USA Politics

bearfan said:
It is easier when you are further away from the daily life of a country ... realistically though .. Trump, like any President (or elected officials) .. is a mixed bag when you can take away the emotion of it (positive or negative) ... and also like most, it will be years before anyone can properly analyze (again free of emotion) ... the pluses and minuses. Odds are there are things that seem like a big deal now that will not even warrant a footnote and things that no one cares about could end up being a big deal.

I don't like the guy, but I am not going to get into the "the whole world is coming to an end, how will we survived" and live in constant outrage. I did not care for Obama (policy wise) ... and did not do it with him either. It is a waste of time
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I think the biggest detriment to Trump as president is his inability to hold up the United States as a world leader - the president isn't as important domestically for policy (which we have discussed many times previously and generally agree upon, as I recall), but is far more important for foreign policy. I'll give Trump some due - he has gotten China to sign on to greater sanctions on North Korea, and scared some of Europe into increasing military spending to NATO. But overall he's not very well regarded by pretty much any other G20 leader, his decision to attempt to renegotiate NAFTA may lead to the end of the agreement, and I don't think anyone considers him and thus the US to be a leader out of anything other than raw military power. That makes working with the US internationally quite difficult.
 
LooseCannon said:
I think the biggest detriment to Trump as president is his inability to hold up the United States as a world leader - the president isn't as important domestically for policy (which we have discussed many times previously and generally agree upon, as I recall), but is far more important for foreign policy. I'll give Trump some due - he has gotten China to sign on to greater sanctions on North Korea, and scared some of Europe into increasing military spending to NATO. But overall he's not very well regarded by pretty much any other G20 leader, his decision to attempt to renegotiate NAFTA may lead to the end of the agreement, and I don't think anyone considers him and thus the US to be a leader out of anything other than raw military power. That makes working with the US internationally quite difficult.
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I agree and disagree with this

The President gets too much credit and blame for things like the economy, but they do have an impact. The tax deal and some deregulation efforts will probably boost the economy at least in the short run.

Internationally, he has had some success ... but I do think the international order is still in many ways stuck in the Cold War days ... intentionally or not/good or bad (and really probably both) ... that world is changing and governments are often the last to adjust to it. With North Korea, Israel, and the trade deals is forcing somewhat of a shift. I think other countries are really trying to have it both ways "the US is a bully and is involved in everything" ... to "oh no, the US is withdrawing ... there is a vacuum, what will step into it (hint: the EU countries can feel free to step up versus China and Russia).

We will see what happens .. but most likely we will not see what happens fully for decades.

With North Korea in particular, status quo was clearly not working.
 
bearfan said:
hint: the EU countries can feel free to step up versus China and Russia
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I don't think EU automatically places itself as competition to those two, teamed with US, so if US backs off a while EU will take the lead. EU is interested in cooperation with both of those states, whether it's doable or not is a question of geopolitics. Very simple - EU didn't mind Russian gas much until Russia started using it as a leverage.
 
Zare said:
I don't think EU automatically places itself as competition to those two, teamed with US, so if US backs off a while EU will take the lead. EU is interested in cooperation with both of those states, whether it's doable or not is a question of geopolitics. Very simple - EU didn't mind Russian gas much until Russia started using it as a leverage.
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That is pretty much what I meant ... Russia and China have used gas and other economic measures to gain some big footholds in part of the world that have traditionally been western Europe's sphere of influence. They (they EU) need to figure out a way to compete in those markets ( Africa for example). In this case it is as much economic as political ... the EU or individual countries in the EU needs to export to those places and they are getting squeezed out on energy and infrastructure projects by Russia and China and techie stuff from China and India .. giving them more leverage beyond Russian gas
 
bearfan said:
the EU or individual countries in the EU needs to export to those places and they are getting squeezed out on energy and infrastructure projects by Russia and China and techie stuff from China and India .. giving them more leverage beyond Russian gas
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Absolutely, China has a huge highway construction program in Africa - they build huge, beautiful highways in places like Botswana and Mozambique in order to buy friends.
 
The thing is Russia is a developed neighbor with a substantial industrial base. Personally I think there are far larger political issues between entities of EU and African countries. There are reasons why they "trust" the Chinese down there, because Chinese didn't enslave them. Yet ;)
 
So apparently, it's possible to press one button and cause panic in the only place in the US that was ever successfully attacked by a foreign power. :facepalm:
 
Perun said:
So apparently, it's possible to press one button and cause panic in the only place in the US that was ever successfully attacked by a foreign power. :facepalm:
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Yep. Have grandparents who live on Maui who called me to tell me how much they love me, which was nice until I figured out the context.

