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Just, imagine, what would happen if, instead of Trump ordering it, a silo commander tried to launch nukes on their own without orders to do so. They would kill the other people who possess keys, like the Captain killed the Political Officer in The Hunt For Red October (remember, an officer points out, "Dude, the reason we don't let any one person hold both of those keys is so no one person can start World War 3. What the hell are you doing just keeping that thing yourself?") should they prove unwilling to assist them, and they're willing to start WW3 by using nukes in a war, so the concept of "innocent deaths" is not a deterrent for this person that they would not commit fratricide if necessary, but you put them in charge of nukes anyways.
This is where I stopped reading. Can somebody tell me what he is talking about? Because I am 99.9% sure that is not how the world works.
That's my point.
That person DOESN'T exist. Because you never gave them the power to launch a nuke in the first place. The person still exists, you just never put them in charge of nukes since they can't be trusted with them. If they're untrustworthy enough to kill a fellow soldier, you simply rejected them from the military entirely.
And if, for some reason, one managed to slip by somehow, I think that a very short firefight would break out because your own soldiers would shoot a nutjob trying to fire a nuke for no good reason.
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d-usa wrote: So does Trump's term end January 2020?
I'm a Canadian, but I know the answer to that question anyways since I learned a bit about how your legal system works.
You're an American, and you'll probably be voting during Trump's possible re-election.
I sure hope you know the answer to that question better than I do.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/12/28 22:42:54
d-usa wrote: So does Trump's term end January 2020?
Honestly I can see it not happening. Especially if it comes out that he has a lot of money and other stuff tied up with russia (which I personally think he does), it would be a national embarrassment that 60 million plus people voted for this buffoon
Dreadwinter wrote: He is from Germany(right?) and it was a rhetorical question.
You mean Trump?
He's American. Obviously.
No, seriously, who are you talking about here?
d-usa is not from the US. He lives here now and I believe he has dual citizenship. (I swear he told us all about this recently, like, less than 10 pages ago?)
Even if he gets a second term, his current term should be put on hold for a year during the election so that the people can decide on who should become president in 2021.
We are advocating three year presidential terms with a year of decision making now, aren't we?
Dreadwinter wrote: He is from Germany(right?) and it was a rhetorical question.
You mean Trump?
He's American. Obviously.
No, seriously, who are you talking about here?
d-usa is not from the US. He lives here now and I believe he has dual citizenship. (I swear he told us all about this recently, like, less than 10 pages ago?)
Cmon, keep up.
Sorry. I don't really care about who says what on forums enough to check the author most of the time. I'm one of those rare people who actually does care more about what was said than who said it, and it causes problems whenever people assume I bothered to notice who posted what or bothered to make a note of it.
So before I wrote that, I checked the country flag next to the poster's portrait. It was the American one, so I mistakenly assumed they were American. Instead, they're merely posting from an American IP, and to me, the idea of an American THAT ignorant is actually more likely than a non-American posting from America. In large part, that's because because this is a US politics thread, and I simply accept the reality that most of us are unaware of SOME part of our own country's legal system until we find out about it, so why rule out the possibility of an American not knowing when a President's term ends, when their own news still keeps pointing out to their own citizens what the term "President-Elect" means.
I understand my words were viewed as harsh, but they were not intended to be an insult at all. I even rewrote them before posting because the original way I was phrasing it was too rude, and I simply wanted to point out that they should probably know things like that, so maybe, just, like, look it up?
My phrasing is bad though. I apologize that I caused offense, I did not intend any. I don't consider an American who doesn't know that their President isn't put in office immediately any dumber than a Canadian who doesn't know when their own government is even "in session" because they (I, actually) never bothered to find out why that's important enough for the Canadians news to keep announcing it periodically. They just haven't learned yet, and no one knows anything until they learn it, and maybe what they learned isn't actually the truth, and there's no point insulting someone for being ignorant at all, since all humans are ignorant about something since we never live long enough to learn everything that the human species knows. We're not omniscient, after all, and, I mean, no matter what any politician nowadays does, the history lessons about it 500 years from now will bore high school students of the future the same way that finding out about Christopher Columbus' voyage to The New World bores high school students now, despite the serious ramifications of what that did that was important enough to put into a history book for everyone to learn about.
