Do Actions Really Speak Louder Than Words?

[Spoonman]

So typical of this administration. Obama runs around calling for a reduction in nuclear weapons. the words

While all along he's ramped up our nuclear production. the action.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/u...n&region=Footer&module=TopNews&pgtype=article

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A sprawling new plant here in a former soybean field makes the mechanical guts of America’s atomic warheads. Bigger than the Pentagon, full of futuristic gear and thousands of workers, the plant, dedicated last month, modernizes the aging weapons that the United States can fire from missiles, bombers and submarines.
It is part of a nationwide wave of atomic revitalization that includes plans for a new generation of weapon carriers. A recent federal study put the collective price tag, over the next three decades, at up to a trillion dollars.

U.S. Ramping Up Major Renewal in Nuclear Arms

 

[Wacky Quacky]

OMG!! A politician lied! Stop the presses!

I'll never understand the need to be able to destroy the world multiple times over. You would think one time is more than enough. But our politicians, and the right wing, seem to get their kicks over who has the bigger nuclear penis.

 

[The Rabbi]

He has to in some sense because the Russians aer in gross violation of every nuclear treaty they ever signed. Something else the media is ignoring. I guess this is part of Obama's new flexibility after his election.

 

[Spoonman]

If bush was president liberals would be screaming this is just bush and his cronies getting rich off government contracts. where are the hypocrites now that their side is in control?

 

[Derideo_Te]

Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

If Obama had pulled the plug on this plant entirely the right would be beating him up for allowing the US nuclear arsenal to fall into disrepair just when Russia is becoming more aggressive.

But let's look at a few excerpts from the article to get the bigger picture. This is part of a Treaty on a REDUCTION in nuclear arms where the Republicans DEMANDED that the arsenal be upgraded.

In the fall of 2008, as Barack Obama campaigned for the presidency, a coalition of peace groups sued to halt work on a replacement bomb plant in Kansas City. They cited the prospect of a new administration that might, as one litigant put it, kill the project in “a few months.”

The Kansas City plant, an initiative of the Bush years, seemed like a good target, since Mr. Obama had declared his support for nuclear disarmament.

The $700 million weapons plant survived. But in April 2009, the new president and his Russian counterpart, Dmitri A. Medvedev, vowed to rapidly complete an arms treaty called New Start, and committed their nations “to achieving a nuclear-free world.”

The accord with Moscow was hammered out quickly. The countries agreed to cut strategic arms by roughly 30 percent — from 2,200 to 1,550 deployed weapons apiece — over seven years. It was a modest step. The Russian arsenal was already declining, and today has dropped below the agreed number, military experts say.

Even so, to win Senate approval of the treaty, Mr. Obama struck a deal with Republicans in 2010 that would set the country’s nuclear agenda for decades to come.

Republicans objected to the treaty unless the president agreed to an aggressive rehabilitation of American nuclear forces and manufacturing sites. Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, led the opposition. He likened the bomb complex to a rundown garage — a description some in the administration considered accurate.

With Russia on the warpath, China pressing its own territorial claims and Pakistan expanding its arsenal, the overall chances for Mr. Obama’s legacy of disarmament look increasingly dim, analysts say. Congress has expressed less interest in atomic reductions than looking tough in Washington’s escalating confrontation with Moscow.

“The most fundamental game changer is Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” said Gary Samore, Mr. Obama’s top nuclear adviser in his first term and now a scholar at Harvard. “That has made any measure to reduce the stockpile unilaterally politically impossible.”

So what we have here is the typical "Gotcha" politics that the GOP likes to play. Obama wears "mom jeans" if he doesn't stand up to Putin but when he does he is pilloried for "out of control spending" that Republicans themselves insisted upon.

Yes, actions do speak louder than words and the actions of the Republicans don't make them look any better than Obama in this instance.

 

[LiberalMedia]

He has to in some sense because the Russians aer in gross violation of every nuclear treaty they ever signed.

A great point! Drive it home by citing the exact provisions of a few of those treaties that the Russians are violating, and proof that the Russians are indeed violating them.