***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[EddieDoyers]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/17/us/politics/trump-iran-nuclear-deal-recertify.html?referer=

Trump Recertifies Iran Nuclear Deal, but Only Reluctantly

WASHINGTON — President Trump agreed on Monday to certify again that Iran is complying with an international nuclear agreement that he has strongly criticized, but only after hours of arguing with his top national security advisers, briefly upending a planned announcement as a legal deadline loomed.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly condemned the deal brokered by President Barack Obama as a dangerous capitulation to Iran, but six months into his presidency he has not abandoned it. The decision on Monday was the second time his administration certified Iran’s compliance, and aides said a frustrated Mr. Trump had told his security team that he would not keep doing so indefinitely.

Administration officials announced the certification on Monday evening while emphasizing that they intended to toughen enforcement of the deal, apply new sanctions on Iran for its support of terrorism and other destabilizing activities, and negotiate with European partners to craft a broader strategy to increase pressure on Tehran. Aides said Mr. Trump had insisted on such actions before agreeing to the consensus recommendation of his national security team.

“The president has made very clear that he thought this was a bad deal — a bad deal for the United States,” Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, told reporters at a briefing on Monday before the decision was made.

By law, the administration is required to notify Congress every 90 days whether Iran is living up to the deal, which limited its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of many international sanctions. With the latest deadline approaching on Monday, the issue set off a sharp debate between the president and his own team, starting last week, aides said.

At an hourlong meeting last Wednesday, all of the president’s major security advisers recommended he preserve the Iran deal for now. Among those who spoke out were Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson; Defense Secretary Jim Mattis; Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser; and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to an official who described internal discussions on the condition of anonymity. The official said Mr. Trump had spent 55 minutes of the meeting telling them he did not want to.

Mr. Trump did not want to certify Iran’s compliance the first time around either, but was talked into it on the condition that his team come back with a new strategy to confront Tehran, the official said. Last week, advisers told the president they needed more time to work with allies and Congress. Mr. Trump responded that before he would go along, they had to meet certain conditions, said the official, who would not outline what the conditions were.

While Mr. Trump headed to Paris and then spent the weekend in New Jersey, his team developed a strategy that it hoped would satisfy him and planned to notify Congress and make the case publicly on Monday. But even as allies were quietly being informed, Mr. Trump balked when he heard the plan at his morning security briefing, the official said. The argument continued during a separate meeting with Mr. Tillerson as Mr. Trump pressed for more action, the official said.

Suddenly, a background briefing to announce the decision was postponed and Mr. Spicer was sent out to assure reporters that a decision would be coming “very shortly,” while aides scrambled to satisfy Mr. Trump. He agreed only late in the day after a final meeting in the Oval Office, in effect telling his advisers that he was giving them another chance and this time they had to deliver. The announcement was then rescheduled for the early evening and a notice was sent to Congress to continue withholding nuclear-related sanctions against Iran.

Under the agreement, the United States can still penalize Iran for behavior such as its development of ballistic missiles or support for terrorism, but it cannot simply reapply the same sanctions that were lifted under a different guise. Iran has the right to appeal to a joint committee and make the argument that the United States is in violation.

European officials have long argued that the agreement was intended only to restrict Iran’s nuclear program, not the panoply of other issues. If the international community were to do more to confront Tehran over its efforts to destabilize neighbors in the Middle East, European officials have said, it would be better to face an Iran without nuclear weapons. They have shown little enthusiasm for revisiting the deal, much less undercutting it.

That Mr. Trump’s actions will satisfy conservatives who have been urging him to rip up the Iran deal seemed unlikely. In a column in The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper, John R. Bolton, a former ambassador to the United Nations who has interviewed with the president for several jobs in the administration, argued that the nuclear agreement “remains palpably harmful to American national interests.” Withdrawing from it, he said, “should be the highest priority.”

Israel and its supporters in Washington have also bristled at a new cease-fire in southwest Syria that was brokered by Mr. Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, fearing it will leave Iran as a major player on the ground in the six-year civil war. Mr. Spicer said the administration would address that with Israel. “There’s a shared interest that we have with Israel, making sure that Iran does not gain a foothold, military base-wise, in southern Syria,” Mr. Spicer said.

