Group items tagged

“We’ve exhausted our coping mechanisms,” said Alan Krueger, an economics professor at Princeton University in New Jersey and former chairman of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. “They weren’t sustainable.” The result has been a downsizing of expectations. By almost two to one — 64 percent to 33 percent — Americans say the U.S. no longer offers everyone an equal chance to get ahead, according to the latest Bloomberg National Poll. The lack of faith is especially pronounced among those making less than $50,000 a year, with close to three-quarters in the Dec. 6-9 survey saying the economy is unfair.

The diminished expectations have implications for the economy. Workers are clinging to their jobs as prospects fade for higher-paying employment. Households are socking away more money and charging less on credit cards. And young adults are living with their parents longer rather than venturing out on their own. In the meantime, record-high stock prices are enriching wealthier Americans, exacerbating polarization and bringing income inequality to the political forefront. Even independent government agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve have been dragged into the debate.

“The basic bargain at the heart of our economy has frayed,” Obama said in a Dec. 4 speech in Washington. “This is the defining challenge of our time: Making sure our economy works for every working American.” Democratic lawmakers also intend to press next year for a higher minimum wage to tackle the yawning gap between rich and poor, Durbin said. Republicans aren’t ceding the issue. “The American dream is certainly more in doubt than in decades,” House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio said in response to Obama’s speech. “But after more than five years in office, the president has no one to blame but himself.”

A recent article written by this writer for Global Research posted last Saturday – “The Benghazi Scandal Is Obama’s Watergate But Worse” – was written in an effort to seek and uncover the truth. Accurate reporting on major world events is a challenge in today’s world where propaganda and disinformation are mainstream media norms and where virtually all major players in American politics simply lie through their teeth every time they open their mouths in constant effort to look good and cover up the truth. The American public knows this pathetic and sobering fact that deception has come to rule in the world of both politics and the media. People today neither believe their newscasters nor their political leaders. That is why examining the content of the tidal wave of assertions and opinions spewing forth from politicians and pundits in the aftermath of the latest Benghazi revelations must be taken with a grain of salt. Again, truth in today’s world is hard to come by. But as an investigative reporter, presenting a brief overview of recent comments and statements for any informed citizen to process and digest seems a worthwhile and important enterprise.

A timeline of recently unfolding events: On 10/12/12 exactly one month after the Benghazi incident, the legal conservative group Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking documents related to the Benghazi attack on September 11th, 2012 that killed the US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. Obama, who had campaigned on a promise of transparency in the criminal wake of the Bush regime, has proven to be anything but open and transparent. Having to sue the US government for access to the records, on April 18th, 2014, a full year and a half later, the Obama administration’s stonewalling ultimately failed and Judicial Watch successfully got hold of 41 State Department Benghazi related documents. Emails between high level White House officials discussing damage control strategies in the immediate aftermath of the Benghazi assault were released last week. Jubilant Republicans are now calling one of those emails their “smoking gun,” believing it is so incriminating that it will do in their would-be opponent Hillary Clinton from potentially competing in the 2016 presidential election.

The newly declassified email written by Obama’s then Deputy Strategic Communications Adviser Ben Rhodes specifically directed then UN Ambassador Susan Rice in preparation for her Sunday morning talk show appearances on September 16th, 2012 to explain the administration’s take on what it knew of the Benghazi murders. Rhodes advised Rice to attribute the Benghazi uprising as “rooted in an Internet video, and not a failure of policy,” pushing talking points designed to bolster Obama’s presidential image as a cool-as-a-cucumber-under-fire kind of wise and benevolent leader and statesman. The major emphasis of the email instructed Rice to blame the bogus anti-Moslem video as inciting a spontaneous protest like in other countries in the region that apparently grew violently out of control, of course all the while knowing that that was a boldface lie. This crucial piece of evidence proves that President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both knew that the video did not cause the attack but that they chose to willfully deceive the American public in order to protect their own political careers and hence was born the infamously never ending Benghazi cover-up. Obama and Hillary withheld this damning email evidence even from the House Oversight Committee led by Congressman Darrel Issa (R-CA) requesting all documents pertaining to Benghazi more than a year ago. With the presidential election less than two months away at the time of the attack, Obama and Hillary were determined at all cost to keep hidden from Americans the real truth of criminal Benghazi activity they were guilty of engaging in during the months leading up to the attack. Last Thursday an angry Issa subpoenaed current Secretary of State John Kerry to appear before the committee on May 21st to further explain why those critical State Department records recently given to Judicial Watch were not among the 3200 documents originally handed over to his committee well over a year ago.

