DSR Weekly Wrap-up: Israel and Lebanon Agree to Ceasefire

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Hello and welcome to DSR Daily. I'm David Rothguff, joined by Riley Fessler and Minestine. You like my outfit, but yeah, addressing for you for each one of you to celebrate Friday,

to celebrate getting through the week.

We're also going to do what we do each week and a Friday. We'll look a little bit at today's news and a little bit at the news going forward and our lead story today touches both of those things, because there are developments today.

“And they will have implications for the main stories of next week, won't they guys?”

Yes, this story is a real turd duck-in of news, if you will. A news turd duck-in. A news. Okay. Well, let's start with the turkey, get to the duck-in.

A chicken? No, I think it goes turkey chicken duck or it's a turkey duck chicken. Turd duck-in. Turkey duck, chicken. Yeah.

Well, our news turd duck-in for the day is that a 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon has begun. And for the remainder of the ceasefire, the passage for all commercial vessels through the state of her mousest declared completely open, which has plummeted oil prices. Everyone is happy about that.

And then the U.S. and Iran are negotiating over a three-page plan to end the war with one element under discussion being that the U.S. would release $20 billion in frozen Iranian funds and return for Iran giving up its stockpile of a rich uranium. You know, one of the things I hate about this era in news and analysis and social media is

that there are always people in social media who are there when something happens to

say, "I told you so." And I hate that. It's just a terrible trait, you know, nodding over people the fact that you were smarter than they were or you were ahead of the curve or you had some inside source. It's just ugly.

And it's unnecessary. So, I am definitely not going to say that we told you so that our podcasts here this week have all been focused on the fact that it's heading in this direction. Just go listen to them. You know, the proof, as I say, is in the Turdakan Go look and you'll see that, you know,

we knew it was heading in this direction because Trump has no appetite to go for it. What's interesting about the current development is that Trump obviously put the shoulder to BB because BB didn't want to do this in order to get the Lebanon and Israel agreement. And it is now clear and the Iranians did this in a fairly smart way that the Straits are open.

The Straits is open, so long as Israel is not fighting in Lebanon. And so it's now on Israel to keep the Straits open. And that is, you know, barring some other kind of a development. And that is a very clever diplomatic ploy in the midst of this that the Trump administration seems to be offering cash for enriched uranium.

I, you know, again, when we had our show on Monday, we were saying we're going to end

“up with a pale imitation of the JCPOA, the Obama 2015 deal, remember when Trump was like,”

"Oh my God, we're giving the Iranians cash." Well, any minute now he'll say, "Well, this is a better deal." And I'm getting more for the cash. I gave them that won't be true, by the way, they won't get everything that they want. And they're talking about a sort of 60-day timeframe for getting to the final deal, which means they'll extend the ceasefire, things will settle down.

And then we'll start seeing the other interesting element of this, which is, where does the, you know, sort of spinning wheel of the Middle East stop at the end of this, whose

they had before, how close is the U.S. to Israel, and this model, how close is the U.S.

to the GCC, where is China that has played a very big role in this, is kind of behind the scenes, but they've been the one, they, they were the ones that sort of halfway through this set of very important message, which is, "No, we're going to help Iran." So if you keep pushing Iran, they're going to have China behind them. And that made the U.S. position even less tenable. And of course, China's client state, the Pakistanis are the ones negotiating

this. And the straight is very important to who the Chinese, and they have shown

“how behind the scenes or subtler diplomacy works better than dropping bombs. And I think”

they're going to end up happy with where this is. The Russians will, the Iranians will

start to rebuild Israel probably not so much. What else do we got? Well, the House has unanimously approved to extend a very controversial surveillance program until April 30th. Yes. It's April 17th.

Yeah, they kicked the can down the road on this one. So it was a lot shorter than what the Republicans wanted earlier in the day, which was a five year extension, and even less

“than the 18 month extension that President Trump wanted. But nonetheless, they are extending”

it, at least for a little bit longer, it was supposed to expire Monday. So they only bought themselves a little bit of time. But this is the surveillance program that allows them to tap into the data of and intercept messages from foreign nationals, look at outside of the United States. But of course, the problem there is what happens when they're contacting U.S. citizens and numerous other ethical questions with this program. So it's sticking around for now,

but the fight over it is certainly not over. No, it's not. It actually has more resistance from far right mega than it does from any other group. Don't like big government. I'll tell you who it has the support of, and that's the intelligence community, which thinks in this day and age that this kind of signals surveillance is vitally important. And this is something that's been supported by Democrat and Republican administrations

because of the urging of the very large cross-section of the intelligence community. And frankly,

