Little cool, isn't it?
"Obama offers major blueprint on climate change" by Coral Davenport, New York Times April 01, 2015
WASHINGTON — The White House on Tuesday introduced President Obama’s blueprint for cutting greenhouse gas emissions in the United States by nearly a third over the next decade.
He and John Kerry are going to stop the airplane trips around the planet?
Obama’s plan, part of a formal written submission to the United Nations ahead of efforts to forge a global climate change accord in Paris in December, detailed the side of the United States in an ambitious joint pledge that the president made in November in Beijing with President Xi Jinping of China.
The United States and China are the world’s two largest greenhouse gas polluters. Obama said the United States would cut its emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025, while Xi said that China’s emissions would drop after 2030.
He didn't blame China, did he?
Obama’s new blueprint describes how the United States will meet its pledge, using the president’s executive authority. It is an acknowledgment that any proposal to pass climate change legislation would be blocked by the Republican-controlled Congress.
At the heart of the plan are ambitious but politically contentious Environmental Protection Agency regulations meant to drastically cut planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions from the nation’s cars and coal-fired power plants. The plan also relies on a speedy timetable, which assumes that Obama’s administration will issue and begin enacting all such regulations before he leaves office.
Time to hit the brakes.
“We can achieve this goal using laws that are already on the books, and it will be in place by the time the president leaves office,” said Brian C. Deese, Obama’s senior adviser on climate change.
But the plan has also intensified opposition from Republican lawmakers who object to Obama’s effort to build a climate change legacy. Republicans have called the rules a “war on coal” and an abuse of executive authority. Nearly every potential Republican presidential candidate has criticized Obama’s climate change agenda. The issue is expected to be important in 2016 political campaigns.
Republican leaders immediately savaged the plan and announced intent to weaken or undo it — and, by extension, to block international efforts to reach a climate accord in Paris. Environmental groups praised the plan, particularly the president’s effort to work around Congress....
Yeah, who cares about the laws or the Constitution?
--more--"
I think I'm seeing a ray of sunlight:
"It’s fast becoming the consumer energy story of our time. The traditional utility industry is increasingly being threatened by a growing trend toward rooftop solar installations and ‘‘net metering,’’ which allows owners of solar panels to pay less for electricity by getting credit for extra power that they feed to the grid. Net metering is pretty disruptive — witness the political fights erupting across the country over it — but still more radical would be a trend in which solar-powered homeowners, potentially further empowered by batteries that would allow them to store energy generated by their panels, went ‘‘off grid’’ entirely. Instead of merely sipping power from our traditional electricity infrastructure when they need it (and paying smaller bills), they would fully disconnect from that infrastructure. According to a recent study in the influential journal Energy Policy, however, ditching the grid is likely to be more an individualistic dream than an economically viable solution for most people."
Darkened over rather quick when you try to do the right thing, huh?
Time to get moving:
"Negotiators face deadline pressure for Iran nuclear deal" by Carol Morello, Washington Post March 31, 2015
LAUSANNE, Switzerland —Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, who arrived Sunday, left for Moscow, and his spokeswoman said he would return if a deal looks realistic.
Secretary of State John Kerry said that difficult issues remain on the table. ‘‘There are still some tricky issues.’’
Gerard Arnaud, the French ambassador to Washington, tweeted, ‘‘Very substantial problems remain to be solved.’’
The French are Israel's bitch on this one.
Marie Harf, a spokeswoman for the State Department, put the odds of an agreement at 50-50. China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, told reporters that he was ‘‘cautiously optimistic’’ and said that ‘‘positions are narrowing.’’
Analysts said Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, may have been practicing some 11th-hour brinkmanship when he told Iranian reporters Sunday that Tehran would not send most of its stockpiles of enriched uranium to Russia.
Hey, that's Amerika's schtick!
Related: Iran backs away from key component of nuclear agreement
Araghchi has made similar comments in recent months, and Tehran swiftly denied that any decision on stockpiles had been reached. A senior State Department official said that the fate of Iran’s stockpiles was still open for discussion.
That seems unusually unreasonable.
The White House said President Obama has been getting regular updates from the negotiating team.
