Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[THE_WIZARD_]

STFU

[Ghengis Jon]

Jeff, the problem with overthrowing horrific regimes, particularly those that have been entrenched, is that unless there is a lust for freedom you'll replace one set of bad guys with another set of bad guys. Only the skill sets change. Look at Iraq or Afghanistan or Russia or Libya to name a few. Iraq I spawned despair in a war ravaged country, Iraq II spawned ISIS, Afghanistan is a revolving door clusterfuck, Libya is complete mess and the USSR gave us Putin. Closer to our backyard, what did overthrowing Allende give us? More right wing death squads. The last time US assisted regime change was even moderately successful was the Polish revolution that brought Walesa into prominence. Our track record of no viable alternatives should give us pause. It seems that typically we bring down a murderous regime and install a corrupt one that uses poverty and disease to kill instead of the security services.


Russia is and will continue to undermine the US in Iran. What are we going to do, put sanctions on Russia? The Chinese could also step up trade with Iran to pressure the US, just like they're doing with North Korea. But lets say the Iranian theocracy falls. Their economy is already in ruins and corruption is the only counterbalance to the mullahs. In a country where the citizens have been schooled to hate the USA since 1979 (or before depending on POV), is there some new Marshall Plan waiting? (How'd the rebuilding in Iraq work out?) How is generational hate going to be overcome in a time span measured in months? If there was a plan, the US would be trumpeting it to increase internal pressure and discontent that sanctions won't provide.


Trump is transactional, he's not a strategic thinker. If you remove a regime (one that ought to be removed) and it devolves into chaos (which is not good in the short or long term), then what have you accomplished? Trump's view will be IT'S A WIN!!! (no more mullahs). But the ME instability, with its increased chances of conflict and crazy world economic gyrations, is not in the US's best interests. But it's still a win because no more mullahs!!! (Economic instability, global tensions and the rise of MORE large scale international terrorist organizations is all fake news!).


The best and the brightest need to impress upon Dear Leader that tariffs and military force are not the only foreign policy tools available. You don't just break shit and call it good. If you're going to blow up a dam, perhaps you should consider where all the water is going to go and how are you going to deal with it instead of saying what happens in the lowlands doesn't affect the high ground. It is up to the best and brightest to stop the transactional perspective. They are failing. There is a distinct lack of strategic thinking and that impedes US interests. The buck stops at the Resolute Desk.

[froot loops]

To the war hawks regime change is always around the corner and the succeeding regime is always better. It never occurs that the sanctions and the oppressive nature of them strengthen the hand of the hard liners. To their minds the public will get fed up with the sanctions and will logically throw them out of power. There's no empirical evidence that this would occur..North Korea has been the subject of the harshest sanctions since the Korean war and there is no end in sight to that regime, in fact Donald Trump professes his love for Kin Jung Un in letter form.

Plus there is no guarantee the exiles out of power would be any better. A total fool like John Bolton(should have been thrown away after the Iraq invasion!) is in the pocket of the MEK. That's the war hawks group of choice in Washington that has no popularity inside of Iran, but they will buy off guys like Bolton and Guiliani.

We consistently overestimate Pax Americana as the neo-cons foolishly cling to in the Middle East.

[froot loops]

[froot loops]

Waaaaaa. My donors need more corporate welfare! They deserve free money! Companies are suffering from high stock valuations, high productivity, large profits, steady growth - are you blind to their suffering?!?

In this case Trump is somewhat right, but he's the one who fired Janet Yellen because she was short and hired Jay Powell. He didn't actually consider the policy ramifications, There wouldn't be much difference at all if Yellen was still in charge. Trump could have nominated a dovish chairman but he is incompetent to the point he wouldn't know what that meant. He laughably tried to nominate Moore and Cain to be to be on the Fed's board. Another incompetent decision. He views the Fed in a prism of re-election chances, so he's right to a point. But the same structural problems the fed is facing now were around when a Democrat was in office and he was bitching about the Fed keeping rates low.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...0SS22A20151103

If you are arguing to raise rates in 2015, then you don't have a leg to stand on in 2019.

The Fed has been irrationally afraid of inflation since the inflationary period of the 70's, it has over learned the lesson. You wouldn't this sheer nonsense of tariffs and xenophobia if the country/Fed had truly been tried to get to full employment over the last few decades. How many times has the economy gone over it's modest inflationary target of 2.0% ? They start puckering when it gets to about 1.5%. The dual mandates have not been treated equally.

[crashcourse]

New Trump accuser says he assaulted her back in the 90's in a Manhattan dept store dressing room. Says she never came forward because he was a lot richer and more powerful than she was. And more recently she knew she'd be bombarded by death threats and hate mail should she ever mention it.

She's not a household name (or at least I don't really know her) but she was a respected editor, tv host, and advice columnist

Trump says he's never even met her but there's a photo of them together in the article. Not that Trump could possibly remember everyone he's ever been in a photo with but this woman isn't a nobody. She was very well known on the social scene in Manhattan in the 80's and 90's.

If you didn't believe any of Trump's previous 15 accusers or any of the Roy Moore accusers, you probably won't believe her either.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/...ccusation.html

this one is a nut DSL

https://www.dailywire.com/news/48763/weird-trump-rape-accuser-says-she-wishes-shed-emily-zanotti?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=benshapiro

[Jeff Buchanan]

Two good counterbalancing arguments from Jon and Froot to my Jon Bolton honorarium post.

