Are all deals created equal? Are all agreements binding for eternity?
All contracts have a clause to outline how the deals can end. When you are buying a house. Sorry, forgot who I was talking to. When the rest of us buy a house, or sell one, we get contracts. The contract does not mean the deal is done, it means it is beginning. There are conditions that have to be met, and if any of them are not met, for whatever reason, the deal falls through.
If the house does not meet the standards for the type of loan, then the deal can and will fall through on financing. If the house doesn’t meet the standards of an inspection, the deal can and will fall through. If that happens, does it mean the buyer or seller are horrible business people or terrible for letting the contract lapse?
There are exit sections of treaties too. How to end the participation of the treaty by one of the signatories. France left NATO for example, early on in the Treaty. Britain recently decided to abandon the EU. Was France a horrible country for leaving NATO? Or did they make the choice they felt best represented their own interests?
Some deals look pretty good on paper, but once you get into it, you find it isn’t a good deal. So you use the exit that is part of the deal, and you walk away. It doesn’t mean you can’t have any other deals.
I was looking for a house. I found one that looked to be what we wanted. I liked it. The wife liked it. We decided to put in a bid. We put as one of the conditions that it had to pass the inspection. And we paid the inspector several hundred to go in and tell us everything that he found. He found a lot. A hell of a lot more wrong that we had imagined, or feared. We looked at the costs of the repairs, and we decided that it would push the cost higher than we were comfortable with. The house would have to be nearly gutted to be properly brought to code and made suitable.
I walked away from the deal. I don’t know who bought the house, I don’t care. It wasn’t the right deal for me. I found another house, and tried to put a contract in the day after the house was removed from the “sale” market and put up as a rental. I was unaware of the change, and the response of the seller or former seller was insulting to say the least. He could keep that damned house until hell froze over before I’d pay a dollar for it.
Finally I found a much better house, for less money, that met nearly every requirement we had. The wife liked it, I liked it a hell of a lot. We bought it. It needed a few updates and repairs, but it would leave us still in budget, and the house closing was finally completed.
Our experience was not as smooth as others, and not as rocky as others still. But that is the deals as we know them.
NAFTA has an exit clause. In case the trade deal no longer is in our best interest. Mexico could leave it for the same reason, if it no longer is in their best interests.
Otherwise we would have gone into World War II required by the deals before to keep sending oil to Japan along with a lot of other material. That would be just flat assed stupid. We would have to load the material on a ship, and then attack our own ships to make sure we didn’t sell the enemy the war materials they desperately needed.
These were my questions:
Who would want to sign a treaty with the United States after Trump trashed the Iran Nuclear Treaty?
Who would sign a trade agreement with the United States after Trump trashed trade agreements?
Who would agree to be a covert agent for the United States after Trump gives classified material to Russians and orders an FBI informant for the United States to be publicly outed?
Do Democratic Countries feel nervous with Trump's embrace of authoritarian dictators and his anti democratic behavior, his attacks on the free press and his threats to jail political opponents?
Is there anyone in the world who would trust Donald Trump after all his dishonest statements and outright lies?
How many ways are there left for Donald Trump to isolate this country from the rest of the world?
How long, if ever, will it take this country to repair the damage Trump is causing this country in every way possible?
And finally, is this all being put in place by Trump alone, or is he being guided by someone? And who would that someone be?
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So your answer was to answer my questions with questions?
A couple things. Let’s start with the “informant”. That is the easiest one. An informant creates the flavor of someone who is already inside learning in the course of their duties that something illegal or unethical is going on. A spy is someone who infiltrates a group to try and get information on something illegal or unethical that they believe is going on. The more accurate term is spy. This is because the only reason he offered his services is because he believed something illegal or unethical was going on and wanted proof. He believed it because he met with Federal Agents.
I am sure you would agree it is unprecedented that a spy would be placed in a rivals political campaign. I mean it would be bad enough if the spy was assigned the task by the DNC but to have the spy sent in by the FBI is beyond outrageous. Even Nixon used former FBI agents, who were out of the employ of the Federal Government to run the Plumbers. And that has been, until now, the most egregious violation of any norms in history.
If breaking deals and treaties is bad, is it also bad to violate international sanctions? Or is pretending to respect those things more important than actually doing what you are supposed to?
Do you deny that these trade agreements and treaties all have exit clauses? No. You just act like abandoning such deals is morally and ethically wrong, no matter how bad these deals have been for us.
We had agreements to support the Shaw of Iran, but we broke that deal didn’t we? I mean he was a brutal dictatorial thug, but we had agreements with him. Should we have left the brutal dictatorial thug in charge?
The Iran Nuclear Deal was never ratified by Congress, so it isn’t a Treaty, or a binding agreement is it? Unless you now feel that Presidents can sign deals and bind the United States to actions in the future without Congressional oversight and agreement. You don’t believe that do you?
That is the real problem with your complaints. The Iran Nuclear Deal was agreed to by President Obama, but never ratified by the US Congress. Nor was it ratified by the Iranian Parliment, nor signed by the Iranian President. So what deal do we have? What deal really exists? There isn’t a deal, at best a vague sort of verbal agreement. Where nobody is really able to state categorically that people are living up to the deal that nobody has really agreed to. That is not a deal.
NAFTA is NOT a good treaty. It wasn’t a good treaty when it was ratified by Congress, and it isn’t a good treaty today. If your complaint is that the international world won’t deal with Trump because he refuses to remain in bad deals, then perhaps the idea is to get better deals going.
I wish you guys on the Left would make up your damned minds. I honestly do. You complain that Trump is willing to talk to North Korea, and in the very next breath swear that nobody is going to talk to us. What happens with our allies we are asked. OK, let’s talk about that.
Let’s say you and I are neighbors. We live on adjoining property down a small private road. We agree we need to upgrade security to protect our property and families as the neighborhood goes bad. I spend a lot of money investing in a better fence, I spend days working on the road to improve it, and I instal security lights and motion activated cameras. You buy some fencing materials, and never put it up.
When the thugs arrive at your house, mine is safe because I put forth the effort to defend our properties, and you didn’t. Is that my fault? Germany for example, one of our very valuable allies, has a Military that couldn’t defend Berlin from an attack by a single division of enemy troops. Their tanks don’t run, their planes don’t fly, their pilots can’t maintain proficiency, in other words, the minimum standards to fly, because the planes are broken and Germany doesn’t pay to have the planes fixed. Their troops aren’t trained, and there aren’t very many of the troops.
Broken fighter jets, grounded helicopters and idled tanks: Germany's military is ailing
Right now, the National Guard of Iowa could wipe the floor with the German Military. But we are supposed to keep pouring billions of dollars into the defense of Germany, because they are an ally. How exactly are they an ally? Do they have a military that can help us defend their nation? Or are they primarily traffic cops pointing our boys to the enemy and screaming stop the baddies before they get here.
Read that article. Brussels which is the Headquarters of NATO and the other NATO member nations say that Germany should spend more on their own military. So Trump is actually speaking along with a majority of our “allies” in expecting Germany to do more to help us defend them. Yet, Trump is bad because he says what a majority of NATO nations are also saying. Just louder, and more abruptly.
You are so full of shit I imagine the city is trying to figure out a way to charge you more for the sewage you produce. Just to get you to pay your fair share.