"Let them eat gay cake" (Politics thread)

by **Bucky** » Fri Apr 03, 2015 17:12:28

Israel?

by **jerseyhoya** » Fri Apr 03, 2015 17:19:26

pacino wrote:Can Jordan?

No. I would think it would be US policy to attempt to persuade Jordan not to pursue a nuclear weapon, and that it wouldn't be terribly hard. I doubt Jordan has any intentions of developing a nuclear weapon. If the king ever fell, who knows what the new Jordanian government might look like.

by **drsmooth** » Fri Apr 03, 2015 17:25:18

jerseyhoya wrote:The problem with Iran keeping the facilities is when the agreements sunset in 10-15 years (or if they attempt to buck the agreement earlier) there is much less to reconstitute in order for them to become a nuclear power.

Bushco policy was, essentially, to ignore Iran's nuclear 'learning process'. Shall we suppose that's a better thing to do? Let me answer that: no. And simply continuing with sanctions is to continue to ignore the progress Iran has made despite sanctions.

It's like you want to do an endzone dance because you've "discovered" that this kinda-sorta outline of a blueprint is not the keys to the pearly gates, and that you've somehow concluded people expressing some elation at this modest progress have been hoodwinked, unlike your new champions of Serious Policy Analysis, Bezos's WaPo editors. Guess what? Everyone retains concern about any deal of this sort.

I'm interested in how Republican congressional leadership will handle its special opportunity to play a role in how any agreement is put into operation.

by **Werthless** » Fri Apr 03, 2015 17:29:00

pacino wrote:there is no harder bargain to have gotten. why are we expecting them to act irrationally? They are not an irrational actor.

I'm surprised that docsmooth did not take the opportunity to trash your theories of rationality.

He usually does not miss an opportunity!

I wouldn't have thought that Saddam would kick out weapons inspectors without having any WMDs, but sometimes the irrational international action is perfectly rational in the context of their national politics. I know that the US often does crazy things just because it's politically expedient to do so.

by **drsmooth** » Fri Apr 03, 2015 17:35:30

Werthless wrote:
pacino wrote:there is no harder bargain to have gotten. why are we expecting them to act irrationally? They are not an irrational actor.

I'm surprised that docsmooth did not take the opportunity to trash your theories of rationality. He usually does not miss an opportunity!

I wouldn't have thought that Saddam would kick out weapons inspectors without having any WMDs, but sometimes the irrational international action is perfectly rational in the context of their national politics. I know that the US often does crazy things just because it's politically expedient to do so.

So in your eyes this nuke deal is crazy but politically expedient?

Your convoluted posting style makes it hard for normal people to understand what your point may be, or even if you have a point

by **Werthless** » Fri Apr 03, 2015 19:10:30

Haven't read anything on the nuke deal outside of this thread since I've been busy with work. But the arguments that folks are making are quite interesting.

by **Bucky** » Fri Apr 03, 2015 19:33:55

I really know nothing about it. But I agree with our General, and Churchill

by **Phan In Phlorida** » Fri Apr 03, 2015 19:50:54

pacino wrote:... IAEA has constant and intense inspections ...

Misread that as IKEA. In context to the post, that would be frikkin' hilarious.

by **Monkeyboy** » Fri Apr 03, 2015 20:22:38

It doesn't matter what the deal said, JH and the republicans would have said it was bad. Honestly, who cares what they say? Did anyone actually think they would say, "hey Obama, nice job!"? He could have gotten everything they wanted and they still would have found a reason to complain, so who cares what they think?

by **Houshphandzadeh** » Fri Apr 03, 2015 20:28:45

that's kind of ironic since it seems like a lot of "liberals" will say something is good just because some Republicans said it was bad

by **Werthless** » Fri Apr 03, 2015 20:41:03

Monkeyboy wrote:It doesn't matter what the deal said, JH and the republicans would have said it was bad. Honestly, who cares what they say? Did anyone actually think they would say, "hey Obama, nice job!"? He could have gotten everything they wanted and they still would have found a reason to complain, so who cares what they think?

You might not care what they think, but jh posted a long quote from an important dem. It's almost as if this post was before his!

by **drsmooth** » Fri Apr 03, 2015 22:27:31

My limited understanding is that by the nature of the deal (assuming it goes forward), Congress has, at very least, an opportunity, if not an obligation, to trot out some big brains to wield its sanction approving/extending/removing powers skillfully so as to reflect its concerns and purposes. Positions do not seem to be cleaving along party lines to the extent we've become accustomed to, so Congressional maneuvering might actually be interesting for a change.

