And now you're down to pedantic bickering about why we need to spend double the money... my money.
And that's why you fucking lost.
Being so uninterested in the details that you'd write off 4 sentences of explanation as "pedantic bickering" is why your administration is a complete tire fire.
No to Agenda 21 and its heirs No to Kyoto and its heirs, specifically the PCA.
I'm more concerned about Trump and his heirs than your crackpot conspiracy theories.
None of these "international agreements" have ever been ratified by the Senate and are therefore not binding on the US or its citizens. Any programs of dollars spent towards any of these things that were "nodded" to by previous administrations needs to be stopped immediately.
Just because you're not obliged by international treaty doesn't mean you shouldn't do something.
Wrong. NOAA monitors the same variables but though different mechanisms. They use what looks like fixed land based sites and measurements from ocean vessels.
NASA's monitoring involved sampling from Aircraft and satellite measurements. Not only are you measuring CO2 in areas the NOAA can't (different parts of the atmosphere... different parts of the globe), and providing different kinds of data they cant, but you're also providing an independent check on the NOAA data.
Why would a Climate Monitoring System be under NASA and not NOAA?
I would think that NASA's only role in this should be launching and maintaining the satellites. The Science and Climate Monitoring itself should be under NOAA control.
That's an interesting question, though not really relevant, because Trump didn't move the research to NOAA, he just cancelled it.
The battery catching fire is an interesting point. I'd be interested to know if the emergency responders initially followed the published guidelines for cooling the battery or if they stopped when they stopped seeing flames. Regardless, it's an interesting point and an important one for the future.
Regarding the rest of the OP's posting...yeah, 2 teens died in a Tesla in Florida while speeding 50-60 around a corner marked for 30 mph. Yes, a lady crashed her car into a Starbucks. Where are the headlines about some random kid who died in a pickup truck this weekend? I'll bet you $50 it happened. Or the old lady in her Ford Fiesta who ran into a parked car? I'll put $20 on that one. What, no national headlines on those ones? What gives? Or do we think miraculously owning a Tesla makes you immune to being a stupid/careless/human driver? I didn't know Musk was advertising that feature. Is Ford? Honda? Lexus?
Where are the headlines about those other Tesla stories you're complaining about? Because I sure didn't see them here on slashdot. The first I heard of them was as valid context provided to this story, which is a pretty standard practice.
This story is news and headline worthy, because it shows that an EV battery in a crashed vehicle is more dangerous and volatile that people realize, and it requires special equipment and expertise to deal with. Right now I'm wondering about the life-cycle of these batteries, Teslas will eventually become junkers, what's going to happen in 20 or 30 years when some teenager is trying to charge the battery in their grandfather's old Tesla?
The US health care system seems to be doing a pretty good job of preventing that so far, as congress hasn't done much to make life-saving treatments cheaper.
Politically, there's a big difference between: "Poor people sometimes die of preventable causes" and "Everyone but the rich dies of this preventable cause".
It was a commitment by Obama, not by the United States. The fact of the matter is that it WAS a bad deal. The Iranian government repeatedly stated that it did not actually bind them in any way, both during negotiations and afterwards.
Huh? I'm sorry, basically everyone who takes arms control seriously thought it was an awesome deal and Iran was abiding by the terms.
A further important point is that technically, Trump did not withdraw from the deal. He decertified that Iran was in compliance with the terms of the agreement.
Meaning Trump lied.
That was the actual argument I'm making, if it was a legitimately crappy deal and Trump had a valid reason for backing out that would be fine, people would expect that.
But the biggest reason Trump seems to be leaving is because it was a major accomplishment by Obama and he wants to undo Obama's legacy. And that's the kind of immature crybaby politics that destroy the US's credibility.
I hate to be repetitive, but here's what will happen:
-the Europeans will pressure Iran to make concessions and a new deal.
They'll likely try to get Iran to do something pointless and symbolic to give Trump his win so he comes back on board "WITH THE GREATEST DEAL EVER!!!" But Iran won't bite, and the Europeans are not going to re-impose their sanctions unless Iran chooses to pull out of the deal, and maybe not even then.
-Britain, France, Germany don't want to lose any access to US markets nor suffer any economic consequences of dealing with Iran if the US decides to limit business.
You're confusing countries and businesses. European companies will still do business with Iran, they'll just be smaller companies who can afford to ignore the US for the opportunity to get big Iranian contracts.
----So, if Trump does anything it will be tactical military strikes. ----Iran does not want tactical US strikes. It has few ways to retaliate short of long-term war with the US. --------Counterinsurgency and terrorism are possibilities, which would suck for the US...and Iran. Mostly Iran.
Trump has the leverage. The old deal is gone, now he is going to negotiate from a position of strength for a new deal.
It will be a better deal.
Why is this not obvious to you?
I don't know if you've met many people before, but Iranians are people, and like most people they don't operate according to the assumptions you're laying out.
Imagine you're trying to make a deal with Bob. Now you don't like Bob, you don't think you should have to deal with Bob, but Bob is really screwing you over and won't stop until you agree to do some things you really don't want to do. But, with great reluctance, you make the deal and uphold your end faithfully.
Then Bob says a bunch of nasty things about you, insinuates you're not upholding the deal, and then breaks the deal and threatens to beat you up if you don't agree to an even worse deal.
Do you really think you're going to accept that even crappier deal with Bob? No, you're going to tell him to ****-off and you're probably even willing to take a beating from Bob because you know you're in the right. It's only once Bob holds a gun to your head that you actually take the worse deal, and then you'll never trust Bob again and stab him in the back the first chance you get.