Sorry, went on a tangent. Another bad habit of mine.
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Spinner wrote: Actually, I think it depends on whether or not there's a Supreme Court opening that year.
Well, yeah.
Voter turnout in a lot of countries is simply so low that you don't win or lose an election by convincing people you're right and your opponent is wrong. You win it by convincing more of your supporters to vote than your opposition does. Even countries with way higher voter turnout still probably have this happen.
And things like fearmongering aren't designed to convince the other side to change teams, they're designed to convince your own supporters that the situation is dire enough to vote.
The reality of Trump's election is that maybe he would have actually lost if the Democrats hadn't spent a couple of weeks convincing their own followers that things were gonna be fine, Trump probably wasn't going to win. That kind of statement, from your OWN side, makes you LESS likely to vote.
The reality of convincing people that their vote matters isn't to say that one particular vote might realistically decide an election. It won't. It could happen by random chance, but you're more likely to be killed by a meteorite within a few minutes of voting, so it's not a possibility worth worrying about. You'd need hundreds of thousands of people to believe their votes matter enough that they vote when they ordinarily wouldn't.
And those campaigns don't go after ONE person, do they? They spread that message as far and wide as they can, and the more people who believe it, the more votes get cast.
So yes, your one vote doesn't matter. Mathematically, this is true. Five million votes? That matters.
But are you so against the term "collective bargaining" that you will reject the core principle behind how voting even WORKS?
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/12/29 00:48:41
I was just making a snarky comment about the whole 'Republicans refuse to consider any nominations from Obama' thing. Not sure what that has to do with voter turnout.
You don't have to make someone happy enough to like you for them to tolerate your existence.
There are plenty of people who hate me. They don't ever kill me though, because they don't hate me THAT much, and generally we just argue with each other whenever we disagree without ever coming to blows.
Well, I guess Canada does its best to stay out of the news... Probably the best strategy in today's political climate. For other nations, however, it isn't easy to stay out of the centre of attention when they play such an important role in foreign affairs. Not saying that Canada or similar nations don't, but they're a combination of subtlety and insignificance compared to other escalating situations that they're not really part of, such as the various crises in the ME.
In terms of AoE power, absolutely. There will always be a theoretical military use for nuclear weapons. You end up facing a foe that has amassed a number of troops together so large that a fuel-air bomb is insufficient, you need a nuke to disable their effectiveness? That might theoretically happen no matter how advanced tech gets.
You're missing the point here - point is, nuclear weapons after the Second World War were intended as threats for massive collateral damage that the other nation would not be able to recuperate from; until the late 80's/90's, when Tactical Nuclear Warheads started to become a thing, nukes were way too powerful to ever be considered for conventional warfare
Even then, if WW3 was to happen, I'd imagine it to be a lot like how Battlefront Miniatures have interpreted it in Team Yankee - same old conventional warfare; the risk will always be too big to use nukes that neither side will seriously consider it, especially since the Red Line is there to stop anything like what happened in 1963 happen again.
So when will tech be advanced enough to give up on nukes altogether? Are you so sure that modern militiaries actually benefit from having as many nukes as possible? Even if you simply always need the deterrent, couldn't you scale down to the point where, like a police officer with a gun, the gun is merely a backup in case they ever are threatened enough, but most cops simply never even entertain the idea of shooting random people, and they probably don't carry enough bullets to do that anyways, because cops don't fight alone, and they can almost always count on other cops to have their backs in situations where their own guns are not enough.
Never is the answer, and scaling down can be interpreted as a sign of weakness. It's one infinite Mexican standoff, where nobody has to, or will, lay down their weapons.
Humans are a species that works best when we work together. This applies to our countries too.
Don't assume you're the only ones who care about your survival. Consider that your allies might've been equally as well protected if they'd sided with Russia during the Cold War, but they didn't, because they sided with YOU instead.