I'd respond this way to both posts:

The ME is fundamentally engaged in a battle of influence between the two main branches of Islam - Shia and Sunni - involving four major players: SA, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Egypt is currently a by-stander and Israel is a fly in the ointment. Sunni's are predominant in terms of numbers by a large margin. Iraq is also predominantly Sunni but political conflict between the two religious sects keeps that government less than stable. Syria is a weird, flammable sectarian mix of Alawites, Sunnis and Shia, among others. Iran is a Shia state by virtue of the current holders of power there. But, they are, in fact Persians who, over the centuries, became practitioners of Islam. The 20th Century brought forth the Phalavi Dynasty in Iran and an era of modernization transforming an essentially religious feudal state to a secular, industrialized one. The 1979 overthrow of Sha Reza Phalavi ushered in a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy in Iran and it remains as such today. Historians believe that the Iranian Revolution brought about the trend to fundamentalist Islamic theocracies as a mode of governance from Morocco and the entire African continent to Malaysia and the whole of Asia.

This circumstance aligns the Gulf States, led by SA in opposition to Iran who has steadily increased it's power and influence in the region to include constant meddling in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq in attempts to insure these governments are aligned with Shia Iran at the expense the rest of the Sunni ME. I don't think linking past failed regime changes undertaken overtly or covertly by the US to the one the US appears to be pursuing in Iran works. While we hear of regime change being attached to the current administration and mostly associated with the histories of Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, the goal of the Trump administration is to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons such that the balance of power there is shifted substantially away from US allies there - SA (at the moment) and Israel. And let me be clear, this isn't only about oil. It's about the strategic importance of the whole of the ME from the Suez Canal to the Red Sea. It is currently and historically the geographical center of world wide trade routes. So forget the idea the ME is no longer strategically important because the US is no longer dependent on ME oil.

The Mullahs can peacefully determine if they want to continue to rule Iran or not. All they have to do is agree to verifyably not pursue nuclear weapons. I've spent some time trying to understand the 2105 JCPOA and I've come to the same conclusion that a whole lot of people came to: there is too much wiggle room in the deal for Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon if they want to. I could list them but that's not the point here. The point is to stress that the current US policy in the ME with regard to Iran is to prevent them from getting nukes - plain and simple, easy to understand. The US has also recently stated that it is Iran's best interests to stop supporting proxy forces to carry out it's expansionist and hegemonic goals in the region. Not hard to comprehend. Of course, the Mullahs, terrorists actually, give the US and the rest of the world the finger.

So yeah, there are historical comparisons worth mentioning here but the US getting behind regime change in Iraq or NK or South America and so on, is not one of them. It's more like the world's willingness to tolerate the rise of Germany and Imperial Japan in the 1930s, two regimes bent on dominating if not a region, the whole world. One could argue that the threat of a large part of the world ruled by fundamental Islamist theocrats linked together by the words of the Prophet Mohamid and promulgated in the Koran could erode the world of freer governments whose governance is based on Judeo-Christian beliefs. Pay me a little now or a huge amount later that late payment involving mushroom clouds.

[froot loops]

Yeah the mushroom cloud argument was a Dick Cheney gem in a run up to the Iraq war. That is an evergreen argument for war.

[Kapture1]

this one is a nut DSL

https://www.dailywire.com/news/48763...ign=benshapiro

strange how trump was only a serial rapist 20 years ago, and only went after hideous cat lady progressive women.

[Ghengis Jon]

I agree with a lot of what you say Jeff, but there is one grievous error in your arguments. By all accounts, Iran was adhering to the agreement. They could make nuclear fuel (enriched U @ ~3.25%). Could you make a dirty bomb? Sure, but nothing that goes BOOOOOOM. Trump withdrew for 2 reasons: his unbridled hatred of Obama and everything that can be associated with him and trying to rein in Iran's influence, thwart ballistic missile development and support of toxic proxies. The first reason doesn't matter. But why withdraw from an agreement that is actually working in it's intent? Because of Trump's mindset. He's a billionaire that was born with a platinum spoon up his ass. The single most important thing in his universe is money. Nothing else matters - not rule of law, not human life, not national interest. Money. The JCPOA lifted sanctions, and if Trump can't screw with money, he's intellectually powerless. He ignores a warehouse of American (non-sanction) economic, diplomatic and technical tools, because all he sees is tariffs, sanctions, and the military in his quiver. Trump is a classic example for the limited responses coming from a limited mind. This disadvantages those advisers who are far more aware and better schooled.

This attitude is exemplified by the so-called "Kushner Plan" for the ME. We'll loan you money for development if you give up all your demands including statehood. Sorry Donny boy, the ME doesn't put money above all else like you do. This "plan" is dead before it's even birthed. It's like the Americans giving up statehood aspirations if the Brits only would have given up the Tea Tax and offered some development loans. Dumbfuck Arafat killed a potential peace agreement that was being negotiated beyond the Oslo Accords for a Palestinian state (Israel's Rabin supported this). Well, Arafat is dead and gone....use the previously negotiated Oslo agreement and statehood follow-up as a starting point, where both sides can point and say "You agreed to this before..."

But I digress. Trump only knows sanctions and tariffs. In order to apply these, he had to withdraw from an agreement that was accomplishing what it intended. I find it hard to believe that the US is powerless against Iran without sanctions or a potential bloodbath. Trump risks acquiring Arafat's label - never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

[froot loops]

Something for talent although he probably already knows about it

[iam416]

[Dr. Strangelove]

Along SC lines...I saw this last week after the Flowers decision. Thomas' dissent, which was significantly longer than the actual decision, only had Gorsuch on board with him...and even then, Gorsuch did not want his name attached to the final 10 pages, which essentially argued that racism is so pervasive in the judicial system that defendants should be allowed to choose the racial composition of their juries.

http://coreyrobin.com/2019/06/21/how-on-gods-green-earth-did-clarence-thomas-just-write-an-opinion-on-race-and-jury-trials-that-was-well-to-the-right-or-was-it-of-brett-kavanaugh-john-roberts-samuel-alito-and-even-neil-gorsuc/

[iam416]

[froot loops]