Little Ricky "Bombs" On Obama-Rama

(May be my last regular post for a little while, for what it’s worth…).

In today’s Philadelphia Inquirer, former Senator Man-On-Dog is glad to see here that the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has apparently talked tough enough for him on the matter of Iran…

But how, you might ask, can the candidate of MoveOn.org and the antiwar-forever crowd be aligned with Bush on preemptive strikes against Iran? Here's how: Last month, Obama declared, "I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon - everything."

It’s always worth a chuckle for yours truly to read Little Ricky make a snide remark about war when, in fact, all he did when “the call to service” came from this nation was to run away as fast as he could to his mansion in Virginia…

International Atomic Energy Administration director Mohamed ElBaradei said last month that if Iran expelled the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency, Iran would need six months to produce a nuclear weapon. Couple that with last week's test firing of missiles capable of delivering that weapon to Israel, and it is no wonder you have seen a rash of stories about the Israelis training for strikes against Iran.

You mean, that test firing of Iranian missiles where a fourth one was added in a photo of the launch, a true “Photoshop” special?

Yes, Iran is a threat, but to Israel, despite what John Bolton and Fox Noise tells us here. And I think it’s pretty much a safe bet that something is already in progress; I for one believe Sy Hersh when he tells us that we’re conducting operations of some type inside Iran (here).

And given the utter waste of the lives of our people, to say nothing of materiel and our overall prestige, fighting Israel’s proxy war in Iraq, I’m not inclined to do any more favors for our “ally.”

And as far as ElBaradei is concerned, he told us that Iran was “only months away from an atomic bomb” in December 2005 here, they will be conducting “mass uranium enrichment in six months” in February 2007 here, although in that same month, he told us a bomb was “ten years away” here.

This man truly needs to get his story straight.

And Obama is now like Bush on nukes, according to Little “Eye of Mordor” Ricky? Please. Obama wants to strengthen the non-proliferation treaty (NPT), while Dubya continually ignores it, as he did in his nuke deal with India.

But as noted here, the India deal is up in the air anyway; maybe it would have faced smoother sailing if India had signed off on the NPT first (not automatically blaming them, but maybe we should have had more negotiations to settle on that)…

...the legislation passed in 2006 -- the so-called Hyde Act -- that gave preliminary approval to the U.S.-India agreement, requires that Congress be in 30 days of continuous session to consider it. Congressional aides said that clock can begin to tick only once India clears two more hurdles -- completing an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and securing approval from the 45 nations that form the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which governs trade in reactors and uranium. Because of the long August recess, less than 40 days are left in the session before Congress adjourns on Sept. 26.

"At this point, both [the IAEA and NSG actions] have to take place in the next couple of weeks" for the deal to be considered by Congress, said Lynne Weil, spokeswoman for the House Foreign Affairs Committee. But the IAEA Board of Governors is not expected to take up the matter until August, whereas the NSG may take several months to reach a consensus.

And this prior post gives you an insight into the restrictive terms of the Hyde Act, which actually encourages India to deal with other “nuke” nations, including Iran.

And on an somewhat related note (as long as we’re talking about the Inquirer), I happened to come across this survey of the Top 30 Newspaper web sites from Editor and Publisher yesterday, and I wanted to see how the paper was faring seeing as how they'd been “treading water” at an average of one percent increases in site traffic over their last two surveys, which is statistically insignificant.

Well, even though 80 percent of the top 30 sites from their survey showed an increase in traffic…why, call me crazy, but I’m looking down this list for philly.com and (gulp), it looks like you guys completely fell off the survey!

C’est dommage!

Well, if I may make a suggestion or two to get back on the list, let me put forward the idea once again to offer content from actual progressive writers from time to time, such as David Sirota or Gene Lyons (many others you could choose from, but those are two names that come to mind). At least the Daily News has Will Bunch (the trolls at Attytood are truly obnoxious) and the occasional appearance of Cliff Schecter as well.

Also, maybe someone navigating to your site from elsewhere in the world doesn’t care about Larry Mendte’s firing over alleged snooping into Alycia Lane’s Emails (if you don’t know who they are, then you’re probably in the group of people I’m talking about). And it would be nice not to have to do so much navigation to obtain such a paucity of national and international news (though Signs on San Diego, for example, makes you navigate all the way to the bottom of the main site page, at least it only takes one click to get the news once you get there).

But then again, if you want to conceive a business model that ultimately leads to your extinction, that’s your choice.