio going to the Republicans gives them a pretty big boost on the way to winning too.

So what is the key to such accurate predictions? Moody's says it's all about economics.

The model takes into account how the economy is doing in each state. The researchers have tested a lot of variables over the years, but the best ones are family ("household") income, home values and gas prices. If those three variables are going up, it favors the incumbent party. If they're not, people want change in Washington.

"The economy's performance strongly favors the Democratic nominee for president," says Moody's.

Moody's points out that household incomes have been steadily improving lately and are likely to go up further before Election Day.

"The only missing ingredient is stronger wage growth, which is expected to pick up in the coming months as the job market approaches full employment," the authors wrote.

So the better the economy gets, the larger the Dem lead becomes.  Republicans know this, so their best chance to win is to continue to block any spending that will improve the economy, and blame Obama.  It's worked for them in 2010 and 2014, and would have worked in 2012 if Romney hadn't been the worst candidate since Dukakis.

On the other hand, if the GOP nominee is still this guy...




Maybe it won't be so close after all.

Sunday Long Read: The War On NC Schools

Washington Post education writer Valerie Strauss posts this detailed carnage from a NC teacher that Republican Gov. Pat McCrory and the NC GOP legislature have inflicted on North Carolina public schools since the red state backlash against Obama in 2012.  It's heartbreaking and very personal to see this, as I grew up and attended both school and college in the state, only to see that education infrastructure being ripped to pieces.

Among their first targets: reductions in unemployment benefits, cuts to public schools, including laying off thousands of teachers, and a massive, nearly half-billion dollar slash from the University of North Carolina system.

Two years later, in the last budget cycle, 2014-15, the legislature providedroughly $500 million less for education than schools needed.

Later in the 2013 session, though, the most radical changes in state financing fell into place. Republicans reconstructed the state’s tax code, relieving the burden on corporations and wealthy residents. They continued to take aim at other parts of the education budget, cutting More at Four program dollars and decreasing accessibility for poor families. The state lost thousands more teacher and teacher assistant positions. The bloodletting was fierce. More on that in a minute.

Across the state, local education districts were faced with budget deficits of considerable proportion after legislators hacked away their funding. School systems raided fund balances, rainy day funds set aside for things like natural disasters, not political ones. Elsewhere, employees were furloughed, teachers were laid off, teacher assistants were forced to take other jobs or lose their classroom positions, and so forth. Non-personnel funding disappeared. Textbooks stayed in circulation another year. Buildings were patched together instead of replaced. Education Week called ours “The Most Backward Legislature in America.”

Republicans defended these austerity measures by saying that lower taxes would eventually yield fiscal growth. And they were right. This year, the government is enjoying a $445 million surplus–a clear victory in light of those multi-billion dollar deficits of yore–but still a statistically small number in light of the state’s $21 billion budget (about two percent), especially after considering that our state budget is still smaller than it was in 2011.

In fact, by 2014-15, North Carolina was still spending $100 million less on public education than it had before the economic recession. And over the past ten years, public schools added more than 150,000 additional students. No Republican legislator can honestly say that per pupil expenditures across the state have increased in the last six years.

The budget fix came at a cost, a steep one.  NC teachers now are the lowest paid in the nation, veteran teachers have been forced to retire, Republicans have completely eliminated the state's Teaching Fellows program in the UNC system that trained new teachers, then created a voucher program to pay for-profit charter schools and religious schools with taxpayer dollars and leave the poorest schools in the state drowning in red ink.

And then they came for the college system I went to.

In four years Republicans have destroyed education in my home state.  It's a depressing read, necessary to drive home that there is a difference between the two parties.

Berned At The Stake

Things didn't go so well for Bernie Sanders when he stopped today in Seattle for a rally and was once again confronted by Black Lives Matters activists on the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri.

A planned speech in Seattle by presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders celebrating the anniversary of Social Security and Medicare was scuttled Saturday after protesters from Black Lives Matter took the stage and demanded that the crowd hold Sanders “accountable” for not doing enough, in their view, to address police brutality and other issues on the group’s agenda.

