(03-10-2015 02:20 PM)VA49er Wrote:  

(03-10-2015 02:14 PM)Crebman Wrote:  They (and rightly so) are totally fearful of Obama cutting a crappy deal just to say he has a deal.

Frankly, our goal is to have the Iranians not have a nuclear weapon. Period.

The Iranians goal is to have a nuclear weapon. Period.

Congress doesn't believe Iran will come off of their goal, and given that, any deal that Obama cuts short of "No nuclear weapon for Iran" is a bad deal. Hell, Obama is trying to kick the problem down the road by getting the Iranians to "agree" to a moratorium on producing weapons grade material for 10 years - which the Iranians told him to "pound sand" on .

Without us having inspection rights - frankly, any deal with Iran is useless.

All the Iranians are doing now is playing a stalling game for a deal they will never live up to in the first place. They are just buying more time to develop their end goal - a Nuclear weapon.

IMO, Iran never will sign a deal. It just uses these so called "negotiations" to buy time to further develop its nuclear capabilities. Kind of like how NK rattles its saber from time to time to get more food, etc.

Both of you are correct regarding Iran's position. That's why IMO the game needs to move to one of containment, intercepting mid range missiles and destruction should Iran misplace some fissionable material in terrorist hands.

(03-10-2015 02:26 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  So the Republicans would essentially threaten an invasion of Iran. But even while doing that, Iran would be working on the nukes. The only way to actually stop them would be to invade. Are the Republicans saying that we should invade?

I'm sure there are a couple of GOP knucklehead who think invasion is a feasible option. But I think most know there is little that can be done. This letter and Bibi's congressional invite were more political jockeying disguised as genuine statesmanship.

(03-10-2015 02:34 PM)vandiver49 Wrote:  

(03-10-2015 02:26 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  So the Republicans would essentially threaten an invasion of Iran. But even while doing that, Iran would be working on the nukes. The only way to actually stop them would be to invade. Are the Republicans saying that we should invade?

I'm sure there are a couple of GOP knucklehead who think invasion is a feasible option. But I think most know there is little that can be done. This letter and Bibi's congressional invite were more political jockeying disguised as genuine statesmanship.

And that I can understand. I just don't want to hear about how Obama is doing this or that wrong when there's really nothing much that can be done, outside of war (on this board, or if I, god forbid, get forced to watch Fox "News" for any length of time).

The Republicans are dead wrong here. They have totally violated the idea of checks and balances.

(03-10-2015 10:59 AM)NIU007 Wrote:  Or did I miss it? Or does nobody want to admit that the action made the particular Republicans look like petulant little children?

The Republicans have lowered themselves to Obama's level... yes, they, too look like petulant little children. This is a consequence of having a leader with no leadership ability and who has displayed no inclination to compromise and no ability to be inclusive.

Given a poor hand to play, the Republicans have selected about the worst available path. The US has no international credibility after today because our government is absolute crap.

(03-10-2015 03:37 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  The Republicans are dead wrong here. They have totally violated the idea of checks and balances.

I think someone here is fond of characterizing our leadership as the party of evil versus the party of stupid. I think that has been flipped on its head today, and the Democrats will be viewed as merely stupid.

I predicted that Congress would throw a wrench in the works, but I'm a bit surprised they bypassed the legislative process altogether.

(03-10-2015 11:15 AM)john01992 Wrote:  

(03-10-2015 11:09 AM)maximus Wrote:  What's the big deal?

You don't like checks and balances?

Checks & balances means that they can vote against the deal if they don't like it, and if they have enough votes, can override it.

What they tried to do was sabotage the negotiating power of the US gov't while sitting at the table with Iran.

You are correct. That kind of stuff sets a dangerous presedent.

(03-10-2015 11:12 AM)john01992 Wrote:  

(03-10-2015 11:06 AM)ECUGrad07 Wrote:  Checks and balances...(Liberals, especially Obama HATE those pesky things)

The Republicans didn't say anything that wasn't correct.

Not that I'm agreeing with this talking point, but a lot of the left leaning blogs/commentators are screaming about how those actions constitution a felony and/or treason.

You are delusional out of your ass if you think "checks and balances" means that congress gets to do anything & everything they want. This current congress seems content on over reaching on diplomatic dealings that have traditionally been reserved for the POTUS rather than congress. I just find it hilarious that a con is branding this as checks & balances when it is the complete opposite of that.

Paybacks are hell. Obama is reaping what he has sown with his executive actions. You don't **** with congress. Hillary will learn the same soon enough.

Dealing with foreign policy isn't the job of Congress.

Treason. Why do they hate America?

(03-10-2015 03:37 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  The Republicans are dead wrong here. They have totally violated the idea of checks and balances.

5 million illegals granted amnesty with a wave of Obama's hand.... no checks and balances in executive actions either... Obama has reapt the whirlwind...

