In yet further proof that Donald Trump should be removed from the White House as fast as humanly possible, the president tweeted that Iran "just test-fired a Ballistic Missile capable of reaching Israel,” when in fact they did nothing of the sort. Reported The Daily Beast: ...read more
Of all the dumb shit that's being said about the $400 million "ransom" that isn't a ransom.perhaps none is dumber, shittier, or more irritating than this dumb shit: Let's just hold on a second. President Obama and his staff briefed the entire world about the $400 million payment ...read more
On Sunday morning, President Obama talked about the release of prisoners from Iran, the 10 sailors detained by Iran last week, and the implementation of the nuclear deal. The President extolled the virtue of diplomacy over war. particularly with regard to the sailors who ...read more
Among the chief arguments against President Obama's historic nuclear deal with Iran was an emotional appeal by Republicans who insisted that the release of American prisoners being held in Iran should have been a deal-breaker. They put a lot of eggs in that basket, and on ...read more
You have to give it to Sarah Palin -- the woman does not rest up. Her Facebook page is a goldmine of breathless idiocy, and she appears more determined than ever to satiate her fans' thirst for moronic political analysis. In this week's installment of "what dumb thing did Sarah ...read more
Predictably, Sith Lord and former Vice President Dick Cheney opposes the Iran nuclear deal. Why? Because Dick Cheney wants to go to war with Iran as part of his unfinished masterplan to turn the Middle East into a giant strip mall for the benefit of US corporations. It went ...read more
President Obama is currently vacationing on Martha's Vineyard, but his administration is hard at work pushing for the 34 votes it needs to sustain the hard-earned Iran nuclear deal. To that end, whatever genius is running the official @TheIranDeal Twitter account thought it ...read more
According to certain Republicans, the fact that it snows sometimes in America means global warming must be a liberal conspiracy. Yet global temperatures keep rising, on chart to make half the planet uninhabitable for humans in the not to distant future while helping eradicate ...read more
On July 14th 2015, TV screens and radio stations in the United States and around the world broadcasted President Obama's fourteen minute statement regarding the Iran nuclear deal. He talked about new beginnings, verification and the stripped capacities of Iran's nuclear program ...read more
If there was one person on the planet no one should ever listen to when it comes to US foreign policy it would almost certainly be Dick Cheney. The former Vice President's major achievement in his 33 year political career was the utter decimation of Iraq - a cause he had ...read more
In March of this year, a petition was sent to the White House signed by over 320,000 people in protest of the Republicans who sent a letter to the Iranian government in order to undermine official negotiations over nuclear disarmament. The petition stated: On March 9th, 2015, ...read more
The Huffington Post ran a story the other day about the tentative and tenuous nature of the Iran negotiations and its political implications at home and abroad. The article put the prospects for a deal at 50/50. The main thrust of the arguments in the piece focused on the ...read more
The big news on Tuesday, notwithstanding the odd Scooby Van sighting, was the White House's decision to lift its veto threat on a Senate bill designed to provide oversight on the delicately-proceeding Iran nuclear deal. At Tuesday's White House briefing, Press Secretary Josh ...read more
Over the weekend, President Obama blasted Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and other Republicans over their treacherous attempts to derail the Iran nuclear deal, singling McCain out over his apparent willingness to trust the Iranian supreme leader over his Vietnam brother and American ...read more
President Obama seems to have completely lost patience with Republican efforts to sabotage the nascent Iran nuclear deal, judging by his remarks Saturday evening. During a press conference to conclude the Summit of the Americas, at which he met with Cuban President Raul Castro ...read more
It's a little soon for an end zone dance, but President Obama took a big step toward another huge political win for his supposed lame duck second term this week, announcing the framework for a deal to restrict Iran's ability to pursue a nuclear weapon. The negotiations bled past ...read more
Remember when ISIS was the terrifying Islamic Godzilla (or as Fox News calls it, "Allah-zilla") that was going to kill us all? Ever since the specter of Hillary Clinton's email reared its Republic-threatening head, you hardly ever hear about them anymore, but they're still out ...read more
We've covered Benjamin Netanyahu's horrendously ill judged speech before Congress a fair bit here at the Banter, discussing the political implications of the speech and 'Bibi's' serial lies about the threat Iran poses to the Middle East and the rest of the world. A more ...read more
It might seem like Hillary Clinton's emails are the biggest story in the world right now, but prior to this week, there was an even greater threat to humanity than a MacGyvered-up Hotmail account, and it was called ISIS. This week, Iraqi forces have been conducting an assault on ...read more
This speech wasn’t Bibi Netanyahu’s fault. It was Speaker John Boehner’s idea to set up the Israeli prime minister’s address to Congress in retaliation for President Obama’s refusing to strengthen sanctions on Iran. If anything, Netanyahu’s visit says more about the dysfunction ...read more
On the eve of his big speech before Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed AIPAC on Monday, and again outlined his skepticism about the Iranian nuclear talks. President Obama downplayed the tensions in an interview with Reuters, saying that while the ...read more
With Republicans rallying around the man they hope will be the third American president from the Bush family, Republicans are opening up exciting new possibilities for regime change the world over. Jeb, like his brother George, is a man who goes by his gut and isn't afraid to ...read more
Benjamin Netanyahu will speak before a joint session of Congress next week after being invited by House Speaker John Boehner. Netanyahu will use the occasion to bang the drums for a confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program and shame the Obama administration for ...read more
Not long ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu probably thought he was pretty clever. He'd reached a secret deal with Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner to address Congress in March, intended to push moderate representatives and senators into passing more ...read more
Today is a very special day, made even more special by current events. Just yesterday, Secretary of State John Kerry announced a seven-month extension of negotiations with Iran over their nuclear program, while under pressure from Congress to ramp up sanctions on the Iranian ...read more
