Why the Iran Nuclear Agreement is Good for the U.S., Israel, and the Mideast

[loyek590]

I see that I, in my response to Ricter's pithy remark, cleverly ignored the number one reason that there is a demonstrable ceiling on the number of terrorist attacks: the number of young people that can be convinced to blow themselves up is strictly limited. We tend to give ourselves too much credit for the effectiveness of our hundreds of billions spent on homeland "security", when the absence of attacks is due to something else.

which brings us back to the iran deal. I don't like sanctions. I like money, and when people have money they don't like suicide attacks. My guess for many members of Isis, it's just a job. Beats unemployment.

 

[ipatent]

I'd have to think about that. I would think it might be the other way around with regard to living standards.

The dollar was once the sole reserve currency, it now shares that status to a some extent. It is certain to share that status more and more going forward. This reserve role, since the demise of Bretton Woods, is far more dependent on the strength of the U.S. economy than on military might. There is also an activation barrier to adopting other reserve currencies. Another factor is relative currency stability. No one wants a reserve currency that oscillates all over the place. But by far the number one reason the U.S. Dollar is likely to remain the most used reserve currency for quite some time is that the world is awash in dollars. Central banks everywhere have big dollar reserves to facilitate trade, and for other reasons. It is in the best interest of these banks, and their respective nations, that they maintain policies that are supportive of the dollar, within reason of course. The last thing anyone wants is a run on the dollar, where everyone trips over everyone else to see who can dump their dollars the fastest. That's not going to happen.

We encourage countries to price products like oil in dollars, and to recycle the profits back into our economy instead of buying elsewhere. Having a carrier just offshore helps.

That props up the dollar.

 

[piezoe]

We encourage countries to price products like oil in dollars, and to recycle the profits back into our economy instead of buying elsewhere. Having a carrier just offshore helps.

That props up the dollar.

Do we encourage them, or is this just a practical matter? I would agree that having stores of dollars in other countries is advantageous to U.S. exports, which is only about 17% of our economy now. But I'm skeptical that having a carrier off shore has much affect on this kind of commerce, or helps prop up the dollar, but there may be a psychological effect I'm not taking into account. Do you really think there is an offshore carrier effect? Can you explain to me why that should be so?

 

[ipatent]

Do we encourage them, or is this just a practical matter? I would agree that having stores of dollars in other countries is advantageous to U.S. exports, which is only about 17% of our economy now. But I'm skeptical that having a carrier off shore has much affect on this kind of commerce, or helps prop up the dollar, but there may be a psychological effect I'm not taking into account. Do you really think there is an offshore carrier effect? Can you explain to me why that should be so?

Because we have clever intelligence people, businesspeople and diplomats who can leverage it.

 

[piezoe]

Ok. I think I understand what you're getting at, I just have no clue how important that is in the grand scheme of things. You must think it is important. I would guess the Pentagon would like us to think it's important, but is it? We'd get our best answer from someone living on the shore opposite the carrier.

 

[ipatent]

I'm sure there's also plenty of defense-related suckling at the government teat that they would be hard-pressed to justify if we knew all the facts.

 

[fhl]

Most of our continuous wars were fought for control of resources and hence profits. Nowadays the military is just an adjunct of corporate America. We encourage Young men and women to go forth and be slaughtered, by telling them they are fighting to preserve our freedoms (considerably diminished nowadays), and we glorify their pointless deaths. They are not dying to preserve our freedoms; they are dying to preserve Corporate Profits, or for various other nefarious reasons, invariably lied about and having nothing to do with preserving freedoms.

We are exceedingly clever at hiding from the public, and even the Congress, the real motives behind our attacks and invasions. When the W. wanted to kill Saddam Hussein because he had threatened his Daddy, he made up lies about weapons of mass destruction. When those lies were exposed, he claimed we were democracy building; hardly a justification for destroying a country and killing and maiming thousands, and wasting a Trillion dollars ..



We would actually be far more free if we didn't continually start these wars and stopped interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. ..

The U.S. is not the only criminal, terrorist nation, but that is no excuse...

Moving on from economics, where you tow right down the liberal line, you now enter the realm of foreign policy, where you once again say nothing but what you read from moveon or some such websites. It's all one giant tin foil hat conspiwacy, isn't it? They're all in cahoots to enrich the bottom line. The wars are all corporate America's fault just like the credit crisis was all their fault and had nothing to do with the gov't and fed herding people into high yield debt with surpressed interest rates.

