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 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 whembly wrote:

The defense for Obama ya'll trying to spin is getting nauseating.

Pot, meet kettle.

Sure... whatever.

Personally, I'd be fine with the deal being rejected, if those who objected to it come up with a legitimate solution.

I feel that we could have gotten a better deal then what we have now. Deal has to much of "Whatever I can get to make my mark in diplomacy" feel to it

I didn't manage to see the Republican debate, but I've read a few interesting pieces afterwards. What I found most interesting was what was only mentioned a few times - Obamacare. No-one tried to make it a major issue. It's almost as if Republicans got all the political gain they could out of it before it was in place and working, and now they're just trying to ease that talking point in to retirement.

Hate to say I told you so, but...

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
Exactly. Besides, we all know our politicians will say anything in order to make their voters and corporate paymasters happy, why would the Iranians be any different? I mean, if we don't trust a single word our leaders say, why do we treat other world leaders as speaking pure truth?

It gets even crazier, because we don't trust anything any Iranian says if it promotes peace or stability, but if any Iranian leader says anything aggressive then we hold it as a mark against their national soul forever, no matter the context, or the speaker, or anything else.


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 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
If Iran shoots first, it could be too late for Israel. Some parts of Israel are only a few miles wide. It's a small country and it would be easy for a well placed nuke to cause a lot of damage.

The Iranian strike would have to be significant enough to take out every US facility as well.

First strike doesn't make any sense when talking about second string players, because there are much bigger kids on the block who won't tolerate little kids firing off nukes at will.


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 whembly wrote:
Walker held his own... his issue is that he doesn't seem "telegenic".

The real issue Walker's problem is that his reforms have delivered nothing. Taking on the unions and slashing taxes is political gold for Republicans, but the actual effect has been crappy economic growth and budget blow outs. Well, at least that kind of mediocre results should be Walker's problem. You're probably right that his appearance on TV is probably a bigger hurdle.

 Jihadin wrote:
I feel that we could have gotten a better deal then what we have now. Deal has to much of "Whatever I can get to make my mark in diplomacy" feel to it

The thing is, though, this deal isn't just between the US and Iran. It was also worked out with China, Russia, France, Germany, and the UK. In rejecting this deal, what message will we be sending to these other world powers who accepted the deal? That the US is incapable of negotiating in good faith? The lines between opposition and support of the deal are purely political; actual and honest diplomacy doesn't enter into it, as we are far too deeply in bed with Israel to the point where it colors all of our foreign policy decisions in that part of the world. Before the deal's details were even announced, at least one special interest group stated they were planning to spend upwards of $20 million to lobby against it.

 whembly wrote:
The Obama years is just like in the Jimmah Carter years.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm

93,770,000 people out of the workforce... numbers not seen since the late 70's.

Okay then, sure, we’ll just ignore population growth and deal in absolute figures. Under Carter there was 136 million people in jobs, now under Obama there’s 189 million! Truly Obama is the great and sainted employer, who has finally created the socialist utopia of employment the US was always destined to be.

So, uh… yeah, I hope you can see the silliness in using absolute numbers. And from there you can realise that what actually matters is the participation rate – ie the number of people employed divided by the total population.

Look at that and you’ll start to see the actual story – employment in the US dropped massively in the GFC and despite recovery elsewhere in the economy the participation rate has only very slightly recovered. Lots of people have tried to use that to score a point against Obama, dragging in claims like immigration or Obamacare (somehow?), but they’re basically all liars and/or idiots. The actual story, like most things in economics, is outside of the control of politicians.

The US is watching the baby boomers retire. It’s a demographics thing. Since women working has become the norm, the biggest reasons to not be employed is because you were under 18 or over 65. Whether the economy is healthy or in the absolute dumps, the biggest reason people aren’t working is because they’re not working age. And the big demographic shift in the US right now is baby boomers shifting to retirement.


