The Union Pacific Railroad slow motion of the U.S. Senate is most evident in this mash-up of four luminaries on Sunday 4 TV as they laboriously repeat the same meaningless policy re Iran as if someone is listening to their ponderous thoughts. A measure of how clumsy and predictable the Obama administration's foreign policy has become is that these senators, both Democrats, Casey and Bayh, and the so-called maverick Republican Lindsay Graham, recommend that Iran must respond or we will be tough with sanctions -- the same facile threat made by POTUS and his Politburo these last weeks. Tehran knows how to play this game. Tehran knows that the Obama team goal is not to be tough but to speak as if it is going to be tough. "I'm not a completely empty water pistol, y'know!" is the level of threat.  Tehran also knows that the Obama administration will repeat this threat as much as it takes to bore everyone until the matter goes away and is replaced by another aimless crisis of management in foreign affairs.  POTUS lacks a sense of proportion, so he is just as likely to speak of Honduras or the public option or the Olympics in Rio! in the same sober fashion as he speaks of Iran's nukes.  POTUS is very good at performing the presidential voice.  Who is listening is the important question.  Not Tehran.  

Dog-Shooting.  

The flap this news cycle with Jim Jones delcaring that Iran is not close to a bomb, while the stooge IAEA publishes a report that Tehran has the makings of a warhead, is carney behavior.

Jim Jones carries water for the Obama Politburo.  Tehran has nukes.  Washington doesn't want to know.  Tehran is laughing at the Politburo, but laughing politely, as this is a mutually agreed game.  The Politburo must make peace with Tehran.  Ahmadinejad could shoot a dog on camera and the Politburo would continue to treat him as a peace-maker and approach Tehran with its hat out.

Not Russia.  

Russia is not much listening to POTUS either, according to Steve Cohen, NYU, who spoke Saturday 3, just returned from a week in Moscow with the chattering classes.   Steve Cohen says that the ordinary people of Russia are burdened by the same Great Recession that weighs on the US population.  Among the elite, there is confidence that Russia has gained a sturdy strategic position with regard Europe -- as the energy superpower of Asia.  The pro-American school in Moscow has retreated to one or two desks, Steve Cohen remarks, and the pro European school is paramount.  Joe Biden's confrontational remarks about Ukraine and Georgia in August (Biden is VP because of his bellicosity in August 2008 that made him the VP pick in a moment of poll weakness for Obama) are regarded as evidence the Obama administration is frail and off-track.  Moscow has committed itself to a partnership with Berlin and through Berlin a strong bond with the European customers of its natural gas.  With regard Tehran's nukes, Steve Cohen says that the Russians have found a way to live with Tehran's strategic aggression and do not want the trouble of sanctions.  Sanctions will not work, is Moscow's judgment, and then again sanctions will create opportunities for the black market that permits RUssia and her friends in Central Asia to prosper.  Can Moscow stop Tehran?  No.  Nor does Moscow believe it can stop Tehran.  Moscow sees the Obama administration as ineffective in Asia as it is in Europe.  Does Moscow see worse?  Yes, but not that Steve Cohen would say.  The Moscow and Berlin dyad is a profound change of direction for Europe.  The dyad will marginalize NATO as long as NATO keeps out Russia.  Finally, does Moscow listen to anyone in the Obama administration?  It listens to Joe Biden, and what it hears is unacceptable and incoherent and inert.

There is one policy shop that listens very closely to POTUS, and that is the writer pool at SNL.  The presentation of the Obama administration checklist on Saturday 3 was accurate and abbreviated. The unsaid part of what POTUS has done and not done in his first nine months includes the unhappy stuff, very unhappy.