Trump is using the same strategy he used in the business world, giant company bullies tiny company and tiny company acquiesces out of survival. His problem is that strategy doesn't work on the International stage, as strong as the US is, the power imbalance isn't extreme enough, and both the US and the President are subject to too many constraints to throw their weight around effectively enough to pull it off.
Trump has leverage, but less than Obama, and not enough to get a better deal.
"What they cannot fix is the total loss of credibility."
I think this is particularly where the analogy to the Mule is apt.
Trump has damaged America's credibility, but honestly, we're largely trading on Trumps credibility right now, not "America's"; so when Trump goes, the rest of the world will breathe a collective sigh and assume things go back to normal -- provided they do, a do so quickly the long term damage should be small -- the chaos will belong to "Trump" not so much to "America"; especially if America is seen struggling to contain Trump, which it is; and things go back to normal when he's gone.
America's credibility is only damaged to the extent that Trump was elected in the first place. But after that, to quote Mulaney... he's like a horse loose in a hospital.
Remember Ted Cruz? Ben Carson? The Not-Romney's of 2012? Sarah Palin? Trump isn't that big of an outlier, the Republicans have been on the verge of electing a nutjob for the past 12 years.
The world is worried because half the US is determined to put very incompetent and irresponsible people in power.
Ummm, members of the U.S. Senate warned Iran that the "deal" President Obama was making with them was non-binding on future administrations before the deal was made unless it was ratified by the Senate.. This was done very publicly after Obama had declared that he was not going to submit the deal to the Senate for ratification. In other words, America never gave its word on this deal because there is a very specific process which must be followed before America has "given its word." Obama chose not to follow that process. What is funny is that Obama repeatedly gave his word that America would honor his agreements without taking the necessary actions to ensure that it actually would...and people still believe him.
It's still a commitment, not as strong as a ratified treaty but it still counts.
But more to the point, it's about being credible and serious. Trump isn't pulling out because he thinks it's a bad deal for serious and specific reasons, if he were that's something other countries could deal with and plan around. He's pulling out because the GOP and Fox News spent a few years taking shots at it for political reasons and he just bought into the line that it's a bad deal.
It hurts the US's credibility because it shows that one of the two major parties no longer takes the job seriously, and when that happens other nations no longer want to deal with you because they don't trust you not to do something stupid and blow it up for no good reason.
If you ask google the same question, you will get more credible citations than you can eat. Willful ignorance is not charming.
Neither is laziness. Saying "Search Google" is a cop out, because you can't list any. The closest I was able to find prior to posting my question to you is a claim from Adam Schiff that there was "more than circumstantial evidence" but he wouldn't elaborate. So there is no specific evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government to "fix" the election.
Lets put it this way.
Anyone so dishonest as to deny question the fact that there's evidence of Russian collusion is not going to accept any evidence provided.
Researching evidence to present to you, just so you can misread, misunderstand, or simply ignore fairly unambiguous sentences, is a waste of people's time.
This will be a great excuse to make first strike against Iran, which is what Israel wants. Bad move on Iran's part. They should just count U.S. out and deal with the rest of the World. The U.S. is alienating itself greatly already anyways.
You think cyber-attacks make a good excuse for a first strike? Not even Trump can get away with that one.
And no one is going to care if Iran starts hacking the US, the international community will probably just consider if fair play considering the stunt Trump just pulled.
How a cyber-war works out for Iran is another question, the US certainly has better hackers but it also has way more targets. And winning a cyber-war might not help Iran once the clown brigade has left the White House.
AND [2] If some method is found to reverse the sterilization procedure, then you agree not to reverse it --- If you reverse it, or are found to have a child other than a child you adopted or had BEFORE the process, then you are banned from further rejuvenation treatments.
You can control overpopulation without making people choose between children and not dying of old age.
People will still be mortal, they'll still die for many other reasons. You can have lotteries or other mechanisms for distributing fertility rights.
Remember, a big consequence of this treatment will be a massive drop in fertility. Age is a big motivator in the decision to have children, but how many people will still want to have a kid in their twenties or thirties when they can wait till they're 80?
The human treatment will cost hundreds of thousands...millions?
The billionaires will live to 130 with great health and the rest of us plebes? Sorry, insurance doesn't cover cosmetic treatments.
In the developing world sure, but within a few years of it being established everyone will get some form of the treatment in the west.
The rich control a lot for certain, but the GOP showdown was a battle between Trump and Cruz, the two people most hated by the elites in the GOP. And Trump actually became President.
You think you Trump ran an effective populist campaign? Just wait for "Vote for me or you will literally die (of old age)".
I don't think that would be a particularly close election.
I would love to live an extended life or "forever". I just don't want everyone else to as well. The social and economic stresses it would put on the finite resources of this planet scare me. I think there's a reasonable chance that we'll see this in our lifetimes and it may be things like war that ends up killing people instead of "natural causes".
I agree overpopulation is a serious consequence of life extension.
But people dying preventable deaths is hardly the optimal solution. If it's a choice between people dying of old age and restrictions on reproduction I'd choose restrictions on reproduction. Sure it's a terrible violation of human rights, but so is dying.
The point of the deal is you didn't have to trust Iran because they're subjected to rigorous inspections./blockquote>
So rigorous that if IAEA would want to inspect a military site - they'd need to ask Iran for permission in advance, tell it the location and possibly wait two weeks.
I think that's fine.
Well, the goal is to inspect for nukes. I don't care for your rationalization of Iranian enmity. Quite a lot of it is plain wrong, or misses important events (like the torture of the entire American embassy stuff). Whatever. If the deal can't get the Iranian regime needs to swallow its fears and allow actual inspections, than the deal is bad. You *can* sneak nuclear technology, it depends on the type. Primitive centrifuges are bulky, but there are technologies (like laser-separation) that are not.