(03-10-2015 04:29 PM)Fitbud Wrote:  

(03-10-2015 11:15 AM)john01992 Wrote:  

(03-10-2015 11:09 AM)maximus Wrote:  What's the big deal?

You don't like checks and balances?

Checks & balances means that they can vote against the deal if they don't like it, and if they have enough votes, can override it.

What they tried to do was sabotage the negotiating power of the US gov't while sitting at the table with Iran.

You are correct. That kind of stuff sets a dangerous presedent.

I suggest a remedial civics course.

(03-10-2015 03:37 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  The Republicans are dead wrong here. They have totally violated the idea of checks and balances.

Uhhh nope

Tom Cotton is the Senator that led to this letter being signed by 47 Senators and sent to Iran. Cotton is one Senator that is living up to his campaign promises. Refreshing.

(03-10-2015 06:00 PM)No Bull Wrote:  

(03-10-2015 03:37 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  The Republicans are dead wrong here. They have totally violated the idea of checks and balances.

5 million illegals granted amnesty with a wave of Obama's hand.... no checks and balances in executive actions either... Obama has reapt the whirlwind...

I agree, but that is a separate issue.

(03-10-2015 06:03 PM)maximus Wrote:  

(03-10-2015 03:37 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  The Republicans are dead wrong here. They have totally violated the idea of checks and balances.

Uhhh nope

It's Constitutional Law 101. They are dead wrong.

(03-10-2015 03:46 PM)I45owl Wrote:  

(03-10-2015 10:59 AM)NIU007 Wrote:  Or did I miss it? Or does nobody want to admit that the action made the particular Republicans look like petulant little children?

The Republicans have lowered themselves to Obama's level... yes, they, too look like petulant little children. This is a consequence of having a leader with no leadership ability and who has displayed no inclination to compromise and no ability to be inclusive.

Given a poor hand to play, the Republicans have selected about the worst available path. The US has no international credibility after today because our government is absolute crap.

No inclination to compromise, and yet all the Republicans still assume he's going to make a deal with Iran.

But yes, most of them seem to be petulant little children. Both sides are bad. We should probably keep that out of foreign affairs if we can though.

(03-10-2015 06:00 PM)No Bull Wrote:  

(03-10-2015 03:37 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  The Republicans are dead wrong here. They have totally violated the idea of checks and balances.

5 million illegals granted amnesty with a wave of Obama's hand.... no checks and balances in executive actions either... Obama has reapt the whirlwind...

No. Those are pre-Americans. What the republicans have done is treasonous. They are traitors. Why do they hate America and our president so much?

(03-10-2015 07:06 PM)firmbizzle Wrote:  

(03-10-2015 06:00 PM)No Bull Wrote:  [quote='HeartOfDixie' pid='11859871' dateline='1426019879']
The Republicans are dead wrong here. They have totally violated the idea of checks and balances.


5 million illegals granted amnesty with a wave of Obama's hand.... no checks and balances in executive actions either... Obama has reapt the whirlwind...

No. Those are pre-Americans. What the republicans have done is treasonous. They are traitors. Why do they hate America and our president so much?

7 Times Democrats Advised America’s Enemies to Oppose the President

Let's have a little history lesson....

Quote:Senators John Sparkman (D-AL) and George McGovern (D-SD). The two Senators visited Cuba and met with government actors there in 1975. They said that they did not act on behalf of the United States, so the State Department ignored their activity.

Senator Teddy Kennedy (D-MA). In 1983, Teddy Kennedy sent emissaries to the Soviets to undermine Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy. According to a memo finally released in 1991 from head of the KGB Victor Chebrikov to then-Soviet leader Yuri Andropov:

On 9-10 May of this year, Sen. Edward Kennedy’s close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in Moscow. The senator charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Y. Andropov.

What was the message? That Teddy would help stifle Reagan’s anti-Soviet foreign policy if the Soviets would help Teddy run against Reagan in 1984. Kennedy offered to visit Moscow to “arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA.” Then he said that he would set up interviews with Andropov in the United States. “Kennedy and his friends will bring about suitable steps to have representatives of the largest television companies in the USA contact Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interviews…Like other rational people, [Kennedy] is very troubled by the current state of Soviet-American relations,” the letter explained. The memo concluded:

Tunney remarked that the senator wants to run for president in 1988. Kennedy does not discount that during the 1984 campaign, the Democratic Party may officially turn to him to lead the fight against the Republicans and elect their candidate president.

House Speaker Jim Wright (D-TX). In 1984, 10 Democrats sent a letter to Daniel Ortega Saavedra, the head of the military dictatorship in Nicaragua, praising Saavedra for “taking steps to open up the political process in your country.” House Speaker Jim Wright signed the letter.

