GOP Attack Ad: Voting For Rand Paul Is Voting To Nuke American Families

Via Mediaite:

A new ad from former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton‘s Foundation for American Security and Freedom warns that if you vote for Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul, a cute suburban American family will be annihilated by a nuclear explosion. The ad is totally not a ripoff of a 1964 Lyndon B. Johnson campaign ad claiming that if Americans voted for Barry Goldwater, a little girl would be annihilated in a nuclear explosion.

LIVE VIDEO: Obama Defends Iran Deal

"President Obama delivers remarks on Wednesday about the Iran nuclear deal at American University, where President John F. Kennedy delivered a speech in 1963 on nuclear diplomacy."

UPDATE: I've replaced the live-stream with a recap.

Celebs Shill For Obama's Iran Deal

Cameo by Queen Noor of Jordan. Teabaggers are pouring into the comments at YouTube.

(Tipped by JMG reader David)

Obama Slams Huckabee And Trump

Jewish Groups Denounce Huckabee

Jewish groups have denounced Mike Huckabee after he made the above comment in an interview with Breitbart. MSNBC reports:

“Whatever one’s views of the nuclear agreement with Iran – and we have been critical of it, noting that there are serious unanswered questions that need to be addressed – comments such as those by Mike Huckabee suggesting the president is leading Israel to another Holocaust are completely out of line and unacceptable,” said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, in a statement.“To hear Mr. Huckabee invoke the Holocaust when America is Israel’s greatest ally and when Israel is a strong nation capable of defending itself is disheartening,” Greenblatt added. The National Jewish Democratic Council called on others in the Party to denounce Huckabee’s remarks, saying they “may be the most inexcusable we’ve encountered in recent memory.” “To state that President Obama is leading Israelis ‘to the door of the oven’ is not only disgustingly offensive to the President and the White House, but shows utter, callous disregard for the millions of lives lost in the Shoah and to the pain still felt by their descendants today,” the organization stated.

Huckabee has doubled-down on his comments in several follow-up tweets.

NEW YORK CITY: Thousands Rally In Times Square Against Iran Nuclear Deal

The Jerusalem Post reports:

An estimated 10,000 people turned out at New York's landmark Times Square on Wednesday in protest over the Iran nuclear deal signed last week. They urged the US Congress to reject the agreement brokered in Vienna to rein in Tehran's atomic program. Speakers at Wednesday's rally included New York's former governor George Pataki, Jerusalem Post senior contributing editor Caroline Glick, former Manhattan district attorney Robert M. Morgenthau, former congressman Allen West and Steven Emerson, founder of the Investigative Project on Terrorism. Pataki addressed the crowd, saying that "this isn't a bad deal, it's a God-awful deal, it must be rejected. Congress must do its job and stand up for the American people, stand up for our safety and say 'no' to this Iranian deal." Claiming that "we know what the outcome of this deal will be," Glick said that "our responsibility as free men and women is to stand up and ensure the security and continuity and strength and morality of the United States of America."

Cruz: Iran Is Getting Everything It Wants

The Iran Deal Explained With Legos

"The 109-page Iran deal is filled with complicated details about how the Persian nation must limit its stockpiles of uranium and plutonium in order to secure sanction relief from the west. We explain it in 60 seconds, using Legos."

LCR Slams Kerry On Iran Deal

The Log Cabin Republicans today published the above message in a full-page ad in Roll Call. Via press release:

“It is absolutely appalling that the negotiations taking place right now between the United States and the Iranian government have avoided any serious discussion of the horrendous human rights abuses taking place in Iran,” Log Cabin Republicans National Executive Gregory T. Angelo stated. “Given the reluctance of Democratic gay rights activists to ever level any criticism whatsoever against the Obama administration, and the absence of the brutal treatment of gays as well as women and Jews from United States diplomacy in this matter, it was incumbent upon Log Cabin Republicans to draw attention to this important issue. The deadline for a deal is looming, but it is not too late; Secretary Kerry can still make human rights an important part of these highly consequential negotiations. Anything that does not is a bad deal.”

