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The Political Thread - Burlamaqui edition


Amentep

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In response to Pelosi saying she wants the SOTU postponed, Trump cancels her foriegn travel. Does he have the power to actually do that (he did concede that theres nothing stopping her from flying commercial)? I mean, I know the President has full control over foriegn policy, but being able to outright alter a congressmembers schedule? I don't recall that ever happening, much less publicly. Sure, there could be times when the President doesn't want congress members to make a foriegn trip, especially if there is something sensitive happening, but given the separation of powers, it really doesn't seem like the President actually has that ability.....

The article mentions that theres speculation that the trip may have been postponed anyway, but that doesn't make what he's trying to do any less childish.

edit: I guess he can deny the military aircraft? Again, it doesn't make it any less childish, especially how it's playing out publicly.

 

edit2: Commentator is saying that the President does have the power to cancel or curtail a congressional delegation because they're using military aircraft. I can see circumstances where it could be used, but not in this childish fashion.

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"Not wearing a seatbelt you are a danger to others, if the car crashes."

 

talk about stretching nonsense. Next youa re gonna claim helmet laws exist because if you don't wear a helmet it is dangerous for other people. LMAO

 

Only Nazis are pro nanny laws.

 

Not wearing seatbelt means you turn into a human projectile if the car crashes. Law of physics. If the guy in front wears seatbelt, and the guy behind does not - he slams into the neck of the guy in front of him in the same speed the car was driving before the crash.

 

There's also the fact that if you wear a seatbelt in a "mild crash", you're far more likely to be able to manouvre the car afterwards and avoid potential other cars. The seatbelt also forces you to be in the best possible posture while driving.

 

Helmets?

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7. Border patrol agents say, “Walls are meaningless without agents and technology to back them up.” Are we prepared to pour countless billions annually — after the wall is built — to create a nearly 2,000 mile, militarized 24-hour surveillance border operation? Because according to patrol agents, that’s the only way a wall would work. Again, are we really, going to use East Germany, a brutal communist state, as our model here?

 

 

 

"Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man."

 

-George S. Patton

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“Political philosophers have often pointed out that in wartime, the citizen, the male citizen at least, loses one of his most basic rights, his right to life; and this has been true ever since the French Revolution and the invention of conscription, now an almost universally accepted principle. But these same philosophers have rarely noted that the citizen in question simultaneously loses another right, one just as basic and perhaps even more vital for his conception of himself as a civilized human being: the right not to kill.”
 
-Jonathan Littell <<Les Bienveillantes>>
Quote

"The chancellor, the late chancellor, was only partly correct. He was obsolete. But so is the State, the entity he worshipped. Any state, entity, or ideology becomes obsolete when it stockpiles the wrong weapons: when it captures territories, but not minds; when it enslaves millions, but convinces nobody. When it is naked, yet puts on armor and calls it faith, while in the Eyes of God it has no faith at all. Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man...that state is obsolete."

-Rod Serling

 

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Trump and her are both being childish. Can she actually postpone the SOTU address? I'm getting mixed messages from thata rticle. At one part it says she asked him to postpone and at another she 'threatened' to postpone it? So, which is? For me, doesn't seem that would be her call to make. I mean, it is a presidential speech so it seems it would be 100% up to Trump.

DWARVES IN PROJECT ETERNITY = VOLOURN HAS PLEDGED $250.

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https://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/russian-tv-airs-doc-claiming-nazi-loving-ukrainians-are-running-canada-s-government-1.4979924

 

Canada's caught in a rhetorical crossfire in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. One of the Kremlin's most prominent propagandists has aired a segment with the incredible claiming that Nazi-loving Ukrainians are running Canada's government and shaping anti-Russian policies

Volo was on to something...

 

 

Meh, if you sanction someone they're likely to think you're a fascist (or commie) as point of principle. Russia 1 is for internal consumption, and that sort of propaganda is always designed to enhance your audience's built in prejudices and ignorance reinforced by previous propaganda. Nazi is used for effect because Russians hate nazis, ergo nazi Kanada == bad. It's also, to a certain extent, designed specifically to reduce trust in media so other country's propaganda channels (VoA, RFE/RL, BBC Russia etc) don't work.