Sanders, who has emerged as the leading alternative to Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination, was the final speaker scheduled on a long program. Shortly after the senator from Vermont started speaking, a small group of protesters took the microphone, shared a series of local grievances with the crowd, including school disparities and gentrification in Seattle, and then asked for a period of silence to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown being shot and killed during a confrontation with a police officer in Ferguson, Mo.

Organizers allowed the period of silence, as some in the large crowd booed and shouted for the protesters to leave the stage. Afterward, Marrisa Janae Johnson, a leader of the Black Lives Matter movement in Seattle, asked the crowd to “join us now in holding Bernie Sanders accountable for his actions.” She motioned for Sanders to join her at the microphone.

After several minutes of frantic conversations, Sanders left the stage and greeted people in the large crowd who had turned out to see him. Many chanted his name.

The tense scene, which was streamed live by a Seattle television station, was reminiscent of one July 18 in Phoenix, when a larger group of Black Lives Matter activists disrupted a Democratic presidential forum at the liberal Netroots Nation gathering that featured both Sanders and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley.

Bernie left the stage rather than deal with the activists.  For the second time in as many months. The Black Lives Matter Seattle chapter did apologize on Twitter for the incident, but that hasn't stopped the Sanders people from going nuts.

The irony is that it's the Sanders people who demanded that Democrats needed "a real debate" among the candidates on the issues rather than simply staying silent as witnesses to a Hillary Clinton coronation.

They got the debate.  It wasn't the one the Sanders people wanted, now is it?

The Kroog Versus The Clown Bus

As Paul Krugman Reminds us, Trumpmania is an inevitable by-product of modern Republicanism.

For while it’s true that Mr. Trump is, fundamentally, an absurd figure, so are his rivals. If you pay attention to what any one of them is actually saying, as opposed to how he says it, you discover incoherence and extremism every bit as bad as anything Mr. Trump has to offer. And that’s not an accident: Talking nonsense is what you have to do to get anywhere in today’s Republican Party.

For example, Mr. Trump’s economic views, a sort of mishmash of standard conservative talking points and protectionism, are definitely confused. But is that any worse than Jeb Bush’s deep voodoo, his claim that he could double the underlying growth rate of the American economy? And Mr. Bush’s credibility isn’t helped by his evidence for that claim: the relatively rapid growth Florida experienced during the immense housing bubble that coincided with his time as governor.

Mr. Trump, famously, is a “birther” — someone who has questioned whether President Obama was born in the United States. But is that any worse than Scott Walker’s declaration that he isn’t sure whether the president is a Christian?

Mr. Trump’s declared intention to deport all illegal immigrants is definitely extreme, and would require deep violations of civil liberties. But are there any defenders of civil liberties in the modern G.O.P.? Notice how eagerly Rand Paul, self-described libertarian, has joined in the witch hunt against Planned Parenthood.

And while Mr. Trump is definitely appealing to know-nothingism, Marco Rubio, climate change denier, has made “I’m not a scientist” his signature line. (Memo to Mr. Rubio: Presidents don’t have to be experts on everything, but they do need to listen to experts, and decide which ones to believe.)

The point is that while media puff pieces have portrayed Mr. Trump’s rivals as serious men — Jeb the moderate, Rand the original thinker, Marco the face of a new generation — their supposed seriousness is all surface. Judge them by positions as opposed to image, and what you have is a lineup of cranks. And as I said, this is no accident. 

It has long been obvious that the conventions of political reporting and political commentary make it almost impossible to say the obvious — namely, that one of our two major parties has gone off the deep end. Or as the political analysts Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein put it in their book “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” the G.O.P. has become an “insurgent outlier … unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science.” It’s a party that has no room for rational positions on many major issues.

Or to put it another way, modern Republican politicians can’t be serious — not if they want to win primaries and have any future within the party. Crank economics, crank science, crank foreign policy are all necessary parts of a candidate’s resume.

