US Politics: Passing Gas In Public is Abhorrent Behavior

[TerraPrime]

1 hour ago, ThinkerX said:

Anecdotal, but...

 

I have several younger 'quasi relatives' who spent time in the military.  Tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, in a so called 'support' capacity.

 

Yesterday, one of these quasi-relatives, out of the service for four or five years now, and irked with being stuck in a series of low paying jobs, announced at the Easter get-together that his plans to re-enlist got a bonus from Trump's policies - apparently, that got made a great deal easier.  He has a series of tests and physical qualifications to pass, and then he is supposedly back in harness by the end of the summer.  Word from the military people he is dealing with is the US will likely be at war by years end. 

 

For what little it may be worth. 

 

It's fantastic that going overseas to kill people for your country is paying better than regular jobs at home. 

 

Fantastic. 

[Altherion]

7 hours ago, Relic said:

Whenever NK comes up i always think the same thing. Why aren't we investing serious assets into an assassination? 

Because no man rules alone. The most likely result of an assassination is that the vacuum is filled with some member of the "court" (closest heir or top general or whatever) and nothing meaningful changes.

[TerraPrime]

Just now, Altherion said:

Because no man rules alone. The most likely result of an assassination is that the vacuum is filled with some member of the "court" (closest heir or top general or whatever) and nothing meaningful changes.

China could easily take him out if they want to. I'm pretty certain some of the NK officials are in China's pay to begin with. Or at least double agents of sorts. 

 

The path to solving NK's problem is through China, not against China. They have much stronger ties and much deeper investment there than the U.S. or anyone else really. 

[A True Kaniggit]

24 minutes ago, TerraPrime said:

 

It's fantastic that going overseas to kill people for your country is paying better than regular jobs at home. 

 

Fantastic. 

Hey, you don't even have to kill anybody. Just go over there and hang out for six months. 

And if you're single you can put all of your stuff in storage and not have to worry about any bills. Just bank every paycheck. Don't forget that hostile fire pay (As long as at least one rocket is fired at the base you're on, you get an additional $225 a month)

Not to mention the 30 days paid vacation every year, the additional 2 weeks R&R if you are deployed, and the free healthcare.

It's all good as long as you can put up with all the cons.

[ThinkerX]

13 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Hey, you don't even have to kill anybody. Just go over there and hang out for six months. 

And if you're single you can put all of your stuff in storage and not have to worry about any bills. Just bank every paycheck. Don't forget that hostile fire pay (As long as at least one rocket is fired at the base you're on, you get an additional $225 a month)

Not to mention the 30 days paid vacation every year, the additional 2 weeks R&R if you are deployed, and the free healthcare.

It's all good as long as you can put up with all the cons.

Alas, this particular quasi-relative is married with five children, ages ranging from a few months to nine. He tried hiring on at Wal*mart as a security guard but got screwed over by management.  He tried to get on with the state troopers, but that failed due to budget cuts and bureaucratic incompetence (he was told directly contradictory things at different times).  Right now, he's making a few bucks above the minimum at Home Depot. For his efforts, he got made 'shift leader,' more responsibility, but no corresponding increase in pay.  The wife is preoccupied with kids and college. 

Its not that he wants to rejoin the military - he prefers being close to his family - its that option just offers the best compensation. 

[ThinkerX]

Apparently, the boarders here inexplicably missed this latest Trump masterpiece:

 

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-to-sign-hire-american-executive-order/ar-BBzXm6U?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=msnclassic

 

Parts of this don't seem utterly disastrous, though I do wonder about 'secret wavers.'

 

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WASHINGTON — President Trump will sign a double-barreled executive order Tuesday that will clamp down on guest worker visas and require agencies to buy more goods and services from U.S. companies and workers. 

Trump will sign the so-called "Buy American, Hire American" executive order during a visit to Snap-On Tools in Kenosha, Wis., Tuesday, said two senior administration officials who briefed reporters on the order Monday. The officials spoke on condition they not be identified because the cabinet-level officials who could discuss the matter on the record were unavailable.

