Office of the Independent Blogger

I like to mix politics, humor and baseball here, with the last one appearing a little less often but soon it’ll be around a little more (more on that later, though). Today, we have an excerpt from the new edition of Game of Shadows about Barry Bonds, steroids and baseball, and I’d like to share a paragraph that stood out.

An encounter with President Bush also encouraged us to believe that the government wouldn’t press on with the leak probe. We had met the president on April 30, 2005, at a private reception before the White House correspondents dinner at the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C. Bush seemed familiar with our work. “You’ve done a service,” the president told us. Then, for a few minutes, we discussed baseball and steroids and the congressional steroid hearings, which had recently concluded. Bush was dismayed by Mark McGwire’s embarrassing refusal to answer questions about whether he had used banned drugs, describing Big Mac’s testimony as, “Sad, sad, very sad.” Rafael Palmeiro’s defiant, unequivocal denials had impressed the president: Palmeiro had played on the Texas Rangers when Bush had owned the team, and the president obviously hoped Palmeiro was telling the truth. Bush mentioned the BALCO stories again as the conversation came to an end. “You’ve done a service,” he repeated.

Now, George W. Bush is a man who has been said by Jose Canseco — the Honorable Rat, as I like to call him (with help coining the nick from a former friend) — to have known and supported his friends who were doing steroids on the Texas Rangers when he owned the team. It doesn’t surprise me that he’d have that position, whatever he may say to the contrary today, and it makes me wonder if there’s anything he doesn’t lie about.

Not the War Plan; not Valentine’s Day poetry; not even his true feelings on steroids in baseball.

Babe Ruth must be barfing up hotdogs in his grave. And I’ll bet George Washington is having a fit.

On a grave note: Dick Cheney was nearly killed today, just barely surviving an assassination attempt by explosion. Can’t say I feel bad for him — the country might just be better off if he were to die, although that would’ve been more true years ago before the damage was done.

But, at least, it spares us the Condi Rice Vice Presidency and even more bogus rumors that she’ll run for President in a Party that would never tolerate it.

To buzzness! Where have you gone, Joe DiBeegio? Our flowers turn their lonely buds to you.

David Bradshaw has endured countless stings during his life as a beekeeper, but he got the shock of his career when he opened his boxes last month and found half of his 100 million bees missing. In 24 states throughout the country, beekeepers have gone through similar shocks as their bees have been disappearing inexplicably at an alarming rate, threatening not only their livelihoods but also the production of numerous crops, including California almonds, one of the nation’s most profitable.

“I have never seen anything like it,” Mr. Bradshaw, 50, said from an almond orchard here beginning to bloom. “Box after box after box are just empty. There’s nobody home.” The sudden mysterious losses are highlighting the critical link that honeybees play in the long chain that gets fruit and vegetables to supermarkets and dinner tables across the country. Beekeepers have fought regional bee crises before, but this is the first national affliction.

Now, in a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie, bees are flying off in search of pollen and nectar and simply never returning to their colonies. And nobody knows why. Researchers say the bees are presumably dying in the fields, perhaps becoming exhausted or simply disoriented and eventually falling victim to the cold. As researchers scramble to find answers to the syndrome they have decided to call “colony collapse disorder,” growers are becoming openly nervous about the capability of the commercial bee industry to meet the growing demand for bees to pollinate dozens of crops, from almonds to avocados to kiwis.

What with one part of the Killer B’s likely retiring this year, and this apparent honeybee shortage, I’m afraid for those whose noise is Buzz. Although I must admit, it’s a scarier prospect for the economic implications it may have, but I believe that the American Economy can survive this.

I just hope the bumblebees come home safe and sound and have homes to come home to unlike — you guessed it: segway! — record numbers of Americans who are now in extreme poverty.

The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, millions of working Americans are falling closer to the poverty line and the gulf between the nation’s “haves” and “have-nots” continues to widen. A McClatchy Newspapers analysis of 2005 census figures, the latest available, found that nearly 16 million Americans are living in deep or severe poverty. A family of four with two children and an annual income of less than $9,903 - half the federal poverty line - was considered severely poor in 2005. So were individuals who made less than $5,080 a year.

