Donald Trump threatens to shut down NBC and other TV news networks that criticize him

[Felya]

Damn, nice one. Mind if I steal that for later use

I was hoping it would catch on, but was cut off too soon! Go for it...

[Santti]

Left and came back. How is that liaing again?
It does seem a certain demographic have a propensity to call people names.

And what demographic would be the one that doesn't call people names?

[Vyuvarax]

And what demographic would be the one that doesn't call people names?

You expect this guy to provide evidence for any claim at this point? I'd be surprised if this amount of lying by Allybeboba doesn't result in a ban.

[Felya]

You expect this guy to provide evidence for any claim at this point? I'd be surprised if this amount of lying by Allybeboba doesn't result in a ban.

Lying is not against tos and if you think about it, it shouldn't be. See the same reason why OP is a bad thing.

[Santti]

You expect this guy to provide evidence for any claim at this point? I'd be surprised if this amount of lying by Allybeboba doesn't result in a ban.

Oh no, I'm just here for the ride. Feeding him and watch him spew bullshit is entertaining.

[cubby]

Personally, I'm starting to love Allybeboba's creativity when it comes to supporting-without-supporting Trump. It's fun to watch. Every post is a new adventure in "I'm not saying I support any kind of liquid, but I do support things being soaking wet."

This. Perfection. Very well said. He is adorable, though - Skroe pretty much summed up his true worth, which I loved reading as well. At this point it's mostly entertainment.

[Vyuvarax]

Lying is not against tos and if you think about it, it shouldn't be. See the same reason why OP is a bad thing.

Fine, but I'm not sure social ostracization and ousting for lying should be compared to authoritarianism.

[Wyrt]

Seems the only time Trumpkins care about the first amendment is when it's literal nazis marching in the streets of America. Every other time it's perfectly fine to stifle it.

[Edge-]

Seems the only time Trumpkins care about the first amendment is when it's some very fine people marching in the streets of America. Every other time it's perfectly fine to stifle it.

Fixed that for you.

[Kathandira]

*Snip*

Curious if this would be an impeachable overreach.

[Felya]

Fine, but I'm not sure social ostracization and ousting for lying should be compared to authoritarianism.

That's why free speech never needs to be limited. It has a built in function that already accounts for that. Your ability to reply.

I like to think a lot of the forums limitation is simply to not waste money on bandwidth, generated by what could be just 1 post. I don't like it, but I do enjoy the effect.

[Kathandira]

At what part did he threaten to “shut down NBC”?

All I saw was they should have their license challenged. All stations should have their licenses challenged when they report inappropriate comments. It doesn’t matter who it is about.

Every profession with a “license” gets their license challenged if they do something inappropriate, I know I would. Why should networks be treated any differently?

"With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!" Mr Trump wrote in a tweet.

He cannot make a call to action as such. He phrased it as "I wonder if" which is fine. But if he actually pressured the FCC to do so, that would be an overreach.

[Felya]

Fixed that for you.

You have been warned:

Editing another member’s posts is worthy of an infraction my friend. And has been reported.

Next, is liable!

[Breccia]

Curious if this would be an impeachable overreach.

Almost certainly. That's why he'll never act on it.

Nor will NBC retract or apologize. They hold all the cards here.

[Stormspellz]

One of the nice benefits of Trump is that his megalomania, insanity and weakness is rapidly replacing the "Imperial Presidency" with the "Impotent Presidency".

The more he keeps saying crazy things and dying on pointless hills, the more he is isolated and the more his power is sapped.

wouldn't go that far, the gop controlled congress is using the trump distraction to push some radical legislation (even for them). So until they don't have majority in congress, trump's clown car administration remains a threat

[Skroe]

I'm gonna use this opportunity to make an aside about something I think will be interesting to people who have read my posts over the years. To understand, you have to read this article:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps...nkrupt-america

Trump’s Plan for 32,000 Nukes Would Bankrupt America
Plus it would be illegal, dangerous, and complicated. No wonder Rex Tillerson called the president a ‘fucking moron.’

David Axe
10.11.17 2:09 PM ET
President Donald Trump told senior administration officials he wanted a nearly tenfold increase in the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, according to NBC News. Trump reportedly called for restoring America's atomic stockpile —currently numbering around 4,000 warheads—to its Cold War peak of 32,000 warheads.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson after the meeting reportedly called Trump a “fucking moron.”

The White House has denied Trump said any such thing and Trump in a tweet insisted that NBC’s report was “pure fiction.”
In any event, for the United States to grow its nuclear arsenal by nearly 30,000 warheads would be illegal, risky, complicated and, ultimately, an unprecedented waste of money.
“It would cost approximately eleventy bazillion dollars,” Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, told The Daily Beast.
Successive presidential administrations since the late 1960s have worked hard to shrink the nuclear arsenal. A series of international treaties starting with the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty have required the United States, Russia and other atomic powers to halt the spread of nuclear weaponry while also limiting live tests of nuclear warheads and, perhaps most importantly, steadily reducing the numbers of nukes from the early 1960s peak.
Experts agree that constraining and cutting nukes makes the world safer and more stable by preventing a runaway arms race. Conversely, adding nukes introduces uncertainty and risk. “Essentially, global stability would be completely overturned” under Trump’s build-up, Hans Kristensen, the director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, D.C., told The Daily Beast.