My team at M&S Westbourne can hardly work together, on a good day; very few people seem to understand the immense power of teamwork, and I certainly don't expect the leaders of nations to understand it well either.
I really, really hope so.
I also really really hope that US military officers are well-versed enough in military law to remember that the illegal things Trump has suggested, if he ever actually gave the order to do things like use nukes and target civilians, your Generals who are given those orders would remind them, "That's an illegal order. We're legally required to disobey them, and have been since the Nuremburg trials, because, 'I was only following orders' is NOT A DEFENCE ANYMORE."
Trust a random stranger on the internet - there's nothing to worry about regarding nukes. It's just a question of whether Trump will do more good than bad overall now.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/12/29 02:10:23
d-usa wrote: So does Trump's term end January 2020?
Can we dream?
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d-usa wrote: Even if he gets a second term, his current term should be put on hold for a year during the election so that the people can decide on who should become president in 2021.
We are advocating three year presidential terms with a year of decision making now, aren't we?
That's now how the BIden rule works...
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Spinner wrote: I was just making a snarky comment about the whole 'Republicans refuse to consider any nominations from Obama' thing. Not sure what that has to do with voter turnout.
Too bad Reid nuked the filibuster... nothing the Democrats can do if R's all vote in-lock-step.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/12/29 02:23:18
Too bad Trump getting elected wasn't enough to get this threat locked. It's always been a cancer, but people managed to will themselves into being more idiotic since the election.
General Annoyance wrote: Never is the answer, and scaling down can be interpreted as a sign of weakness. It's one infinite Mexican standoff, where nobody has to, or will, lay down their weapons.
Actually, what happened with nukes IRL is that countries realized they had 60,000 nukes or so after the end of the Cold War, so they looked around at the number of guns they had, went, "Okay, yeah, maybe THIS many is just TOO many," so they started donating their guns to the guns for toys charity, which turned their guns (nukes) into toys (fuel for their nuclear power generators).
Then they just kept like, 2,000 of them around, because you don't need to have enough guns to kill EVERYONE, just enough to make people take enough damage they don't want to mess with you. Realistically, not everyone's going to want to kill you at once, so you just keep a reasonable number of guns around, so you can kill enough people that people aren't willing to even try, and anyone crazy enough to even try it on their own is so crazy that everyone else, regardless of their opinion about you, is more worried about the crazy person than they are about you, so the cops are going to arrest them if they try anything.
It's not a perfect analogy, but really, the USA isn't doing anything bad enough that anyone with nukes isn't willing to just offer some advice when they're willing to hear it and let them do what they want, because no one's getting hurt by it enough that we want to stop the USA badly enough to threaten a nuclear war over it.
Well, I mean, except North Korea, but if you think China's going to protect them if they nuke the USA, you're living in a dream world. China and the USA do so much business together that China definitely values their relationship with the USA enough not to stop the USA from taking out a country that nuked them. None of Afghanistan's allies wanted to stop the USA from going after Afghanistan after 9/11. I mean, yeah, when you guys went after Iraq too, we didn't help you there, but that was only because Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and Afghanistan did.
I mean, you guys DO understand what being the richest, most powerful country on the planet actually MEANS, right?
It means that if you want to have a more powerful ally than the USA, you have to start looking for space aliens, because no one on Earth is a better ally to have in terms of protection.
When your allies need to run to someone to hide behind because someone threatened to hurt us, well, the USA is the biggest, baddest country around. If you're our ally, and you like us enough to protect us, we'll hide behind you, because no one messes with you.
That applies to MORE than your nuclear arsenal, you know?
I mean, how BAD would the stuff the USA would have to be doing to convince Canada to simply allow the world's militaries to invade the USA from our territory, and provide a reason good enough that we'd do it? Pretty damned bad. Like using nukes as standard weapons, and deliberately targeting civilians. Which are things Trump has suggested. Hence the Hitler comparisons. Hitler started WW2. Trump might be the one crazy enough to try to start WW3, and he happens to be an American.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/12/29 03:34:10
d-usa wrote: Even if he gets a second term, his current term should be put on hold for a year during the election so that the people can decide on who should become president in 2021.