House Speaker John Boehner and his cronies removed North Carolina Congressman Walter Jones from the House Financial Services Committee in late 2012, as part of a purge that removed Republicans who were not all in for Wall Street -- and for Boehner's brand of "service" to the industries that are supposed to be regulated by Congress -- from the one panel with the power to hold bankers and brokers to account. But Jones, who had opposed bank bailouts and favored Wall Street regulation, did not go quietly. He spoke up about the purge and made little secret of his sense that -- though he had split with Boehner on a number of issues -- his biggest "sin" in the eyes of the party leadership was his refusal to bow to the demands of big campaign donors. “This whole place is all about money. Money is more important than policy,” complained Jones, who has in recent years co-sponsored most major pieces of campaign-finance reform legislation in the House -- including a call for a constitutional amendment designed to restore the ability of federal, state and local officials to regulate campaign spending.

The congressman's bluntness did not go over well with the masters of the universe on Wall Street. So, this spring, they set out to purge Walter Jones from Congress altogether. They found a consummate DC insider with close ties to the financial-services industry, Taylor Griffin, and filled the challenger's campaign treasury with PAC checks from J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, as well as political powerbrokers like former Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour and Wayne Berman of the Blackstone Group. It did not stop there. Jones' independence extended far beyond debates over Wall Street bailouts and regulation. The Republican is a social and economic conservative -- make that a social and economic very conservative -- but he has repeatedly broken with the party establishment on issues of war and peace, privacy rights, trade policy and budgets. He even voted against proposals by the darling of Wall Street and the party establishment, Congressman Paul Ryan

Bush administration aides and apologists rushed in with public statements and "independent" expenditures to attack Jones for his opposition to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for his refusal to go along with moves that might lead to wars with Iran and other countries. Former Bush White House spokesman Ari Fleischer gave his enthusiastic backing to Griffin, as did former national security adviser Juan Zarate. Sarah Palin, one of the party's most consistent militarists, came in big for Griffin, who hailed her as an "old friend." A neo-conservative group, the Emergency Committee For Israel, spent at least $250,000 on ads that claimed Jones "preaches American decline." What Jones actually said was that, “Lyndon Johnson’s probably rotting in hell right now because of the Vietnam War, and he probably needs to move over for Dick Cheney.” At the same time, the wealthy champions of Ryan's crony-capitalist approach to budgeting were in with big money for TV ads and direct mail from the "Ending Spending Action Fund" -- a super PAC backed by billionaire businessman Joe Ricketts. By a lot of DC measures, Jones should have been doomed.

As lawmakers continue to spar with President Obama over his use of executive power on an Iran nuclear deal and a slew of domestic matters, most appear willing to let him have his way on at least one issue — the war against the Islamic State in Iraq, Syria and potentially beyond. It has been nearly three months since Obama, responding to congressional demands and his own pledge to seek legislative blessing, sent proposed war authorization language to Capitol Hill. Now, the subject appears to be dying a quiet death. A feisty bipartisan minority is not prepared to let it go without a fight. Thirty House lawmakers from both parties Thursday signed a letter to Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) demanding that he force action on the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, or AUMF, against the Islamic State.

If not, wrote its primary authors, Reps. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) and Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), “this shirking of our duty will have lasting effects, serving to expand the scope of executive power at the expense of Congress.” But Boehner and other GOP leaders, blaming the Democrats, have already effectively announced the demise of the AUMF. They say they see no way to bridge deep partisan disagreements over how much authority to give the president.

The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad has broken ranks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, telling U.S. officials and lawmakers that a new Iran sanctions bill in the U.S. Congress would tank the Iran nuclear negotiations. Already, the Barack Obama administration and some leading Republican senators are using the Israeli internal disagreement to undermine support for the bill, authored by Republican Mark Kirk and Democrat Robert Menendez, which would enact new sanctions if current negotiations falter. Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee  -- supported by Republican Senators Lindsay Graham and John McCain -- is pushing for his own legislation on the Iran nuclear deal, which doesn't contain sanctions but would require that the Senate vote on any pact that is agreed upon in Geneva. The White House is opposed to both the Kirk-Menendez bill and the Corker bill; it doesn't want Congress to meddle at all in the delicate multilateral diplomacy with Iran.