 

Not like it doesn't happen in the west either, it's just typically more subtle or appears so since it's tailored to western sensibilities. Most westerners will think that Russia is abrogating the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF)- when the US has been demonstrably violating it with a deployed system, Aegis Ashore, for 2 years and planned to well before that- because the media are idiots who parrot NATO statements uncritically because anything else is hard work, goes against editorial lines and may get you labelled as a bot or troll; and most people accept it because it fits their prejudices and belief that Russia cannot be trusted and comes from an 'authoritative' source. And, for the few that know and suggest the US has violated it you can deploy the three backstops in sequence: Aegis Ashore doesn't count as it's launcher only no cruise missiles (it counts, launchers are explicitly banned as well as the missiles but you can 95% rely on journos not to check; you also have plenty of analysts outright saying that once the INF is gone CMs will be deployed because they'd be so effective), we're trustworthy when we say we won't deploy cruise missiles and Russia should just Take Our Word For It while they're not trustworthy and we cannot take their word for it; and China isn't bound by it anyway. As if the latter is relevant, China literally cannot hit the mainland US with intermediate range missiles, they can't even hit Hawai'i. You can put money on journos not checking basic geography as well though.

 

If anything the Russian population's position overall is better than the western one, since they tend to think everyone is feeding them tripe including their own media; many westerners are positively proud of believing whatever they're told.

 

 

 

"Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man."

 

-George S. Patton

 

 

As if I needed more reason to think Patton was a blowhard.

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The Maginot Line was such a success in keeping the Germans out of France ;)

“He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.” - Albert Einstein

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Well at the time he said that he wasn't wholly wrong

Why has elegance found so little following? Elegance has the disadvantage that hard work is needed to achieve it and a good education to appreciate it. - Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

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so it seems you tube troll migh manage to sh1tpost himself into parlament...

 

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I'm the enemy, 'cause I like to think, I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech, and freedom of choice. I'm the kinda guy that likes to sit in a greasy spoon and wonder, "Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecue ribs with the side-order of gravy fries?" I want high cholesterol! I wanna eat bacon, and butter, and buckets of cheese, okay?! I wanna smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in the non-smoking section! I wanna run naked through the street, with green Jell-O all over my body, reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly may feel the need to, okay, pal? I've SEEN the future. Do you know what it is? It's a 47-year-old virgin sitting around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake, singing "I'm an Oscar Meyer Wiene"

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The Maginot Line was such a success in keeping the Germans out of France ;)

 

Maginot Line was a symptom of the problem not the problem itself though. It did its own job well enough, it was just pointless when the Germans attacked around it and your strategic and tactical response was to contemplate your navel for four days then blindly panic. Moribund and ossified command with associated stupid deployment of conventional forces and inability to react was the french problem. Patton also had the fairly unique position of being on the perpetual strategic offense due to disparity of resources and having constant air superiority.

 

Well at the time he said that he wasn't wholly wrong

 

It's not wholly wrong even today, but it is wrong enough. The US has used fixed fortifications under different names extensively since WW2 (and before) as everyone does. Some of the forts the US has in Afghanistan have been around considerably longer than the Maginot Line was prior to WW2 at this point. And their forts in Vietnam were one of the few bits of strategy that worked well, since they did regularly draw NVA/ Vier Minh formations out to attack them.

 

Then again I'm making more out of it than intended because I do think Patton is a blowhard, whatever quote is used and from whomever the Trump Wall is a pretty unworkable idea overall.

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Probably more true in terms of an even contest, say against the Soviets.  Always interpreted that as meaning strategically they are useless and maneuver warfare is the way.   Then again, it is just a quote, rather than something he wrote down as part of a treatise on warfare, so probably looking into something more than it warrants.

Why has elegance found so little following? Elegance has the disadvantage that hard work is needed to achieve it and a good education to appreciate it. - Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

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Not like it doesn't happen in the west either, it's just typically more subtle or appears so since it's tailored to western sensibilities. Most westerners will think that Russia is abrogating the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF)- when the US has been demonstrably violating it with a deployed system, Aegis Ashore, for 2 years and planned to well before that- because the media are idiots who parrot NATO statements uncritically because anything else is hard work, goes against editorial lines and may get you labelled as a bot or troll; and most people accept it because it fits their prejudices and belief that Russia cannot be trusted and comes from an 'authoritative' source. And, for the few that know and suggest the US has violated it you can deploy the three backstops in sequence: Aegis Ashore doesn't count as it's launcher only no cruise missiles (it counts, launchers are explicitly banned as well as the missiles but you can 95% rely on journos not to check; you also have plenty of analysts outright saying that once the INF is gone CMs will be deployed because they'd be so effective), we're trustworthy when we say we won't deploy cruise missiles and Russia should just Take Our Word For It while they're not trustworthy and we cannot take their word for it; and China isn't bound by it anyway. As if the latter is relevant, China literally cannot hit the mainland US with intermediate range missiles, they can't even hit Hawai'i. You can put money on journos not checking basic geography as well though.