But the leadership of both major parties had better be skillful, because they will be in deep here, required to exercise some real statecraft, something they have little recent practice at.

by **Monkeyboy** » Sat Apr 04, 2015 16:03:32

Houshphandzadeh wrote:that's kind of ironic since it seems like a lot of "liberals" will say something is good just because some Republicans said it was bad

I've criticized Obama and agreed with Reps a number of times. My point is that this Congress has been an all timer in terms of obstruction. JH pretty much parrots whatever they say, but leaving him out of this, I don't know why anyone would care what reps say on the subject since their opinion will almost 100% of the time (maybe 100% of the time) will be that Obama screwed up. And with something this large and important and something they complained that he would screw up, there is zero chance they would say anything positive about this. Zero. So who cares?

by **Phan In Phlorida** » Sat Apr 04, 2015 19:52:44

drsmooth wrote:
jerseyhoya wrote:I do love catching up on a good BSG politics discussion. How could anyone not think this is a great deal?

One wonders whether you would have engaged in a similar PtK-length discursion had Obama simply said something like "y'know Tom Cotton, you and Bolton are cotton-pickin' right - let's light the place up"

Cotton's a tool.

Cotton has previously issued specific calls for military intervention against Iran, from American action to supplying Israel with weaponry manufactured by members of the National Defense Industrial Association (a lobbying group for defense contractors). In March, Cotton appeared at an "off-the-record" NDIA event. He's a tool.

by **Monkeyboy** » Sun Apr 05, 2015 20:22:58

There you go, Pip. That's what this is about as much as anything, money.

That and who looks the most like they are appeasing Israeli interests.

by **TomatoPie** » Mon Apr 06, 2015 08:41:47

by **jerseyhoya** » Mon Apr 06, 2015 13:28:18

From today's New York Times, a decent write up on why it matters that Iran is allowed to keep these advanced, difficult to disrupt facilities and on how the final details on just what they're allowed to keep matters a great deal in whether the agreement is able to live up to its stated goals.

Many nuclear experts and American officials expected that the negotiations would end with Fordo’s complete dismantlement. David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington research group that monitors Iran’s nuclear program, wrote early last year that “a key demand will be that this site close down.”

But the preliminary deal announced in Switzerland on Thursday instead calls for the site’s conversion exclusively to peaceful research. Iran has agreed to forgo enriching uranium at Fordo for at least 15 years, and to conduct no research there on new enrichment gear. The proposed deal also calls for the removal of “almost two-thirds of Fordo’s centrifuges and infrastructure.”

R. Scott Kemp, a centrifuge expert at M.I.T. who formerly worked at the State Department and Princeton, hailed the overall deal as “a remarkable achievement” but said Fordo could be a spoiler.

Since the deal allows the retention of roughly 1,000 centrifuges in the site’s underground halls, and says nothing about forbidding the installation of highly advanced ones so long as they do no uranium enrichment, the site might eventually pose a danger, Dr. Kemp argued on the website of the M.I.T. Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy.

He said Fordo thus configured might enable Iran to acquire the fuel for a bomb in as little as three months; the Obama administration has sought to lengthen the so-called breakout time to at least one year.

The retained centrifuges, Dr. Kemp wrote, “could be rapidly repurposed for enriching uranium under a breakout scenario” unless they were specifically designed to be incompatible with such purification.

He said that between now and late June, when negotiators are to complete the nuclear accord, they will face “the difficult task” of ensuring that centrifuges at Fordo are “physically incapable of uranium enrichment.”

An alternative, he added, would be restrictions on the number and type of centrifuges allowed.

“If this oversight is addressed,” Dr. Kemp said, the rest of the deal would “lengthen the breakout time to about one year.”

Nuclear Plant in Iranian Desert Emerges as Flash Point in Talks

by **drsmooth** » Mon Apr 06, 2015 15:01:18

jerseyhoya wrote:From today's New York Times, a decent write up on why it matters that Iran is allowed to keep these advanced, difficult to disrupt facilities and on how the final details on just what they're allowed to keep matters a great deal in whether the agreement is able to live up to its stated goals.

Count me as shocked, shocked that there are still technical specifics to be explicitly spelled out in this draft agreement

Still plenty of time for the Bolton/Cotton combine to mount an H-bomb on a cropduster and render the whole thing moot

by **Phan In Phlorida** » Mon Apr 06, 2015 17:20:25

Houthis and the Blobfish

by **TomatoPie** » Mon Apr 06, 2015 17:34:56

The New York Times agrees: It is government subsidy, not lack of governmental funding, that is driving tuition costs:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/opini ... p=cur&_r=0

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