Boehner defies Obama on Iran sanctions, invites Netanyahu

[Morch]

Netanyahu might be gone a lot sooner with Bottlegate as it is being called in the Israeli media.

State Comptroller Joseph Shapira announced on Thursday that he is turning over the Netanyahu family bottle deposit scandal to Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein, who will decide whether or not to open a formal investigation into the matter.

It emerged on Wednesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus wife, Sara Netanyahu, kept thousands of shekels from deposits on empty bottles that were returned, on her orders, to supermarkets in Jerusalem over the course of several years even though the bottle deposits were state property.

Shapira's office noted that the scandal must be turned over to the attorney general because Sara Netanyahu is not an official figure subject to investigation by the state comptroller, and as a private citizen she falls under the jurisdiction of the attorney general.

Source;http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/1.639717

Nice to know while Bibi was organising the bombing of the poor Palestinian civilians his wife was watching the shekels.

Not much to do with the current topic, and not very likely to be the main factor in bringing own Netanyahu.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/795924-israeli-center-left-alliance-looks-to-unseat-netanyahu/?p=9003123

[Morch]

Boehner defies Obama on Iran sanctions, invites Netanyahu

I thought Bibi usually just phones his orders in?

Or, things could be a bit more complicated when one adds this guy to the puzzle - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Adelson

[chuckd]

Unfortunately, I think it's too late for that, Obama has probably already done most of his damage. When were back to having boots on the ground in the Mideast, I'm sure you guys will be still blaming GW, instead of Obama dropping the ball. As a matter of fact, I can't think of very much that Obama has gotten right, $2.00 gasoline? Unemployment? The only reason the deficit hasn't been as bad, is because he got caught running his mouth, and got stuck with sequester.

Categorical claims such as those in the post need documenting....gas prices, employment and unemployment, the deficits etc.

Gas prices overall and unemployment are down as are the deficits, employment is consistently up long term.

Prez Obama has done what no other president has done, which is to regain his approval and popularity after having suffered declines in each.

Barack is back despite the deniers and the naysayers, John Boehner being chief among them. Boehner is too busy these days running Republican party foreign policy in Congress to have any time to legislate or negotiate. For years now Beohner's press conferences have sounded like the WWF in their Sunday suits.

Permit me to give this a shot.

1. Gas prices

The cost of gasoline is at its lowest level in years thanks to just a few simple factors.

One is the huge success with fracking and retrieving the shale oil from privately owned land. The US has gone from a net importer of crude into an exporter of refined products due to this. I might add it was done in spite of all the administration's efforts to keep it from happening. There have been no permits to speak of issued for drilling on government land either in the lower 48 or Alaska. In fact Obama recently declared several million acres of ANWR as being off limits to drilling. The drilling is on private land and is making some land owners very rich people.

Another reason is the Saudi decision to not reduce production in light of falling prices. Their decision to feed the market would seem to be an attempt to drive out some of the wildcat drillers in the US and lower the competition. Thus the market is glutted with oil.

The key is that old tried and true axiom...The law of supply and demand.

2. Employment and unemployment

The current 5.6% seems very good on the outside. However, considering the labor force participation rate is at it's lowest level since the recession of the 1980's, that can hardly be considered a booming success. Only 80.8% of those citizens aged between 25 and 54 are actively seeking jobs or currently employed, either part time or full time.

If an unemployed individual doesn't seek work during the month they drop out of the labor picture and are no longer considered unemployed.

The U-6 unemployment rate currently stands at 11.2%.

http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/unemployment-rate-drops-due-almost-half-million-more-not-labor-force-5654

3. Deficits

All this bragging about the administration cutting the deficit in half is true. It is also nonsense.

Deficit by year:

2009 - $913 Billion (*)

2010 - $1.294 Trillion

2011 - $1.299 Trillion

2012 - $1.100 Trillion

2013 - $680 Billion

2014 - $492 Billion

The bragging rights of deficit cutting arise from the fact Obama has lowered the deficit from $1.4 Trillion to a measly $492 Billion in only six years are disingenuous at best.

How can you cut something that you tripled in the first place?

The last deficit for the Bush administration was $459 Billion and his cumulative deficits amounted to only $2.634 (*) Trillion in 8 years.

Obama's deficit for his first six years is a grand total of $5.778 Trillion.

http://www.davemanuel.com/history-of-deficits-and-surpluses-in-the-united-states.php

The remainder of your Democratic party talking points are not worth addressing.

(*) The deficit for 2009 has been lowered for Obama and increased for Bush's 8 year total by $500 Billion in fairness.

[Publicus]

That is quite the runaway off topic post you made up there yet no matter how you slice it, it's still baloney.