It's not rationalization it's understanding, and I didn't iterate Iranian sins because I was trying to explain why Iran doesn't like the US, not why the US hates Iran.
And when the deal came out most arms inspectors were shocked at how good it was. I'll take their opinion over yours.
Whom do you mean by "they"? Protesters set up the clock, not "Iran" or the Iranian goverment.
The government kept it there. Also, you must have missed the many direct quotes in the article regarding destruction of certain other country.
1 quote from Khomeni talking about 2040. It's not a threat it's just angry yelling.
It gives them more money sure, but it doesn't prevent the use of sanctions for their other activities
Do you think the Iranian regime is stupid? That they'd do a deal to remove sanctions, and then allow the US to turn around and say: "Well, we are reimposing the exact same sanctions we had before for some other reason, oh, and your commitments under the deal still stands despite us finding some excuse to avoid our own". Not being able to reimpose any of the same sanctions as before was Iranian condition #1. Otherwise they'll leave the deal. All that's left is some piddling stuff that can't change behaviour.
It's less effective, but it's still consequential. And if you get them to re-engage economically some of those secondary sanctions have bigger effects.
one of the bigger benefits of the deal isn't even Nukes, it's laying the groundwork to turning Iran into a regular non-renegade nation
Really, are there less executions in Iran (no)? Any let up in the theocracy (no)? Moderation towards neighbours (no and no)? The groundwork being laid here is ignoring and finding excuses for the regime's malfeasance in order to pretend the deal was fine.
Rouhani is a moderate, the deal was a huge win for moderates and nudged Iran in all those directions. Cancelling it empowers the hardliners and makes things worse.
Note that what you said doesn't contradict my point - the deal made a nuclear arms race more likely, because Iran's enemies would tech up to match new Iranian capabilities. There was no buy-in in the Middle East for the deal.
What new capabilities? You're still operating under this fiction that the deal gave them a bomb!
And if they did make a bomb they weren't the sort of nutty nation to launch a first strike, the biggest effect would be to ensure their long-term marginalization.
Imagine how this reads in the Middle East: "If the Iranians uke you, they'd be marginalized (but you'll be dead)". Note also that we saw for the last 30 years the regime doesn't mind marginalization. Perhaps because its a theocracy ordered by God. Or maybe because they saw they'd always find Western useful-idiots to excuse them.
You misread that. Iran isn't launching a first strike, they've never been a country that attacks, their objective has always been defensive nukes. It's having those Nukes that marginalizes them.
Basically just a concurrence, though I regard ISIS as kind of a lesser Taliban that never had a real chance against Iran. However, it was the threats of ISIS and similar nuts that helped suck Iran into Iraq after Dubya started whacking the hornet's nest with his short stick.
I really can't understand the mindsets of the various lunatic fringes that support Trump. Almost all of them seem so self-contradictory that it's hard not to dismiss them as insane. Religious nuts who defend religious morality and Trump in the same sentence? Authoritarians who enslave themselves to a foolish puppet? A friend recently recommended the author John Hart on the grounds that he might give me some insight into the thinking of some of Trump's supporters, but the book I picked has such enormous plot holes that it's exhausting my highly trained abilities to suspend my disbelief...
I can get the religious right because they're not interested in biblical morality as much as cultural supremacy. If anything it's a bonus since Trump is fighting for white Christians without being bound by Christian morals.
Authoritarians I don't understand as well... but the ones who really perplex me are what should be standard relatively ordinary Republicans. I get partisanship can make you a reluctant supporter, but he still has massive support among rank-and-file Republicans, I don't understand how they can look at his antics and corruptions and not be completely freaked out.
-Iran's economy will go from really bad (google it) to significantly worse.
Truish, European sanctions won't return and their economy is probably still recovering from the sanctions being lifted. It's possible they may keep seeing economic growth.
-Political discontent in Iran will grow.
True
-Internal politics will create pressure on Iranian leadership to negotiate directly with the US.
False. Iranian people will be rightly pissed at the US and negotiating with someone who just screwed you over is a huge loss of face, the Iranian leaders won't be able to negotiate with Trump if they wanted to.
Trump just helped but the Iranian hardliners back in power.
-Trump, being Trump, will gladly negotiate.
He'd love to negotiate but he doesn't have much leverage. The Europeans will never re-engage with the sanctions, especially not with Trump in charge. And the US alone can't hurt them enough economically.
-A new nuclear deal, or other peaceful bilateral initiative, will occur.
No new deal is coming. Most likely everyone ignores the US and a somewhat more belligerent Iran keeps trading with Europe. Less likely, Iran drops out and starts working towards a bomb again. And if they ever come back to the table it's with a much weaker deal, otherwise war is the only way to make sure they don't get a bomb.
-Bilateral relations will thaw for the first time since the Iranian Revolution.
They were thawing, not anymore.
Commenters are forgetting that America isn't THAT unpopular among Iranian youth.
Wasn't unpopular, about to get more unpopular. An Islamophobe who screws over your country is not a popular individual.
Discontent runs high. Trump has leverage. Trump has leverage in a few different ways, in fact.
Trump has weak sanctions and a unilateral war, that's about it.
Anyway, guess what...looks like we might get a new deal with North Korea and an end to that war.
Scrapping a deal that the other side was living up to is not a way to build credibility. I suspect Trump just blew his incredibly slim chance of getting real lasting concessions from NK.
Hear, hear, especially as regards Dubya. Actually I'm almost shocked by the amount of insight I've seen in the so-modded comments I've seen so far.
You didn't mention one important aspect, however. The reason for this mess and the real driver of Iran's increasing power is Dubya's mess in Iraq, brought to you by the very same fools who have produced today's fiasco. The power vacuum they created in Iraq had to be filled in some way. The only problem is whether to describe it as "irresistible" or "inevitable", but the bottom line is that the winners of Dubya's wars were Iran in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. On America's tab--which is still open and bleeding.
