On Presidential Promises

President's election promises are usually kept. It is true that elections are designed to mislead, but actual promises, and policy positions, are usually in line with what they do. The things progressive leftists care about, that is basic democratic objects of governance, are simply left out of media attention and/or the arena of acceptable discourse. The bulk of real, explicit promises are made to lobbyists and other groups that operate tactically to rout democratic state operations. As they are fulfilled, reporting is usually limited to professional and business magazines: "the only ones who care" according to our tightly-centralized media culture.

In Rout, Iran Agrees to Slash Domestic Energy Production

Under sanctions meant to foment unrest by causing humanitarian crisis in the state, Iran has given up key rights to its sovereign energy and technology development, reminiscent of its historical struggle to retain the value of its oil resources, a struggle primarily waged against many of the same Western powers who sought to maximize profit exports and provided far more profit-sharing to monarchist states in the region, which were treated by these powers as more legitimate than Iranian democratic representation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/15/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-deal-is-reached-after-long-negotiations.html

The "sober" criticism is that Iran needs to "repent." Will US and UK repent on what they actually did to Iran? Jim Webb has repeated this obscenity. It's reported uncritically. So, too, are the "concerns" of gangsters like Netanyahu, who runs a vandal state which has undeclared nuclear arms and has NOT signed the NNPT (Iran has & follows the treaty, which is why it hasn't been invoked - they live up to their obligations).

Meanwhile, the US has shuttered its SMART obligations under Obama and has built newer, more ranged/accurate nuclear arms. Russia (much like in Ukraine, Georgia) has been late to the game - they recently announced plans to follow suit, and upgrade their arms. Perhaps we will be lucky enough to have a Kennedy brinkmanship 2.0 as our current and future administrations ratchet up the deadly game of arms races, arming monarchies and starving republics, and bankrolling ethnic cleansing.