The Tuesday deadline is crucial for US negotiators, because Obama and Kerry have said that if a framework agreement is not reached by then, they will have to assess whether to continue the process. But an interim agreement, under which Iran has limited its nuclear output, does not expire until June 30.
It's a false deadline, but useful if you want to start a war!
Negotiators from France, Germany, Britain, China, and Russia have expressed less urgency about getting some sort of understanding outlined by midnight Tuesday.
An agreement, if there is one, could still be difficult to sell to a skeptical Congress and many Americans.
Actually, it would be an EASY SELL to the the American people, but hey, what's one more lie from the war-promoting pos paper?
In Jerusalem, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, issued a statement saying that the negotiators were turning a blind eye to Iranian ‘‘aggression’’ supporting Houthi rebels in Yemen.
I knew that was going to be brought into the conversation, and look who did it!
--more--"
I'm told the talks will go ‘‘down to the wire,’’ and I'm going to ‘‘presuppose failure’’ based on experience.
"Diplomats continue Iran nuclear talks past deadline" by Carol Morello, Washington Post April 01, 2015
LAUSANNE, Switzerland — The continuation of talks does not signal an end to the drama. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that President Obama’s patience with the negotiations is not limitless.
We heard the same thing from the a**hole who preceded him.
He noted that an interim agreement in which Iran limited its nuclear output while negotiating a final deal remains in effect until the end of June, but the extension was surprising, partly because State Department officials had been adamant that the March 31 deadline they set when an interim agreement was extended in November was firm.
Not really. Only if you believe the daily rot gut of propaganda pre$$.
In fact, the deadline was mostly about American politics.
Tired of the imagery and illusion yet?
The Obama administration is trying to get an agreement with Iran before congressional critics get a chance to pass bills requiring their approval of a potential nuclear deal or imposing more sanctions on the country. Several bills are pending that would give Congress the option to reject a final accord.
Few lawmakers reacted publicly on Tuesday to the latest developments in the talks. But Senator Tom Cotton, Republican from Arkansas, said that the prolonging of talks into an extra day, ‘‘in the face of Iranian intransigence and duplicity, proves once again that Iran is calling the shots.’’ He also predicted Obama would make ‘‘further concessions’’ to Tehran.
Senator Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican, author of a bill that would impose new sanctions on Iran, said that Congress should vote on that measure ‘‘instead of another extension of nuclear talks.’’
All these guys are tools of Israel.
However, Congress is on break until April 14, and some members have urged the administration not to be a prisoner of an artificial deadline.
In Lausanne, where the talks are being held, US negotiators led by Kerry held a grueling schedule of meetings Tuesday with diplomats from Iran, Britain, France, Germany, China, and Russia, starting shortly after sunrise and stretching late into the night. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi departed the talks to return to Beijing. But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who left Monday saying he would return when a deal looked ‘‘realistic,’’ flew back from Moscow to rejoin the negotiations. He pronounced the prospects for an agreement ‘‘good.’’
Yeah, weather has cleared quite a bit!
The talks, which began in 2003 but only picked up momentum a decade later, have already produced tentative accords on dozens of issues. But negotiators have cautioned repeatedly that nothing is truly settled until agreements are reached on all issues.
That is SUCH a LIE! Iran reached out to Bush in 2003 and they were rejected.
Despite progress at almost every stage of the negotiations, the final weeks have been consumed by talks over differences....
--more--"
Did the deadline matter? Not really.
Related: Obama pessimistic about prospects for Mideast peace
So am I.
US denies drone killed 2 Iranian advisers in Iraq
Oh, I'm sure that helped!
"Nuclear deal is focus, Iran official says" Associated Press March 28, 2015
LAUSANNE, Switzerland — Iran’s foreign minister sought Friday to dismiss concerns that his country’s preoccupation with the crisis in Yemen could serve as a distraction at nuclear talks with six world powers, saying the negotiations remained focused on sealing a deal.
Some are hoping it scuttles the deal!
Yemen is ‘‘the hot issue of the day’’ and has come up at the talks but ‘‘it doesn’t mean that we negotiated about it,’’ Mohammad Javad Zarif told reporters.
Saudi-led air strikes on Shi’ite rebels in Yemen are further straining relations between the Sunni Gulf kingdom and predominantly Shi’ite Iran.