Already scrolling upthread to say that... we're not going to see eye to eye much on any of these subjects, but I will tell you that I have very little confidence in anything in Washington, pretty much every branch, every bureau, and every institution slowly being eroded away.
 
Perun said:
So apparently, it's possible to press one button and cause panic in the only place in the US that was ever successfully attacked by a foreign power. :facepalm:
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Apparently, there is a test of the system at the switch of each shift. But the employee hit the real button, not the test button, and despite cancelling that, the system sent the alert anyway. It took them 38 minutes to figure out how to send the followup. This is a technical failure, and probably a very good one - it allows them to fix problems in the system.

Octillus said:
I have very little confidence in anything in Washington
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How do you feel about things in Honolulu, since it was their fault? :D
 
Yeah, that is a colossal fuck up at the state level ... you would think there would be some kind of procedure for a false alarm .. looks like not so much ... I would guess (and hope) other states are looking at how they are set up.

The real big problem with false alarms (not just for this, but weather events, etc) is that people might be less inclined to believe future (and real) alerts
 
bearfan said:
The real big problem with false alarms (not just for this, but weather events, etc) is that people might be less inclined to believe future (and real) alerts
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Agreed. This is what tests were supposed to figure out. Hopefully all the states - and indeed other jurisdictions like in places like Canada and Europe - are looking at their own emergency response software to close gaps.
 
images
 
I read an op-ed in the Washington Post by a woman detailing the fear she and her family felt for those 38 minutes. Two observations stood out above the rest. The first was her noticing that Twitter was quicker to announce (30 minutes) that it was a false alarm than the official texts sent by the state (38 minutes). The other was that while hidding in the tub of their bathroom with her daughter and their dog, she asked her daughter, 'Have they taught you about duck and cover at school?' Then she realized she didn't know about it either as she was 36 and grew up in an era relatively free of fear from this exact scenario.

Um... Seriously? Duck and cover? From a nuke? I want to give the woman the benefit of the doubt and say that her judgement was clearly clouded by complete and utter fear if she thought 'duck and cover' in her bathroom tub was going to protect her and her daughter in ANY way from a nuclear missile. Who does she think she is? Indiana Jones?
 
Onhell said:
I read an op-ed in the Washington Post by a woman detailing the fear she and her family felt for those 38 minutes. Two observations stood out above the rest. The first was her noticing that Twitter was quicker to announce (30 minutes) that it was a false alarm than the official texts sent by the state (38 minutes). The other was that while hidding in the tub of their bathroom with her daughter and their dog, she asked her daughter, 'Have they taught you about duck and cover at school?' Then she realized she didn't know about it either as she was 36 and grew up in an era relatively free of fear from this exact scenario.

Um... Seriously? Duck and cover? From a nuke? I want to give the woman the benefit of the doubt and say that her judgement was clearly clouded by complete and utter fear if she thought 'duck and cover' in her bathroom tub was going to protect her and her daughter in ANY way from a nuclear missile. Who does she think she is? Indiana Jones?
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Well, duh ... they need to get in the fridge.

Though I will say with the distance between islands and the large mountains in the middle of the island ... and the possibility that a missile could miss be many miles (really probable given North Korea's tests), they might be a decent chance of avoiding debris by going to a safe location depending on where they are versus where a missile would hit.

I might be talking out of my ass here, but it would seem worth doing. When it was the Soviets ... then yeah, pretty pointless
 
True that the type of missile and where it hits will factor into it, but even if it misses or they are protected from debree... unless they're in an actual shelter the radiation will most likely be lethal.
 
The radiation probably depends on where it hits and where you are vis-a-vis the wind ... guess my only point is that trying to seek cover may or may not help, but most likely will not hurt
 
It also depends on the type of missile launched and how much of its fissile fuel is consumed in the explosion.
 
Some serious when the wild wind blows shit.

Yeah, it was Hawaii on the statewide level, which shouldn't be surprising to anyone - other than the military base, there's a very small state with much to be desired in terms of infrastructure.

I'm not sure how the delegation of responsibilities go in this respect, but I'd probably defer to the military specifically in this situation. Good to have the state involved for tsunami warnings, tropical storms, geological events (I guess tsunamis are technically that but whatever), etc - but maybe just maybe having our armed forces involved in this particular warning system would be wise.

As for Washington - I stand by my statement, there is an environment that cultivated this active fear, whether or not it would've gotten to this point at either rate doesn't change the fact that I have no confidence in how it is being managed.
 
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