Israeli intelligence officials have been briefing both Obama administration officials and visiting U.S. senators about their concerns on the Kirk-Menendez bill, which would increase sanctions on Iran only if the Iranian government can't strike a deal with the so-called P5+1 countries by a June 30 deadline or fails to live up to its commitments. Meanwhile, the Israeli prime minister’s office has been supporting the Kirk-Menendez bill, as does the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, ahead of what will be a major foreign policy confrontation between the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government in coming weeks. Evidence of the Israeli rift surfaced Wednesday when Secretary of State John Kerry said that an unnamed Israeli intelligence official had said the new sanctions bill would be “like throwing a grenade into the process.” But an initial warning from Israeli Mossad leaders was also delivered last week in Israel to a Congressional delegation -- including Corker, Graham, McCain and fellow Republican John Barrasso; Democratic Senators Joe Donnelly and Tim Kaine; and independent Angus King -- according to lawmakers who were present and staff members who were briefed on the exchange. When Menendez (who was not on the trip) heard about the briefing, he quickly phoned Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer to seek clarification. Barrasso told us Tuesday that different parts of the Israeli government told the delegation different things. “We met with a number of government officials from many different parts of the government. There’s not a uniform view there,” he said.

Menendez is so livid at the administration, he decried its efforts to avert Congressional action on Iran at the hearing, telling Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken: “You know, I have to be honest with you, the more I hear from the administration in its quotes, the more it sounds like talking points that come straight out of Tehran.” Tuesday night, Obama threatened to veto the Kirk-Menendez bill if it passes Congress. Wednesday morning, House Speaker John Boehner responded by announcing that Netanyahu has accepted his invitation to address a joint session of Congress on Feb. 11, just as Congress is likely to be embroiled in a legislative fight over both bills. Boehner told fellow Republicans that he was specifically inviting Netanyahu to address the threat posed by radical Islam and Iran. Netanyahu is expected to deliver full-throated support for sanctions. The administration is upset that Netanyahu accepted Boehner’s invitation without notifying them, the latest indication of the poor relationship between the Israeli government and the White House. Two senior U.S. officials tell us that the Mossad has also shared its view with the administration that if legislation that imposed a trigger leading to future sanctions on Iran was signed into law, it would cause the talks to collapse.

The FBI is at it again. Creating fake terror plots to justify their existence. And this plot hits on all the themes one would expect from a good fake terror plot. The FBI initially found a patsy by trolling Twitter for support of ISIS. That's exciting because finding someone retarded enough to admit support for murderers is really difficult. Then they sent an in-house jihadist to team up with the patsy to plan a grand terror attack on the nation's Capitol. Heroically, the moment the 20-year-old patsy said he would "go forward with violent jihad" the FBI steps in and declares a victory in the war on terror. NBC News reports: Ohio man was arrested Wednesday and accused of planning to attack the U.S. Capitol, U.S. officials told NBC News. But the officials said the man, identified as Christopher Cornell, 20, was dealing with an undercover agent the entire time and was never in a position to carry out his plan. "There was never a danger to the public," an official told NBC News. The officials said that starting in August, Cornell began posting comments on Twitter in support of ISIS under an alias, Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah. Shortly after those posts began appearing, the FBI sent an undercover operative to meet with him.

During a meeting with the operative, court documents say, Cornell said he wanted "to go forward with violent jihad" and that Anwar al-Awlaki — the U.S.-born Muslim cleric who was killed by a U.S. drone in September 2011 and was the first U.S. citizen publicly known to have been added to the U.S. kill-or-capture list — and others had encouraged that kind of action. Seriously, Anwar al-Awlaki again? Hasn't his name become synonymous with "false flag"? He's a proven federal asset who also supposedly handled the Fort Hood Shooter, the Underwear Bomber and even the recent Paris Shooters - all incredibly shady events that served to advance the "war on terror" agenda. The FBI has incubated fake terror plots over and over: See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. Surely they'd never let an event go live, would they? What would they have to gain? Well, the only reason this story exists at all is to make the public feel that there are genuine terror threats targeting the US Capitol. That is then used to justify spying on the Internet and funding the huge terrorism-industrial complex that has nothing better to do than make up the reasons to keep giving them money. The police state is a ruthless business, and false flag terror is its most effective marketing tool. UPDATE: Surprise, the salesmen are already using this fake story to push their agenda: John Boehner Credits Government Surveillance For Uncovering Capitol Bomb Threat

