US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7337

On April 14 2017 05:02 zlefin wrote:
yawn, bombs dropped in war zones; feels like it could easily be regarded as a total non-issue and ignored. But I guess it's soemthing to talk about, and explosions are cool.

On April 14 2017 05:05 Danglars wrote:

To be perfectly honest, I only see personal choice in whose account you trash or trust. I'd have to see much more to show "not against the tunnels but against what's in it" to an Occam's razor "yes, dropping a big bomb over a tunnel system is first designed to collapse and kill, secondly psychological shock and awe, and the PhD is not a marketing shill."

"The MOAB has a very narrow target set," a US Air Force official told Business Insider. "Basically," the official said, "targets in an environment like caves or canyons or clearing minefields" are ideal for the MOAB.

On April 14 2017 05:21 m4ini wrote:


First, read the actual press release of the forces.

Second, your own PhD states what i'm telling you.



Targets in caves. The press release talks about "obstacles" in regards to cleaning the areas, which includes IEDs which most likely would've set off.

A tiny bit of common sense would've been enough though. There's a reason bunker busters exist and were primarily used. That reason isn't because MOAB would've been more effective, because it isn't. It actually can't be as long as it isn't a shaped charge, which again, obviously, it isn't. It fires above ground, so only directly underneath you'd get actual pressure on a tunnel, because the shockwave 2m around the bomb already disperses sideways, not downwards.

I don't see anything wrong with it being retaliation strike to show "if you kill our guys, we'll bring the big guns". I do see a lot wrong with pretending that it was something else entirely.

On April 14 2017 05:58 xDaunt wrote:

Wouldn't a fuel air explosive like the MOAB be really good for clearing out cave systems just through its creation of vacuums and pressure differentials?

On April 14 2017 05:21 m4ini wrote:


First, read the actual press release of the forces.

Second, your own PhD states what i'm telling you.



Targets in caves. The press release talks about "obstacles" in regards to cleaning the areas, which includes IEDs which most likely would've set off.

A tiny bit of common sense would've been enough though. There's a reason bunker busters exist and were primarily used. That reason isn't because MOAB would've been more effective, because it isn't. It actually can't be as long as it isn't a shaped charge, which again, obviously, it isn't. It fires above ground, so only directly underneath you'd get actual pressure on a tunnel, because the shockwave 2m around the bomb already disperses sideways, not downwards.

I don't see anything wrong with it being retaliation strike to show "if you kill our guys, we'll bring the big guns". I do see a lot wrong with pretending that it was something else entirely.

On April 14 2017 07:01 IgnE wrote:
it seems extremely wasteful to build and drop bombs that cost a third of a billion or fire off nearly a billion in tomahawk missles to blow up a portion of syrian airfields when we are simultaneously having a discussion about how to pay for our citizens' basic healthcare

Donald Trump’s true believers are losing the faith.

As Trump struggles to keep his campaign promises and flirts with political moderation, his most steadfast supporters — from veteran advisers to anti-immigration activists to the volunteers who dropped their jobs to help elect him — are increasingly dismayed by the direction of his presidency.

Their complaints range from Trump’s embrace of an interventionist foreign policy to his less hawkish tone on China to, most recently, his marginalization of his nationalist chief strategist, Steve Bannon. But the crux of their disillusionment, interviews with nearly two dozen Trump loyalists reveal, is a belief that Trump the candidate bears little resemblance to Trump the president. He’s failing, in their view, to deliver on his promise of a transformative “America First” agenda driven by hard-edged populism.

"Donald Trump dropped an emotional anchor. He captured how Americans feel," said Tania Vojvodic, a fervent Trump supporter who founded one of his first campaign volunteer networks. "We expect him to keep his word, and right now he's not keeping his word."

Earlier this week, Vojvodic launched a Facebook group called, “The concerned support base of President Trump,” which quickly drew several dozen sign-ups. She also changed the banner on her Facebook page to a picture of Bannon accompanied by the declaration: “Mr. President: I stand with Steve Bannon.”

"I'm not so infatuated with Trump that I can't see the facts," she said. "People's belief, their trust in him, it’s declining."

The swiftness and abruptness of Trump’s shift from bomb-throwing populist outsider to a more mainstream brand of Republican has taken the president’s stalwarts by surprise.