 

 

While I do not believe that the purported violation is as serious as Bolton and his ilk are suggesting (if anything I believe the whole debacle arose due to poor oversight of Russia's defence industry that got a missile with the _range capability_ rubber-stamped by the MoD rather than any actual deliberate intent on the Kremlin's part to violate the treaty) and I think Obama dropped the ball when his administration was frustratingly vague on what was the offending missile at the start (if it is true, as some are suggesting, that it had come from a deeply embedded intelligence source and they were vague so as to protect it then I'd rather he never brought if up at all) the Russian counterclaim is far flimsier. Breaking the claims down...

 

1. Nuclear missiles can be launched from the Mk. 41 cells.

 

It makes close to zero strategic sense to put them in a _fixed_ launcher. One of the main reasons why the GLCM, Pershing II, and SS-20 were so scary was because a handful of mobile launchers could have been anywhere in enemy territory and it would take dozens, if not hundreds of tactical nukes to account for all of them, let alone with conventional weapons. Compare that to an Aegis Ashore facility that you can be sure will always be there and can be overwhelmed by no more than a baker's dozen warheads (even less if some of the 24 cells at each facility hosts the notional nuclear missile).

 

2. The ABM interceptors can be outfitted with nuclear warheads and turned on ground targets.

 

The Exo-atmospheric Kill Vehicle that serves as the "warhead" for the SM-3 missile weighs 140 pounds versus the 290 lbs of a W80 variable yield warhead. If one had the will, time, and resources could that warhead be eventually mated to that missile (see point 4)? Well, why not? But at those dimensions good luck getting it to range as far as Moscow.

 

3. Nuclear-tipped Tomahawks have existed, and they can be launched from the Mk. 41 cells.

 

The TLAM-N has been removed from service since 2011 with both the missiles and the W80-0 warheads having since been dismantled (in fact it was the US Navy itself that considered it redundant capability early in the Bush administration). Even if production for both the missiles and warheads could be restarted it would be close to thirty years behind modern Flights of Tomahawks in guidance methods, signature reduction, and networking capability, which brings us to a common misconception...

 

4. A nuclear warhead can be swapped with the conventional warhead of a modern Tomahawk.

 

This vastly underestimates the amount of engineering nuclear weapons systems require on both the launch platform and weapons side. Nuclear weapons have a degree of complexity that goes quite well beyond an ordinary cruise missile with a unitary high-explosive warhead; on the weapons side it includes additional electronics to power additional systems such as the permissive action links, safety features, arming mechanisms, and so forth. These in turn must be powered up and be able to talk to additional equipment from the launching platform (it was for this reason that for the Indian Air Force's MMRCA the Dassault Rafale was selected, as it already had the necessary equipment for employing nuclear weapons, and because these systems have been removed why the B-1B Lancer is no longer considered a nuclear delivery platform for purposes of arms control agreements).

 

Could the US cheat on the above? Well, I find it highly unlikely they would be able to get away with it, as journalists have consistently been able to to get a reasonable idea of the budgets of supposedly highly secretive special operations outfits like JSOC (mostly by looking out for budget items with painfully mundane and highly vague titles like "Army Compartmented Elements" and "Development Group"). Then there's the fact that the GRU could simply look up GAO reports related to Tomahawk development (to quote Sir Humphrey Appleby: "Open government. Freedom of information. We should always tell the press freely and frankly anything that they could easily find out some other way"). Finding these wouldn't exactly be a smoking VLS cell but at that point their counterclaim would carry as much weight as the current administration's claim that the SSC-8 is an INF violation.

 

 

 

As if I needed more reason to think Patton was a blowhard.