Tehran’s clerical government argues that Mr. Trump has already violated the nuclear agreement by pressuring businesses not to engage with Iran even though the nuclear sanctions have been lifted. “That is violation of not the spirit but of the letter of the J.C.P.O.A. of the nuclear deal,” Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, said on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” on Sunday, using the initials for the agreement.

Mr. Zarif, visiting New York, told a gathering of the Council on Foreign Relations on Monday that he has yet to talk with Mr. Tillerson, unlike his frequent conversations with former Secretary of State John Kerry, with whom he negotiated the nuclear accord.

In an interview on Monday with Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of The National Interest, a foreign policy journal, Mr. Zarif raised the prospect that Iran would be the one to back out. “If it comes to a major violation, or what in the terms of the nuclear deal is called significant nonperformance, then Iran has other options available, including withdrawing from the deal,” he said.

That would be an outcome welcomed by the Trump administration. Top officials like Mr. Tillerson and Mr. Mattis have expressed concern about the effect on American relations with European allies if Mr. Trump were to unilaterally pull out, especially after he already announced his intention to back out of the Paris climate change accord that Europeans strongly support.

But some advisers to the president argue that if they can provoke Iran into being the one to scrap the nuclear deal, it will leave the United States in a stronger position.

Mr. Trump has aligned the United States with Sunni Arab states, like Saudi Arabia, as well as Israel in their mutual struggle with Shiite-led Iran over control of the Middle East. His administration has already announced modest new sanctions against Iran, but nothing on the scale of those imposed before the nuclear agreement.

 

[dwalk31]

So you just say that if you don't like a fact, you can disagree with it? No. Thats not how life works. And if you disregard well established studies or theories as "propoganda" or "nonsense" then you're disagreeing with reality and committing the most egregious kind of intellectual dishonesty. There's no debating or rationalizing with that kind of stupidity.

"the most egregious kind of intellectual dishonesty"

It ain't that serious...

 

[harlemtothebronx]

This must have all happened before my time in the thread. I know you said Ninja made racist or bigoted comments and Im not sure if he is black, but I am pretty sure he is a minority. He was being racist against white people?

But this is what it seems to boil down to. You feel that, when presented with what you consider clear evidence, an opposing party should admit what has been established. If they don't, then there is no point in engaging or interacting with that.

Personally, I don't agree with you there. We can agree to disagree. But, I won't ignore or block you because we disagree. I actually learn a lot from differing opinions.

Man, what the **** are you pontificating about?

If a person is unwilling to acknowledge simple facts, what is the point of a discussion other than to drive the individual following norms and acknowledging reality mad? Please explain to me why not being willing to engage with people who willingly ignore fact is somehow immature or shortsighted?

I really have to hear this one.

 

[dwalk31]

Man, what the **** are you pontificating about?

If a person is unwilling to acknowledge simple facts, what is the point of a discussion other than to drive the individual following norms and acknowledging reality mad? Please explain to me why not being willing to engage with people who willingly ignore fact is somehow immature or shortsighted?

I really have to hear this one.

I didn't say it was immature or short sighted. But y'all out here name calling, using profanity and talking about "being driven mad," blocking and using ignore features.... Lol, whatever is best for your mental health.

It is nice whenever someone has an actual conversation. Did you guys see the homeless spikes they were doing in some cities? Terrible

 

[RustyShackleford]

I can tell dude is hitting y'all with some grade-A deflections just by you guys responses.

 

[dwalk31]

I can tell dude is hitting y'all with some grade-A deflections just by you guys reaponses.

Luckily you are in the safe space ignoring it. Oh wait...

 

[SoleByThePound]

That is why many have blocked Ninjahood, because he has no respect for basic principles of debate. There is nothing to gain from arguing with him. He will rarely ever give a direct answer to a question, if an answer at all. And whatever doesn't fit within his worldview or could be construed as criticism to Trump is met with relentless deflection, whataboutism, strawman arguments, ...

The new ignore option is my favorite thing on the site, like Rusty said "It is like these dude don't even exist".