The problem is not "Donald Trump is insane."  The problem is "The entire Republican Party is insane."   The even larger problem is that people keep voting for them, because there's tens of millions of voters who are driven by getting revenge on the country for daring to elect Barack Obama.  Right now Donald Trump looks like he's the most willing to punish those who voted for our current President and so he's ahead, but let's be honest here. All the GOP candidates are willing to punish particular groups in order to win.

Republicans are the party of vengeance, and baby, vengeance sells.

Trumped Card

Looks like The Donald has pissed off the stiffs with his debate antics Thursday and in a major way.  He's been kicked out of Jackass Jackassson's shindig this weekend.

I have invited @MegynKelly to attend tomorrow night’s RedState Gathering event in place of Donald Trump.

— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) August 8, 2015

So there really is something Trump can do to get grounded, and that's go after FOX News's Megyn Kelly.

I have tried to give a great deal of latitude to Donald Trump in his run for the Presidency.

He is not a professional politician and is known for being a blunt talker. He connects with so much of the anger in the Republican base and is not afraid to be outspoken on a lot of issues. But there are even lines blunt talkers and unprofessional politicians should not cross.

Decency is one of those lines.

As much as I do personally like Donald Trump, his comment about Megyn Kelly on CNN is a bridge too far for me.

In a CNN interview, Mr. Trump said of Megyn Kelly, “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”

It was not the “blood coming out of her eyes” part that was the problem.

I think there is no way to otherwise interpret Mr. Trump’s comment. In an attempted clarification, Mr. Trump’s team tells me he meant “whatever”, not “wherever.”

So, implying that Megyn Kelly was on her period was apparently the straw that broke the camel's back, not any of the other massively misogynist or racist or generally awful crap he's spouted.

OK Eric, whatever

Last Call For Hill's College Plan

Hillary Clinton is pushing student loan debt relief, a major point with many folks my age and younger, as well as making college more affordable with Preisdent Obama's community college plan.

Hillary Rodham Clinton will propose an expanded government program Monday to address what she calls the crisis of student debt, her campaign said Friday.

A revised plan to make college more affordable and relieve the crushing debt students often accrue is a major plank of her policy platform and a key demand of young voters as well as the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Clinton is not expected to go as far as some on the left want by calling for “debt-free” college. She is instead expected to present a detailed, and expensive, plan to increase funding for public colleges and universities.

Clinton’s campaign press secretary Brian Fallon said the policy proposals will come in a speech in New Hampshire on Monday. Fallon did not provide details of the plan.

But sources familiar with the plan who were not authorized to speak publicly said the proposal centers on an incentive system for states to expand investments in higher education. With grants from the federal government, participating states would be able to lower the cost of attendance at public colleges and universities.

Clinton is also expected to include President Obama’s proposal for free community college as a part of her platform. That $60 billion proposal calls for states to cover a quarter of the cost for more than 10 years.

As I keep saying, all of these really great plans from Democrats about college and debt relief and higher education will never, ever, ever pass a Republican Congress.  Until we get rid of the GOP, these proposals are dead on arrival.

Perhaps we as voters should fix that.

Church Meets State In Head-On Collision

Meanwhile, back home in my old neck of the woods in Lincolnton, North Carolina, it seems the Lincoln County Board of Commissioners suddenly have a real problem with religion in local government.

The Lincoln County Board of Commissioners had always opened government meetings with Christian prayer. About two months ago, officials decided that in order to avoid legal trouble, they’d have to let everyone participate. 

That didn’t last long. 

On Monday, commission chairman Carrol Mitchem, who had previously announced he wouldn’t “bow to minorities” and that he “ain’t gonna have no new religion or pray to Allah” at board meetings, held true to his word and walked out on the first person to address the North Carolina government meeting with a Muslim prayer, the Lincoln Times-News reports. 

“That was very upsetting. It was upsetting,” Dustin Barto of the Foothills Interfaith Assembly, who had led the Muslim prayer, told WSOC-TV. 

