The Politics Thread (PLAY NICELY!)

This is really, really, late, but I'm on holiday and this is solid gold. Sorry folks.

If you're not afraid, and getting shot is less likely than being struck by lightning (though minorities would, um, disagree with that) . . .

. . . why do you need guns again?

Wow. way to not get the un-subltle irony there:

Am I to take by your statement that you believed there is an actual law of nuclear holocaust prevention without fact-checking me first?

I'm starting to think I could make you buy that I have the means, the know-how and sufficient convincing strength to build a giant wall around france and make completely unrelated poor people cough up dough for me to do so. /S

not everyone brainfarted on this :

see? thetrophysystem pretended it was the most confusing thing he EVER read and made a it a major freaking point of order out of all my post to cover up for his buddy's mess-up but also wanted to show he understood.

and to @thetrophysystem :

I'm

Sôôôôôôôôôôôrry for confusing you. won't happen again.


On another note, both all three of you make claims about nukes being or not being less supbscebtible of being launched then awhile ago :

,

,

so, I take it, not as it was during the cold war right?

wich is it are nukes subcebtible to flying or not? are guns dissapearing in the U.S. or are they increasing in number? which is it!?

first rule of lying as a team : you gotta coordinate!

being honest and factually exact as a team on the other hand (and as a plus), requires no coordination at all. everyone can document themselves seperately.

I think this is why the anti-trump (ergo the "vote-for-hillary" I wouldn't use the term "pro-") seemingly has the upper hand in this thread.


side notes:

be honest with me here :

if you were to picture yourself as a citizen living in 1968 (~birth of the pc) and you heard these claims on a show or so :
"in ten to twenty years computers that can fit in your hand, the size and shape of small books, if you will, running tens of thousands of times the number of operations per second our most powerful supercomputer can and able to display on it's flat surface life as if seen through a mirror or a window in color! and these will be available to nearly all income thresholds and so integral to daily routine in western society that not having one would come as a handicap."

do you honestly believe that you in this senario would have been the odd one out to believe it?

this is untold levels of naïveté.

you honestly believe that?

side-question do you think Trump trying his very hardest, could potentially be up to the task of pulling it off?

You realize these statements aren't mutually exclusive? He can both be in it for money and ego (and which one fuels which doesn't matter). Either way, he won't care. His business will come first. Really, we already had this episode with Silvio Berlusconi. It didn't work out.

Considering there have been cases when the final check was "i chose to believe in the good of mankind", i'm not as confident in this system. Not just the cuban missile crisis (vasili arkhipov), but also a warning system that gave a false alarm (fortunately correctly judged by the officer Stanislav Petrov). On the american side for example we have john bordne who defied orders to launch nuclear missiles (the order was a malfunction in the system).

How many more times do we have to rely on nothing but human goodness? Do you really think Donald Trump, Man-Who-Gets-Angry-At-Small-Hands-Comments, would hesitate to nuke the middle east if there was a malfunction that made it seem Israel was getting bombed?

It's like we're poking a ******* dragon and hope he's not hungry.

Yes mr trump. Mr "i may not tell the truth, but hillary is a liar!"

I could of course quote statistics and say that trump lies twice as much as anyone else, but all that trump-voters would get from that is "see! hillary lied!"

May i remind people it was Bush who stole an election and started a war with Iraq, starting this giant mess that led to IS? Convenient short-term memory it seems.

So you're saying the Democrats are shouting "I want what that kid got!". Yeah, no, that's not how momma raised me to act in stores, and that's not how I'm going to let grown *** adults act in politics.

No?

Republicans steal an election, no problem. But if the democrats try, how dare they even think of it!
Republicans start the war that leads to IS, thanks Obama!

Hypocricy at it's finest. Hillary is a liar. But Trump is "flexible"

According to you, it was never the president who backed down from firing nukes, it was always someone else. So why does Trump make it more or less dangerous then?

Okay. Hillary is still a liar. Don't elect her. We had a democrat in office last 8 years. If we wanted recreational marijuana and gun control, we'd have it. They promise it, but never deliver, and like the ACA, it's never functional anyway. There are a mountain of reasons not to do it, "the democrats deserve a corrupt leader because the republicans had one", isn't "fair or equal", it's "assanine and childish".

soooooo... not EVERY political party can be summed up by two simple-minded and juvenile ideas.

the democratic party's core does not subscribe to these two very juvenile mantras. the people who do will undoubtedly vote for dems but you don't see me in this thread saying all the republican party wants is the return of slavery and the murder of all non-christians.