In 1987, Wright worked out a deal to bring Ortega to the United States to visit with lawmakers. As The New York Times reported:

There were times when the White House seemed left out of the peace process, uninformed, irritated. ”We don’t have any idea what’s going on,” an Administration official said Thursday. And there was a bizarre atmosphere to the motion and commotion: the leftist Mr. Ortega, one of President Reagan’s arch enemies, heads a Government that the Administration has been trying to overthrow by helping to finance a war that has killed thousands of Nicaraguans on both sides. Yet he was freely moving around Washington, visiting Mr. Wright in his Capitol Hill office, arguing his case in Congress and at heavily covered televised news conferences. He criticized President Reagan; he recalled that the United States, whose troops intervened in Nicaragua several times between 1909 and 1933, had supported the Somoza family dictatorship which lasted for 43 years until the Sandinistas overthrew it in 1979.

Ortega then sat next to Wright as he presented a “detailed cease-fire proposal.” The New York Times said, “Mr. Ortega seemed delighted to turn to Mr. Wright.”

Senator John Kerry (D-MA). Kerry jumped into the pro-Sandanista pool himself in 1985, when he traveled to Nicaragua to negotiate with the regime. He wasn’t alone; Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) joined him. The Christian Science Monitor reported that the two senators “brought back word that Mr. Ortega would be willing to accept a cease-fire if Congress rejected aid to the rebels…That week the House initially voted down aid to the contras, and Mr. Ortega made an immediate trip to Moscow.” Kerry then shilled on behalf of the Ortega government:

We are still trying to overthrow the politics of another country in contravention of international law, against the Organization of American States charter. We negotiated with North Vietnam. Why can we not negotiate with a country smaller than North Carolina and with half the population of Massachusetts? It’s beyond me. And the reason is that they just want to get rid of them [the Sandinistas], they want to throw them out, they don’t want to talk to them.

Representatives Jim McDermott (D-WA), David Bonior (D-MI), and Mike Thompson (D-CA). In 2002, the three Congressmen visited Baghdad to play defense for Saddam Hussein’s regime. There, McDermott laid the groundwork for the Democratic Party’s later rip on President George W. Bush, stating, “the president of the United States will lie to the American people in order to get us into this war.” McDermott, along with his colleagues, suggested that the American administration give the Iraqi regime “due process” and “take the Iraqis on their face value.” Bonior said openly he was acting on behalf of the government:

The purpose of our trip was to make it very clear, as I said in my opening statement, to the officials in Iraq how serious we–the United States is about going to war and that they will have war unless these inspections are allowed to go unconditionally and unfettered and open. And that was our point. And that was in the best interest of not only Iraq, but the American citizens and our troops. And that’s what we were emphasizing. That was our primary concern–that and looking at the humanitarian situation.

Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV). In 2002, Rockefeller told Fox News’ Chris Wallace, “I took a trip by myself in January of 2002 to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and I told each of the heads of state that it was my view that George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war against Iraq, that that was a predetermined set course which had taken shape shortly after 9/11.” That would have given Saddam Hussein fourteen months in which to prepare for war.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). In April 2007, as the Bush administration pursued pressure against Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went to visit him. There, according to The New York Times, the two “discussed a variety of Middle Eastern issues, including the situations in Iraq and Lebanon and the prospect of peace talks between Syria and Israel.” Pelosi was accompanied by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA), Tom Lantos (D-CA), Louise M. Slaughter (D-NY), Nick J. Rahall II (D-WV), and Keith Ellison (D-MN). Zaid Haider, Damascus bureau chief for Al Safir, reportedly said, ‘There is a feeling now that change is going on in American policy – even if it’s being led by the opposition.”

The Constitution of the United States delegates commander-in-chief power to the president of the United States. Section 2 clearly states, “He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur…” As Professor Jack Goldsmith of Harvard Law School writes, Senators have a good argument that “the President lacks the authority under the U.S. Constitution to negotiate a pure Executive agreement in this context. Almost all major arms control agreements have been made as treaties that needed Senate consent, and the one major exception, the Salt I treaty, was a congressional-executive agreement.”

One who might agree: former Senator Joe Biden, whose White House profile explains, “then-Senator Biden played a pivotal role in shaping US foreign policy.” Among other elements of that role: decrying President George W. Bush’s surge in Iraq as “a tragic mistake” and vowing, “I will do everything in my power to stop it.” As Tom Cotton said this morning, “If Joe Biden respects the dignity of the institution of the Senate, he should be insisting that the President submit any deal to approval of the Senate, which is exactly what he did on numerous deals during his time in Senate.”

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/...president/

While the g

(03-10-2015 07:06 PM)firmbizzle Wrote:  

(03-10-2015 06:00 PM)No Bull Wrote:  

(03-10-2015 03:37 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  The Republicans are dead wrong here. They have totally violated the idea of checks and balances.

5 million illegals granted amnesty with a wave of Obama's hand.... no checks and balances in executive actions either... Obama has reapt the whirlwind...

No. Those are pre-Americans. What the republicans have done is treasonous. They are traitors. Why do they hate America and our president so much?

While the GOP was wrong in this instance, their actions weren't treasonous.