By the end of the meeting, all prayer was banned at board meetings and will be replaced with a moment of silence. Commissioner Alex Patton initiated the motion which was easily voted into effect. 

“To me, the final straw was when our chairman got up and walked out,” Patton told WSCOTV, adding that the commission needs to focus on pressing matters like the economy and education. 

The issue of prayer at the meetings had generated months of controversy, the station reported. 

Previously, Mitchem had vowed to keep Christian-only prayers at the meetings.
“I don’t believe we need to be bowing to the minorities,” Mitchem had told WBTV. “The U.S. and the Constitution were founded on Christianity. This is what the majority of people believe in, and it’s what I’m standing up for.”

This is what freedom of religion really means in America: the freedom to inflict Christianity by law upon the rest of the people, but any other religion (or distinct lack of one) is not tolerated.  I'm glad that Lincoln County finally got rid of the prayer sessions, but the journey to get there was spiteful, ignorant, and discriminatory to say the least.

The sad part is I don't see the Supreme Court stepping in to stop this nonsense anytime soon, and in fact I'm pretty sure there's at least four justices who will make it worse whenever possible.

The Noise Machine Is Drowning The Iran Deal

Weeks of ridiculous Republican rhetoric on Iran, ranging from Lindsey Graham's Neville Chamberlain idiocy to Mike Huckabee's statement that President Obama was "leading Jews to the ovens" has turned the public decidedly against the proposition.

A majority of Americans opposes a recently reached international accord lifting sanctions on Iran in exchange for new limits on its nuclear program, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll.

Nearly six in 10 Americans, or 57 percent, oppose the nuclear deal, while 28 percent voice support for it in the national poll released Monday, in a 2-to-1 margin against the deal. 

Republicans strongly oppose the deal brokered by the Obama administration, 86 to 3 percent, while Democrats support the top second-term foreign policy agenda item for President Obama, 52 to 32 percent. 

A majority of Americans disapprove the way Obama is handling the situation in Iran (56 percent), compared with 35 percent who approve. A majority (58 percent) also thinks the deal makes the world less safe.

It's a good thing polls don't make foreign policy, but Republicans have, at least in the short term, turned this major win with Iran into a real problem for President Obama and the Democrats.  Several other polling outlets have reported similar numbers, and in every case Americans are very skeptical of the nuclear deal.  President Obama took to the airwaves yesterday to once again make the case for the deal.

President Obama took on critics of the nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers in an aggressive speech on Wednesday, saying they were the same people who created the “drumbeat of war” and played on public fears to push the United States into the Iraq war more than a decade ago.

“Let’s not mince words: The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy and some sort of war — maybe not tomorrow, maybe not three months from now, but soon,” Mr. Obama told about 200 people in a speech at American University. “How can we in good conscience justify war before we’ve tested a diplomatic agreement that achieves our objectives?”

Mr. Obama, opening a new, more overtly political phase of his public campaign for the accord, portrayed the coming vote in Congress to approve or reject the deal as the most consequential foreign policy decision for lawmakers since Congress voted in 2003 to authorize the invasion of Iraq. He implored them to “shut out the noise” and back the deal.

Delivered in stark terms that surprised some foreign policy analysts and left no room for questioning whether the agreement is good for American security — “It’s not even close,” Mr. Obama declared at one point — the president’s speech was a striking display of certitude about a diplomatic deal that has split the American public and presented a dilemma for lawmakers, including many in his own party.

Mr. Obama criticized Republicans who are pressing forward with legislation to block the accord, which is on track for a vote in September. Opposition to the agreement, he said, stems from “knee-jerk partisanship that has become all too familiar, rhetoric that renders every decision made to be a disaster, a surrender.”

He said hard-liners in Iran who chant “Death to America” were “making common cause with the Republican caucus.”

Republicans went berserk over that last statement, accusing the President of calling them, and the majority of Americans against the deal, traitors to the country. In reponse to the president,   Republicans now say they will pass a bill implementing more sanctions on Iran after the 60 days is up, almost certainly collapsing the deal by default.