The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. That’s 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period. McClatchy’s review also found statistically significant increases in the percentage of the population in severe poverty in 65 of 215 large U.S. counties, and similar increases in 28 states. The review also suggested that the rise in severely poor residents isn’t confined to large urban counties but extends to suburban and rural areas.

The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries. That helps explain why the median household income of working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.

These and other factors have helped push 43 percent of the nation’s 37 million poor people into deep poverty - the highest rate since at least 1975. The share of poor Americans in deep poverty has climbed slowly but steadily over the last three decades. But since 2000, the number of severely poor has grown “more than any other segment of the population,” according to a recent study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

It always stuns me that there aren’t more people who care about poverty. Liberals focus far too much on social issues and Conservatives far too much on religious issues — just once I’d like to have a campaign fought on genuine economic grounds, like 1992, and on that note, I’d like you to shoot me, please, for I have praised that election one too many times in the last twenty four hours (not that it doesn’t deserve praise, not that Clinton doesn’t deserve praise, or anything).

To make up for it, I’d like to refer you to the greatest election in American history, in 1948.
And I hope you think about poverty and do something — anything — about it, from buying a homeless man a sandwich to donating to the Salvation Army.

That is all for today.

Do pardon my absence. I’ve been entertaining by medical issues but fear not, for I am well! And although I’ll keep this entry brief, let me say that I have returned and am at full strength yet again. Which is more than I can say for Fidel Castro who is dying as I type, and hopefully dead by the time you, Child of the Future, have read this.

I’m not sure I understand the uproar over Hillary Clinton by Democrats of late. I don’t much care for her but the panicking because she’s “conniving to knock Obama off of his high horse” and because she’s attempting to win an election she’s running in amuse me and trouble me. If she starts running underground ads in South Carolina alleging that he not only has a nigger baby but is a nigger baby, then we’ve got a problem but until that day comes she’s just another politician positioning herself for victory.

And for those of you wondering where my Nigger example comes from, that’s what the Bushes did to John McCain in 2000 when they claimed that he’d adopted a “black baby” during the South Carolina primary. McCain was so outraged that he decided to adopt the campaign staff responsible for the smearing of his adopted daughter on his road to the White House in 2008.

Politics. Such a strange and petty profession.

Chuck Hagel has made some interesting comments lately about running for President as an independent with a Democrat on his ticket. It’d be interesting, to be sure, but it’d destroy the government from within if he got elected, which he wouldn’t — and that makes it a good idea as it would force the election to be fought everywhere by everyone. 1992 was one of the better elections in American history, and a Hagel run would help make the campaign even more worthy of note.

Let me say something right now: if Rudy Giuliani becomes the President of the United States, I’ll have lost all faith in the political process as we know it. He’s running the most shallow campaign of my lifetime, he’s nothing more than an unaccomplished Mayor, and he’s one of the sleaziest men in politics.

On a more substantive note: look mom, no change!

Seven months after Fidel Castro temporarily handed power to his brother because of illness, Cuba is at a critical juncture and the United States should not let up pressure for political change on the island, U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said on Wednesday. The United States should not ease travel restrictions imposed against Cuba, nor should it forge relations of any sort with a government led by Raul Castro, he said.

“Cuba is at a critical point in its history. The country is poised for change,” Gutierrez, a Cuban-American, said at a gathering on Cuba at the Council of the Americas lobby group. “The policy of the Bush administration has been to help the Cuban people achieve their freedom through democratic change, and not to do them a tragic disservice by legitimizing a successor regime and helping maintain its tight grip over the Cuban people,” he said.

We could do a lot more for the Cuban people if we changed our policies on the matter.
I guess Communism and Totalitarianism are only okay if you‘ve got all the money in the world.

Why aren’t Republicans calling appeasement on the President?

Now that Iran has officially missed the UN Security Council deadline for stopping its uranium enrichment work, Western leaders have decided on a deliberately muted response. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in meetings in Berlin Wednesday with European, Russian and United Nations diplomats, is sticking to the agenda — easing Israeli-Palestinian tensions, and keeping her remarks low-key. Her European counterparts also hope to pass the day without a drama over Tehran’s defiance. The reason is purely tactical.” We don’t need a war of rhetoric,” says a European diplomat.