The Iranians are negotiating with the P5+1 because the have to respect the five who are the permanent members of the UN security council plus Germany which presently is a rotating member of the UNSC.

The Russians are building much of the Iranian nuclear power infrastructure and are also on the UN negotiating team, which is another classic instance of the ambiguity inherent to the United Nations. It also points out the US and Russia need to figure out ways to pursue common interests.

The ayatollahs need a deal the UNSC can accept which is why they are negotiating. Presently the P5+1 would be satisfied to have an agreement that would recognize Iran will have nuclear energy but to keep Iran a year away from building a bomb at all times going forward. This way we could find out if the ayatollahs ever gave the go-ahead to make one.

Netanyahu wants to dismantle Iran's capability to make a bomb. Netanyahu is completely unrealistic as there are so many red lines in such an undertaking there never could be an agreement. Come to think of it, that might be Bibi's whole idea. The new Republican Senator from Israel-Likud will give these marching orders to the US Congress and he will do it in person.

[mania]

Boehner defies Obama on Iran sanctions, invites Netanyahu

I thought Bibi usually just phones his orders in?

Or, things could be a bit more complicated when one adds this guy to the puzzle - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Adelson

Feathers of the same corrupted bird are hard to distinguish as being any different

[chuckd]

Of course Netanyahu wants to dismantle Iran's capability to make a bomb. Even in your most naive of days, you couldn't have possibly thought he wanted to HELP them get the bomb, now did you.

Obama is desperate for some sort of victory in his foreign policy. He will do whatever it takes to get an agreement regardless of how far down the road he has to kick the can.

He hasn't been able to lead from behind for six years and the two failures he has had as his Secretaries of State have failed to produce anything meaningful.

He can't start now and expect any small degree of success. His foreign policy is baloney.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Obama has agreed to 80 percent of Iran's demands in nuclear talks, Israeli officials tell Ch. 10

Israeli officials told Channel 10 on Friday that they are convinced the Obama administration has already agreed to most of Iran’s demands in the P5+1 negotiations over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

According to unnamed officials, Washington “has given the Iranians 80 percent of what they want” out of the negotiations, Channel 10 is reporting.

Jerusalem officials appear alarmed at the prospect that the United States will soon strike a deal with the Iranian regime that will leave it with a “breakout point” of months before it can gallop toward the bomb.

http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Obama-has-agreed-to-80-percent-of-Irans-demands-in-nuclear-talks-Israeli-officials-tell-Ch-10-389532

[Publicus]

The White House has of course noted the speciousness of the scurrilous 80% claim which is grabbed out of the air by those who would return relations among Iran, Israel, the United States, to their past 35 years of hollering insults, shouting threats, issuing denunciations. Instead, there are now new words from Tehran and Washington such as "productive" and "positive" which are being spoken for the first time since any Iranian-American encounter or exchange since 1979. Some people however can't stand it.

The fact is the seven countries involved in the 14 months of negotiations have what might still be 80% of the issues outstanding and still unresolved. There is the matter of the quality of centrifuges Iran could keep, the disposition of enriched fuel in Iran's possession, the depth and extent of IAEA inspections, the extent of allowable Iranian nuclear research, the timeline for sanctions relief, the duration of the agreement itself and much more.

This is a full plate of seven set pieces among the P5+1 and Iran.

So here is what has in fact been agreed...

The principles that have already been agreed to are crucially important. These principles are: 1) Iran will remain a non-nuclear weapons state; 2) Iran will have the full right to use nuclear energy and materials for peaceful purposes under the terms agreed to as an Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) signatory; 3) Iran has agreed to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring, inspections, and safeguards in accordance with the requirements of the NPT, including the Additional Protocol; 4) the IAEA has effective means to monitor and verify Iran’s observance to the terms of an agreement, provided that the IAEA receives Iran’s full cooperation; and 5) economic and other sanctions imposed against Iran related to its nuclear program will be removed.

There is no reason to believe that the technical gaps that remain between the parties’ positions cannot be bridged in ways that are perceived by all parties as fair and just.

http://iranprimer.usip.org/blog/2014/nov/26/experts-what-next-diplomacy

[Publicus]

Netanyahu might be gone a lot sooner with Bottlegate as it is being called in the Israeli media.

State Comptroller Joseph Shapira announced on Thursday that he is turning over the Netanyahu family bottle deposit scandal to Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein, who will decide whether or not to open a formal investigation into the matter.

It emerged on Wednesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus wife, Sara Netanyahu, kept thousands of shekels from deposits on empty bottles that were returned, on her orders, to supermarkets in Jerusalem over the course of several years even though the bottle deposits were state property.

