Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Ghengis Jon]

And his incessant Putin worship.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Disagree. You think a lot of left-wingers will stay home in protest? They are more likely to vote for Biden, IMO, than suburban middle-class housewives will vote for Bernie Sanders. Biden can look confused as fuck on stage with Trump and unless he pisses himself I don't think it'll matter much. The vote is going to be a referendum on Trump. And Trump himself will insist it be that, because he couldn't stand to have it be otherwise.

Remember -- in 2016, among people who disliked both candidates, Trump did very well. This time the roles have reversed. Polls have been consistently showing that Biden is winning people who don't like him by a margin even bigger than Trump won last time.

I can't disagree with this. Turmp's base may be strong and vocal but I think we've had this discussion here about the importance of the undecideds (and the sub groups) ..... and of the must win states for Trump in the EC. This isn't a slam dunk election for Trump even with the likes of a nearly 90yo tottering Biden, Communist Bernie and Pocahontas the likely D candidates facing Trump.

Polls have also demonstrated as DSL points out that the 2020 Presidential Election is going to be a referendum on Trump's character and behavior - his narcissistic, 5 year-old parts of it. His Iran gamut is about 6 months too early, maybe 8-10. The news cycle will forget about the cluster-fuck the Iranians created for themselves mostly as an after effect of Trump's tough policies with the Mullahs ..... unless and of course Trump manages to stir something up in the ME in August or September that works out for him and carries over to November and I'd count on it. That shit has become the new presidential campaign tool across the last 3 or 4 administrations.

[Kapture1]

meh, if Trump could get elected after the things he said in the primaries...

Honestly I don't see anything really any worse that he has said since becoming president. The biggest difference between 2016 and now is that he has an actual presidential record to review, and honestly, it's a good one. Record low unemployment, booming economy, consumer confidence highest in decades, income increasing, and increasing fastest at the lower end, millions now off of food stamps and public assistance. And he has handled foreign policy pretty well, especially this recent situation with Iran.

[Dr. Strangelove]

If people were willing to overlook his personality and give him credit for achievements, his approval rating wouldn't perpetually be below 45%. And he has a problem that too many people don't think he's responsible for the good economy, relative peace, etc. There's also people who genuinely thought President Trump would behave differently than 2016 Campaign Trump. Now they know they were wrong.

The best thing Trump could do for himself is shut down Twitter and step away from the public spotlight for a while but he won't ever do that. Why do you think even Fox stopped carrying his rallies live start to finish? People were turning the channel. He's overexposed.

[Kapture1]

If people were willing to overlook his personality and give him credit for achievements, his approval rating wouldn't perpetually be below 45%. And he has a problem that too many people don't think he's responsible for the good economy, relative peace, etc. There's also people who genuinely thought President Trump would behave differently than 2016 Campaign Trump. Now they know they were wrong.

The best thing Trump could do for himself is shut down Twitter and step away from the public spotlight for a while but he won't ever do that. Why do you think even Fox stopped carrying his rallies live start to finish? People were turning the channel. He's overexposed.

only those watching CNN and MSNBC, so a relatively small % of the general population.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Doug Collins has officially apologized for his "Democrats love terrorists" remarks

[Dr. Strangelove]

Very interesting...Soleimani was not the only target that night. We launched a second operation in Yemen meant to kill another Quds Force Commander. But we didn't get him.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/on-the-day-us-forces-killed-soleimani-they-launched-another-secret-operation-targeting-a-senior-iranian-official-in-yemen/2020/01/10/60f86dbc-3245-11ea-898f-eb846b7e9feb_story.html

[Dr. Strangelove]

State Department sent the Iraq govt a letter outright refusing to discuss withdrawal with them

https://www.afp.com/en/news/15/us-rejects-iraq-request-discuss-troop-withdrawal-doc-1nl7oa3

[Ghengis Jon]

Putin smiles.