Congressman Walter Jones, a Republican who represents a wide swath of eastern North Carolina, might not strike you as a populist. But as a lawmaker, the veteran politician with a slow Southern drawl has become a gadfly in his own party for thumbing his nose at powerful political interests. He is the only GOP co-sponsor of the DISCLOSE Act, a measure to reveal the donors of dark-money campaign advertisements. He is among the loudest critics of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, telling an audience one that “Lyndon Johnson’s probably rotting in hell right now because of the Vietnam War, and he probably needs to move over for Dick Cheney.” And Speaker John Boehner removed Jones from the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees Wall Street. His sin? Bucking leadership and supporting many bills to further regulate the financial sector, along with serving as the last remaining House Republican to have voted for the Dodd-Frank reform package. The Republican establishment has attempted to remove Jones from office by dispatching a number of primary challengers over the years. For this cycle, a former Bush administration aide named Taylor Griffin is the party favorite to finally wipe out Jones. Several outlets, such as Bloomberg News, have reported that Griffin’s candidacy is being heavily promoted by the financial industry. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and other banks helped fuel the $114,000 fundraising haul Griffin reported in his first campaign disclosure report. Earlier this week, a Super PAC financed in part by hedge fund titan Paul Singer went on air with a negative ad against Jones.

What hasn’t been reported, however, is that Griffin himself is a longtime political consultant for the biggest predators on Wall Street. Republic Report has obtained a disclosure report that shows that Griffin’s client list reads like a who’s who of financial interests that have preyed upon North Carolina families for short term gain.

After Pope Francis moved to recognize a Palestinian state, some gung-ho defenders of Israel suggested the pontiff should stick to preaching and stay out of politics.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), also Catholic, has invited the Pope to address Congress later this year, where the whole world will watch to see if he delivers a political message. He has, after all, not shied away from criticizing his own priests for lack of piety at a holiday mass.

Lawmakers should debate whether to authorize further military action against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant militants, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday.Pelosi said she agreed with a letter sent by Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Walter Jones (R-N.C.) that called on House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to allow a vote on whether Congress should give the White House the authority to expand airstrikes and military action against the terrorist group in Iraq.

President Barack Obama told congressional leaders he will propose terms for a measure authorizing U.S. military force against Islamic State, two top Republicans said following a White House meeting today.

A debate over efforts to defeat Islamic State would reopen tension over the president’s authority to conduct military operations and uneasiness among some lawmakers -- mostly Obama’s fellow Democrats -- about being drawn into open-ended conflicts and ground combat.

A debate over authorizing military force against Islamic State could put Republican senators considering a run for the White House in 2016 in a tricky position. Among them are Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida. Last week’s attacks in Paris, including the murder of journalists at Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper, brought the threat posed by Islamic extremists back into the spotlight.

he White House’s outrage over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to speak before Congress in March — a move he failed to coordinate with the administration — began to seep through the diplomatic cracks on Friday, with officials telling Haaretz the Israeli leader had “spat” in President Barack Obama’s face.

“We thought we’ve seen everything,” the newspaper quoted an unnamed senior US official as saying. “But Bibi managed to surprise even us.

“There are things you simply don’t do. He spat in our face publicly and that’s no way to behave. Netanyahu ought to remember that President Obama has a year and a half left to his presidency, and that there will be a price,” he said. Officials in Washington said that the “chickenshit” epithet — with which an anonymous administration official branded Netanyahu several months ago — was mild compared to the language used in the White House when news of Netanyahu’s planned speech came in. In his address the Israeli leader is expected to speak about stalled US-led nuclear negotiations with Iran, and to urge lawmakers to slap Tehran with a new round of tougher sanctions in order to force it to comply with international demands. The Mossad intelligence service on Thursday went to the rare length of issuing a press statement to deny claims, cited by Kerry, that its chief Tamir Pardo had told visiting US politicians that he opposed further sanctions.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing growing criticism in Israel for a planned speech to the U.S. Congress about Iran, accused by his political rivals of damaging ties with Washington to promote his election campaign.

By Patrick J. Buchanan

If the sadists of ISIS are seeking — with their mass executions, child rapes, immolations, and beheadings of Christians — to stampede us into a new war in the Middle East, they are succeeding. Repeatedly snapping the blood-red cape of terrorist atrocities in our faces has the Yankee bull snorting, pawing the ground, ready to charge again. "Nearly three-quarters of Republicans now favor sending ground troops into combat against the Islamic State," says a CBS News poll. The poll was cited in a New York Times story about how the voice of the hawk is ascendant again in the GOP. In April or May 2015, said a Pentagon briefer last week, the Iraqi Army will march north to recapture Mosul from the Islamic State. On to Mosul! On to Raqqa! Yet, who, exactly, will be taking Mosul?