Don't forget ISIS, that's pretty damn easy to attribute to the Iraq war. And Putin is probably a lot more manageable if the mid-2000's NATO expansion didn't convince him that the US was out to create a military alliance encircling Russia. Not to mention the other contributing factor in the invasion of Ukraine, the Iraq war lowering the international standards for invading other countries.
Oh and Bush's bone-headed "temporary tax cut" that caused skyrocketing deficits in a time of economic prosperity, making the financial meltdown much worse than it needed to be.
People spend so much time treating politics like a team sport they forget the actual consequences of political action. Hundreds of thousands of people died because the Bush administration make easily avoidable errors.
That's not a minor thing, that's a very, very, big consequence of incompetent/irresponsible politicians.
All these people just falling in line with Trump as he stumbles along making bone-headed decisions based on a Fox and Friends segment. Are they actually thinking about the consequences that kind of decision making will bring?
The Treasury Department has the power to punish european companies into oblivion for violating sanctions against the Iranian regime - they have US assets and operations that can be easily ground down to nothing - and their home governments will be totally powerless to stop it.
IF they have US assets and operations.
It certainly limits the number and sizes of firms that can deal in Iranian oil, but I'm sure there's a lot of firms that will decide to forgo US banks for the opportunity to trade with Iran. And when the sanctions come off again they'll have a huge headstart over US companies in the Iranian market.
Exactly right. Had Obama wished to make the deal permanent, he needed to go to the Senate to have them ratify it. Since the Senate at the time was controlled by Republicans he was in no mood to negotiate with
Your take-away from the Obama administration is that Obama was the one reluctant to negotiate with Republicans?
The point of the deal is you didn't have to trust Iran because they're subjected to rigorous inspections.
So rigorous that if IAEA would want to inspect a military site - they'd need to ask Iran for permission in advance, tell it the location and possibly wait two weeks.
I think that's fine.
Remember that as much as the US distrusts Iran and considers it an enemy Iran distrusts the US and considers it an enemy too, the difference being Iran actually has some damn good reasons. During WWII the Allies invaded and occupied a neutral Iran installing a pro-West ruler, the current Iranian government is around only because the Western influence eventually led to the overthrow of that ruler.
Not to mention how loudly the Neocons were trying to drum up support for an Iranian invasion during Bush II's term.
If you were Iran would you really allow Western inspectors to wander into any military site they wanted to without notice? You'd have a very valid suspicion that the US inspectors were gathering intel for an invasion.
At the same time, it takes big-ass centrifuges to enrich Uranium, centrifuges you can't sneak away in 2 weeks. The 24 day period doesn't give Iran time to cover up a bomb program.
They literally set up a clock dedicating to counting the days until said country's destruction, based on comments from the _current_ supreme leader.
And one of the bigger benefits of the deal isn't even Nukes, it's laying the groundwork to turning Iran into a regular non-renegade nation. A lot of that has already been achieved, Rhouani is talking about staying in the deal even with Trump dropping out.
Yeah, good for Trump. He's destroyed a perfectly good non-proliferation deal and risked a Nuclear arms race in the Middle East
Note that every other country likely to engage in said arms race opposed the deal. The deal made a Nuclear arms-race *more* likely since it strengthened Iran so much that other countries were tempted to turn to non-conventional weapons.
The Saudi's and Israeli's are regional rivals for influence and they'd much prefer Iran as a marginalized pariah nation than an economic and political rival for influence. Their best case if a collapse of the Iran deal and a US invasion to prevent a nuke, hell Bibi was practically begging for that.
I'm not actually certain they're all the concerned about Iran getting Nukes. For one, it's unclear that Iran actually wanted to build Nukes. They definitely wanted the ability to build Nukes, ie highly enriched Uranium and the know how to make a bomb on fairly short notice, but they probably didn't want to
The point of the deal is you didn't have to trust Iran because they're subjected to rigorous inspections.
who has claimed to want to destroy entire countries
You mean their blowhard former President once made a comment that sounds like that when translated and taken out of context.
But you can't relate to anything like that.
and it the worlds leading sponsor of terror,
Whether or not that's true is irrelevant. The deal was about Nukes, not missiles, Hezbollah support, or anything else.
would not use the principle of Taqiyya (Shia being much more flexible in its use) to lie about their goals is ridiculous.
WTF? You think the only people on the planet capable of lying are Muslims following your distorted understanding of religious practice? Was it really that necessary to discredit your already dumb argument by demonstrating to everyone that you're an ignorant Islamophobe?
The perfidy of the Iranian government is well documented as is the avoidance measures they took to truly by limited in their goals to become a nuclear power.
Good for Trump.
Yeah, good for Trump. He's destroyed a perfectly good non-proliferation deal and risked a Nuclear arms race in the Middle East because he's too big a wuss to admit that he got suckered by the Fox News/GOP push to smear Obama in the lead up to the 2016 election.
Risking Nuclear war is one thing, but admitting you were wrong??? That's unthinkable!!!
Yeah, sure, the technology is crap. That doesn't mean anyone is cutting corners, it means that self-driving cars is still in its infancy and is kind of shit.
I suppose it was also negligent homocide for the makers of the Comet
Well no, because I don't see evidence of negligence.
I'm not against testing/developing your self-driving cars on the roads, that's the only way you can do some types of testing.
But if you're going to do that you need to take safeguards, namely, you need to make sure that your safety driver is fully engaged and ready to take control, and that means hiring a fairly attentive safety driver, possibly two if you realize that just one will lose focus.