We are advocating three year presidential terms with a year of decision making now, aren't we?
That's now how the BIden rule works...
I realize we've been through this 20 times, but maybe the twenty first will do the charm!
"if the president consults and cooperates with the Senate or moderates his selections, then his nominees may enjoy my support as did Justice Kennedy and Justice Souter"
Please, please stop using the same tired bs over and over again. You are a smart person, and have some great arguments when not arguing BS (you were among the people who changed my stance on guns). For everyone's sanity if nothing else.
"Mr. President, where the nation should be treated to a consideration of constitutional philosophy, all it will get in such circumstances is a partisan bickering and political posturing from both parties and from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. As a result, it is my view that if a Supreme Court Justice resigns tomorrow, or within the next several weeks, or resigns at the end of the summer, President Bush should consider following the practice of a majority of his predecessors and not — and not — name a nominee until after the November election is completed."
This was right before th conventions too, not 6 months before the election.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/12/29 04:01:32
Homosexuality is the #1 cause of gay marriage.
kronk wrote: Every pizza is a personal sized pizza if you try hard enough and believe in yourself.
sebster wrote: Yes, indeed. What a terrible piece of cultural imperialism it is for me to say that a country shouldn't murder its own citizens
BaronIveagh wrote: Basically they went from a carrot and stick to a smaller carrot and flanged mace.
d-usa wrote: Even if he gets a second term, his current term should be put on hold for a year during the election so that the people can decide on who should become president in 2021.
We are advocating three year presidential terms with a year of decision making now, aren't we?
That's now how the BIden rule works...
I realize we've been through this 20 times, but maybe the twenty first will do the charm!
"if the president consults and cooperates with the Senate or moderates his selections, then his nominees may enjoy my support as did Justice Kennedy and Justice Souter"
Please, please stop using the same tired bs over and over again. You are a smart person, and have some great arguments when not arguing BS (you were among the people who changed my stance on guns). For everyone's sanity if nothing else.
"Mr. President, where the nation should be treated to a consideration of constitutional philosophy, all it will get in such circumstances is a partisan bickering and political posturing from both parties and from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. As a result, it is my view that if a Supreme Court Justice resigns tomorrow, or within the next several weeks, or resigns at the end of the summer, President Bush should consider following the practice of a majority of his predecessors and not — and not — name a nominee until after the November election is completed."
This was right before th conventions too, not 6 months before the election.
d-usa wrote: Even if he gets a second term, his current term should be put on hold for a year during the election so that the people can decide on who should become president in 2021.
We are advocating three year presidential terms with a year of decision making now, aren't we?
That's now how the BIden rule works...
I realize we've been through this 20 times, but maybe the twenty first will do the charm!
"if the president consults and cooperates with the Senate or moderates his selections, then his nominees may enjoy my support as did Justice Kennedy and Justice Souter"
Please, please stop using the same tired bs over and over again. You are a smart person, and have some great arguments when not arguing BS (you were among the people who changed my stance on guns). For everyone's sanity if nothing else.
"Mr. President, where the nation should be treated to a consideration of constitutional philosophy, all it will get in such circumstances is a partisan bickering and political posturing from both parties and from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. As a result, it is my view that if a Supreme Court Justice resigns tomorrow, or within the next several weeks, or resigns at the end of the summer, President Bush should consider following the practice of a majority of his predecessors and not — and not — name a nominee until after the November election is completed."
This was right before th conventions too, not 6 months before the election.
So he didn't mean it?
Cool story bro
Literally read what he said "Until after the election is completed". IT wasn't "Delay 6 11 months until next president", it was "delay 2 months to avoid the politicization".
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/12/29 04:11:21
Homosexuality is the #1 cause of gay marriage.
kronk wrote: Every pizza is a personal sized pizza if you try hard enough and believe in yourself.
sebster wrote: Yes, indeed. What a terrible piece of cultural imperialism it is for me to say that a country shouldn't murder its own citizens
BaronIveagh wrote: Basically they went from a carrot and stick to a smaller carrot and flanged mace.
d-usa wrote: Even if he gets a second term, his current term should be put on hold for a year during the election so that the people can decide on who should become president in 2021.