“It was like, here’s the chance to do something different. And that’s why people’s hopes are dashed,” said Lee Stranahan, who, as a former writer at Breitbart News, once worked with Bannon. “There was always the question of, ‘Did he really believe this stuff?’ Apparently, the answer is, ‘Not as much as you’d like.’”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The deflation of Trump’s base threatens to further weaken a president who’s already seen his public support drop to historic lows. Frustration among the president’s allies has intensified in recent days, with many expressing worry that Bannon, the intellectual pillar of the nationalist movement that catapulted Trump to the presidency, is being pushed out.

As Bannon’s influence wanes, on the rise is a small group of Wall Street-connected advisers whose politically moderate and globalist views are anathema to the populist cause.

The palace intrigue intensified this week after Trump refused to say he still had confidence in Bannon and downplayed the former Breitbart chairman's role in his campaign victory. And it’s feeding suspicions that the president is changing his priorities.

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), one of the president’s most vocal backers on Capitol Hill, said he’s been disheartened by the chief strategist’s isolation.

"A lot of us look at Steve Bannon as the voice of conservatism in the White House," said King, who has known Bannon for years.

The displeasure over Bannon’s reduced status has trickled down to Trump’s grass-roots army of volunteers. Among those unsettled is Shane Bouvet, a 24-year-old campaign volunteer and blue-collar single father from Illinois who became something of a hero in the Trump movement. On the eve of the inauguration, Trump, who had read about how Bouvet trekked across the country by car so he could watch the swearing-in, gave him a check for $10,000.

Bouvet later said the gift saved the life of his father, who was battling cancer and needed the money to cover medical costs.

That day, Bouvet also was introduced to Bannon. The two spoke briefly, and Bouvet came to identify with the adviser who, like him, represented a “forgotten America” that Trump had appealed to with his blue-collar pitch. He said in an interview that he still supports the president, but is troubled by reports that Bannon is on the outs and that senior adviser Jared Kushner, a New York City real estate scion, is accumulating influence.

On April 14 2017 07:01 IgnE wrote:
it seems extremely wasteful to build and drop bombs that cost a third of a billion or fire off nearly a billion in tomahawk missles to blow up a portion of syrian airfields when we are simultaneously having a discussion about how to pay for our citizens' basic healthcare

On April 14 2017 03:13 LegalLord wrote:
You know, I just realized something. This bombing has a pretty hilarious "if we have nuclear weapons, why can't we use them?" vibe to it. It's not a nuke but it's the closest the clown can get without triggering MAD.

On April 14 2017 08:01 Liquid`Drone wrote:


I heard Little Boy is about 1000 times more powerful than this one? Basically nukes are in a whole other league.

A state appeals court in Florida on Thursday affirmed a circuit court’s decision to order Trump National Doral Miami golf resort to pay a small paint company and its attorney hundreds of thousands of dollars after failing to pay a tenth of that for paint and other materials during a renovation project.

Lawyer fees — in addition to the initial missing payment of $32,535.87 — were originally awarded to The Paint Spot, a local store nearby Trump National, in July 2016, as reported by the Miami Herald. Circuit Court Judge Jorge Cueto applied a 75 percent additional fee on top of the attorney Daniel Vega’s billed time as well, because his firm, Taylor Espino Vega & Touron, had taken the case on a contingency fee basis. The total at the time was $282,949.91.

But the Trump Organization appealed the decision, alleging that the paint company had filed a construction lien incorrectly, naming a contractor who had worked on a separate project. On Wednesday, Florida’s Third District Court of Appeals ruled that “Trump failed to establish that it was adversely affected by the error.”

The court also pointed to an unfortunate bit of testimony from contractor Straticon’s construction manager, Jamie Gram.

“[T]he decision not to pay [Paint Spot] had nothing to do with a defective Notice to Owner,” Gram said, according to the decision. “They weren’t paid because Mr. Trump had already paid [subcontractor] M&P a decent amount of money of the contract … and there was still a lot of work that needed to be completed, so we used the money, M&P’s remaining balance, plus additional funds to pay to get the work done.”

Vega told Daily Business Review on Thursday that he expected the appeals court legal fees to be similarly multiplied by 1.75.

The result is a massive bill for a relatively small disagreement over paint.

The U.S. is prepared to launch a preemptive strike with conventional weapons against North Korea should officials become convinced that North Korea is about to follow through with a nuclear weapons test, multiple senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.

North Korea has warned that a "big event" is near, and U.S. officials say signs point to a nuclear test that could come as early as this weekend.

The intelligence officials told NBC News that the U.S. has positioned two destroyers capable of shooting Tomahawk cruise missiles in the region, one just 300 miles from the North Korean nuclear test site.