Shapira's office noted that the scandal must be turned over to the attorney general because Sara Netanyahu is not an official figure subject to investigation by the state comptroller, and as a private citizen she falls under the jurisdiction of the attorney general.

Source;http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/1.639717

Nice to know while Bibi was organising the bombing of the poor Palestinian civilians his wife was watching the shekels.

Not much to do with the current topic, and not very likely to be the main factor in bringing own Netanyahu.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/795924-israeli-center-left-alliance-looks-to-unseat-netanyahu/?p=9003123

True but it is informative to know that the wife handles the petty cash.

A shekel saved is a shekel earned.

[Morch]

Netanyahu might be gone a lot sooner with Bottlegate as it is being called in the Israeli media.

State Comptroller Joseph Shapira announced on Thursday that he is turning over the Netanyahu family bottle deposit scandal to Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein, who will decide whether or not to open a formal investigation into the matter.

It emerged on Wednesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus wife, Sara Netanyahu, kept thousands of shekels from deposits on empty bottles that were returned, on her orders, to supermarkets in Jerusalem over the course of several years even though the bottle deposits were state property.

Shapira's office noted that the scandal must be turned over to the attorney general because Sara Netanyahu is not an official figure subject to investigation by the state comptroller, and as a private citizen she falls under the jurisdiction of the attorney general.

Source;http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/1.639717

Nice to know while Bibi was organising the bombing of the poor Palestinian civilians his wife was watching the shekels.

Not much to do with the current topic, and not very likely to be the main factor in bringing own Netanyahu.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/795924-israeli-center-left-alliance-looks-to-unseat-netanyahu/?p=9003123

True but it is informative to know that the wife handles the petty cash.

A shekel saved is a shekel earned.

Just the recent episode. Locking her husband out of the room in New York, causing a diplomatic incident and a mega traffic jam in Moscow as she was waiting for her hair to dry - perhaps a bit more serious. But for all that, Netanyahu and his party are actually up in the polls...go figure.

Edited February 3, 2015 by Morch

[Chicog]

The last deficit for the Bush administration was $459 Billion and his cumulative deficits amounted to only $2.634 (*) Trillion in 8 years.

Stop with the fibs. Not only was Bush responsible for the 2009 deficit, but the damage he did is what led to the continuing rise, with tax cuts for his buddies and two expensive wars.

Obama should be commended for bringing it back down under control.

The deficit for fiscal year 2009 — which began almost four months before President Obama took office — was $1.4 trillion and, at 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), marked the largest deficit relative to the economy since the end of World War II. Annual deficits in 2010 through 2012, while slightly lower, each topped $1 trillion. If current policies remain in place, deficits are expected to range between $600 billion and $900 billion for the rest of this decade, reaching a low around 2015 before climbing again.

Although longer-term pressures on spending stem chiefly from an aging population and rising health-care costs, those pressures are not new. Policymakers knew about them when they enacted the Bush-era tax cuts and assented to fighting two wars on borrowed money. (These pressures also were taken into account in the Congressional Budget Office projections issued at the start of 2001, which showed budget surpluses for the next several decades.)

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3849

And that's from 2013. The last fiscal years deficit was down to $483 Billion.

Edited February 3, 2015 by Chicog

[Scott]

An off-topic post has been removed.

[Chicog]

At least the American President had the good sense not to further endanger his relationship with Netanyahu and the Israeli people.

In reviewing Netanyahu’s political ploy, and his ambassador’s duplicitous behavior, it seems fair to ask whether this is really how friends treat friends?

While you may entirely agree with Boehner’s decision to invite Netanyahu to address the Congress, can you possibly not be disturbed that the Israeli ambassador to our country went out of his way to not tell our Secretary of State of his plan to interfere with our foreign policy and seek to embarrass our president in the process?

Israeli voters know these details and, by many accounts, are not all that happy with the way Netanyahu is inserting himself into the politics of the United States. What’s more, Israelis understand that, should Netanyahu win re-election, they are now looking at two years—if not more should a Democrat take the White House in 2016—of a very cold relationship with the White House at a time when this is likely not in the best interest of Israel.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2015/01/25/bibi-netanyahu-aka-the-republican-senator-from-israel-may-have-made-a-fatal-political-mistake/2/

I sincerely hope this blows up in Netanyahu's face. He really is a detestable person.

[chuckd]

The last deficit for the Bush administration was $459 Billion and his cumulative deficits amounted to only $2.634 (*) Trillion in 8 years.

Stop with the fibs. Not only was Bush responsible for the 2009 deficit, but the damage he did is what led to the continuing rise, with tax cuts for his buddies and two expensive wars.

Obama should be commended for bringing it back down under control.

