I totally agree we should impeach Obama and not let him be President any more. I think everyone else here agrees with me, right? Ok, thread settled.
No, no, no. Impeachment’s not enough. I say we amend the Constitution!
I do try to understand fellow Dopers’ cognition. I hope you’ll help me, Silver lining.*I think Trump lies more than Obama. Do you agree or disagree?*This is a straightforward yes/no question. I’m not asking for non sequiturs about tax policy, nor for a recap of the Benghazi scandal. Can you handle it?
Holy Christ, this was not a lie. Some people had to change doctors because the one they had been seeing chose to be assholes and not accept ACA insurance. Some people’s doctor died, some retired. I suppose that’s Obama’s fault too. And before you say “If you like your insurance, you can keep it”- some people had junk insurance pre-ACA and had low premiums (because their policies were worthless). Then the insurers had to up their game and actually spent some of their money on health care. Some insurers didn’t want to play a game that wasn’t rigged in their favor and stopped offering policies, which was a good thing.
“I think Trump lies more than __________.”
I’m pretty confident you can fill in that blank with damned near anyone you please, and that will still be a true statement.
Yes, it would be disappointing if Obama intentionally misled the American people. I’ll withhold judgement on that score until it’s hashed out.
Would this somehow mitigate the thousands of documented and verified false statements made by the Trump? It’s really hard to find a falsehood uttered by Obama; for Trump, you pick any day of any year and find multiples.
Someday the Trump apologists will comprehend that Obama actually put in the hard work formulating policy, leading to legislation like the ACA or agreements like the Iran deal. Has Trump even put in a full days work as president? He’s like ISIS or Al-Queda or a giant infant with a tower of blocks. He exists only to destroy the hard work of others.
No. And let’s find a god to thank for that!
So, the promise in question was that “Senior U.S. government officials repeatedly testified to Congress that Iranian access to the U.S. financial system was not on the table or part of any deal.”
But the BIG LIE was that the Obama Administration sought to give a license to an Omani bank that holds nearly $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets, which were held in Omani rials. Because the Omani currency is pegged to the dollar, a rial cannot buy a euro. It can only buy a dollar.
So the Obama Administration apparently sought a way to turn the rials into euros, which required a conversion of the rials into dollars first. The Treasury Department looked at the JCPOA, the text of which (according to the Senate report in the OP) said that Iran was allowed to engage in (and I quote the report):
Then the Treasury Department drew up a license, which the report says is legal, that allowed a bank to conduct a transaction that had an “indirect benefit to persons subject to the jurisdiction of the Government of Iran.”
As I read the report, I’m not seeing that any Iranian person or entity ever would have had access the the U.S. financial system. The Omani bank would sell its rials to buy $6 billion of dollars, requiring a U.S. bank to partner in the transaction. Iran would then be able to withdraw the dollars from the Omani bank. The first transaction is between two banks, not Iranians. The second transaction is between a foreign bank and Iran. Where does Iran get inside the U.S. financial system?
I’m no expert on these matters – and I guarantee you that the OP isn’t either. But on the face of it, it just looks like more right-wing partisan bullshit. But I’m open to correction on the facts.
ETA: and of course it bears repeating that none of this ever happened, because no U.S. bank wanted to participate.
That was my take on it as well. The only thing I could surmise was that the Obama Administration was ostensibly and selectively freeing Iranian reserves (i.e. Iran’s money in the first place) held by foreign banks. Something the JCPOA framework permitted as a reward for Iran’s compliance. The main problem I see here is: Obama!
…a narcoleptic rug."
There was a similar article, on a related subject, a few months ago by POLITICO:
Of the two, letting drug smugglers off is probably more notable.
I noticed that there was no followup, no further reporting by competing newspapers, etc. It came in one day and it was gone the next, without comment.
I don’t think that’s an issue of the liberal media. It’s the liberal media who reported it, after all.
The media is a business. If an article about Trump gets 50 million clicks and an article about Obama gets 50,000 clicks, then they’re going to follow up on Trump and drop the subject of Obama. That’s probably what happened here.
So why didn’t the article take off? Well, probably because a) Obama successfully got away with it. He left office before the scheme was discovered. And, b) He’s no longer in power, so the subject is moot.
The reality is that, Democrat or Republican aside, all Americans are basically fine with the idea that the government does the occasional sneaky thing. It’s an American truism that “It ain’t illegal unless you get caught.” To the extent that one side or the other flies off into a rage about some unethical act that a politician committed, it’s because of sports, not that the public really cares. Finding a scandal and using it to disempower the enemy is the sport. That’s only of any use while the person is still in office.
If it were to come out that George W Bush was an avid cocaine junky through the last half of his presidency, all the liberals on this board will be like, “Oh.” And then they’d move on, despite their opposition to the politics of George W Bush. Whether Bush was a cocaine junky or not, at this point in the game is no longer really relevant to anything. It’s interesting, but not useful for sports, and so everyone moves on.