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 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
How many times are those numbers only reflecting those who are still "actively" unemployed (ie, pulling unemployment, active within 24-48 hours on job sites, etc)? While I would also dispute the sheer number (seriously, almost 100 million people??? I doubt that)

The measure is of the participation rate, not unemployment. ie how many people don't have job for any reason. So that 100 million includes not just the 25 year old who's looking for work, but also includes, you know, 78 year old retirees and 4 year olds just about ready to start kindergarten.

Its a really important statistical measure (it's a really powerful indicator of future economic growth), but it's not much use politically because it's driven mostly by demographic issues that are entirely outside of politics.

Peaceful Nuclear Power? Well, that would mean switching out uranium reactors and making Thorium reactors as Thorium, unlike Uranium, cannot be weaponized.

 shasolenzabi wrote:
Peaceful Nuclear Power? Well, that would mean switching out uranium reactors and making Thorium reactors as Thorium, unlike Uranium, cannot be weaponized.

That's only because we haven't gotten round to it

Ouze wrote:
I'm not an economist but 100 million people not in the workplace means actual unemployment, with 218m working age americans, would be like, 50%, which sounds to me like there is some shenanigans afoot with how those numbers are being presented.

Unemployment is measured as 'people who looking for work' divided by 'people in work + people who are looking for work'. So there's about 9 to 10 million Americans currently unemployed and looking for work, and 189 million people with jobs. 10/(189+10) gives you an unemployment figure of about 5%.

Participation rate is measuring the number of people in work, against the total population. Exactly why someone wouldn't have a job doesn't matter (those reasons are given in other measures). So the almost 100 million includes retirees, people no longer able to work, children and so on.


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 whembly wrote:
Trump actually said:

"You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her... wherever."

O.o

Is it worse than what he said about McCain? Or is Kelly more of a protected species in the Republican party than McCain?

 sebster wrote:
children and so on.

Does it really account for children who aren't even of "Working age" yet? I thought that the 317 million population figure was counting basically "only" people who were already of voting age.

 sebster wrote:

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 whembly wrote:
Trump actually said:

"You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her... wherever."

O.o

Is it worse than what he said about McCain? Or is Kelly more of a protected species in the Republican party than McCain?

No... not really.

It's just that many folks are trying to infer that Trump's donkey-cave -nish is par for the course for all GOP.

Trump is doing this for Trump.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Does it really account for children who aren't even of "Working age" yet? I thought that the 317 million population figure was counting basically "only" people who were already of voting age.

The 317 million is all people in the US, regardless of age. There's about 80 million kids in the US, about 200 million people of working age, and about 40 million retirees.

 sebster wrote:

Ouze wrote:
I'm not an economist but 100 million people not in the workplace means actual unemployment, with 218m working age americans, would be like, 50%, which sounds to me like there is some shenanigans afoot with how those numbers are being presented.

Unemployment is measured as 'people who looking for work' divided by 'people in work + people who are looking for work'. So there's about 9 to 10 million Americans currently unemployed and looking for work, and 189 million people with jobs. 10/(189+10) gives you an unemployment figure of about 5%.

Participation rate is measuring the number of people in work, against the total population. Exactly why someone wouldn't have a job doesn't matter (those reasons are given in other measures). So the almost 100 million includes retirees, people no longer able to work, children and so on.

Thanks. I knew that was being presented inaccurately, but I didn't know why.

 whembly wrote:
It's just that many folks are trying to infer that Trump's donkey-cave -nish is par for the course for all GOP.

Trump is doing this for Trump.

Who is the current frontrunner as far as GOP polling goes? Clearly he's saying something you guys like.

Ouze wrote:

 whembly wrote:
It's just that many folks are trying to infer that Trump's donkey-cave -nish is par for the course for all GOP.

Trump is doing this for Trump.

Who is the current frontrunner as far as GOP polling goes? Clearly he's saying something you guys like.

Mostly... it's because many are wanting to punish the RNC with a bad candidate.