[iam416]

In addition to all the other good news, arrests at the border have plummeted since PDJT reached a deal with Mexico re enforcement and US policy of not letting asylum seekers wander freely about the US while they wait for a hearing.

[Ghengis Jon]

Wow. Buried in the 29th paragraph of this WSJ article is this nugget:


"Mr. Trump, after the strike [on Soleimani], told associates he was under pressure to deal with Gen. Soleimani from GOP senators he views as important supporters in his coming impeachment trial in the Senate, associates said."


Subscriber link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-...ke-11578619195

[Jeff Buchanan]

Reuters is reporting that Tehran will announce on Saturday the reason for the 737 crash on Wednesday. That's really unprecedented in aviation accident investigations so, expect nothing more than propaganda.

It takes months to arrive at even preliminary reasons for an aviation accident and for good reason ...... investigators will tell you, "you can almost always reject the first thing observers think caused an air accident." The reason for that is causes are layered. It's never a simple explanation. Even in this case with the intell released publicly by the US it looks like an accidental shoot down but it is not beyond the realm of possibility that the US is engaged in a misinformation campaign here to discredit Iran ...... nice move if accurate. All is fair in love and war it's been said and make no mistake, Iran and the US are at war (in a non-technical sense) and Iranian military leadership has said as much.

I also reported incorrectly that the FAA had been invited to assist in the investigation and I thought that was weird. Well, it's weird but its actually the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) that was invited by Boeing but I'm not clear that Iran has approved NTSB involvement and I can't imagine they would. There were no US citizens aboard that were killed as far as I know. Iran has invited all countries whose citizens were on the aircraft and died to send reps to participate in the accident investigation. This sort of thing sounds good, generous and accommodating but, the first thing I'd ask to see if I was from the NTSB (beyond the aircraft crash site and aircraft remains) would be the radio transmissions from civil controllers between the aircraft up to the point it crashed as well as the data logs and voice recordings from the nearby Iranian Air Defense systems. You put that to bed right away and move on or you validate the shoot down. Easy - not going to happen.

[Jeff Buchanan]

...... I could also see a scenario where the Mullahs fess-up. Trying to lie about this, assuming the US intell is real, is a losing approach.

Iran could cloak the fucked up shoot-down in all kinds of BS but it would mostly blame the US for things like, "they jammed or spoofed our radars and that prevented us from making a proper ID of the target." That might fly with the uninformed but I can go down a list of signals intel that would reveal that would be BS too.

I think the only country to admit responsibility publicly for an accidental shoot down of the several that have occurred in the last decade or so is the US in the Vincenes mishap. The US paid out millions in damages for that fuck-up.

[Dr. Strangelove]

It takes months to arrive at even preliminary reasons for an aviation accident and for good reason ...... investigators will tell you, "you can almost always reject the first thing observers think caused an air accident." The reason for that is causes are layered. It's never a simple explanation. Even in this case with the intell released publicly by the US it looks like an accidental shoot down but it is not beyond the realm of possibility that the US is engaged in a misinformation campaign here to discredit Iran ...... nice move if accurate. All is fair in war it's been said and make no mistake, Iran and the US are at war (in a non-technical sense) and Iranian military leadership has said as much.

I would not want the US to simply lie and make up evidence to make Iran look bad if that's what you're suggesting. However, that's not what I think happened here. I think a jittery SAM unit shot it down.

Question though and no one may know the answer, but are some SAM systems "autopilot" for lack of a better word? Or does someone always have to be there to "push the button" so to speak? I ask because it's curious that the Ukraine flight was not the first commercial airliner to take off that day nor was it the first to take that same route. Basically I'm wondering why they shot down that particular flight and not the earlier ones.

[Ghengis Jon]

As far as I know, ground-to-air systems all have a physical command routine and cannot be set to "auto scan - auto fire" as a walk away system. Target acquisition can be set to automatic, but not weapon release. Anti antiaircraft systems look for blanket and targeting radar (among other things) which make the auto feature somewhat fatal. Don't know about the Patriot or Iron Dome systems.