According to Rowan Scarborough of The Washington Times, the U.S. general who trained the Iraqi army says Mosul is a mined, booby-trapped city, infested with thousands of suicide fighters. Any Iraqi army attack this spring would be "doomed." Translation: Either U.S. troops lead, or Mosul remains in ISIS' hands. Yet taking Mosul is only the beginning. Scores of thousands of troops will be needed to defeat and destroy ISIS in Syria. And eradicating ISIS is but the first of the wars Republicans have in mind. This coming week, at the invitation of Speaker John Boehner, Bibi Netanyahu will address a joint session of Congress.

Yesterday the White House took a new step toward the theater of the absurd by “declaring a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela,” as President Barack Obama put it in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner. It remains to be seen whether anyone in the White House press corps will have the courage to ask what in the world the nation’s chief executive could mean by that. Is Venezuela financing a coming terrorist attack on U.S. territory? Planning an invasion? Building a nuclear weapon? Who do they think they are kidding? Some may say that the language is just there because it is necessary under U.S. law in order to impose the latest round of sanctions on Venezuela. That is not much of a defense, telling the whole world the rule of law in the United States is something the president can use lies to get around whenever he finds it inconvenient.

Didn’t read any of this in the English-language media? Well, you probably also didn’t see the immediate reaction to yesterday’s White House blunder from the head of the Union of South American Nations, which read, “UNASUR rejects any external or internal attempt at interference that seeks to disrupt the democratic process in Venezuela.”

Washington was involved in the short-lived 2002 military coup in Venezuela; it “provided training, institution building and other support to individuals and organizations understood to be actively involved in the brief ouster” of President Hugo Chávez and his government, according to the U.S. State Department. The U.S. has not changed its policy toward Venezuela since then and has continued funding opposition groups in the country. So it is only natural that everyone familiar with this recent history, with the conflict between the U.S. and the region over the 2009 Honduran military coup and with the current sanctions will assume that Washington is involved in the ongoing efforts to topple what has been its No. 1 or 2 target for regime change for more than a decade. The Venezuelan government has produced some credible evidence of a coup in the making: the recording of a former deputy minister of the interior reading what is obviously a communique to be issued after the military deposes the elected government, the confessions of some accused military officers and a recorded phone conversation between opposition leaders acknowledging that a coup is in the works.

When House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) announced he had invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress just a few weeks ahead of an Israeli election, he was criticized for giving Netanyahu a platform to boost his campaign.The United States has a policy of not meeting with foreign leaders in advance of elections, so as not to appear to be tilting the electoral balance. But Netanyahu insisted that his motivations had nothing to do with the election, and that the timing of the speech was demanded by the urgency of the Iran nuclear negotiations. There was simply no time to waste.Already, however, Netanyahu is using his speech as a prop in a campaign commercial back in Israel, where the prime minister is shown basking in the applause of members of Congress who did not boycott his speech.

With five days left until the Israeli elections, Netanyahu launched the 80-second campaign ad above, featuring his controversial address along with footage of rockets being launched.

But now that Mr. Netanyahu has won after aggressively campaigning against a Palestinian state and Mr. Obama’s potential nuclear deal with Iran, the question is whether the president and prime minister can ever repair their relationship — and whether Mr. Obama will even try.On Wednesday, part of the answer seemed to be that the president would not make the effort. Continue reading the main story Related Coverage Win in Israel Sets Netanyahu on Path to Rebuild and Redefine GovernmentMARCH 18, 2015 Palestinian Leaders See Validation of Their Statehood EffortMARCH 18, 2015 Netanyahu Soundly Defeats Chief Rival in Israeli ElectionsMARCH 17, 2015 News Analysis: Deep Wounds and Lingering Questions After Israel’s Bitter RaceMARCH 17, 2015 In strikingly strong criticism, the White House called Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign rhetoric, in which he railed against Israeli Arabs because they went out to vote, an attempt to “marginalize Arab-Israeli citizens” and inconsistent with the values that bind Israel and the United States. The White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, told reporters traveling with Mr. Obama on Air Force One on Wednesday that Mr. Netanyahu’s statement was “deeply concerning and it is divisive and I can tell you that these are views the administration intends to communicate directly to the Israelis.”