Many conservatives feel jilted that the current GOP leadership are worthless hacks.

So, no... it's not liking Trump that puts him as the frontrunner now. It's "feth the establishment's pick". (ie, Bush and all).

 whembly wrote:
No... not really.

It's just that many folks are trying to infer that Trump's donkey-cave -nish is par for the course for all GOP.

Trump is doing this for Trump.

Of course Trump is doing this for Trump. Everything Trump has done has been for Trump, and what's more I'd argue hardly any politician acts out of service to their party. We can argue all day about whether they're really motivated about personal ambitions or about service to the country, but in terms of loyalty to their political party, I think that rarely ever merits a consideration.

But it would be very interesting if a misogynist dig did political harm to Trump, when an attack on a US POW as a loser did no harm. Would that mean the modern Republican party has suddenly become more concerned about women's equality than about protection of the nation's fighting men and women... or would it more accurately reflect that Megyn Kelly is a protected establishment figure in a way that John McCain isn't. If this actually does finally sink Trump, it's hard to see it as any other than the latter, but I actually doubt it will move Trump's numbers. The 80 to 85% of Republicans who hate him and would never vote for him will continue to hate him and not vote for him, while the 15 to 20% who support him... well they haven't been discouraged by any of the stupid bs so far, so I doubt this will be any different.

 sebster wrote:

 whembly wrote:
No... not really.

It's just that many folks are trying to infer that Trump's donkey-cave -nish is par for the course for all GOP.

Trump is doing this for Trump.

Of course Trump is doing this for Trump. Everything Trump has done has been for Trump, and what's more I'd argue hardly any politician acts out of service to their party. We can argue all day about whether they're really motivated about personal ambitions or about service to the country, but in terms of loyalty to their political party, I think that rarely ever merits a consideration.

But it would be very interesting if a misogynist dig did political harm to Trump, when an attack on a US POW as a loser did no harm. Would that mean the modern Republican party has suddenly become more concerned about women's equality than about protection of the nation's fighting men and women... or would it more accurately reflect that Megyn Kelly is a protected establishment figure in a way that John McCain isn't. If this actually does finally sink Trump, it's hard to see it as any other than the latter, but I actually doubt it will move Trump's numbers. The 80 to 85% of Republicans who hate him and would never vote for him will continue to hate him and not vote for him, while the 15 to 20% who support him... well they haven't been discouraged by any of the stupid bs so far, so I doubt this will be any different.

Nah...

Trump is going down because more than just the political junkies watched the debate, where Trump didn't do himself any favors.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
If Iran shoots first, it could be too late for Israel. Some parts of Israel are only a few miles wide. It's a small country and it would be easy for a well placed nuke to cause a lot of damage.

I always see this argument - what if Iran launched or detonated a nuke at Israel? And the line of thought never goes very far.

First, here's what a 60kt nuclear weapon (the largest one India had ever tested, so comparable) would look like if detonated in Tel Aviv:



It would kill approximately 200,000 people if an airburst or 138,000 in a surface detonation. It would be unbelievable awful, a tragedy unmatched in modern times, except all those times just as many people died in war via bullets and less rapidly - to paraphrase Lord of War, the AK-47 truly is the real weapon of mass destruction. But I digress, between 140k and 200k israelis are dead and another 400k are injured.

There are 8 million people living in Israel. Israel is a nuclear power. What do you think happens next?

Iran has spent the last few decades trying to expand their influence, most notable into Iraq. No one really disputes this. People don't fill out mortgage paperwork in the morning when they're planning on doing a murder-suicide that evening. No one really disputes this. Those ideas need to get connected.

 whembly wrote:
Mostly... it's because many are wanting to punish the RNC with a bad candidate.

Many conservatives feel jilted that the current GOP leadership are worthless hacks.