As well as killing loads of innocent people and bombing embassies(?!!)!
Zarif said they ‘‘have to stop, and everybody has to encourage dialogue and national reconciliation.’’
Despite Iran’s concerns over Yemen, however, ‘‘our negotiations are confined to the nuclear’’ issue, he said.
Zarif spoke shortly after his first meeting of the day with Secretary of State John Kerry.
Iran has been pushing for full up-front sanctions relief as soon as a pact is sealed, but White House spokesman Josh Earnest said President Obama thought that would be ‘‘unwise.’’
‘‘We need to see sustained long-range compliance with the agreement before we start having a conversation about removing things like the statutory sanctions that have been so critically important,’’ said Earnest....
So Obama is backtracking and betraying Iran on the deal already?
--more--"
And I thought they were friends:
"Amid talks with Iran, an MIT bond; Nuclear envoys share past, have ‘good rapport’" by David E. Sanger, New York Times March 29, 2015
LAUSANNE, Switzerland — At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the mid-1970s, Ernest J. Moniz was an up-and-coming nuclear scientist in search of tenure, and Ali Akbar Salehi, a brilliant Iranian graduate student, was finishing a dissertation on fast-neutron reactors.
The two did not know each other, but they followed similar paths once they left the campus: Moniz went on to become one of the nation’s most respected nuclear physicists and is now President Obama’s energy secretary.
Salehi, who was part of the last wave of Iranians to conduct nuclear studies at America’s elite universities, returned to an Iran in revolution and rose to oversee the country’s nuclear program.
Forty years later, they are facing off in intense one-on-one talks as the deadline approaches for a nuclear deal that could be one of the most important, and disputed, international accords in decades.
**************
In recent days, those discussions have hit major road blocks.
“We have a good rapport,” Moniz said as he poured himself a glass of well-aged Scotch and settled into the living room of his Lausanne suite, overlooking Lake Geneva.
The question is whether it is possible to dismantle enough of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure to assure the United States and its allies that they would have enough warning to stop Iran if it tried to build a nuclear bomb.
Meaning they are not building one, are they?
In a sign that the negotiators are getting closer to an initial agreement, foreign ministers from the other world powers have begun arriving in Lausanne.
“The endgame of the long negotiations has begun,” said Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister. “The final meters are the most difficult but also the decisive ones.”
Moniz, 70, understands his role well: He is providing not only technical expertise but also political cover for Kerry. If a framework agreement is reached in the next few days, it will be Moniz who will have to vouch to a suspicious Congress, to Israel, and to Arab allies that Iran would be incapable of assembling the raw material for a single nuclear weapon in less than a year.
Salehi, 66, will have his own problems selling an agreement to the generals and clerics in Tehran, many of whom are suspicious of Iran’s Western-educated negotiators and will have to be convinced that Iran has not backed down in the face of US demands.
Moniz, who was born in 1944 in Fall River, Mass., got hooked on science as a high school student in the post-Sputnik era of the late 1950s and early 1960s. After attending Boston College, he earned a doctorate in theoretical physics from Stanford and then he joined the faculty at MIT, where he fell in with a group of physicists who were active in the Union of Concerned Scientists and similar groups.
And look where he ended up.
--more--"
Related: Sen. Robert Menendez indicted on corruption charges
I'm sure the underage prostitutes in the Dominican Republic had nothing to do with it. Obama must be mad at him
And if there is no deal?
"There have been calls for a targeted attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities — following the precedent set by Israel’s successful raid
against a nuclear facility in Iraq three decades ago; however, Iran’s nuclear program has been
laid out in a way that makes it more difficult to destroy. And there’s a risk that such an assault could trigger a retaliation, with its own cascade of unpredictable effects.....more"
Let's hope saner heads prevail in this world, even if the track record of rulers poor.
NDUs:
N.J. senator faces bribery charges linked to donor
Nothing about the sexual abuses?
"Late shift in tactics sets up pivotal talks" by Michael R. Gordon and David E. Sanger, New York Times April 02, 2015
(I see Mike Gordon and go ugh!)