When it was reported last week that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had told U.S. officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry "not to ever second guess me again" regarding Hamas and ceasefire talks, even those aware of the sycophantic nature of U.S. policy ...read more
On Monday the White House announced the deployment of 275 American soldiers to Iraq to protect the American embassy in Baghdad, a city currently in the crosshairs of the militant group, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). That group, which was repudiated by al Qaeda in ...read more
Amid the atrocities taking place in Iraq at the hands of jihadis operating as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), three opinions about the region have been vindicated: 1) Given the instability of the Middle East, perhaps Iraq was better off under the control of a ...read more
by Nina Ippolito On Tuesday, Tehran police chief Hossein Sajedinia caused an uproar when he disclosed that he had arrested six young Iranians for the unforgivable crime of — fair warning, sensitive readers may want to stop here — making a bland YouTube video in which they dance ...read more
On Friday, President Obama signed a law that would block Hamid Aboutalebi from entering the U.S, as Iran's ambassador to the United Nations. Shockingly, Fox News journalist Megyn Kelly told a huge lie of omission (several, really) when she reported on the President's signing ...read more
Last Friday I went on Thom Hartmann's show 'The Big Picture Rumble' to debate the Senate Republicans playing politics with veterans' benefits, the British & U.S. intelligence agency scandal regarding 'Optic Nerve', and how Verizon's CEO wants to charge people based on how much ...read more
Happy Wednesday. Hope you're not caught in a polar vortex. Here's what's happening on the interweb: 1. Republicans Drag Senate To A Halt To Force A Vote On Iran Sanctions Senate Republicans are dragging the upper chamber to a halt in an effort to force a vote on a bill that ...read more
"Don’t you think it’s a little curious? Some of my friends were talking over the weekend, isn’t that curious timing? Out of nowhere, you know, in the midst of Obamacare not unrolling correctly, the president’s poll numbers never been lower then, look, John Kerry pulls a rabbit ...read more
You might've noticed that I've been off the Glenn Greenwald / Edward Snowden beat for a while. Call me crazy, but healthcare and the conga-line of lies being told about the Affordable Care Act are just a smigde more important than metadata and Australia spying on Indonesia. Wow. ...read more
The saying goes, "Once is an event, twice is a coincidence and three times is a pattern." So it goes with the Obama administration's major foreign policy trophies. The historic accord with Iran, freezing the so-called "axis of evil" nation's development of nuclear weapons, while ...read more
Good morning, gerbils. It's back to the wheel with you on this oh-so-glorious Monday. Here's some reading material to get you back into the swing of things. 1. Let's Make a Deal Obviously the big story of the weekend was the historic nuclear deal with Iran that took place in ...read more
The outcome of the deal between the US and Iran over the weekend has been called 'historic', and the most significant agreement between Washington and Tehran "since the 1979 Iranian revolution". In a hotel in Geneva after the third round of intensive talks between US Secretary ...read more
I'll make this quick. John Cornyn is a fucking idiot. As some of you may already know by now, the ink was barely dry on last night's historic deal to curb Iran's nuclear program when Cornyn -- or whoever's tasked with being neural-linked to his aging brain and spitting out ...read more
The White House has announced an historic deal with Iran regarding its nuclear program. The deal would freeze the nation's nuclear program and, according to officials, would permit inspections inside the so-called "axis of evil" nation. In exchange, the United States would relax ...read more
By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett As New York prepares for the annual opening of the United Nations General Assembly, the volume of Western media speculation about the prospects for a U.S.-Iranian diplomatic breakthrough has mounted to impressive levels. Predictably, ...read more
By Sebastian Rotella, ProPublica Last year, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited his ally President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, where the firebrand leaders unleashed defiant rhetoric at the United States. There was a quieter aspect to Ahmadinejad's visit in January ...read more
Amazingly, Sen. John McCain wasn't always as gung ho about sending Americans off to fight in foreign lands as he is today. In September 1983, Senator McCain voted against President Reagan’s decision to put American troops in Lebanon as part of a multinational peacekeeping ...read more
By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett The controversy over Iran’s nuclear activities has at least as much to do with the future of international order as it does with nonproliferation. For this reason, all of the BRICS countries [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South ...read more
David Albright, former weapons inspector and founder of the Institute for Science and International Security. By Robert Parry The neocon-flagship Washington Post and its investigative reporter Joby Warrick are at it again, hyping an account about Iran’s nuclear program pushed ...read more
President Richard Nixon meets with Chinese leader Mao Zedong in Beijing, Feb. 21, 1972. By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett The Obama administration will be making a big mistake if it interprets Iran’s insistence that the U.S. not “point a gun” at it as a rejection of ...read more
This is probably not the best line of attack from the Republicans on Susan Rice. From Buzzfeed: Republicans aimed criticism at U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice Thursday for having modest stakes in companies that did business with Iran. And while the revelation has driven new ...read more
The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From TPM: Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal on Wednesday praised Egypt for its role in brokering a cease-fire with Israel and thanked Iran for supplying his organization's militants with arms during the eight-day conflict. Meshaal asserted ...read more
By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett: As President Obama signaled renewed interest last week in a “diplomatic resolution to the problem” with Iran, liberal advocates of soft regime change are again coming out of the woodwork to profess their support for engaging Tehran. ...read more
A supply helicopter approaches Forward Operating Base Salerno in Afghanistan’s Khowst province on Nov. 5, 2012. (Photo credit: U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Abram Pinnington) By Paul R. Pillar: After a campaign and election in which, at least as much as in most other election ...read more
The US military is now taking Israel's increasingly belligerent rhetoric against Iran more seriously and is directly warning it not to take any action. The delicate and volatile situation puts the United State's interests in the area in jeopardy and it is now calculating that ...read more