We are advocating three year presidential terms with a year of decision making now, aren't we?
That's now how the BIden rule works...
I realize we've been through this 20 times, but maybe the twenty first will do the charm!
"if the president consults and cooperates with the Senate or moderates his selections, then his nominees may enjoy my support as did Justice Kennedy and Justice Souter"
Please, please stop using the same tired bs over and over again. You are a smart person, and have some great arguments when not arguing BS (you were among the people who changed my stance on guns). For everyone's sanity if nothing else.
"Mr. President, where the nation should be treated to a consideration of constitutional philosophy, all it will get in such circumstances is a partisan bickering and political posturing from both parties and from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. As a result, it is my view that if a Supreme Court Justice resigns tomorrow, or within the next several weeks, or resigns at the end of the summer, President Bush should consider following the practice of a majority of his predecessors and not — and not — name a nominee until after the November election is completed."
This was right before th conventions too, not 6 months before the election.
So he didn't mean it?
Cool story bro
Literally read what he said "Until after the election is completed". IT wasn't "Delay 6 months until next president", it was "delay 2 months to avoid the politicization".
But you said it doesn't exist...
Now I'm confused.
Anyway, the point was that Biden threatened it... the fact that it was 2 months v. 11 months... doesn't really matter. (more of a testament of HOW LONG this election season started).
To be fair, I had my timing wrong... Turtle was going to make this a campaign issue regardless of whom Obama picked(I thought Turtle only did that after Garland). So, there is that.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/12/29 04:15:25
d-usa wrote: Even if he gets a second term, his current term should be put on hold for a year during the election so that the people can decide on who should become president in 2021.
We are advocating three year presidential terms with a year of decision making now, aren't we?
That's now how the BIden rule works...
I realize we've been through this 20 times, but maybe the twenty first will do the charm!
"if the president consults and cooperates with the Senate or moderates his selections, then his nominees may enjoy my support as did Justice Kennedy and Justice Souter"
Please, please stop using the same tired bs over and over again. You are a smart person, and have some great arguments when not arguing BS (you were among the people who changed my stance on guns). For everyone's sanity if nothing else.
"Mr. President, where the nation should be treated to a consideration of constitutional philosophy, all it will get in such circumstances is a partisan bickering and political posturing from both parties and from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. As a result, it is my view that if a Supreme Court Justice resigns tomorrow, or within the next several weeks, or resigns at the end of the summer, President Bush should consider following the practice of a majority of his predecessors and not — and not — name a nominee until after the November election is completed."
This was right before th conventions too, not 6 months before the election.
So he didn't mean it?
Cool story bro
Literally read what he said "Until after the election is completed". IT wasn't "Delay 6 months until next president", it was "delay 2 months to avoid the politicization".
But you said it doesn't exist...
Now I'm confused.
Anyway, the point was that Biden threatened it... the fact that it was 2 months v. 11 months... doesn't really matter. (more of a testament of HOW LONG this election season started).
To be fair, I had my timing wrong... Turtle was going to make this a campaign issue regardless of whom Obama picked(I thought Turtle only did that after Garland). So, there is that.
It doesn't exist because:
A. nothing happened
B. Biden never said "let's hold the supreme court hostage to try and get our guy in."
And it does matter. It was "let's not go through this process with an extremely political candidate right before the elections, let's wait until after." Not "It's nowhere near the elections, so we are going to stall for an entire fething year to hopefully get our guy in." And the first person to announce the candidacy was in April, and Scalia died in February.
Homosexuality is the #1 cause of gay marriage.
kronk wrote: Every pizza is a personal sized pizza if you try hard enough and believe in yourself.
sebster wrote: Yes, indeed. What a terrible piece of cultural imperialism it is for me to say that a country shouldn't murder its own citizens
BaronIveagh wrote: Basically they went from a carrot and stick to a smaller carrot and flanged mace.