LAUSANNE, Switzerland —With only hours to go Tuesday night before the end-of-the-month deadline set by the White House, Secretary of State John Kerry and Energy Secretary Ernest J. Moniz stepped into a large tent at a luxury hotel and dialed into a video conference with President Obama.
There was no way to meet the deadline, Kerry said from the tent, which was designed to defeat eavesdropping.
I can't imagine jwho would want to do that?
Thanks for running interference for Israel, NYT. Or did the Israeli military censor strike that part?
The Iranians, he said, perhaps sensing that the deadline meant a lot in Washington and little in Tehran, were intransigent.
“They were turning our own deadline against us to see if we would give ground,” said one senior official who would not be named due to the secrecy around the talks.
Obama, according to two people familiar with the discussion, told Kerry and Moniz to ignore the deadline while making it clear that he was ready to walk away and leave all sanctions on Iran in place, and see whether that would change the dynamic.
It is still not clear whether the change in tactics will succeed in convincing the Iranians that the Obama administration does not want the accord more than they do, but it was an example of the negotiating gamesmanship that has taken over the talks.
Pffft!
Kerry has kept his plane warmed up.
Thanks for helping out with the greenhouse gas reductions!
Foreign ministers who came to sign an accord have returned home for other duties....
Except I was told yesterday they are returning!!
--more--"
"Stakes high for John Kerry on Iran nuclear deal; Secretary’s legacy may lie in the balance as he strives for accord" by Michael Kranish, Globe Staff April 02, 2015
WASHINGTON — “If he gets this deal, he will be a candidate for a Nobel Peace Prize,” shared with Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif of Iran, said Kenneth M. Pollack, a Brookings Institution scholar and author of the book, “Unthinkable: Iran, the Bomb, and American Strategy.”
So what? Obama has proved that prize is meaningless, and Pollack nothing more than another Zionist war promoter who was out front on Iraq and WMD. Think I don't remember?
“There’s a lot of people in Washington and elsewhere who suspect that John Kerry recognizes that. The risk is he gets a deal and it is a bad one and he is ultimately remembered for enabling Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. That would be awful.”
No problem with Israel stealing materials from the U.S. and building their own, though.
Kerry’s critics say he is being blinded by a drive for a crowning achievement and is being duped by Iran.
Danielle Pletka, senior vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, expressed concern that out of a desire for making any kind of deal, Kerry will give Iran concessions that he opposed as a 2004 presidential candidate.
Why do they always turn to WAR-PROMOTING "EXPERTS" for analysis?
**************
In the 2004 campaign, Kerry said during a debate with President George W. Bush that “Iran is moving toward nuclear weapons, and the world is more dangerous.” He also vowed that he would “lead a global effort to prevent Iran from obtaining the technology necessary to build nuclear weapons.”
2004?!!!!
World has CHANGED A LOT SINCE!
“Iran claims that its nuclear program is only to meet its domestic energy needs,” the 2004 Kerry campaign website said. “John Kerry’s proposal would call their bluff by organizing a group of states to offer Iran the nuclear fuel they need for peaceful purposes and take back the spent fuel so they cannot divert it to build a weapon. If Iran does not accept this offer, their true motivations will be clear.”
Same with AmeriKa.
Now, Pletka said, she is concerned that a deal would enable Iran to enrich uranium and keep fuel that could be used for a nuclear weapon, among other measures.
But a State Department spokeswoman, Marie E. Harf, said Kerry’s statements then are “entirely consistent with our approach to Iran today’’ and employ “peaceful means to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.’’
“These negotiations are not about Secretary Kerry’’ but are part of an effort to make the world safer, she said.
The United States and its negotiating partners — Russia, China, Germany, Britain, and France — have pressed for a variety of restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for an easing of economic sanctions. Kerry has said this provides the best chance for blocking Iran’s quick development of a nuclear weapon, while critics say it does not go nearly far enough.
Kerry is a longtime proponent of using economic sanctions to achieve goals that otherwise might require military force. He has long shown a willingness to compartmentalize issues when he views it in the US interest, which is why he is willing to negotiate with a country that has been an adversary of the United States and Israel, and with which the United States has no diplomatic relations.
He's even willing to talk to Assad (as the presence of ISIS in Damascus -- in Palestinian refugee camps, no less -- will require US airstrikes).