Take the russian case. Imagine that the officer had filed the Report as real. It would've been a judgement call for the president.

Do you really want to wait for the permutation where the right choice has to be made by a president who wouldnt hesitate to start WWIII?

I didn't say they were mutually exclusive in principle, only that for Trump it kind of is.

1. As I said, if elected he will be one of the most controversial and hated presidents of all time - even by his own party. There will be a lot of motive to find any reason to get rid of him.
2. All the spotlighting of Clinton's machinations have basically revealed most of the tricks in the book. Anything that Trump may try won't easily go unnoticed. The Liberal news machine would be all over his *** in seconds and an impeachment would most likely follow shortly after. You have to remember that a significant portion of the Trump vote is really a vote against 'crooked hillary'. His own base will openly revolt if there is even a whiff of corrupt behaviour or cronyism.

Nah, millitary is the final check, not the president. In all the famous documented cases of near misses it was always the man in the uniform that had any decision making power.

It's a common misunderstanding that we were saved by 'human goodness'. Petrov stopped a launch because he recognised that it didn't fit the profile of a real nuclear first strike (would have comprised of many many missile signatures). Do not be mistaken, he would have launched in a heartbeat otherwise. These guys don't get trusted with this stuff without being vetted that they will actually follow through 'for their country' when it counts. Really, we've been saved by human rationality more than anything else.

Anyway, if Israel gets bombed, they will be the ones launching their own nukes if so. In fact it will be in US interests to stop them from doing just that. You see, America is at risk of getting nuked even if they aren't the ones launching anything. Just like if I retaliate against a kid who punched me, I need to also make sure I take care of his big brother as well. There's a cost to being the biggest guy on the block - you also become the biggest target.

But yea, you're right this stuff is pretty scary. It can potentially all go to **** in literally 30 minutes, but it won't be because of the doing of any US president.

I guess Obama isn't a democrat

HOW do you live with yourself.

you're a walking talking movie bad guy stereotype on an plot exposition binge at the end of the movie and it doesn't seem to phase you at all...

you don't snap out of it. you don't wake up and realize you're not actually a movie character.

wtf.

I'm mindblown.

I like all the technicalities here, I'd just like to add a bit.

what if america isn't the only country on earth?

what if there are other countries who also factor in the balance?

oh. how convenient for that theory : it's the case.

trump as president goes and does a number of things as he does and since it's been spiraling out of control since the beginning of his campaign we can safely assume by then it'll be far worse and the consequences far more reaching.

what if during a meetup with putin it goes really sour and it's a fistfight.

you vouch for the soldiers of the U.S. but do you vouch for the Russians? what about other nuclear armed countries?

I just can't help but feel that having someone who's a diplomat and not all out crazy and abrasive to everyone can be pivotal to nuclear threats not getting the drop that spills.

so?



I both knew he supports them and support these two ideas myself (as exemplified all over this thread).

you seem to be purposefully missing the point.

I think you've reached the point where you are no longer interpreting things rationally. I think you should calm down, and try again.

We do NOT have it yet. YESTERDAY, the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency upheld their stance on Marijuana being a Schedule-1 Drug. They DECIDED FOR IT TO REMAIN FEDERALLY ILLEGAL. Are you ******* KIDDING ME DEMOCRATS, this is the difference between Liberals and Progressives, Liberals stopped functioning a long time ago, and I think the first thing we need to do is budget healthcare to make sure the Liberals get the help they need to be fed and watered and have their diaper changed and regular mental evaluation, because it would be CRUEL not to get them the help they need. They are some seriously awful extremist people.

With democrats in office, we'll have plenty more laws to lock people away for various things they did or didn't do, and absolutely no liberties returned in any way shape or form. Like "recreational marijuana". Because "Liberals" are now a stiff-collar corporate type as well, they do NOT do what they promise, they do what BENEFITS them.

Well it's not that surprising considering the US political system is either the entire left or the entire right. Not a whole lot of room for any form of nuance

mmmmhhmm 69