As I said earlier in the thread, last primary election people thought the series of weird, flavour of the month candidates was an 'anyone but Romney' thing. Seeing this primary it might be more of an 'anyone but a Republican' thing. The Republican establishment politicians have spent so much time talking about how establishment politicians are bad they've actually made it hard to win their own primary.

But I think there's another issue here - Trump has talked almost complete gibberish throughout his campaign, but why would anyone turn off that gibberish and switch to a different Republican? Would they switch to Bush? His concept is that throughout completely unstated means he's going to create the greatest sustained productivity increase in US history (4% growth without large population growth would be probably the greatest achievement in economic history). And his credentials to support this claim is that he sat there while Florida went through a massive property bubble that crashed shortly after he left office.

Would they switch to Walker? His anti-unions reforms were supposed to be necessary to drive economic growth in Wisconson... but its delivered completely mediocre growth. Meanwhile his tax cuts were supposed to maintain budget revenue because the Laffer curve unicorn would work just fine, except the projected 1 billion surplus ended up a 2 billion deficit.

No-one in the Republican primary has any genuine substance behind their positions. Voting Republican at this point means you're basically buying in to a lot of fantastical nonsense, so really the difference is whether you'd prefer it came from someone using the usual poltiical language, or an abrasive donkey-cave. 20% prefer it comes from an abrasive donkey-cave.


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 whembly wrote:
Nah...

Trump is going down because more than just the political junkies watched the debate, where Trump didn't do himself any favors.

Early polling, admittedly on-line, has Trump polling in the low 20s, actually increasing his numbers.

I think Trump will fall away as the field narrows and most of the vote coalesces around a couple of more traditional candidates, so that Trump's 20 odd % no longer competes. But I really doubt it will happen because of something he says - what could he possibly say than stating you don't like prisoners of war because they aren't winners?

Gawd seb... I just hope it ain't Jeb!

Ouze wrote:
I always see this argument - what if Iran launched or detonated a nuke at Israel? And the line of thought never goes very far.

Yeah. Geography matters a lot when trying to prevent, say, a sudden advance by an armoured column, and that's where Israel has an almost uniquely bad strategic position. It's the issue that's driven much of Israel's defence policy, including their own decision to acquire nukes.

But when it comes to nuke slinging it's just a total non-issue, because you don't throw nukes all over the whole country, you hit the cities. And your images show why very clearly - relative to total geography, cities are actually very small, and while a nuke is awesomely powerful, it's an extraordinarily expensive way to knock out 6 dairy farms. So you target cities, and there having lots of countryside surrounding your cities gives no extra protection.

And what if they manage to knock out Jerusalem in one strike? They would have the remainder of Israels military and nuclear arsenal staring in their faces, every single western power retaliating, and every single Islamic country pissed off for leveling the Temple Mount. They could but it would be incredibly stupid to do so, and even Iran knows this.

I don't think that Iran has the intention to commit mass suicide with their last thoughts being "at least Israel is gone", especially since even destroying Jerusalem wouldn't get rid of Israel. And people who keep on insisting that Iran would do it should know better.

 whembly wrote:
Gawd seb... I just hope it ain't Jeb!

I just can't figure out a reason to pick any of them, to be honest.

I another interesting comment I read about the debates - the Reagan thing is starting to get really weird. His economic record was actually pretty crappy (less jobs created than Carter, funnily enough), and his policy legacy doesn't exist (he thought Medicare was a socialist takeover, and wanted to dismantle Social Security - so effectively his legacy is some nice speeches). But more than that - it was 35 years ago! Imagine if a political party in 1980 was idolising someone from 1945, you’d have to think something had gone pretty badly wrong. Then imagine if a political party in 1945 was still holding to the policies of their leader in 1910, you’d know they were badly in need of modernising. A lot changes in 35 years.

Since 1980 Republicans there's been a whole lot of political change. Unions have been effectively sidelined, international trade has been almost entirely opened up, and the US has seen the Soviet Union collapse to become the single major power in world affairs. Welfare has gone through what, two major reforms? All this time we've seen Republicans calling for lower and lower taxes in the belief that it will grow jobs. At what point does a sober assessment conclude that whatever potential these policies have has been reached?