The safety driver was not attentive and from the sounds of it choosing a well qualified safety driver wasn't a priority, they just wanted someone cheap to check off the "safety driver" box.
That a discount safety driver wouldn't be paying attention at a critical moment is a fairly foreseeable consequence and easy to remedy, hence negligent homicide.
Slashdot Mirror
And now you're down to pedantic bickering about why we need to spend double the money... my money.
And that's why you fucking lost.
Being so uninterested in the details that you'd write off 4 sentences of explanation as "pedantic bickering" is why your administration is a complete tire fire.
No to Agenda 21 and its heirs
No to Kyoto and its heirs, specifically the PCA.
I'm more concerned about Trump and his heirs than your crackpot conspiracy theories.
None of these "international agreements" have ever been ratified by the Senate and are therefore not binding on the US or its citizens.
Any programs of dollars spent towards any of these things that were "nodded" to by previous administrations needs to be stopped immediately.
Just because you're not obliged by international treaty doesn't mean you shouldn't do something.
Exactly.
The NOAA actually does monitor this. It's just another government duplication
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/...
Wrong. NOAA monitors the same variables but though different mechanisms. They use what looks like fixed land based sites and measurements from ocean vessels.
NASA's monitoring involved sampling from Aircraft and satellite measurements. Not only are you measuring CO2 in areas the NOAA can't (different parts of the atmosphere... different parts of the globe), and providing different kinds of data they cant, but you're also providing an independent check on the NOAA data.
Why would a Climate Monitoring System be under NASA and not NOAA?
I would think that NASA's only role in this should be launching and maintaining the satellites. The Science and Climate Monitoring itself should be under NOAA control.
That's an interesting question, though not really relevant, because Trump didn't move the research to NOAA, he just cancelled it.
The battery catching fire is an interesting point. I'd be interested to know if the emergency responders initially followed the published guidelines for cooling the battery or if they stopped when they stopped seeing flames. Regardless, it's an interesting point and an important one for the future.
Regarding the rest of the OP's posting...yeah, 2 teens died in a Tesla in Florida while speeding 50-60 around a corner marked for 30 mph. Yes, a lady crashed her car into a Starbucks. Where are the headlines about some random kid who died in a pickup truck this weekend? I'll bet you $50 it happened. Or the old lady in her Ford Fiesta who ran into a parked car? I'll put $20 on that one. What, no national headlines on those ones? What gives? Or do we think miraculously owning a Tesla makes you immune to being a stupid/careless/human driver? I didn't know Musk was advertising that feature. Is Ford? Honda? Lexus?
Where are the headlines about those other Tesla stories you're complaining about? Because I sure didn't see them here on slashdot. The first I heard of them was as valid context provided to this story, which is a pretty standard practice.
This story is news and headline worthy, because it shows that an EV battery in a crashed vehicle is more dangerous and volatile that people realize, and it requires special equipment and expertise to deal with. Right now I'm wondering about the life-cycle of these batteries, Teslas will eventually become junkers, what's going to happen in 20 or 30 years when some teenager is trying to charge the battery in their grandfather's old Tesla?
I've heard of them, but I've never actually seen one in real life, since I live in Alberta, a province free of rats.
Of course, we're not really a "removal success" since we kept them out in the first place.
The US health care system seems to be doing a pretty good job of preventing that so far, as congress hasn't done much to make life-saving treatments cheaper.
Politically, there's a big difference between: "Poor people sometimes die of preventable causes" and "Everyone but the rich dies of this preventable cause".
It was a commitment by Obama, not by the United States. The fact of the matter is that it WAS a bad deal. The Iranian government repeatedly stated that it did not actually bind them in any way, both during negotiations and afterwards.
Huh? I'm sorry, basically everyone who takes arms control seriously thought it was an awesome deal and Iran was abiding by the terms.
A further important point is that technically, Trump did not withdraw from the deal. He decertified that Iran was in compliance with the terms of the agreement.
Meaning Trump lied.
That was the actual argument I'm making, if it was a legitimately crappy deal and Trump had a valid reason for backing out that would be fine, people would expect that.
But the biggest reason Trump seems to be leaving is because it was a major accomplishment by Obama and he wants to undo Obama's legacy. And that's the kind of immature crybaby politics that destroy the US's credibility.
I hate to be repetitive, but here's what will happen:
-the Europeans will pressure Iran to make concessions and a new deal.
They'll likely try to get Iran to do something pointless and symbolic to give Trump his win so he comes back on board "WITH THE GREATEST DEAL EVER!!!" But Iran won't bite, and the Europeans are not going to re-impose their sanctions unless Iran chooses to pull out of the deal, and maybe not even then.
-Britain, France, Germany don't want to lose any access to US markets nor suffer any economic consequences of dealing with Iran if the US decides to limit business.
You're confusing countries and businesses. European companies will still do business with Iran, they'll just be smaller companies who can afford to ignore the US for the opportunity to get big Iranian contracts.
----So, if Trump does anything it will be tactical military strikes.
----Iran does not want tactical US strikes. It has few ways to retaliate short of long-term war with the US.
--------Counterinsurgency and terrorism are possibilities, which would suck for the US...and Iran. Mostly Iran.
Trump has the leverage.
The old deal is gone, now he is going to negotiate from a position of strength for a new deal.
It will be a better deal.
Why is this not obvious to you?
I don't know if you've met many people before, but Iranians are people, and like most people they don't operate according to the assumptions you're laying out.
Imagine you're trying to make a deal with Bob. Now you don't like Bob, you don't think you should have to deal with Bob, but Bob is really screwing you over and won't stop until you agree to do some things you really don't want to do. But, with great reluctance, you make the deal and uphold your end faithfully.