Iranian leaders have been making conciliatory noises lately. Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, in Vienna to meet with International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed El Baradei, said Tuesday that Iran was “looking for ways and means to start negotiations.” Still, avowed radical President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that Iran was willing to freeze its enrichment program and return to talks only if the US and the other members of the nuclear club also stopped enriching uranium.” Do you believe that’s a serious offer?” White House spokesman Tony Snow scoffed.

As the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) prepares to release a report which confirms Iran’s non-compliance, Rice and her European counterparts have sworn off strident words that that could play into Tehran’s hands, since its strategy has been to portray the big industrialized powers as heavy-handed, unjust and biased against developing nations that aspire to the nuclear club. Iran, says former State Department proliferation chief Robert Einhorn,” has been reasonably effective in driving wedges” between the industrialized and developing worlds.

That’s why, when she emerged from a meeting with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Rice tried to extend the olive branch to Tehran, stressing her desire to meet face to face with the regime’s representatives. “In May of last year we offered, the Bush Administration offered, to reverse 27 years of American policy to engage in the context of the six with our Iranian counterparts,” she told reporters. “I’ve said I would meet my Iranian counterpart anyplace, anywhere, anytime should the Iranians decide to suspend their activities. And so that and the fact that there is a very positive package that the six countries have put together that should incent Iran to engage in a positive way with the international community. I think we’re all still hopeful that the day is going to come when the Iranians decide to pursue that course, rather than one of confrontation.”

Despite the muted voices, US and Western diplomats have already begun discussing a second sanctions resolution to be tabled in the Security Council. It won’t be sweeping or harsh: last winter, Russian and Chinese objections to stringent sanctions proposed by the US and Europeans locked up the Security Council for two months of agonizing debate. A watered down resolution finally passed Dec. 23.

But it passed unanimously, and to the Western nations, that’s far more important than what it actually said. Officials involved in the process say that this time, they’ve learned to avoid the perils of over-reaching. So the strategy hammered out by the Rice team and its European counterparts is to propose very modest, incremental sanctions that will have little actual economic impact on Iran. “What we don’t want to do is have a repeat of last time,” says a European diplomat.” After much pain, we kept the international community together, which is one of the most powerful levers that we have.”

I’m not sure how I feel about this. I’m actually confused. See, I believe firmly that we will go to War with the Iranians if they continue on this present path and I doubt that there’s much we can do to stop them peacefully. But this presents a deep and serious problem — do we start a war, or let them start it, and do we let them build? I lean toward the latter, simply because I generally do not condone preemptive war, but I don’t know what to think in this situation. It’s so sensitive — though I think that the White House would do well to wait.

Eddie Murphy wants to (Democratic) party all the time; Ben Stiller thinks there’s something about Barack, and Jennifer Aniston — well, I have nothing clever for her, as I can’t remember any of her films.

What do they all have in common? They are raising money for Barack Obama.

No word yet as to who Eddie Murphy’s transvestite will support.
Seriously, though — I’m amazed that Hollywood is fighting amongst itself over who to support.

Campaign contributions are stunning when you look at them up close and note, “These are the people that decide who runs?” Not that all big donors are big bad donors, but sometimes — oftentimes, they are.

I mean…Richard Mellon Scaife? Ben Stiller?! Oh the humanity!

Maybe now the Republicans will stop saying that terrorists support the Democrats?

The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) won’t say what it plans to do with thousands of dollars in campaign donations it received from an accused terror financier. Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari gave $15,250 to the NRCC since 2002, according to FEC records published on the Web site opensecrets.org. On Friday, Alishtari pled not guilty to funding terrorism and other crimes, including financial fraud. The NRCC is the main political group dedicated to helping the Republican party win seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Reached Monday morning for comment, an NRCC spokeswoman declined to discuss the matter on the record. The indictment against Alishtari unsealed in Manhattan federal court Friday charges him with providing material support to terrorists by transferring $152,000 between banks to allegedly be used to purchase night-vision goggles and other equipment needed for a terrorist training camp.