 

[aepps20]

I agree with DAPPER Don. He only lost 4 Republican votes which is AMAZING. Once again, not to second guess MY PRESIDENT but if Barson were more involved in the healthcare discussions Don doesn't lose any votes and gains a majority of dems on his side. Leaving BENJAMIN FRANKLIN CARSON on the sidelines is like leaving Jonathan Snow at the wall.

 

[dwalk31]

The new ignore option is my favorite thing on the site, like Rusty said "It is like these dude don't even exist".

Nothing better than talking about the things you are ignoring. It is like you aren't even ignoring it

 

[harlemtothebronx]

I didn't say it was immature or short sighted. But y'all out here name calling, using profanity and talking about "being driven mad," blocking and using ignore features.... Lol, whatever is best for your mental health.

It is nice whenever someone has an actual conversation. Did you guys see the homeless spikes they were doing in some cities? Terrible

I’m speaking in general terms. I’ve learned my lesson with engaging posters like you and ninjahood. I mean, there is really no way to justify that comment. Not acknowledging fact is pretty damn horrible, especially if you expect to be respected and taken seriously by those who take fact into account.

I haven’t and will not block any of y’all. It doesn’t bother me at all to read the ridiculousness I sometimes see in this thread from posters who literally will not acknowledge fact if it doesn’t fit within their world view.

You could try to play up our outrage in an attempt to downplay how ridiculous some Trump supporters are acting. Cognitive dissonance. Anyone with half a brain can see it, even those of you embracing this post-fact political realm.

On the topic of homelessness, though...it’s become pretty bad in New York. The homeless population went up during a focused effort to expedite the housing process and get as many homeless families out of shelters and into public housing units.

I’m not sure about nationally, though. Would you happen to have an article? Sounds intriguing.

 

[dwalk31]

I’m speaking in general terms. I’ve learned my lesson with engaging posters like you and ninjahood. I mean, there is really no way to justify that comment. Not acknowledging fact is pretty damn horrible, especially if you expect to be respected and taken seriously by those who take fact into account.

I haven’t and will not block any of y’all. It doesn’t bother me at all to read the ridiculousness I sometimes see in this thread from posters who literally will not acknowledge fact if it doesn’t fit within their world view.

You could try to play up our outrage in an attempt to downplay how ridiculous some Trump supporters are acting. Cognitive dissonance. Anyone with half a brain can see it, even those of you embracing this post-fact political realm.

That's fair. It is without doubt that some Trump supporters are acting ridiculous. It is true that some Dem supporters are as well.

I just try to discuss the issues and not take things personally.

 

[noskey]

I agree with DAPPER Don. He only lost 4 Republican votes which is AMAZING. Once again, not to second guess MY PRESIDENT but if Barson were more involved in the healthcare discussions Don doesn't lose any votes and gains a majority of dems on his side. Leaving BENJAMIN FRANKLIN CARSON on the sidelines is like leaving Jonathan Snow at the wall.

THIS IS HOW WE MAKE AMERICA COAL AGAIN! Dapper Don won more than 90% of Republican senators! And even more of the American people when you don't count the 60 million illegal votes that went to Demoncrat Crooked HiLLary! How DARE these elitist, scumbag libbies defy their master President. They refuse to bend the knee to Lord Commander President Donald Snow Trump, so they should get the gallows like those treasonous Nights Watch libbies.

 

[whywesteppin]

I can tell dude is hitting y'all with some grade-A deflections just by you guys responses.

i feel like we're in interstellar

 

[harlemtothebronx]

That's fair. It is without doubt that some Trump supporters are acting ridiculous. It is true that some Dem supporters are as well.

I just try to discuss the issues and not take things personally.

I’m not speaking on you personally, but it’s easy to not take things personal when something as serious as the presidency is something you can’t look at with clear eyes. When someone is unwilling to acknowledge fact to prove a point, they generally care about winning the argument more than they do what’s right and wrong.

It’s why ‘trolling’ has become a tactic that some politicians think works.

That’s a problem. If we aren’t speaking from a place of honesty, there is no discussion to have. And that’s being honest with one’s self. What it takes to realize that you may be or may have been wrong.

I see a lot of folks are missing that.