The deficit for fiscal year 2009 — which began almost four months before President Obama took office — was $1.4 trillion and, at 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), marked the largest deficit relative to the economy since the end of World War II. Annual deficits in 2010 through 2012, while slightly lower, each topped $1 trillion. If current policies remain in place, deficits are expected to range between $600 billion and $900 billion for the rest of this decade, reaching a low around 2015 before climbing again.

Although longer-term pressures on spending stem chiefly from an aging population and rising health-care costs, those pressures are not new. Policymakers knew about them when they enacted the Bush-era tax cuts and assented to fighting two wars on borrowed money. (These pressures also were taken into account in the Congressional Budget Office projections issued at the start of 2001, which showed budget surpluses for the next several decades.)

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3849

And that's from 2013. The last fiscal years deficit was down to $483 Billion.

I thought somebody would protest my figures but I thought you were smarter than that. Guess I was wrong.

1. The budget for 2009 was submitted by the Bush Administration to Congress requesting the following spending commitments:

Federal Revenue - $2.7 Trillion

Expenditures - $3.107 Trillion

Deficit - $407 Billion

2. Upon submission to Congress it became the property of Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Bush was out of the picture.

Knowing a savior (BHO) had been elected, the two Democrats in Charge (DIC) decided to hold up approval of the 2009 budget to receive input from the incoming BHO and determine what he wanted. The two DICs then held up passage of the budget and ran the government on continuing resolutions through the remaining 112 days of the Bush administration.

After receiving a wish list from BHO, the DICs substantially amended the bill as written and called for a vote. On March 11, 2009 the budget was signed by BHO into law. The new spending authorization now included the $840 Billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (aka Stimulus bill), which was signed into law by BHO on February 7, 2009, some four weeks before the budget was signed.

3. The following figures are the final numbers for fiscal 2009:

Revenue Requested - $2.7 Trillion

Revenue Received - $2.105 Trillion

Spending Requested - $3.107 Trillion

Actual spending - $3.518 Trillion

Deficit Requested - $407 Billion

Actual Deficit - $1.413 Trillion

4. In fact had the original budget submitted by Bush been accepted, acted on and passed into law with Bush signing the legislation, the deficit would have been in the $1 Trillion range considering the actual revenue amount received.

However, Bush had nothing to do with the final product.

Barack, Harry and Nancy produced, directed and starred in the 2009 budget deficit.

PS: Your source is filled with Democratic party operatives and seems to be a mouthpiece for the DNC.

[chuckd]

<snip>

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2015/01/25/bibi-netanyahu-aka-the-republican-senator-from-israel-may-have-made-a-fatal-political-mistake/2/

I sincerely hope this blows up in Netanyahu's face. He really is a detestable person.

You really should mark your posts as being op-eds rather than trying to pawn them off as fact.

This is an opinion piece only.

[Chicog]

<snip>

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2015/01/25/bibi-netanyahu-aka-the-republican-senator-from-israel-may-have-made-a-fatal-political-mistake/2/

I sincerely hope this blows up in Netanyahu's face. He really is a detestable person.

You really should mark your posts as being op-eds rather than trying to pawn them off as fact.

This is an opinion piece only.

I realise that you occasionally have reading comprehension difficulties, but I would have thought it was obvious to anyone from the style of writing.

[Chicog]

Barack, Harry and Nancy produced, directed and starred in the 2009 budget deficit.

PS: Your source is filled with Democratic party operatives and seems to be a mouthpiece for the DNC.

In reponse before we both get a rap on the knuckles from Scott...

The 2009 fiscal year began October 1, 2008, nearly four months before Obama took office. The budget for the entire fiscal year was largely set in place while Bush was in the White House. So is we update the chart to show the Bush fiscal years in green, we can see that Obama is partly right in claiming that he inherited a mess (though Obama actually deserves a small share of the blame for Bush’s last deficit since earlier this year he pushed through both an “omnibus” spending bill and the so-called stimulus bill that increased FY2009 spending).

And to qualify, the author said:

My blog post specifically noted that Obama bears part of the responsibility for the FY2009 deficit, but since less than $200 billion of so-called stimulus was allocated in FY2009, that is rather trivial compared to a budget deficit of more than $1.4 trillion. And even if the extra spending from the omnibus spending bill is added to Obama’s tab, his total is still less than $250 billion.

The other factor of course was the nosedive in federal income that Bush was responsible for when his buddies screwed up the global economy.

To be continued in another thread (which I'm sure will be along soon enough).

[chuckd]

Just one last word on this. All your various sources are conveniently passing over the simple fact the Democrat majority and President passed the $840 Billion Stimulus bill, adding it to the Bush budget request. Bush had nothing to do with this.

Now on to other matters?