That’s not even the worst of it, though. Why, I’ve heard rumors that George W. is a Republican! And not George Washington, try though King George might to enlist him.

Marking George Washington’s 275th birthday, President Bush on Monday linked the ideals of the first president to the war being fought by the 43rd, saying Washington’s goals guided the nation’s quest to extend freedom beyond its borders. “George Washington’s long struggle for freedom has … inspired generations of Americans to stand for freedom in their own time,” Bush said, using a morning visit to Mount Vernon to compare the dilemmas faced at the birth of the nation to the troubles he now confronts. “Today, we’re fighting a new war to defend our liberty and our people and our way of life,” he said. “And as we work to advance the cause of freedom around the world, we remember that the father of our country believed that the freedoms we secured in our revolution were not meant for Americans alone.”

Quoting the first president — and referring, by implication, to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — Bush said: “He once wrote, ‘My best wishes are irresistibly excited whensoever in any country I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom.’ ” Bush spoke for nine minutes on a frigid morning in front of the first president’s mansion overlooking the ice-crusted Potomac River. “I feel right at home here,” he told the audience of several hundred. “After all, this is the home of the first George W.”

Pretty silly — but not quite like this was. I did a Google News Search to look it up and found that article amidst the serious articles. It’s about George Washington’s sex appeal and the researchers that are determining it.

Who in their right mind would spend time researching that when there’s founding father treasure to be found?

Actually, I have a treasure of my own to recommend. For those of you with GameBoys, and I’m sure more of you have them than would like to admit — pick up Final Fantasy VI. Or I’ll rip your lungs out.

I have two observations stemming from this article: one — why is it legal to give someone a “consulting contract” right before or after they endorse you? that’s clear and unequivocal bribery. Shame that practical matters make it impossible to legislate; two — let’s go to an excerpt, first:

Clinton, who spoke to the AP during her first trip to this early voting state since announcing her White House bid, also said South Carolina should remove the Confederate flag from its Statehouse grounds, in part because the nation should unite under one banner while at war. “I think about how many South Carolinians have served in our military and who are serving today under our flag and I believe that we should have one flag that we all pay honor to, as I know that most people in South Carolina do every single day,” the New York senator said. “I personally would like to see it removed from the Statehouse grounds.” Other Democratic hopefuls, including Sens. Joe Biden of Delaware and Chris Dodd of Connecticut, have said the flag should come down. The banner, which once flew over the Statehouse dome and now flies nearby, is the subject of an ongoing NAACP boycott.

I wonder which Democrat will be the first, and probably last (since I doubt more than one will be so desperate) to attempt and win the state with the pander of panders, namely the declaration that South Carolina and other Southern states should and are just hanging on to their history.

Probably Edwards, just because of where he’s from.

I’ve got a couple of other, smaller things to touch on. This is absurd; a man who may have cost the country’s taxpayers sixty million dollars and cost them at least ten has been promoted by the Administration and is now in charge of all of the nation’s offshore oil activities.

Bush’s brain is offshore.

This type of article really makes me angry. It’s titled, and reads, “We are the troops and we don’t support the escalation.” It should read, “I am a person who doesn’t support the escalation and a few people are with me.” He is not a We or a Them. He is just a man who might represent a family or two but no more.

You know who I am?
I am the Independent Blogger. This is my Office. Coo coo ca choo.

Mitt Romney is catching flak, though not from me, for his identity: he doesn’t “know the Lord,” according to a Florida heckler. He can expect to hear that until next February when he drops out of the race. It’s sad that a candidate will be pounded for his religion but it’s the truth, and I can’t believe he didn’t understand that or care before he ran.

It probably has to do with ego and money. Everything is in electoral politics.

Let me just say: John Edwards has a campaign I can get behind: literally!
But seriously. I like John Edwards — saw him on Bill Maher last night — and he’s a good man with good sense and good values. I’m not sure who I’ll be endorsing in the primaries now that my main man has officially ruled out a run for the Presidency, but it increases the odds that I’ll support Edwards. Who knows — Edwards and Vilsack are my favorites right now, followed by Ms. Clinton, but that can all change once the actual campaign gets underway, because it hasn’t started yet.