By combining aspects of immigration policy with federal procurement regulations, Trump is using executive action to advance his philosophy of economic nationalism without waiting for action from Congress.  But like many of his previous executive orders, the order will largely call on cabinet secretaries to fill in the details with reports and recommendations about what the administration can legally do.

Specifically targeted: The H-1B visa program, which allows 85,000 foreign workers into the United States each year to take specific high-skilled jobs with U.S. companies. The program is popular with the information technology industry, which Trump has accused of "importing low-wage workers on H-1B visas to take jobs from young college-trained Americans."

 

 

[ThinkerX]

This could get interesting:

 

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/two-plaintiffs-join-suit-against-trump-alleging-breach-of-emoluments-clause/ar-BBzXpf7?li=BBnbcA1&ocid=msnclassic

 

Two new plaintiffs — an association of restaurants and restaurant workers, and a woman who books banquet halls for two D.C. hotels — plan to join a lawsuit alleging that President Trump has violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause because his hotels and restaurants do business with foreign governments.

The new plaintiffs will be added to the case on Tuesday morning, according to a spokesman for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a D.C.-based watchdog group.

CREW had originally filed suit against Trump in federal court in January, alleging that — by continuing to own his business, which rents out hotel rooms and meeting spaces to other governments — Trump had violated the constitutional provision that bans “emoluments” from foreign powers.

Legal experts had said that the case faced a serious hurdle: It wasn’t clear that the watchdog group actually had standing to sue in the first place. What harm had it suffered, specifically, because of Trump’s actions?

The new plaintiffs are intended to offer an alternative answer to that question. Both say that, as direct competitors of Trump’s restaurants and hotels, they may lose foreign clients, who may book with Trump properties to curry favor with the president.

[TheKitttenGuard]

A perfect moment of picture and sound:

https://youtu.be/49x3HZweRpU?t=2m11s

 

[DireWolfSpirit]

Trumps Mar-A-Lago resorts kitchen has been slapped with 55 citations since 2014 from Florida Health Department inspectors. No wonder the guy wants to cut business regulations. He wants to be able to serve spoiled meat and not get fines and bad publicity.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/13/health/mar-a-lago-health-inspection-trnd/?iid=ob_homepage_deskrecommended_pool

[Swordfish]

15 hours ago, r'hllor's reformed lobster said:

House dems introduce bill to let former presidents decide if one is unfit for the office

what the fuck is the matter with these people 

 

I've seen a  lot of dumb proposals before, this one is up there.  How do these guys get to the point where they put something like this forward with a  straight face?

I get that this is an attempt to pander to his base, and not a serious attempt at legislation, but is this something people would actually support?

 

[Kalbear]

Oh awesome - per nytimes the carrier group sent to Korea wasn't sent there after all. And then we lied about it.

 

[Jaxom 1974]

41 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

 

I've seen a  lot of dumb proposals before, this one is up there.  How do these guys get to the point where they put something like this forward with a  straight face?

I get that this is an attempt to pander to his base, and not a serious attempt at legislation, but is this something people would actually support?

 

Hey, if it was Trump, or his people, suggesting it, then his base would be all over it.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

 Not sure if real...

 

 

/Withstand the fiery darts of your enemies, Trumpy!

[Swordfish]

4 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Hey, if it was Trump, or his people, suggesting it, then his base would be all over it.

And?

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

Just now, Swordfish said:

And?

But?

[Altherion]

14 hours ago, TerraPrime said:

China could easily take him out if they want to. I'm pretty certain some of the NK officials are in China's pay to begin with. Or at least double agents of sorts. 

 

The path to solving NK's problem is through China, not against China. They have much stronger ties and much deeper investment there than the U.S. or anyone else really. 