 

[whywesteppin]

THIS IS HOW WE MAKE AMERICA COAL AGAIN! Dapper Don won more than 90% of Republican senators! And even more of the American people when you don't count the 60 million illegal votes that went to Demoncrat Crooked HiLLary! How DARE these elitist, scumbag libbies defy their master President. They refuse to bend the knee, Lord Commander President Donald Snow Trump, so they should get the gallows like those treasonous Nights Watch libbies.

very well said, comrade!

trump got 98% of the vote that matters, just like Assad in Syria. even Putin didn't do that well.

it's very easy to understand why he is this well-loved. he tells it like it is, and he usually tells it like it ain't. he is dangerously dapper, not just in his youth but today as well. how else was he able to attract much younger beautiful women like Melania and Ivanka? finally, he understands what it's like to work in the coal mine to put food (especially well-done steaks) on the table.

these liberal losers are nothing but that: losers. they don't understand. i doubt all 4 of their grandparents were born in the USA so how could they?

we won 98% of this country by land mass. i can produce the color map that takes advantage of the gross differences in population density if you'd like. point is, we need to go back to a system where your vote depends on where you live, which depends on the color of your skin. that's the only fair voting system that one could imagine. don't fall for the Soros propaganda on this.

for all these numbers i cited for trump, double them and that's the results Benjamin Barson will get in 2020. he won't just repeal and replace obummercare, he'll burn health care to the ground with 196% approval.

 

[dwalk31]

I’m not speaking on you personally, but it’s easy to not take things personal when something as serious as the presidency is something you can’t look at with clear eyes. When someone is unwilling to acknowledge fact to prove a point, they generally care about winning the argument more than they do what’s right and wrong.

It’s why ‘trolling’ has become a tactic that some politicians think works.

That’s a problem. If we aren’t speaking from a place of honesty, there is no discussion to have. And that’s being honest with one’s self. What it takes to realize that you may be or may have been wrong.

I see a lot of folks are missing that.

Admittedly, I haven't been on the thread for very long, but perhaps a lot of the issue comes down to delivery. Explaining to someone that they are misinformed/mistaken is very different than hurling low-IQ accusations. When I mentioned that the snark is a large part of how someone like Trump is elected, that is what I'm talking about. For instance, the "deplorables" line was un-helpful. Delivery is important. You seem to be pretty reasonable. If we are speaking from a place of honesty, then it is clear that the rhetoric on both sides is ridiculous. And in this thread, the majority of the ridiculousness comes from one side of the aisle.

 

[noskey]

Skip back in time about a year in this thread. Just take a stroll through the general election campaign season. You need to understand the past to understand the present.

 

[EddieDoyers]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...es-150p:homepage/story&utm_term=.39aac9783a6c

Trump has repeatedly broken his core campaign promise

It’s not just that Donald Trump ran for president with a lack of interest in the details of policy or legislating, though both of those things were apparent from the outset of his campaign. Standing next to his helicopter near the Iowa State Fairgrounds in August 2015, Trump dismissed policy statements as something the press cared more about than voters. When asked how he would get legislation passed in Congress, a much different task than running a company, he waved away such pedestrian concerns. He’d twist their arms the way he forced permits through the New York City Council.

But, again, it wasn’t just that he was uninterested in the traditional systems by which laws were passed in Washington. It was that he embraced that disinterest as a solution. He was an Outsider, coming to D.C. without the encumbrances of having done this before. This was framed by his supporters as though he was the new sheriff in town, prepared to think outside the box. Others framed it less generously, as though a tourist had wandered onto an aircraft carrier and decided he was going to shoot down some MiGs.

Trump’s central pitch, redistilled and redistributed on a near-daily basis over the course of 2016, was a simple one: I am a dealmaker, and I will make deals. It was a simple premise and his core campaign argument, simpler and more important than “make America great again.” Once you bought into the idea that Trump’s business acumen would translate into handshake agreements solidifying the future of our country, you were bought into the idea that he could do anything. Which is what he promised. He made sweeping assertions of what he could do, powered — not inhibited — by the objections of realists.