Ted Cruz Defends Letter To Iran

Via Talking Points Memo:

"I guess the question I have first is, was the intention of the letter to get in the way of a negotiations as it is proved to?" Brzezinski asked Cruz. "Look, the intention of the letter was two things. Number one, to defend our national security. I think this deal that is being negotiated by the Obama administration is profoundly dangerous," he said. Brzezinski interrupted: "So it was intended to get in the way of the deal?" "It was intended to stop a bad deal," he shot back. "Absolutely." The two went back and forth as Brzezinski repeatedly brought Cruz back to the results the letter was having on the nuclear talks. "To interfere with a negotiation with Iran and to actually possibly even undermine a deal in the making? Basically the next step to that is to just get right down the road to war," she said.

Russia Declares Right To Deploy Nukes In Crimea (And Maybe Has Already)

Via the Independent:

Russia has said that it has the right to deploy nuclear weapons to Crimea, a year after Vladimir Putin seized the territory from Ukraine following a referendum. Home to the strategic Black Sea port city of Sevastopol, which already housed Russia’s fleet before the Ukrainian crisis erupted at the start of 2014, Crimea is significantly nearer central Europe than any nuclear base Russia is thought to control. “I don't know if there are nuclear weapons there now,” a Russian foreign ministry official told the Interfax news agency on Wednesday.

“I don't know about any plans, but in principle Russia can do it,” said Mikhail Ulyanov, who is the head of the ministry's department on arms control. The comments come at a highly sensitive time for international relations around the Black Sea, after Nato members Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey joined four other alliance states in a multinational naval exercise there on Tuesday. The US, Canada, Germany and Italy also took part in the military drills, including an American flagship, the guided missile cruiser USS Vicksburg. And it comes as Russia becomes increasingly bold in stating the details of how it took Crimea, an act still deemed illegal by most international bodies.

Not at all scary.

Today's New York Daily News

Via Talking Point Memo:

The New York Daily News on Tuesday used its front page to condemn Republican senators for signing an open letter to Iran warning that a potential nuclear deal could be null once President Barack Obama is out of office. The tabloid's front page prominently featured Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Rand Paul (R-KY). It also branded the 47 senators who signed the letter as "traitors" who tried to "sabotage" the President's nuclear negotiations.

Twitchy is very upset about this.

UPDATE: JMG reader Chris sends us an interesting post from The Week:

The next time Republicans in the Senate try to explain treaties and the U.S. Constitution to Iranian officials, they may want to pick someone other than a foreign minister with a masters and PhD in international relations from the University of Denver, plus two degrees from San Francisco State University. Javad Zarif, who is also Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, responded to a letter from Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and 46 other GOP senators with an explainer of his own. Not only are the senators shaky on their own Constitution's separation of powers, Zarif wrote, according to Iran's Tasnim News Agency, but "the authors may not fully understand that in international law, governments represent the entirety of their respective states, are responsible for the conduct of foreign affairs, are required to fulfill the obligations they undertake with other states, and may not invoke their internal law as justification for failure to perform their international obligations." That's important, Zarif added, because "the conduct of inter-state relations is governed by international law, and not by U.S. domestic law."

Doomsday Clock Advances Two Minutes

Via USA Today:

Citing unchecked climate change and the ongoing threat of nuclear weapons, scientists Thursday moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to midnight. "It is now three minutes to midnight," said Kennette Benedict, the executive director and publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at a news conference in Washington, D.C. "The probability of global catastrophe is very high. This is about the end of civilization as we know it." Three minutes is the closest to midnight the clock has been since 1984 during the Cold War. The closest it has ever been to midnight — two minutes— was in 1953, when the hydrogen bomb was first tested. The closer to a setting of midnight it gets, the closer it's estimated that a global disaster will occur. "In 2015, unchecked climate change, global nuclear weapons modernizations and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity," the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said in a statement.

Back when I was in middle school, my history teacher had us construct a paper Doomsday Clock which was posted to the bulletin board and referred to often in the months following the Yom Kippur War, which the teacher convinced us was the start of it all. The inevitability of nuclear armageddon was further drilled into our nightmares via showings of Fail-Safe and Panic In The Year Zero. And to bring the doomsday specter very close to home, several weeks of ninth grade were devoted to out-loud readings of chapters from the Orlando area-based nuclear war novel Alas, Babylon. Those readings were done by the American literature teacher and viewed over the school's closed-circuit television system in multiple classrooms. Not incidentally, she was married to the history teacher.