 

I would have settled for "even a broken clock is right twice a day," but the concept is _axiomatic_: An un-monitored obstacle is virtually useless. As Raithe's quoted post also pointed out in the case of Trump's wall it would be even worse than useless, as it would impede the ability of border patrol to keep track of the movements of anyone attempting to get over, under, or even through it. Most everything that Schumer and Pelosi offered in lieu of the wall (more border patrol agents, UAVs, additional helicopters and vehicles, FLIR cameras, etc.) would prove far more effective, especially for cost, than the wall. There were even things they proposed such as more asylum claims judges that is the stuff some immigration activists truly slide their fingers down their shirt collars and tug at them nervously over.

Edited by Agiel
Quote
“Political philosophers have often pointed out that in wartime, the citizen, the male citizen at least, loses one of his most basic rights, his right to life; and this has been true ever since the French Revolution and the invention of conscription, now an almost universally accepted principle. But these same philosophers have rarely noted that the citizen in question simultaneously loses another right, one just as basic and perhaps even more vital for his conception of himself as a civilized human being: the right not to kill.”
 
-Jonathan Littell <<Les Bienveillantes>>
Quote

"The chancellor, the late chancellor, was only partly correct. He was obsolete. But so is the State, the entity he worshipped. Any state, entity, or ideology becomes obsolete when it stockpiles the wrong weapons: when it captures territories, but not minds; when it enslaves millions, but convinces nobody. When it is naked, yet puts on armor and calls it faith, while in the Eyes of God it has no faith at all. Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man...that state is obsolete."

-Rod Serling

 

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I think you need to read the treaty itself, or at least a decent executive summary as you've made a fairly critical error:

 

INF despite its abbreviation bans both nuclear and non nuclear land based missiles and launchers in those range categories- which it pretty much has to, or you could just swap warheads on dual use systems or sea based variants. Doesn't actually matter if nuclear tomahawks are all retired because land launchers that can fire conventional ones are banned as well. There isn't any dissent that I've seen that Aegis Ashore MK41 VLS is capable of firing cruise missiles, hence it is 100% banned for land deployment under INF even if it's not intended- pinky swear- to be used to fire them.

 

I actually think the INF is one of the more useless treaties and a certain number of violations are inevitable (a lot of land based missile testing is technically illegal, even when not intended to be fired from land or being used as test object), but the only party that is definitely violating it at the moment is the US.

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President Trump Directed His Attorney Michael Cohen To Lie To Congress About The Moscow Tower Project

 

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/trump-russia-cohen-moscow-tower-mueller-investigation

 

 

 

This should be huge but probably won't be.

"My hovercraft is full of eels!" - Hungarian tourist
I am Dan Quayle of the Romans.
I want to tattoo a map of the Netherlands on my nether lands.
Heja Sverige!!
Everyone should cuffawkle more.
The wrench is your friend. :bat:

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It hasn't been corroborated by other major networks yet, however, from the sound of it, it seems like one of those rare leaks from the Mueller investigation or more likely, from those associated with it, so, it won't be corroborated until the report gets released.

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buzzfeed, lol

I'm the enemy, 'cause I like to think, I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech, and freedom of choice. I'm the kinda guy that likes to sit in a greasy spoon and wonder, "Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecue ribs with the side-order of gravy fries?" I want high cholesterol! I wanna eat bacon, and butter, and buckets of cheese, okay?! I wanna smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in the non-smoking section! I wanna run naked through the street, with green Jell-O all over my body, reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly may feel the need to, okay, pal? I've SEEN the future. Do you know what it is? It's a 47-year-old virgin sitting around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake, singing "I'm an Oscar Meyer Wiene"

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Always found it funny they have a news division, or at least didn't change the name.

Why has elegance found so little following? Elegance has the disadvantage that hard work is needed to achieve it and a good education to appreciate it. - Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

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Surprisingly, despite the name and association, BuzzfeedNews is a proper news organisation, these days.

"My hovercraft is full of eels!" - Hungarian tourist
I am Dan Quayle of the Romans.
I want to tattoo a map of the Netherlands on my nether lands.
Heja Sverige!!
Everyone should cuffawkle more.
The wrench is your friend. :bat:

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Surprisingly, despite the name and association, BuzzfeedNews is a proper news organisation, these days.

 

If you don't have the reputation, you work for it. If you have it, you abuse it and peddle advertisements and partisan propaganda.

 

Tis the world we live in...

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Politics... one of humanity's never ending tragedies. More politics here

 

:skull:

“He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.” - Albert Einstein

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