Then Bob says a bunch of nasty things about you, insinuates you're not upholding the deal, and then breaks the deal and threatens to beat you up if you don't agree to an even worse deal.
Do you really think you're going to accept that even crappier deal with Bob? No, you're going to tell him to ****-off and you're probably even willing to take a beating from Bob because you know you're in the right. It's only once Bob holds a gun to your head that you actually take the worse deal, and then you'll never trust Bob again and stab him in the back the first chance you get.
Trump is using the same strategy he used in the business world, giant company bullies tiny company and tiny company acquiesces out of survival. His problem is that strategy doesn't work on the International stage, as strong as the US is, the power imbalance isn't extreme enough, and both the US and the President are subject to too many constraints to throw their weight around effectively enough to pull it off.
Trump has leverage, but less than Obama, and not enough to get a better deal.
"What they cannot fix is the total loss of credibility."
I think this is particularly where the analogy to the Mule is apt.
Trump has damaged America's credibility, but honestly, we're largely trading on Trumps credibility right now, not "America's"; so when Trump goes, the rest of the world will breathe a collective sigh and assume things go back to normal -- provided they do, a do so quickly the long term damage should be small -- the chaos will belong to "Trump" not so much to "America"; especially if America is seen struggling to contain Trump, which it is; and things go back to normal when he's gone.
America's credibility is only damaged to the extent that Trump was elected in the first place. But after that, to quote Mulaney... he's like a horse loose in a hospital.
Remember Ted Cruz? Ben Carson? The Not-Romney's of 2012? Sarah Palin? Trump isn't that big of an outlier, the Republicans have been on the verge of electing a nutjob for the past 12 years.
The world is worried because half the US is determined to put very incompetent and irresponsible people in power.
Ummm, members of the U.S. Senate warned Iran that the "deal" President Obama was making with them was non-binding on future administrations before the deal was made unless it was ratified by the Senate.. This was done very publicly after Obama had declared that he was not going to submit the deal to the Senate for ratification. In other words, America never gave its word on this deal because there is a very specific process which must be followed before America has "given its word." Obama chose not to follow that process. What is funny is that Obama repeatedly gave his word that America would honor his agreements without taking the necessary actions to ensure that it actually would...and people still believe him.
It's still a commitment, not as strong as a ratified treaty but it still counts.
But more to the point, it's about being credible and serious. Trump isn't pulling out because he thinks it's a bad deal for serious and specific reasons, if he were that's something other countries could deal with and plan around. He's pulling out because the GOP and Fox News spent a few years taking shots at it for political reasons and he just bought into the line that it's a bad deal.
It hurts the US's credibility because it shows that one of the two major parties no longer takes the job seriously, and when that happens other nations no longer want to deal with you because they don't trust you not to do something stupid and blow it up for no good reason.
If you ask google the same question, you will get more credible citations than you can eat. Willful ignorance is not charming.
Neither is laziness. Saying "Search Google" is a cop out, because you can't list any. The closest I was able to find prior to posting my question to you is a claim from Adam Schiff that there was "more than circumstantial evidence" but he wouldn't elaborate. So there is no specific evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government to "fix" the election.
Lets put it this way.
Anyone so dishonest as to deny question the fact that there's evidence of Russian collusion is not going to accept any evidence provided.
Researching evidence to present to you, just so you can misread, misunderstand, or simply ignore fairly unambiguous sentences, is a waste of people's time.
This will be a great excuse to make first strike against Iran, which is what Israel wants. Bad move on Iran's part. They should just count U.S. out and deal with the rest of the World. The U.S. is alienating itself greatly already anyways.
You think cyber-attacks make a good excuse for a first strike? Not even Trump can get away with that one.
And no one is going to care if Iran starts hacking the US, the international community will probably just consider if fair play considering the stunt Trump just pulled.
How a cyber-war works out for Iran is another question, the US certainly has better hackers but it also has way more targets. And winning a cyber-war might not help Iran once the clown brigade has left the White House.
AND [2] If some method is found to reverse the sterilization procedure, then you agree not to reverse it --- If you reverse it, or are found to have a child other than a child you adopted or had BEFORE the process, then you are banned from further rejuvenation treatments.
You can control overpopulation without making people choose between children and not dying of old age.
People will still be mortal, they'll still die for many other reasons. You can have lotteries or other mechanisms for distributing fertility rights.
Remember, a big consequence of this treatment will be a massive drop in fertility. Age is a big motivator in the decision to have children, but how many people will still want to have a kid in their twenties or thirties when they can wait till they're 80?
The human treatment will cost hundreds of thousands...millions?
The billionaires will live to 130 with great health and the rest of us plebes? Sorry, insurance doesn't cover cosmetic treatments.
In the developing world sure, but within a few years of it being established everyone will get some form of the treatment in the west.
The rich control a lot for certain, but the GOP showdown was a battle between Trump and Cruz, the two people most hated by the elites in the GOP. And Trump actually became President.
You think you Trump ran an effective populist campaign? Just wait for "Vote for me or you will literally die (of old age)".
I don't think that would be a particularly close election.
I would love to live an extended life or "forever". I just don't want everyone else to as well. The social and economic stresses it would put on the finite resources of this planet scare me. I think there's a reasonable chance that we'll see this in our lifetimes and it may be things like war that ends up killing people instead of "natural causes".
I agree overpopulation is a serious consequence of life extension.
But people dying preventable deaths is hardly the optimal solution. If it's a choice between people dying of old age and restrictions on reproduction I'd choose restrictions on reproduction. Sure it's a terrible violation of human rights, but so is dying.