Yeah, Kerry is a real hero for the cause of peace. Just ignore administration policy and his vote to invade Iraq!
“The Iran deal represents his greatest chance for going down in history with his name next to a significant achievement, and it would be quite an achievement, a game changer in the Middle East and America’s role in the Middle East,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, a former deputy assistant secretary of state who is now an analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Look, another I.S.I.S!!
Kerry has a longstanding interest in negotiating directly with Iran. After becoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2009, Kerry talked with administration officials about going to Iran, perhaps as part of a legislative exchange. While Kerry did not end up traveling to Tehran, publicity about a possible trip signaled that he wanted to become personally involved in negotiations.
Two years later, in 2011, Kerry traveled to Oman and, in a conversation not revealed until more than a year later, told that country’s leader, Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said, that the United States wanted to open negotiations with Iran.
Then, on Sept. 26, 2013, eight months after becoming secretary of state, Kerry met in New York City with Zarif, marking the first time in decades that a US secretary of state had met with an Iranian foreign minister. Kerry, who relies on a highly personal style of diplomacy, went on to hold a series of meeting with Zarif, from Vienna to Paris to New York’s Waldorf Astoria hotel. Two months later, Kerry negotiated an interim agreement that froze parts of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for some relief from sanctions, enabling broader talks.
Last month, as the parties inched closer to a longer-term deal, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel delivered an address to Congress in opposition to a deal. Critics, including many Republicans as well as some Democrats, said Iran could not be trusted.
As the deadline for agreeing to a framework approached, Kerry on March 25 addressed a room full of US diplomats who had assembled at the State Department. He told them that he had learned more about the difficulties of diplomacy in his two years as secretary of state than in his nearly 30 years as a US senator.
His mission, he told the ambassadors, was “to have the courage to take the risk, to go to that bargaining table even when there are bitter foes of talking or willingness to try to do that. Because the alternative is conflict, the alternative is war. War is the failure of diplomacy.”
Returning later that day to the negotiations in Switzerland, Kerry found that talks were going longer than hoped, forcing him to miss Monday’s Boston dedication of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the US Senate.
See: Kennedy Cult
I'm not a member.
Instead of celebrating his former colleague’s legacy, he remained at work on building his own.
--more--"
Yes, the "Iran talks could shape his legacy even with the outcome in doubt on a deal to at least temporarily prevent a nation that has long been associated with the chant of “death to America” from obtaining nuclear weapons."
Related(?): No Foolin': Nuclear False Flag Planned For Final Four
Is that why Boehner is in Israel?
"John Boehner meets Netanyahu, is silent on Iran nuclear talks" by Jodi Rudoren, New York Times April 02, 2015
(This item was cleared by Israel's military censors)
JERUSALEM — Much ado was made in Washington and Jerusalem after the disclosure that House Speaker John Boehner would lead a congressional delegation to Israel this week. It was the Ohio Republican who had invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak to Congress, against White House wishes, about nuclear talks with Iran.
Critics said the visit to Israel, coming two weeks after Netanyahu’s electoral victory and coinciding with a deadline in the Iran negotiations, could only deepen accusations of mutual meddling in domestic politics.
Yeah, another "coincidence."
But the original deadline for the Iran talks passed without an announcement from negotiators in Switzerland, and Boehner refrained from making news.
Netanyahu and Boehner had been scheduled to make statements before cameras at noon. Instead, Netanyahu appeared alone to issue his latest attack on the nuclear negotiations.
That's because had Boehner been standing next to him at that moment it would have been an act of treason. He would have been providing support and succor for a foreign government opposing U.S. policies. That's treason!
A bit later, Boehner appeared on the podium with Netanyahu and mentioned neither the Iran talks, nor the current strained relations with the White House. He did offer comments about how “the bonds between the United States and Israel are as strong as ever.”
That's treason!!
He had led eight GOP House members to Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. They are to leave Thursday.
All getting a look at the current operations in this phase and region of WWIII.
--more--"
UPDATE: U.S. Defense Secretary: We Might Bomb Iran Even If a Peace Agreement Is Signed
Things have darkened considerably as Congre$$ shows its usual cowardice and Carter tries to drum up recruits!