What has started, right now, is the political nonsense that makes Americans cynical, and this goes for both parties: the massive fundraising, the “careful attempts at positioning one’s self on the issues,” all of that. I won’t be making any endorsements until the actual campaigning for the public support has begun as opposed to the campaigning for the bigwigs’ money and reporters’ attention that’s going on now.

Now, onto something that could literally be Earth-shattering as opposed to figuratively: for those of you, of us, who worry that an asteroid might destroy the Earth, fear not! The UN is to decide who will do what in the event of an asteroid hurtling toward the Earth. They are to present it to the World for Ratification sometime in 2009. Which means, of course, that if an asteroid comes before then, we’re screwed.

The UN draft treaty would establish who should be in charge in the event of an asteroid heading towards Earth, who would pay for relief efforts and the policies that should be adopted. In addition, it would set out possible plans to deflect the object. Ideas could include hitting the asteroid with a spacecraft or rocket to deflect its orbit. Other less destructive proposals include a “gravity tug” that would simply hover over the asteroid and use gravity as a “towline” to change its path. But any decision to deflect an NEO could come with its own set of conundrums for the UN, as changing its path may simply alter its final target.

“It’s important to understand when you start to deflect an asteroid that certain countries are going to have accept an increase in risk to their populations in order to take the risk to zero for everyone,” said Dr Schweickart. It is difficult decisions like this which can only be addressed by the UN, the Association of Space Explorers believes. And it is under no illusion that the process can be sorted out quickly. “You have to act when things look like they are going to happen - if you wait until you know for certain, it’s too late,” said Dr Schweickart.

Aim it at China please.

THe House and Senate have passed a set of tax breaks that are progressive and beneficial to the economy. I applaud the move. (They still have to reconcile their differences in committee but those are tiny and will be dealt with soon.)

John McCain is a phony. But we at the Office of the Independent Blogger already knew that.

This is disgusting.

A senior Justice Department official who recently resigned her post bought a nearly $1 million vacation home with a lobbyist for ConocoPhillips months before approving consent decrees that would give the oil company more time to pay millions of dollars in fines and meet pollution-cleanup rules at some of its refineries.

Sue Ellen Wooldridge, former assistant attorney general in charge of environment and natural resources, bought a $980,000 home on Kiawah Island, S.C., last March with ConocoPhillips lobbyist Don R. Duncan. A third owner of the house is J. Steven Griles, a former deputy interior secretary, who has been informed he is a target in the federal investigation of Jack Abramoff’s lobbying activities.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department said yesterday that Wooldridge sought and received approval from a career ethics official in her office before buying the vacation property. Wooldridge’s lawyer and officials at ConocoPhillips said that Duncan had no role in negotiating the consent decrees and never lobbied Wooldridge.

Wooldridge, who earlier served in senior positions at the Interior Department, lives with Griles in Virginia. Her investment with Griles and the oil lobbyist took place on March 13, 2006, property records show, during a wide-ranging Justice Department criminal investigation that involves Griles and lobbyists at Interior. The joint purchase and Wooldridge’s role in the consent decrees were reported yesterday by the Associated Press.

Stephen Grafman, an attorney for Wooldridge, said his client owns a 25 percent share of the vacation property. “She used her own money,” Grafman said. He said that Wooldridge was called in November before a grand jury investigating Abramoff and Griles but that she is not under investigation.

Then she should be. At the least, she should be barred from working in government ever again.

Oh, and fellow Democrats? Please stop allowing Jack Murta to speak on our behalf; it’s embarrassing. He’s a crooked politician and he’s as out-of-touch as George W. but from the other side.

More on the “disarmament agreement” with North Korea.

A hard-won disarmament pact that the U.S. and four other nations struck with North Korea on Tuesday requires the communist nation to halt its nuclear programs in exchange for oil while leaving the ultimate abandonment of those weapons projects to a potentially trouble-filled future. In a sign of potential problems to come, North Korea’s state news agency said the country was receiving 1 million tons of oil for a “temporary suspension” of its nuclear facilities — and failed to mention the full disarmament for which the agreement calls.