Well, the goal is to inspect for nukes. I don't care for your rationalization of Iranian enmity. Quite a lot of it is plain wrong, or misses important events (like the torture of the entire American embassy stuff). Whatever. If the deal can't get the Iranian regime needs to swallow its fears and allow actual inspections, than the deal is bad. You *can* sneak nuclear technology, it depends on the type. Primitive centrifuges are bulky, but there are technologies (like laser-separation) that are not.
It's not rationalization it's understanding, and I didn't iterate Iranian sins because I was trying to explain why Iran doesn't like the US, not why the US hates Iran.
And when the deal came out most arms inspectors were shocked at how good it was. I'll take their opinion over yours.
The government kept it there. Also, you must have missed the many direct quotes in the article regarding destruction of certain other country.
1 quote from Khomeni talking about 2040. It's not a threat it's just angry yelling.
Do you think the Iranian regime is stupid? That they'd do a deal to remove sanctions, and then allow the US to turn around and say: "Well, we are reimposing the exact same sanctions we had before for some other reason, oh, and your commitments under the deal still stands despite us finding some excuse to avoid our own". Not being able to reimpose any of the same sanctions as before was Iranian condition #1. Otherwise they'll leave the deal. All that's left is some piddling stuff that can't change behaviour.
It's less effective, but it's still consequential. And if you get them to re-engage economically some of those secondary sanctions have bigger effects.
Really, are there less executions in Iran (no)? Any let up in the theocracy (no)? Moderation towards neighbours (no and no)? The groundwork being laid here is ignoring and finding excuses for the regime's malfeasance in order to pretend the deal was fine.
Rouhani is a moderate, the deal was a huge win for moderates and nudged Iran in all those directions. Cancelling it empowers the hardliners and makes things worse.
What new capabilities? You're still operating under this fiction that the deal gave them a bomb!
Imagine how this reads in the Middle East: "If the Iranians uke you, they'd be marginalized (but you'll be dead)". Note also that we saw for the last 30 years the regime doesn't mind marginalization. Perhaps because its a theocracy ordered by God. Or maybe because they saw they'd always find Western useful-idiots to excuse them.
You misread that. Iran isn't launching a first strike, they've never been a country that attacks, their objective has always been defensive nukes. It's having those Nukes that marginalizes them.
Basically just a concurrence, though I regard ISIS as kind of a lesser Taliban that never had a real chance against Iran. However, it was the threats of ISIS and similar nuts that helped suck Iran into Iraq after Dubya started whacking the hornet's nest with his short stick.
I really can't understand the mindsets of the various lunatic fringes that support Trump. Almost all of them seem so self-contradictory that it's hard not to dismiss them as insane. Religious nuts who defend religious morality and Trump in the same sentence? Authoritarians who enslave themselves to a foolish puppet? A friend recently recommended the author John Hart on the grounds that he might give me some insight into the thinking of some of Trump's supporters, but the book I picked has such enormous plot holes that it's exhausting my highly trained abilities to suspend my disbelief...
I can get the religious right because they're not interested in biblical morality as much as cultural supremacy. If anything it's a bonus since Trump is fighting for white Christians without being bound by Christian morals.
Authoritarians I don't understand as well... but the ones who really perplex me are what should be standard relatively ordinary Republicans. I get partisanship can make you a reluctant supporter, but he still has massive support among rank-and-file Republicans, I don't understand how they can look at his antics and corruptions and not be completely freaked out.
Here's what will actually happen:
Wishful thinking?
-Iran's economy will go from really bad (google it) to significantly worse.
Truish, European sanctions won't return and their economy is probably still recovering from the sanctions being lifted. It's possible they may keep seeing economic growth.
-Political discontent in Iran will grow.
True
-Internal politics will create pressure on Iranian leadership to negotiate directly with the US.
False. Iranian people will be rightly pissed at the US and negotiating with someone who just screwed you over is a huge loss of face, the Iranian leaders won't be able to negotiate with Trump if they wanted to.
Trump just helped but the Iranian hardliners back in power.
-Trump, being Trump, will gladly negotiate.
He'd love to negotiate but he doesn't have much leverage. The Europeans will never re-engage with the sanctions, especially not with Trump in charge. And the US alone can't hurt them enough economically.
-A new nuclear deal, or other peaceful bilateral initiative, will occur.
No new deal is coming. Most likely everyone ignores the US and a somewhat more belligerent Iran keeps trading with Europe. Less likely, Iran drops out and starts working towards a bomb again. And if they ever come back to the table it's with a much weaker deal, otherwise war is the only way to make sure they don't get a bomb.
-Bilateral relations will thaw for the first time since the Iranian Revolution.
They were thawing, not anymore.
Commenters are forgetting that America isn't THAT unpopular among Iranian youth.
Wasn't unpopular, about to get more unpopular. An Islamophobe who screws over your country is not a popular individual.
Discontent runs high. Trump has leverage. Trump has leverage in a few different ways, in fact.
Trump has weak sanctions and a unilateral war, that's about it.
Anyway, guess what...looks like we might get a new deal with North Korea and an end to that war.
Scrapping a deal that the other side was living up to is not a way to build credibility. I suspect Trump just blew his incredibly slim chance of getting real lasting concessions from NK.
Trump winning isn't that far out of reality.
Reality is not your friend.
Hear, hear, especially as regards Dubya. Actually I'm almost shocked by the amount of insight I've seen in the so-modded comments I've seen so far.
You didn't mention one important aspect, however. The reason for this mess and the real driver of Iran's increasing power is Dubya's mess in Iraq, brought to you by the very same fools who have produced today's fiasco. The power vacuum they created in Iraq had to be filled in some way. The only problem is whether to describe it as "irresistible" or "inevitable", but the bottom line is that the winners of Dubya's wars were Iran in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. On America's tab--which is still open and bleeding.