We'll see how this goes, as Sen. Chuck Schumer is the highest ranking Democrat yet to abandon the deal but you'd better believe that Republicans are going to do everything they can to wreck this deal and start a war with Iran.

StupidiNews!

• Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, the number 2 Democrat in the Senate, says he will vote against the Iran nuclear deal.
• A new study finds American teenagers get up too early in the morning to begin school and are not getting enough sleep to stay focused as a result.
• Ferguson, Missouri is expecting protests and marches to commemorate the anniversary of the death of Michael Brown on Sunday.
• Apple has taken a significant chunk out of the watch market as sales of watches in the US have dropped more than 10% from last year.
• Adult streaming video service Pornhub has launched a premium version of the site for $9.99 a month, with 100,000 additional titles for viewing.

Last Call For Good News, Bad News On Climate Change

Politico environmental reporter Michael Grunwald finds President Obama's clean power plant plan to be both better -- and worse -- than he expected it to be.

Environmentalists, journalists, administration officials and industry flacks have all hyped the Clean Power Plan as the strongest climate action in history, but the 1560-page text provides plenty of evidence for my case that it’s merely the fourth-strongest climate action of the Obama era. I found a few nuggets that were even weaker than I expected, including a remarkable footnote suggesting that states can do nothing to reduce emissions for nine years and still comply with the rule. 

Still, I have to admit the overall plan is actually stronger than I expected yesterday, and much stronger than the toothless draft plan I ridiculed in May. So before I resume harping about the plan’s unambitious goals for the grid, and the various ways its defenders and critics are exaggerating its impact, let me discuss how the EPA fixed the draft’s most glaring absurdities, because these changes have been largely overlooked. The media have focused on modest tweaks to non-binding national goals—emissions are now expected to drop 32 percent by 2030, versus 30 percent in the draft, and coal is expected to provide 27 percent of our power instead of 31 percent—but those aren’t the changes that matter. 

What matters are the changes to binding state targets, and those changes are not modest. They also have serious political implications. The original draft took it easiest on states with the heaviest reliance on dirty fossil fuels—states that nevertheless complained the most about Obama’s supposedly draconian plan. The final rule cracks down much harder on those states, while taking it much easier on states that are already moving toward cleaner sources of electricity. 

Check out this excellent chart compiled by my colleague Alex Guillen. North Dakota would have been required to cut emissions just 10.6 percent to comply with the draft rule, the least of any state; it will have to cut emissions 44.9 percent to comply with the final rule, the most of any state except for similarly fossil-fueled Montana and South Dakota. Coal-rich Wyoming, Kentucky, West Virginia and Indiana were also among the biggest losers in the revised plan. Meanwhile, the states that are already greening their grid—led by Washington, Oregon and New York—were the biggest winners in the final rule. 

That is a radical change. The EPA acknowledged in the plan that it “rectifies what would have been an inefficient, unintended outcome of putting the greater reduction burden on lower-emitting sources and states.” As EPA air quality chief Janet McCabe explained to me in an interview: “We got a lot of comments making the same point you did.” But it hasn’t gotten attention, perhaps because coal-state politicians cried wolf so loudly about the draft. It’s the result of a decision to calculate emissions according to a uniform measurement for every power plant rather than a weirdly calibrated analysis of what’s reasonable for individual states. 

But whether or not the new approach is more technically or legally defensible, getting tougher on dirtier states could have a dramatic effect on results, because states like Kentucky and West Virginia were always unlikely to do any more than the legal minimum, while states like California and Massachusetts are unlikely to stop their transitions to cleaner energy once they achieve compliance.

So yes, when Mitch McConnell is calling on states to refuse compliance with the plan, they don't have to do anything until 2024 at the earliest anyway.  And that means AG Jack Conway here in Kentucky, who is fighting the plan hard, really isn't fighting anything because Kentucky doesn't have to actually do anything for nine years.

That's kind of the dirty secret of the EPA plan, it doesn't actually do anything as far as forcing compliance for nearly a decade.

And another decade of carbon pollution is certainly not going to help things.