“Health care that covers everyone for less cost and with better options!” Trump would promise. But that’s impossible!, the realists would respond. “That’s because you don’t know how to make deals,” Trump would reply. If you bought into the idea that Trump could close the deal, you bought into the idea that the naysayers simply didn’t get it.

Trump can’t close the deals.

What deals has he made? He got a conservative appointment confirmed for the Supreme Court — after having Neil M. Gorsuch recommended to him by outside groups and after the Senate changed its rules to assure the confirmation. He’s signed a lot of executive orders, but those aren’t deals and some of those were blocked by the courts. He discussed a cease-fire in Syria during his sit-down with Vladimir Putin, which seems to be holding.

But legislation? No.

On Monday night, the most recent example: Two more Republican senators came out in opposition to the Obamacare overhaul that was awaiting their votes. The senators’ announcement was especially brutal because it came shortly after Trump hosted a dinner during which he hoped to persuade other senators to back the bill. Trump was late to the effort and was wooing the wrong people when the rug was pulled out from under him.

The president is anxious to assure the public that he remains the competent deal-maker-in-chief, tweeting brash, overconfident and contradictory assertions about the future of health-care legislation after the bill’s collapse. (On Monday night, it was “REPEAL failing ObamaCare now.” On Tuesday morning, “[a]s I have always said, let ObamaCare fail.”) And yet, as we noted on Monday, Trump didn’t really do very much to ensure its passage.

That the bill was in trouble wasn’t a secret. For some time now, it’s been clear that Senate Republicans had a remarkably thin margin of error on their effort to get the necessary 50 votes for passage. But Trump didn’t do much to try to solidify his party’s position. He traveled to France last week for a Bastille Day celebration, a trip that had been planned for some time but does not appear to have been unmissable. When he returned to the country over the weekend, he literally spent hours over two days watching a golf tournament at his private club in New Jersey. Where was the dealmaking?

Two things likely happened. The first is that Trump quickly learned that the 535 members of Congress operate from a different position of concern than the people with whom he used to make business deals. The bottom line, here, is the concern of voters, something that varies from person to person. There’s never a one-on-one agreement. That Trump also revealed himself to be an untrustworthy ally — saying, for example, that the House bill he took credit for helping to pass was “mean” — no doubt made his job harder. Why take a tough vote on a bill if you’re going to get burned for it by a president seeking to cover his own tail?

That’s the other thing that happened. One reason Trump likely never embraced the Senate bill was that he certainly knew it wasn’t very popular. And among the motivations that power the president, few are as important as the desire to be viewed positively.

Theoretically, the buck stops at the president’s desk. But Trump seems more than happy to let the blame fall elsewhere: On his Republican allies, on the Democrats, on Hillary Clinton.

There’s an anecdote that didn’t get much attention last week that’s relevant here. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) was addressing a small crowd in D.C. when he told a storyabout a conversation between Trump and his secretary of defense, Jim Mattis. From Washingtonian’s report:

“We’re asking permission to send 50 of our soldiers into a village outside Raqqa,” Mattis told Trump, according to Graham. “Why are you calling me?” Trump replied. “I don’t know where this village is at.” Mattis told him, “Well, that’s what we’ve done for the last 8 years.”

Trump, Graham said, then asked, “Who’s asking to go into that village?” Mattis told him, “A major, first in his class at West Point.”

“’Why do you think I know more about that than he does?’” Graham said Trump asked. “And then he hung up.”

In one sense, that’s understandable: The guy on the ground has more intimate familiarity with what’s happening than does Trump. But in two senses, it’s amazing. First, Trump is the ultimate decision-maker on military matters, a role he embraces in the abstract but that, here, seemed to take him aback. But, second, we can easily see a way in which this is handled if the incursion into that village goes south: Well, Trump might say, it’s not my fault.


During the 2016 Republican convention, one year ago this week, Trump promised that only he could fix what was wrong in Washington. That it was he who could go to Washington, crack skulls and make change. A year later, that’s not how it has played out. As some might have predicted, Trump’s lack of familiarity with the process of legislating and his over-the-top promises on what he could deliver didn’t pan out. He came to Washington pledging to be the ultimate dealmaker, who would make all of your dreams come true.