Haven't you even noticed who it is that is browbeating this country into one war after another? Obviously not. The wars are inevitably ginned up by what are called neocons. These are theoretically people who are new to the conservative movement, but in practice they are just liberal in every single mi-nute way except they see a war they want to be involved in around every single corner.

Bill Kristol, John Mccain, Lindsey Graham...these are some of the chief architects, the quintessential neocons, among others.
It's very hard for me to visualize them sitting around thinking about how they want to do these things because they want xyz's profit and loss statement to look better. You really think that John Mccain was in Syria agitating to go to war against Assad on behalf of ISIS was for corp profits? And when he did a one-eighty a year later and decided that ISIS was the bad guy, we needed to go into Syria and take out ISIS....all for corp profits?

These people are leftists who have wars on their mind for some odd reason, but I don't think corp profits are in the top five. They have some sort of pathological need to display power, and this is their outlet or something. Who can really get into the mind of these people anyway.

I'm still astonished that you leftists are pushing the lie at every opportunity that there were no wmd in Iraq. The nytimes admitted just last year that there really were wmd's in iraq. And yet the lie persists. I thought I just read one of your posts yesterday that said how much you dislike lies.

Just one more thought. After we went into Iraq, guess who it was that very openly bragged that it was his advice to W that we stay there and finish the job of rebuilding the place. Do you know who that was? It was Colin Freaking Powell. That's who it was. I have no idea why he was so intent on staying there, but corporate profits is once again way down my list of his pathologies. But I do know that he was secretly an Obama voter all along, and that Lindsey Graham has already stated that he would rather have Hillary Clinton win than the republican party if Trump were the nominee.

Sorry, but I have a very difficult time finding anything that I can't pin right on the donkeys.

 

[piezoe]

Moving on from economics, where you tow right down the liberal line, you now enter the realm of foreign policy, where you once again say nothing but what you read from moveon or some such websites. It's all one giant tin foil hat conspiwacy, isn't it? They're all in cahoots to enrich the bottom line. The wars are all corporate America's fault just like the credit crisis was all their fault and had nothing to do with the gov't and fed herding people into high yield debt with surpressed interest rates.

Haven't you even noticed who it is that is browbeating this country into one war after another? Obviously not. The wars are inevitably ginned up by what are called neocons. These are theoretically people who are new to the conservative movement, but in practice they are just liberal in every single mi-nute way except they see a war they want to be involved in around every single corner.

Bill Kristol, John Mccain, Lindsey Graham...these are some of the chief architects, the quintessential neocons, among others.
It's very hard for me to visualize them sitting around thinking about how they want to do these things because they want xyz's profit and loss statement to look better. You really think that John Mccain was in Syria agitating to go to war against Assad on behalf of ISIS was for corp profits? And when he did a one-eighty a year later and decided that ISIS was the bad guy, we needed to go into Syria and take out ISIS....all for corp profits?

These people are leftists who have wars on their mind for some odd reason, but I don't think corp profits are in the top five. They have some sort of pathological need to display power, and this is their outlet or something. Who can really get into the mind of these people anyway.

I'm still astonished that you leftists are pushing the lie at every opportunity that there were no wmd in Iraq. The nytimes admitted just last year that there really were wmd's in iraq. And yet the lie persists. I thought I just read one of your posts yesterday that said how much you dislike lies.

Just one more thought. After we went into Iraq, guess who it was that very openly bragged that it was his advice to W that we stay there and finish the job of rebuilding the place. Do you know who that was? It was Colin Freaking Powell. That's who it was. I have no idea why he was so intent on staying there, but corporate profits is once again way down my list of his pathologies. But I do know that he was secretly an Obama voter all along, and that Lindsey Graham has already stated that he would rather have Hillary Clinton win than the republican party if Trump were the nominee.

Sorry, but I have a very difficult time finding anything that I can't pin right on the donkeys.

So "neocon" means "new to the conservative movement".

You OWN this song fhl. Sing it with all you've got, Give us a heartfelt rendition.

 

[Spike Trader]

Some folks are better at posting cartoons.


one-eighty is a straight line.

 

[loyek590]

if I was the American god I would tell Iran, "Give us our 4 prisoners back and we will lift the sanctions. But if we ever think you are building a bomb, you'll see what a bomb is. But don't worry, we will not bomb you until we have the same intelligence we had on Saddam's bomb."