“I don't think it's going to go away. I think they're going to extend it. Maybe they'll be a”

tweak here, tweak there. There are laws to protect Americans and the tweaks will probably just underline the laws. But this thing will end up continuing in some form. And there's a parallel

here. Look, they kick the ceasefire down the road, they kick this thing down the road. Ultimately,

that's because they want to preserve it, not because they want it to go away. Todd Lyons, who was the acting director of ICE announced that he's a resigning. So don't let the hit you on the way out. But by Todd, get a shitty job. You really have a lot of blood on your hands. Good luck working for the lender pillow company or wherever you end up working. And we're going to have a real wholesale reshuffling at DHS before we can relax. I have to say I'm slightly encouraged

by DHS under Mark Wayne Mullin, compared to DHS under Christie. Now, I mean, I feel little queasy to the saying that. I'm sure there will be bad things coming soon. But in terms of in terms of, you know, some of the corruption and some of the people that they had there and some of the extreme abuses, it does seem like there's a tweak of what. Again, these are all signs of Trump sort of feeling weak. You know, we also had, I don't know that it's in our list of stories,

but they appointed a woman to head to CDC, Coast Guard veteran, long time public health person, former deputy surgeon general who's pro-vaccine and as a woman of color. I mean, it is the least

because, you know, this is somebody who doesn't support his stuff. But all of these things are

mid-course corrections from as a consequence of early excesses by Trump. Well, we have another progressive and Congress because Democrat Analylia can't have too many. Mehia won a resounding victory in New Jersey's 11th district yesterday. And she beat Republican Joe Hathaway by 20 points to fill the seat that was vacated by Governor Mikey Cheryl. So it's great. It's the only good news from this one. That's the district that my sister lives in in Northern Jersey. I'm not from too far

from there. The Democratic margins in the district have gone up and up and up. The biggest margin has gone to this progressive. The Republicans were, oh my God, it's a progressive. It's Mom Donnie.

“You have to stop them. And the voter's response was, no, that sounds pretty good to us.”

It's a great message to America, which is like, oh my God, we can't have too many progressives in the Congress. The voters won't like it. No, they like people who get things done. Look at Mom Donnie. Just past 100 days in office. He's getting stuff done. He is fulfilling

his promises, whether it's a modest tax, some 5 billion dollar, plus Pieda Tears in Manhattan,

which is beginning to tax the rich and Elon just squealed. Oh my God, this is the worst thing I've ever seen. A Pieda Tears tax for Pieda Tears over $5 million. But, you know, Mom Donnie is making a point with that. He's making a point with universal preschool for people throughout the city,

“improving certain city services, focusing and getting things done. That's a message”

that, you know, being progressive, unlike being mega, is not about lip service. It's actually about serving people. You may recall we did a podcast a while back with E.J. Deod, who had just written about this. And he refer made a reference to a tradition in the early part of the 20th century called Super Socialism. And Super Socialism is not a slower on Socialism. It's Socialists who fix the Sewers. It's Socialists who get involved and roll up their sleeves and actually do stuff.

And so, you know, getting more progressives in there. It's good thing. But Riley, it is not true, contrary to what you would like to make it true. The DSR network stands for Deep Say Radio, our origin, you know, over a decade ago. It is not, as you wish it were, Democratic Socialist Radio. I, for now. Okay, folks, take that as a warning. Not of us would cry big beers if that's where it all ended up. What else you got? Our last story is a story that

looks towards the future of what we have to look forward to. And apparently, I was hoping that we just, you know, if no one talks about it, it will just go away. But unfortunately, Trump's 250 foot triumphal arc in Washington got green lit by a federal arts panel, which approved an early design for the arc. So unfortunately, we're inching closer and closer. What is this? Like, they're calling it an arc because in France, it's called the arc de Triomphe.

But it's an arc in English, it's an arc. I know the White House is calling it an arc de Triomphe. But in an arc de Triomphe. But in English, it's an arc. An arc is a boat full of animals.

“I think it's supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, like arc de Triomphe. Yes, don't know. It is a little”

ridiculous. It's offensive. It is Marie Antoinette, although Marie Antoinette never said

left the meat cake. But here is America. We're getting rid of social programs, getting rid of healthcare programs. People can't afford food. One of the other stories of this week, which is absolutely disgusting. But go look it up. Is, no, no, not the record story. A different kind of disgusting. All those U.S. soldiers we've sent to the Middle East, the ones on the ships, then running out of food for them. Their pictures, floating around on the internet, of trays,

with almost no food on them, and parents can't even send care packages to their sons and daughters who are off their fighting. But the point is, sadly, that we don't have enough money to do the

Center and redo that. Sure. It's, you know, it's just ugly. And of course, tax cuts for billionaires.

“Oh, yeah. Well, let's double down on that. A little bit of a taste for Trump and his family. Oh,”

yeah, we can do that. Your mama needs cancer treatment. Go drive and Uber. I mean, it's

it's, it's, it's pretty repugnant. And it's also pretty clear. And the reason that you're getting

“Democrats waiting election after election after election is people are like, wait a minute. This is,”

is not the way this should be working. You are screwing us. This must be over. Um, and hopefully we will get ourselves there sometime soon. We'll watch it. We'll talk about it. We had a great

“conversation with Norm Hortonstein yesterday and words matter. Should listen to that. We've got”

one of our forward-looking political conversations coming on a need to know later today with our friends Simon Rosenberg and Tara McGowan to the best Dem Insiders you'll ever hear from, who you hear from here every month. Um, and so there's all of that coming at you. Uh, download it and enjoy it and enjoy your weekend. Uh, we'll be back with you real soon. Thank you, Minna. Thank you, Riley. Uh, thank you for all the nice compliments about my next time that I know

will fill the comments section on YouTube in a matter of minutes, right? Second seconds. Second,

second. Second. Sorry. Thanks everybody. Bye bye. [BLANK_AUDIO]