Turns out Donald Trump was just another politician, making promises he couldn’t keep.

 

[gry60]

A critical element of the learning process is knowing when you're wrong, being able to admit you're wrong and the most important of all: learning from being wrong.

This.

I want to add that a big part of why certain people are unable to recognize when they are wrong is because they lack the understanding of how the information thay challenges their beliefs was deduced in the first place. The method of reasoning used to logically get to a conclusion we call "fact" (or a theory) is the scientific method. Many Americans seem to be unaware of that process, and I guess it is a consequence of the way people are educated throughout their academic career. With much emphasis on information retention and test results, I can see why teachers from kindergarten to colleges would overlook the actual application of the scientific method (observation, hypothesis, test, theory) in favor of feeding students formulas and ask them to plug in numbers.

This is actually one of the strengths of liberal arts: because answers are not set in stone (unlike undergrad engineering) students actually have to reason to get to a convincing conclusion (that is, one that addresses the strengths and weaknesses of a particular position and weights the former against the latter). It should also be remembered that most scientists who gave use the mathematical tools and the insight in physics and chemistry and biology we still explore today were also writers (communication), philosophers, and artists. In light of all of that, I can help but shake my head at those who think lib arts are useless. Above all, they teach you how to reason.

So you just say that if you don't like a fact, you can disagree with it? No. Thats not how life works. And if you disregard well established studies or theories as "propoganda" or "nonsense" then you're disagreeing with reality and committing the most egregious kind of intellectual dishonesty. There's no debating or rationalizing with that kind of stupidity.

As I read somewhere, you can always disagree with the theory of gravity, jump off a roof, and see if you float.

 

[iamdef]

Here's the problem with your complaint of the "snark". Admittedly you haven't been here so you don't know how difficult and tiring the concept of trying to have a full conversation with the stubbornness and the obnoxiousness that has walked this thread.

It doesn't seem that bad in the beginning, we all have given our time and take on situations and have been met with a wall that cannot be defeated by having a discussion.

 

[dwalk31]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/07/18/trump-has-repeatedly-broken-his-core-campaign-promise/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_promises-150p:homepage/story&utm_term=.39aac9783a6c

Trump has repeatedly broken his core campaign promise

But the truth is... these same comments were made about the house, then the bill passed the house. A version will likely pass the senate as well. Saying he broke his core campaign promise in terms of repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act is premature, at best.

 

[whywesteppin]

he promised to repeal and replace right away, he promised it would be easy, he promised we would pay a fraction of what we were paying.

even with a majority in the senate he couldn't get 50 people on board. the odds are in his favor too because this was a key campaign issue for many republicans.

if he was at all competent, trump would've pitched this as a bipartisan effort from the very start. he would've found a solution that isn't based on partisan principles but rather on what's best for the American people.

not only did he fail to do that, he has made it clear in his actions and his words that he has no interest in crossing the aisle. he has doubled down with some of the most alarmingly conservative voices in town. this is not the work of a deal-maker. this is the work of a demagogue and a fraud.

 

[dwalk31]

he promised to repeal and replace right away, he promised it would be easy, he promised we would pay a fraction of what we were paying.

even with a majority in the senate he couldn't get 50 people on board. the odds are in his favor too because this was a key campaign issue for many republicans.

if he was at all competent, trump would've pitched this as a bipartisan effort from the very start. he would've found a solution that isn't based on partisan principles but rather on what's best for the American people.

not only did he fail to do that, he has made it clear in his actions and his words that he has no interest in crossing the aisle. he has doubled down with some of the most alarmingly conservative voices in town. this is not the work of a deal-maker. this is the work of a demagogue and a fraud.

But if he gets the deal through, in the end, doesn't that show that he is? I mean you may not like his methods, but if it actually passes would you still not give him any credit?

 

[rillo561]

Trump isn't even trying to sell this crap, he doesn't even know enough about it to sell it. He just wants all of the "glory" with zero work. He can sell you crap like casinos and his name, but detailed stuff like insurance, the guy has no clue, and it's showing.

 

[dwalk31]

That much I agree with. It is a good thing that POTUS is not charged with making the law