And with Mr. Netanyahu’s last-minute turnaround against a Palestinian state alongside Israel, several administration officials said that the Obama administration may now agree to passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution embodying principles of a two-state solution that would be based on the pre-1967 lines between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip and mutually agreed swaps.Most foreign policy experts say that Israel would have to cede territory to the Palestinians in exchange for holding on to major Jewish settlement blocks in the West Bank.

Such a Security Council resolution would be anathema to Mr. Netanyahu. Although the principles are United States policy, until now officials would never have endorsed them in the United Nations because the action would have been seen as too antagonistic to Israel.Continue reading the main story “The premise of our position internationally has been to support direct negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” a senior White House official said. “We are now in a reality where the Israeli government no longer supports direct negotiations. Therefore we clearly have to factor that into our decisions going forward.”

The White House is accusing Israel of "cherry-picking" information that distorts the U.S. position in nuclear talks with Iran.“There's no question that some of the things that the Israelis have said in characterizing our negotiating position have not been accurate. There's no question about that,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said during a press briefing on Wednesday.ADVERTISEMENT"We've also been very clear about the fact that the United States is not going to be in a position of negotiating this agreement in public, particularly when we see that there is a continued practice of cherry-picking specific pieces of information and using them out of context to distort the negotiating position of the United States.”The White House spokesman said those involved in the talks are obligated to act in “good faith.”“And that means giving negotiators the room and the space to negotiate,” Earnest said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government have long expressed alarm over the talks that seek to dismantle Iran’s illicit nuclear effort in exchange for relief from economic sanctions.Netanyahu is expected to lobby against the potential deal, when he visits Washington in the coming weeks to address Congress. That invitation from Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) without the knowledge of President Obama has sparked a partisan fight, with many Democrats saying they will skip the speech.Netanyahu has warned that a nuclear-armed Iran would be an existential threat to Israel.The ongoing nuclear talks are between Iran and the P5+1 group, including the U.S., Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. The U.S. has kept Israel, a close ally, informed on developments.Earnest pushed back against reports that the administration was cutting the Israelis out of the loop on the negotiations.

"You could arguably make the case that there's no country that is not participating in the negotiations that has greater insight into what's going on at that negotiating table,” said Earnest of Israel.He added that no nation “has a clearer stake in the outcome of these negotiations.”“The United States has a clear stake in this outcome, but so does Israel,” said Earnest. “And that's why we're going to continue to consult with them about these talks.”

President Obama on Thursday took the rare step of vetoing a major defense policy bill, upping the stakes in a faceoff with Republicans over government spending.  Obama used his veto pen on the National Defense Authorization Act during a photo-op in Oval Office.  “I’m going to be vetoing this authorization bill. I’m going to be sending it back to Congress, and my message to them is very simple: Let’s do this right,” Obama said. ADVERTISEMENTIt’s highly unusual for a president to veto the defense legislation, which typically becomes law with bipartisan support. The move amounts to a public rebuke of congressional Republicans, who warned that vetoing the $612 billion measure would put the nation’s security at risk.  The veto was Obama’s third this year and the fifth of his presidency. The Defense authorization bill has been vetoed four times in the last half-decade.  

Obama argues the bill irresponsibly skirts spending caps adopted in 2011 by putting $38 billion into a war fund not subject to the limits, a move he called a "gimmick." He has called on Congress to increase both defense and nondefense spending. “Let’s have a budget that properly funds our national security as well as economic security, let’s make sure that we’re able in a constructive way to reform our military spending to make it sustainable over the long term,” Obama said.  The president also objects to language in the bill that requires the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military prison to remain open. Republican leaders expressed outrage with Obama’s decision to veto the bill, pointing out that it puts a scheduled pay raise for troops, among other policy changes, at risk. “By placing domestic politics ahead of our troops, President Obama has put America’s national security at risk,” Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a statement.  “This indefensible veto blocks pay and vital tools for our troops while Iranian terrorists prepare to gain billions under the president’s nuclear deal."  

The move forces Congress to revisit the bill and send it back to the president. The military will continue to operate under last year’s defense policy if lawmakers cannot reach an agreement.  Republicans have pledged to attempt to override Obama’s veto, but it’s unlikely they have the votes to do so.  The Senate voted 70-27 to pass the bill, and overriding the veto would require 67 votes. But Democratic leaders have said some members would switch their vote to avoid defying the president.  The House vote count, 270-156, would not be enough to override a veto, which would take 290 votes. Asked how confident the White House is Obama’s veto will be sustained, White House spokesman Eric Schultz replied: “very.”