Given how often the country's government swaps around from one party to the other, 2 years into Trump's election, another vote will be held to determine some portion of your country's Congress and Senate to be re-elected. This may mean that 2 years into Trump's presidency, enough people are willing to vote Democrat that you're actually dealing with Trump facing a Democrat majority in the Congress and Senate, if enough Democrat voters turn out to outweigh the number of Republican voters that turn out.
So whatever your country is willing to accept, both sides are able to do, because you can't apply the rules to one party and not the other.
One thing your country is GREAT at is fearmongering. Both sides do it, constantly.
How many Democrat voters do you think could be convinced to turn out to vote in 2018 because of the stuff the Democrats and left-leaning media in the US are telling them about the effects of the Republicans being able to pass literally anything they want and just doing so?
Why might Republican voters not turn out a lot too? Their party is doing literally everything it wants, with no opposition, and you just watched Trump get elected 2 years ago.
Also, how likely is it that the creators of your governments laws didn't ever ask themselves, "Hey, what happens if one party controls a majority of the votes in the government, so they just pass laws that make it so they never lose power again, even though everyone's still allowed to vote for both parties?" and didn't answer it with, "Oh crap, that might be bad, let's make some laws against that, and put them in the constitution so no one can ever change them unless there's a really, REALLY good reason to determine the constitution unconstitutional."
So what does the constitution say about the possibility of the USA becoming a one-party country because it rigs the rules so no one can ever amass enough votes against them to oppose them.
My guess is that the constitution would consider it like being an oligarchy.
And eventually, you could probably legitimately revolt against the USA becoming an oligarchy, and the military would be obligated to support the revolt, since they're pledged to obey the constitution, not the government, for EXACTLY this reason. And the constitution says the USA is a democratic republic (and a lot of other things too, I just don't feel like looking them all up), NOT an oligarchy.
So there you go. They do this, it goes on long enough, you're constitutionally required to stage an armed revolt against the government to secure proper representation in the government, like the Founding Fathers did.
And the Republicans can easily avoid that by just, you know, NOT passing legislation.
And the reality is, sometimes Republicans vote against the Republican views, sometimes the Democrats vote against the Democrat views. If they didn't, you could literally never have passed any legislation any time the other party controls even one of the three branches.
So both sides are willing to compromise sometimes. Not always, because sometimes you have to not compromise and stand up for your principles. And one principle that both Democrats and Republicans share in abundance is that America was once ruled by a monarchy, and it was a good idea to fight a war to be a democracy of some sort instead. An oligarchy is no better than a monarchy, and both sides agree on that.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/12/29 05:19:27
whembly wrote: No... Ted Cruz/Rand Paul/et. el. announced very early in 2015.
Scalia passed in Feb 2016.
Ah, it just said "March". I thought that was 2016, not 2015 my mistake.
Is it, like, even a problem that the Republicans decided to not let Obama's nomination for a Supreme Court Justice through?
There's a reason you don't just have the President appoint these people, instead of merely nominating them. There's a reason you let Congress and maybe the Senate too have an opinion. Yeah, it sucks this one time, because they're doing it when it's not merited.
What if it were merited though? What if you simply didn't let Congress get in the way, and simply had the President appoint whoever they liked? How much more damage could Trump do with his choice if he could make it whoever he wanted to, instead of having to appease even the Republicans enough that party solidarity isn't enough to get them to go along with it, and he, like, appointed one of his personal friends, instead of someone the Republicans are at least willing to allow enough to vote in favor of accepting?
Yeah, they picked a dumb reason to do it. But maybe the consequences of not letting them do things for dumb reasons just makes things worse, not better.
If Congress had been more than 51% Democrats at the time, that nomination would've passed.
And if you're gonna have a two party system, maybe just stop assuming that the side you prefer less is always wrong about everything, and consider that they still represent around half of your government, thus it's damned well worth considering that maybe have valid points sometimes.
You guys have gone a bit beyond "partisan politics" and now you're treating the other party like the enemy in a war or something. You guys are all on the same side - AMERICA - you just differ in opinion on the particulars.