Sure they could, but what's in it for China? They could have changed the status quo any time in the past few decades and didn't do it so unless NK does something truly unacceptable or the US is willing to commit a sufficiently large carrot or stick, China is probably not going to budge.

[Swordfish]

4 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

But?

Who you calling but?!?

[Werthead]

 

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Easy to read too much into this; but I can't think of other instances where China acted like this. I wonder if they see the widespread distrust of Trump as an opportunity to begin preempting the US as the guarantor of international security. I'll be curious to see if there are more stories like this coming in the future

 

Indeed. China has several times leveraged its position as the "more reliable and predictable" economic superhero at international meetings and summits in the last few months.

 

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The question is, can Drumpf do so without approval form Congress?

Yes. North Korea and the United Nations (!) remain in a state of war under the terms of the 1953 ceasefire. From a legal perspective, the Korean War has been going on continuously since 1950 and there's merely been a pause in operation, albeit an unprecedentedly long one. As C-i-C, I believe the President can unilaterally end that ceasefire at a moment's notice.

 

 

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What will be more interesting is to see what happens when Bannon is inevitably fired. 

That's one relief in all of this, that the real arsehole end of the Trump brigade has unceremoniously fallen from grace and will be out on its ear.

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Again: what is the long-term plan? What is the desired outcome, and what are acceptable outcomes?

The long-term plan is the reunification of the Korean peninsula. To be fair, even China accepts that will happen, it's always just been a case of when, and China knows that dirt-poor North Korea, with less than half the population of South Korea and one-fiftieth (!) the economic strength, is never going to come out on top of that game.

I think at this point the desired outcome on all sides is the removal of a dangerous, nuclear-armed regime in North Korea. China would probably find it acceptable - if irritating - even for a reunified, Western-style Korea to emerge as an ally of the United States on the grounds of economic necessity (China needs rich nearby countries to trade with as well as distant ones, and South Korea and Japan are handy for that) and also moderating local competition (South Korea would expend a lot of its wealth and political capital in rebuilding North Korea over the course of decades, probably making it more dependent on cheap Chinese goods and assistance).

The unacceptable outcome is a massive, major, long-running war which kills millions and leaves the peninsula in smoking and possibly radioactive ruins. But this doesn't appear too likely either.

 

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Whenever NK comes up i always think the same thing. Why aren't we investing serious assets into an assassination? 

 

The assassination of the North Korean leader would very quickly and swiftly be followed by a North Korean military retaliation against South Korea. The standby North Korean military doctrine for all eventualities is "If in doubt, hit the South with an artillery barrage".

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Given the prepositioned and presighted artillery North Korea has trained on Downtown Seoul I can't imagine there being any way the occupation of North Korea by any major power could ever be bloodless.  The instant they get wind of a real strike they'll pull the trigger on 10,000+ artillery pieces and kill God knows how many people in very short order.

North Korea can't even hit downtown Seoul, it's too far away (Seoul is absolutely massive, one of the biggest cities on Earth, so there's a fair degree between "being able to hit bits of Seoul" and "being able to hit all of it"). The greatest danger is to the northern suburbs and the towns and villages between Seoul and the border, and of course if North Korea has managed to fit a WMD to a medium-range ballistic missile which can hit most of the peninsula.

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The real danger is the ability of their short and medium-range rockets to hit places in SK and Japan with WMD. 

 

It'll be interesting to see the effectiveness of AEGIS and THAAD in this scenario. Most of North Korea's ballistic missile technology is old and not particularly impressive, so you'd assume they'd be easy pickings for interceptors, if the US and South Korea have enough of them operational. I believe Japan has now said it will shoot down any missile that tries to overfly its territory, as I believe a couple of North Korea's tests have done.

 

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I asked this before, but never got a response. Would it be possible to evacuate Seoul (I know you couldn't completely evacuate the city, but maybe a large portion) preemptively? How well could NK monitor/detect that? 