Don't forget ISIS, that's pretty damn easy to attribute to the Iraq war. And Putin is probably a lot more manageable if the mid-2000's NATO expansion didn't convince him that the US was out to create a military alliance encircling Russia. Not to mention the other contributing factor in the invasion of Ukraine, the Iraq war lowering the international standards for invading other countries.
Oh and Bush's bone-headed "temporary tax cut" that caused skyrocketing deficits in a time of economic prosperity, making the financial meltdown much worse than it needed to be.
People spend so much time treating politics like a team sport they forget the actual consequences of political action. Hundreds of thousands of people died because the Bush administration make easily avoidable errors.
That's not a minor thing, that's a very, very, big consequence of incompetent/irresponsible politicians.
All these people just falling in line with Trump as he stumbles along making bone-headed decisions based on a Fox and Friends segment. Are they actually thinking about the consequences that kind of decision making will bring?
The Treasury Department has the power to punish european companies into oblivion for violating sanctions against the Iranian regime - they have US assets and operations that can be easily ground down to nothing - and their home governments will be totally powerless to stop it.
IF they have US assets and operations.
It certainly limits the number and sizes of firms that can deal in Iranian oil, but I'm sure there's a lot of firms that will decide to forgo US banks for the opportunity to trade with Iran. And when the sanctions come off again they'll have a huge headstart over US companies in the Iranian market.
Exactly right. Had Obama wished to make the deal permanent, he needed to go to the Senate to have them ratify it. Since the Senate at the time was controlled by Republicans he was in no mood to negotiate with
Your take-away from the Obama administration is that Obama was the one reluctant to negotiate with Republicans?
Were you even paying attention?
So rigorous that if IAEA would want to inspect a military site - they'd need to ask Iran for permission in advance, tell it the location and possibly wait two weeks.
I think that's fine.
Remember that as much as the US distrusts Iran and considers it an enemy Iran distrusts the US and considers it an enemy too, the difference being Iran actually has some damn good reasons. During WWII the Allies invaded and occupied a neutral Iran installing a pro-West ruler, the current Iranian government is around only because the Western influence eventually led to the overthrow of that ruler.
The US then supported Iraq as they invaded Iran in a war that killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians. This war included the US assisting Iraq in their deployment of Chemical weapons (ie, WMDs) against Iran.
Not to mention how loudly the Neocons were trying to drum up support for an Iranian invasion during Bush II's term.
If you were Iran would you really allow Western inspectors to wander into any military site they wanted to without notice? You'd have a very valid suspicion that the US inspectors were gathering intel for an invasion.
At the same time, it takes big-ass centrifuges to enrich Uranium, centrifuges you can't sneak away in 2 weeks. The 24 day period doesn't give Iran time to cover up a bomb program.
Whom do you mean by "they"? Protesters set up the clock, not "Iran" or the Iranian goverment.
It gives them more money sure, but it doesn't prevent the use of sanctions for their other activities, hell, Trump has literally implemented sanctions against Iran for their missile program.
And one of the bigger benefits of the deal isn't even Nukes, it's laying the groundwork to turning Iran into a regular non-renegade nation. A lot of that has already been achieved, Rhouani is talking about staying in the deal even with Trump dropping out.
The Saudi's and Israeli's are regional rivals for influence and they'd much prefer Iran as a marginalized pariah nation than an economic and political rival for influence. Their best case if a collapse of the Iran deal and a US invasion to prevent a nuke, hell Bibi was practically begging for that.
I'm not actually certain they're all the concerned about Iran getting Nukes. For one, it's unclear that Iran actually wanted to build Nukes. They definitely wanted the ability to build Nukes, ie highly enriched Uranium and the know how to make a bomb on fairly short notice, but they probably didn't want to
The idea that Iran, who has lied,
Who hasn't?
The point of the deal is you didn't have to trust Iran because they're subjected to rigorous inspections.
who has claimed to want to destroy entire countries
You mean their blowhard former President once made a comment that sounds like that when translated and taken out of context.
But you can't relate to anything like that.
and it the worlds leading sponsor of terror,
Whether or not that's true is irrelevant. The deal was about Nukes, not missiles, Hezbollah support, or anything else.
would not use the principle of Taqiyya (Shia being much more flexible in its use) to lie about their goals is ridiculous.
WTF? You think the only people on the planet capable of lying are Muslims following your distorted understanding of religious practice? Was it really that necessary to discredit your already dumb argument by demonstrating to everyone that you're an ignorant Islamophobe?
The perfidy of the Iranian government is well documented as is the avoidance measures they took to truly by limited in their goals to become a nuclear power.
Good for Trump.
Yeah, good for Trump. He's destroyed a perfectly good non-proliferation deal and risked a Nuclear arms race in the Middle East because he's too big a wuss to admit that he got suckered by the Fox News/GOP push to smear Obama in the lead up to the 2016 election.
Risking Nuclear war is one thing, but admitting you were wrong??? That's unthinkable!!!
Yeah, sure, the technology is crap. That doesn't mean anyone is cutting corners, it means that self-driving cars is still in its infancy and is kind of shit.
I suppose it was also negligent homocide for the makers of the Comet
Well no, because I don't see evidence of negligence.
I'm not against testing/developing your self-driving cars on the roads, that's the only way you can do some types of testing.
But if you're going to do that you need to take safeguards, namely, you need to make sure that your safety driver is fully engaged and ready to take control, and that means hiring a fairly attentive safety driver, possibly two if you realize that just one will lose focus.
The safety driver was not attentive and from the sounds of it choosing a well qualified safety driver wasn't a priority, they just wanted someone cheap to check off the "safety driver" box.
That a discount safety driver wouldn't be paying attention at a critical moment is a fairly foreseeable consequence and easy to remedy, hence negligent homicide.