Headline Of The Day

Well, this a little unnerving:

New Yorkers got a chilling wake up call Tuesday about just how badly terrorists want to strike the city. The warning came straight from the top: President Obama. During a news conference in the Europe, Obama said he’s far more worried about the possibility of a nuclear weapon exploding in New York City than he is about the threat posed by Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. He spoke dismissively of Russia as “a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors, not out of strength, but out of weakness.” “Russia’s actions are a problem. They don’t pose the No. 1 national security threat to the United States,” Obama said in The Hague, Netherlands. “I continue to be much more concerned when it comes to our security with the prospect of a nuclear weapon going off in Manhattan.”

Even a nuclear bomb wouldn't shut up Donald Trump.

ISRAEL: Teabaggers Meet Privately With Netanyahu Over Nuclear Accord With Iran

The Christian Post reports:

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins led seven members of Congress known for their strong ties to evangelical Christians on a nine-day swing through Israel's Holy Land earlier this month, touring the country's most important religious sites and meeting with top-level Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The trip, sponsored by the U.S. Israel Education Association with grants from several Christian and Jewish organizations, included Congressmen Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Mike McIntyre (D-N.C.), Ted Poe (R-Texas) and Steve Scalise (R-La.). "Mr. Netanyahu, who was delayed in joining our group because he had been on the phone with President Obama, called the agreement a 'historic mistake' and we agree. The Israeli government does not feel western solutions are the right solutions for Middle Eastern Solutions," Perkins said, in reference to lifting sanctions on Iran. The Prime Minister said Israel would not be bound by the six-month agreement made between Tehran and the U.S., also criticizing the Obama administration from keeping the negotiations a secret, even from America's closest allies.

Perkins says that the United States only signed on to the deal because President Obama hopes to pass the problem along to his successor.

Netanyahu Slams Iran Accord

He goes on for another six tweets.

Quote Of The Day - Ben Shapiro

"The Iran deal marks the second brokered deal within six months that leaves brutal anti-Western regimes seeking weapons of mass destruction better off than they would otherwise have been. The approach of the Obama administration in the Middle East seems to be one of making parchment agreements without any real verification or enforcement mechanisms. Each agreement puts Israel in a worse position. And while the world press announces triumphantly that the Obama administration is achieving peace in our time, the world grows closer and closer to the world’s worst regimes armed with the world’s most dangerous weapons – all presided over by a weak-kneed White House intent on minimizing American influence around the globe." - Ben Shapiro, writing for Breitbart, where some commenters are welcoming the coming global thermonuclear war now guaranteed by Obama. Because Jesus.

GENEVA: International Accord Reached With Iran To Halt Nuclear Program

Big news out of Switzerland tonight. The United States, France, Germany, China, Russia, Great Britain, and the European Union have brokered a deal with Iran on its nuclear program. Via New York Times:

The United States and five other world powers announced a landmark accord Sunday morning that would temporarily freeze Iran’s nuclear program and lay the foundation for a more sweeping agreement. It was the first time in nearly a decade of talks, American officials said, that an international agreement had been reached to halt much of Iran’s nuclear program and roll some elements of it back.

According to the agreement, Iran would agree to stop enriching uranium beyond 5 percent. To make good on that pledge, Iran would dismantle links between networks of centrifuges. All of Iran’s stockpile of uranium that has been enriched to 20 percent, a short hop to weapons-grade fuel, would be diluted or converted into oxide so that it could not be readily used for military purposes. No new centrifuges, neither old models nor newer more efficient ones, could be installed.

Centrifuges that have been installed but which are not currently operating could not be started up. The agreement, however, would not require Iran to stop enriching uranium to a level of 3.5 percent or dismantle any of its existing centrifuges. The accord was a disappointment for Israel, which urged the United States to pursue a stronger agreement that would lead to a complete end to Iran’s enrichment program. But Iran made it clear that continuing enrichment was a prerequisite for any agreement.

The president spoke about the deal late last night.

Allen West: It's Time To Nuke Iran

Sample response from one of his followers: "It should have been turned into a glass parking lot years ago."

Quote Of The Day - Sheldon Adelson

"You pick up your cell phone and you call somewhere in Nebraska and you say, ‘OK let it go.’ So there’s an atomic weapon, goes over, ballistic missiles, the middle of the desert, that doesn’t hurt a soul. Maybe a couple of rattlesnakes, and scorpions, or whatever. And then you say, ‘See! The next one is in the middle of Tehran.'" - Billionaire GOP money man Sheldon Adelson, explaining his diplomacy strategy for Iran to Yeshiva University students.