And the biggest issue is that the economic environment has changed massively - what might have been a decent idea 35 years ago doesn't necessarily apply to the new world. US manufacturing production has grown, but manufacturing jobs have decreased by about half, because competitive manufacturing today is almost entirely automated. We’ve seen microcomputers go from a new economic driver to absolute saturation. There’s now more than a billion robots at work around the world. The largest growth companies of the last decade have been internet companies with hardly any employees. Given the vastly different economy, the idea that business investment just naturally leads to growth has gone from being contentious to being almost complete gibberish. But Republicans couldn’t even dare question that Reagan’s ideas were a bit too simplistic.

35 years.

 whembly wrote:

Oh c'mon man.

The defense for Obama ya'll trying to spin is getting nauseating.

I'm not spinning anything. I'm pointing out that your characterization of Obama's words is not reflective of what Obama actually said. Stating that one group of people has found common cause with another group of people does not indicate that the speaker believes that they are the same, or even necessarily comparable.

 d-usa wrote:
And what if they manage to knock out Jerusalem in one strike? They would have the remainder of Israels military and nuclear arsenal staring in their faces, every single western power retaliating, and every single Islamic country pissed off for leveling the Temple Mount. They could but it would be incredibly stupid to do so, and even Iran knows this.

I don't think that Iran has the intention to commit mass suicide with their last thoughts being "at least Israel is gone", especially since even destroying Jerusalem wouldn't get rid of Israel. And people who keep on insisting that Iran would do it should know better.

I served in the gulf on a sub, trust me my friend it will never happen. Spent few years in Asian waters too, good luck anybody else.

 d-usa wrote:
And what if they manage to knock out Jerusalem in one strike? They would have the remainder of Israels military and nuclear arsenal staring in their faces, every single western power retaliating, and every single Islamic country pissed off for leveling the Temple Mount. They could but it would be incredibly stupid to do so, and even Iran knows this.

I don't think that Iran has the intention to commit mass suicide with their last thoughts being "at least Israel is gone", especially since even destroying Jerusalem wouldn't get rid of Israel. And people who keep on insisting that Iran would do it should know better.

You're labouring under the assumption that religious fanatics operate under the same rational processes that the rest of us live by.

Just because it's the 21st century, doesn't mean to say that Medieval ways of thinking have completely vanished.

History is replete with people doing bad things in the name of religion...


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Ouze wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
If Iran shoots first, it could be too late for Israel. Some parts of Israel are only a few miles wide. It's a small country and it would be easy for a well placed nuke to cause a lot of damage.

I always see this argument - what if Iran launched or detonated a nuke at Israel? And the line of thought never goes very far.

First, here's what a 60kt nuclear weapon (the largest one India had ever tested, so comparable) would look like if detonated in Tel Aviv:



It would kill approximately 200,000 people if an airburst or 138,000 in a surface detonation. It would be unbelievable awful, a tragedy unmatched in modern times, except all those times just as many people died in war via bullets and less rapidly - to paraphrase Lord of War, the AK-47 truly is the real weapon of mass destruction. But I digress, between 140k and 200k israelis are dead and another 400k are injured.

There are 8 million people living in Israel. Israel is a nuclear power. What do you think happens next?

Iran has spent the last few decades trying to expand their influence, most notable into Iraq. No one really disputes this. People don't fill out mortgage paperwork in the morning when they're planning on doing a murder-suicide that evening. No one really disputes this. Those ideas need to get connected.

What about the fallout? Land being contaminated for years?


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 Gordon Shumway wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
And what if they manage to knock out Jerusalem in one strike? They would have the remainder of Israels military and nuclear arsenal staring in their faces, every single western power retaliating, and every single Islamic country pissed off for leveling the Temple Mount. They could but it would be incredibly stupid to do so, and even Iran knows this.