 

North Korea would not be able to monitor it very well, but would probably pick up a movement on that scale. You could evacuate quite a lot of the population (there are drills and contingency plans for this) but the expectation is that war would break out very quickly without time to evacuate a city of over 20 million people. The main plan is for people to evacuate into buildings and subways. The Seoul metro was deliberately built deeper than was necessary for this purpose. Several of the stations can hold over 10,000 people apiece with the idea being they could survive for several days. Given that North Korea's window of bombardment would likely last for an hour or so before their artillery positions were obliterated, that's unnecessary redundancy.

All of Seoul's buildings built in the last twenty years also have to have bomb shelters underneath them, and I believe that all of them built since 9/11 also have to be externally-supported (meaning they can't collapse in on themselves like core-supported buildings like the Twin Towers, which is much easier to do). Many buildings in Seoul also have mid-level shelters, so in the event of a gas attack people can shelter above the danger level.

Amongst major modern cities, Seoul is probably the most prepared on Earth to withstand a major attack. But there's only so much they can do. The main hope is that any attack would be brief and very swiftly halted by the overwhelming firepower of the South Korean military and the US.

 

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Because let's have no delusions, war with NK seems inevitable and that means so does the total destruction of Seoul. 

 

Totally destroying a major city with conventional weapons in a short time period is flat-out impossible. Unless North Korea can use a nuclear weapon (not impossible but it's not believed to be within their current capabilities), totally destroying Seoul is not remotely possible. They can certainly cause enormous damage to the northern environs of the city though. The death toll would certainly be in the dozens, probably in the hundreds and quite possibly in the thousands.

 

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Would Seoul even be the primary target of North Korea? I know that's their rhetoric, but if a full-scale war breaks, those artillery shells only have a very limited lifespan before they get taken out. I'd imagine South Korean and U.S. military bases near the DMZ would be a much higher priority.

There'd much lower loss of life (especially since I imagine military personal would evac to shelters faster), but if North Korea could destroy a lot of the equipment on those bases that'd at least delay the eventual counteract.

 

That would be desirable, but North Korean artillery spotting is less than an exact science. When they hit the South Korean island a few years ago the accuracy was not great and they just seemed to go for lobbing everything they could in the island's vague direction and hoping for the best. South Korean and American military bases are small targets and difficult to hit. Greater Seoul is 11,000 square kilometres in size (the city itself is only about 400 square km of that), which even the North Koreans should be able to hit.

In addition, the likelihood of the North Koreans blasting a hole through the DMZ, charging through and hanging a right into Seoul, which some military planners were still discussing ten years ago, is pretty much gone now. The North Korean army actually invading South Korea seems highly unlikely (and they certainly wouldn't get far if they did), so there's really nothing to be gained by attacking the military bases. Really, the second the shooting starts North Korea has already lost, their only chance is causing enough damage to make a ceasefire desirable.

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Sure they could, but what's in it for China? They could have changed the status quo any time in the past few decades and didn't do it so unless NK does something truly unacceptable or the US is willing to commit a sufficiently large carrot or stick, China is probably not going to budge.

Not having a massive warzone on their doorstep encouraging the better part of 20 million people to flee towards their border, for one thing.

Also, China is really pissed off with Kim Jong-un, much more than I think they've ever let on. China has gone out on a very long, increasingly expensive limb for North Korea and Kim Jong-il at least seemed to appreciate that and at least made nods towards peace talks and negotiations and reconciliation. His son doesn't appreciate it and seems to have taken China's support and protection for granted. China imposing the coal embargo and telling North Korea to get with the programme has probably taken Pyongyang by surprise and required some recalculations.

[Fragile Bird]

<sighs>

Trump just basically announced war on the Canadian dairy industry.

[all swedes are racist]

2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Oh awesome - per nytimes the carrier group sent to Korea wasn't sent there after all. And then we lied about it.

 

millions of people are going to die soon because our presidents brain is just a mango sized lump of cholesterol