It wasn’t clear if the report represented an attempt by the government to backtrack on the deal, or was simply a statement of bluster for a deeply impoverished domestic audience that Pyongyang has rallied around the nuclear program as a cause for national pride. And by tackling so many issues in a process likely to take years, the deal could unravel, pulled apart by differing agendas of its six signers, which also include China, South Korea, Russia and Japan. “We have a lot of work to do,” U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill told reporters. “It’s certainly not the end of the process, it’s really just the end of the beginning of the process.”

That sounds about right. I’m confident enough, and always have been, that the North Koreans will never nuke anyone, but there’s always been that doubt. If we can just keep talking, I think we’ll disarm them eventually. It’ll take Kim Jung Il’s death, in all likelihood, but I believe there are better days ahead on the Korean Peninsula and they involve eventual reunification and no, I don’t think that’s wishful thinking at all.

I’m not a big fan of Barack Obama but I am a big fan of feist and I loved this.

“I think it’s flattering that one of George Bush’s allies on the other side of the world started attacking me on the day after I announced,” Obama said of the low blow from Down Under. Prime Minister John Howard said Obama’s plan to withdraw troops by March 2008 would play into terrorists’ hands. “If I were running Al Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory, not only for Obama but also for the Democrats,” Howard said. Obama noted that Australia has only 1,400 troops in Iraq. “If he’s ginned up to fight the good fight in Iraq, I would suggest that he calls up another 20,000 Australians and sends them to Iraq. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of empty rhetoric,” Obama said.

Chickenhawks should be called for it and I commend Obama for his remarks. It’s great to hear a politician speak so candidly and not be afraid of the international establishment on it. I still don’t think he’s right for the Presidency or the candidacy, but — if he can keep being fresh, and straightforward, he’ll be good for the country in a lot of ways, provided it doesn’t win him the Presidency.

John McCain said something yesterday that I don’t quite understand, here.

“By the way, a lot of us are also very concerned about the possibility of a, quote, ‘Tet Offensive.’ You know, some large-scale tact that could then switch American public opinion the way that the Tet Offensive did,” the Arizona senator said. Last month, an Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that 62 percent said the United States made a mistake in going to war in Iraq. McCain made his comment in explaining why he did not believe the Bush administration should set a date by which it should deem Bush’s troop increase a success or a failure.

“I think that it should be publicly open-ended because I think that if you set a date, that there’s every possibility that the insurgents would just lay back and wait until we leave,” McCain said. Tet, a massive invasion in 1968 of South Vietnam by Communist North Vietnamese, inflicted enormous losses on U.S. and South Vietnamese troops and is regarded as a point where public sentiment turned sharply against the war.

Public opinion switched a long time ago, buddy.
Maybe that’s why the Republican Congress and their President took so long to address the countless flaws in our War — because they aren’t up to date on the news.

Tentatively, we have an agreement with North Korea on future nuclear weapons but have, on the surface, achieved nothing with regard to their present nuclear arsenal.

A summary of the proposed agreement that was circulated among senior policy makers in Washington before the Tuesday morning announcement made clear that even if the North agreed to take the listed first steps — sealing its main nuclear reactor and inviting international inspectors back into the country — there was no specific deadline for it to turn over any nuclear weapons or weapons fuel that it had produced in recent years. That would happen only after the parties reached another agreement.

In essence, the draft appeared intended to prevent the North from producing more weapons, but to defer discussions over the weapons and fuel it has already stockpiled. Mr. Hill had earlier suggested that if the current talks were to yield an agreement, follow-up discussions could be held in March and April. The summary calls for the six nations in the talks to “create working groups for full and rapid implementation” of a September 2005 agreement in which the North agreed in principle to abandon its nuclear weapons.

But in the past, the North Korean envoys to similar working groups have proven to have no real negotiating authority. The summary, which did not include language on what the North would get in return for shutting down its weapons program, was given to The New York Times by a person who was trying to explain the timing and vagueness of the deal’s elements.

However, I must say I’m happy with this deal. Its existence alone makes it less likely that the North Koreans would use or sell nuclear weapons. What they pine for is respect, and with such a dialogue they achieve it. It’s a good deal, provided the six countries involved use it in future negotiations to achieve more.