I don't think that Iran has the intention to commit mass suicide with their last thoughts being "at least Israel is gone", especially since even destroying Jerusalem wouldn't get rid of Israel. And people who keep on insisting that Iran would do it should know better.

I served in the gulf on a sub, trust me my friend it will never happen. Spent few years in Asian waters too, good luck anybody else.

On the eve of world war 1, Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, laughed at the prospect of a war engulfing Europe...

In 1938, the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, returned from Munich clutching a piece of paper. Peace in our time...

We al know those events played out, unfortunately...

Point is, it's dangerous to predict nothing will happen.

To paraphrase a famous American. In Life you can only be certain of 3 things: death, taxes, and war in the Middle East

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
What about the fallout? Land being contaminated for years?

Yes, that would be a large problem... for Lebanon as well.

But the point is Iran wouldn't be around to see it. And again, none of the things they're actually doing - trying to extend regional power- sync up with the fairy tale of apocalyptic martyrs.

 d-usa wrote:
And what if they manage to knock out Jerusalem in one strike? They would have the remainder of Israels military and nuclear arsenal staring in their faces, every single western power retaliating, and every single Islamic country pissed off for leveling the Temple Mount. They could but it would be incredibly stupid to do so, and even Iran knows this.

I don't think that Iran has the intention to commit mass suicide with their last thoughts being "at least Israel is gone", especially since even destroying Jerusalem wouldn't get rid of Israel. And people who keep on insisting that Iran would do it should know better.

Unless its smuggled in and goes off.

With nothing incoming from Iran, who do we know its from Iran? What does the world do if Israel "unilaterally" (which is how it will be spun) attacks Iran after?

I'm not actually pro any side on this (other than the side that gets us out of the region utterly and right freaking now), but that is one real world scenario.


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Ouze wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
What about the fallout? Land being contaminated for years?

Yes, that would be a large problem... for Lebanon as well.

But the point is Iran wouldn't be around to see it. And again, none of the things they're actually doing - trying to extend regional power- sync up with the fairy tale of apocalyptic martyrs.

If you belong to a religious subsect that believes in the very real pending Armaggedon and you want to trigger it off, how is this a bad thing?

 Frazzled wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
And what if they manage to knock out Jerusalem in one strike? They would have the remainder of Israels military and nuclear arsenal staring in their faces, every single western power retaliating, and every single Islamic country pissed off for leveling the Temple Mount. They could but it would be incredibly stupid to do so, and even Iran knows this.

I don't think that Iran has the intention to commit mass suicide with their last thoughts being "at least Israel is gone", especially since even destroying Jerusalem wouldn't get rid of Israel. And people who keep on insisting that Iran would do it should know better.

Unless its smuggled in and goes off.

With nothing incoming from Iran, who do we know its from Iran? What does the world do if Israel "unilaterally" (which is how it will be spun) attacks Iran after?

I'm not actually pro any side on this (other than the side that gets us out of the region utterly and right freaking now), but that is one real world scenario.

The chances of Iran building a nuclear weapon and smuggling it into Israel without anybody stopping it is pretty damn remote, and if we are talking "dirty bomb" it is something that they could have done for a very long time now. The chances of Iran pulling it off without leaving any of their fingerprints all over the place is even more remote.

Both of those chances are less likely than the chance that Iran is stupid enough to even try to do something that guarantees their annihilation from the combined force of Israel/the western world/the Islamic world.

How is it remote. They are going to build a bomb.

They need a shipping container or just a large box depending on how big it is.


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 Frazzled wrote:
How is it remote. They are going to build a bomb.

They need a shipping container or just a large box depending on how big it is.

How do you prove they did it?
Would any one believe you?
Would the religious leaders care?

Over the weekend, Bernie Sanders had a rally shut down by a group of BLM protesters. I find the irony, and self-serving idiocy delicious there.