Tag: Plans

Watch For That Inflection Point

CoS Bolton is going around the world drumming yup support for a possible trip to Iran (by trip I mean some sort of military action)…..

Bolton is what Bolton always does….protects Israel over the interests of this country.

Hiss newest con job on the world is about the possibility of an attack by Iran….and he has gone viral with the warmongers….

Here’s the dire warning National Security Advisor John Bolton brought Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Jan. 6: “We have little doubt that Iran’s leadership is still strategically committed to achieving deliverable nuclear weapons.”

I have found zero evidence to support Bolton’s claim. It is unclear who “we” means, but it certainly does not include the American intelligence community. They have found exactly the opposite.

While it is currently trendy to fact-check Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, allow me to suggest that it matters more — a lot more —when  statements made by the national security advisor are untrue. This four-Pinocchio claim is a true whopper and has serious national security implications.

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/01/boltons-big-iran-con/154109/

Time for all of us to start looking for that “Tonkin Moment” that will start a war with Iran over some minor incident that can be used to gin up support to the attacks.

It will not be difficult since the US and NATO pretty much have Iran surrounded….just look at the map…..

Related image

Even Pentagon officials are fearing the language of Bolton…..

Having spent decades advocating a US attack on Iran, John Bolton’s position as National Security Adviser is allowing him to push the idea hard with President Trump. For those less enamored of that war, including Pentagon leadership, there is mounting concern that Bolton might provoke such a war.

So when Bolton came to the Pentagon asking them for military options for attacking Iran, nominally in retaliation for a Shi’ite Iraqi militia firing mortar shells in Baghdad, they were reticent.

The options they delivered were reportedly very limited. They involved little more than a show of force with limited airstrikes against some random Iranian military site. This was far short of what Bolton wanted, but former Defense Secretary James Mattis argued that even this was a bad idea, and no attack has happened yet.

But the National Security Council are still saying the attack plans are being considered, and Mattis is no longer around to argue against it. This potentially would allow Bolton to push for the symbolic attack and hope it escalates into more, or to push the Mattis-less Pentagon for even bigger plans for more ambitious wars.

(antiwar.com)

Like I keep saying….watch for that one small incident that can be used to turn this from a war or words to a war of bullets and missiles.

Why would I say this?  Pompeo has trotted through the Middle East beat the drums of war…..

The United States’ international windbag, Secretary of Defense (read: War) Mike Pompeo has been acting the imperial blowhard throughout the Middle East. With his boss busy denying that he’s a Russian agent, watching advisors and cabinet members come and go with dizzying alacrity, and dodging porn-star accusations, Pompeo is trotting through the Middle East, sounding war drums.

It seems that Iran, which has long been in the crosshairs of U.S. gunboat ‘diplomacy’, remains firmly targeted. In Cairo, Pompeo promised a “…campaign to stop Iran’s malevolent influence and actions against this region and the world”.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/01/18/pompeo-the-u-s-and-iran/

But say that there is a short limited war with Iran?  If interested check it out.

https://lobotero.com/2015/04/16/a-really-bad-idea-a-limited-war-with-iran-the-national-interest/

For those that want to know what went wrong and the US and Iran were at each other’s throats……all this animosity began with the hostage situation from the 1970s……if one would like to see how all this manure began then the national archives can help…..

The Iran Hostage Crisis was a major international crisis caused by the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and its employees by revolutionary Iranian students, who then held the Embassy employees as hostages, in direct violation of international law. The revolutionary government of Iran, under the Ayatollah Khomeini, supported the hostage undertaking. The crisis ended with the release of the hostages after a captivity of 444 days, from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981.

https://www.archives.gov/research/foreign-policy/iran-hostage-crisis

In closing….a “what if”……https://lobotero.com/2017/05/31/iran-a-what-if/

 

THe Two Candidates Tax Plans (Simplified)

Len Berman, a former Treasury tax official who is now a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, says if Obama’s proposals—which include plans to rescind the Bush tax cuts on couples making more than $250,000, close corporate tax loopholes, and tax private equity earnings known as “carried interest” as ordinary income—were adopted in 2009, for example, married couples with earnings in the lowest quintile of the population would see their aftertax income rise 5.8%. Those in the next quintile would see an increase of 4%. Those breaks would be paid for by those with high incomes: the top 1% of taxpayers would see aftertax income fall 8.4%.

Under McCain’s proposals, by contrast—including an extension of the Bush tax cuts for all taxpayers, a corporate tax cut, and a larger reduction in estate taxes than Obama would support—far more of the benefits would go to the top. If his plans went into effect in 2009, married couples in the bottom fifth of the population would see aftertax income go up just 0.2%, while those in the next quintile would see a 0.7% hike. But those in the top quintile would see a bump up in aftertax income of 2.7%.

“It’s just flat wrong” to say people would do worse under Obama, says Berman. “Most lower- and middle-class people would pay less taxes under Obama than they would under the proposals being put forth by McCain.”

Very basically, McCain is a supply side proponent, that is cut taxes and the economy will grow.