Adding 30,000 nukes “would violate major international treaties, including our [Non-Proliferation Treaty] commitments, almost certainly force us to resume nuclear testing again and signal to the rest of the world that nuclear weapons are important,” Geoffrey Wilson, a nuclear expert with Ploughshares Fund, a peace-advocacy group in San Francisco, told The Daily Beast.

Countries could decide that if they wanted to deter the United States, “they better build or seriously revitalize their own nuclear weapons programs,” Wilson added.
Even if a huge nuclear expansion weren’t geopolitically “crazy” —to borrow Wilson’s succinct assessment—it would certainly be prohibitively expensive, ultimately costing perhaps tens of trillions of dollars.

“Obama committed to replacing the existing nuclear force on an almost one-to-one basis,” Lewis pointed out. “We estimate that will cost a trillion dollars over 30 years to keep what we have and build replacements. To increase it tenfold would require massive infrastructure investments sustained over many decades.”

It’s obvious Trump didn't think through the cost and complexity of a major atomic expansion. There’s more to an effective nuclear deterrent than just piles of warheads. The Pentagon also builds and maintains rockets, bombers and submarines to actually deliver the warheads to their targets during a potentially world-ending nuclear war.

“What [Trump] reacted to apparently was the number of warheads in the [Defense Department] stockpile,” Kristensen said. “But those warheads are linked to specific delivery platforms that only have so many spaces.”

Add tens of thousands of nukes, and you have to add thousands of rockets, bombers and submarines. “If he wanted to significantly increase the stockpile size, he would either end up with a lot of nuclear warheads he couldn’t do anything with or he would have to pay for a lot of new missiles and bombers so the extra warheads would actually be used,” Kristensen pointed out.

A single new B-21 nuclear-capable stealth bomber costs around $600 million. The Air Force hopes to buy around 100 of them. Now imagine buying thousands of them, plus the subs and rockets and all the extra warheads themselves—and doing as major treaties collapse and countries rush to acquire hundreds or thousands more nukes of their own.
“That’s why his remark is so moronic,” Kristensen said. “It’s not related to the real world.”

Now before I get into what I'm bringing up, I want to establish a few ground facts:
(1) This is a perspective piece, not a news article. David Axe is providing analysis, which means a viewpoint. I've discussed his viewpoints at length in the forums over the years. Pretty much "if the US military isn't using cropdusters to fight Terrorists, it's wasting money. Retire everything else"

(2) I do not think the US should build 40,000 more strategic nuclear weapons. I think it should worsen Russia's strategic security through other means, and probably leave the INF Treaty and eventually NewSTART. But There is no world in which we need 40,000 weapons. We don't even need the 4000 we have in the active (1550) + reserve (2500) stockpile.

Now that being said, David Axe is being apallingly dishonest in this article. It's truly stunning. And he is doing what he normally does: he hate something, so he is saying it is expensive to discredit it using some really bad math. Namely:

Even if a huge nuclear expansion weren’t geopolitically “crazy” —to borrow Wilson’s succinct assessment—it would certainly be prohibitively expensive, ultimately costing perhaps tens of trillions of dollars.

“What [Trump] reacted to apparently was the number of warheads in the [Defense Department] stockpile,” Kristensen said. “But those warheads are linked to specific delivery platforms that only have so many spaces.”

Add tens of thousands of nukes, and you have to add thousands of rockets, bombers and submarines. “If he wanted to significantly increase the stockpile size, he would either end up with a lot of nuclear warheads he couldn’t do anything with or he would have to pay for a lot of new missiles and bombers so the extra warheads would actually be used,” Kristensen pointed out.

A single new B-21 nuclear-capable stealth bomber costs around $600 million. The Air Force hopes to buy around 100 of them. Now imagine buying thousands of them, plus the subs and rockets and all the extra warheads themselves—and doing as major treaties collapse and countries rush to acquire hundreds or thousands more nukes of their own.

So much of this is nonsense, and a national security reporter for many years, David Axe knows this, yet makes the argument anyway. This is not the first time I've called out this guy and his bullshit numbers. I've been doing so for defense programs here since I almost started posting.

First and foremost, let's talk warheads. 30,000 warheads would be at issue, not missiles or bombs. The warheads would be IN missiles or bombs. In modern arsenals, they would be MIRVd - multiple warheads per missile.

The US currently has two missiles. The Minuteman III ICBM and the Trident II D5 Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM). The Minuteman III, of which we have 450, is capable of carrying 3 warheads, but currently carries 1 due to the limits of NewSTART and the fact that the US is putting most of it's retalitatory power on it's SLBMs. And those SLBMs, the Trident II, is capable of carrying 12 warheads. currently, they carry 4-8, again due to treaty limits. The US Navy has 14 active Ballistic Missile submarines, each with 24 tubes (several sealed at the moment due to treaty limitations, that would go away under expansion).

Simple math shows this. You put 12 warheads in 24 tubes and arm all 14 SSBNs, and you have 4032 warheads in just 14 Submarines. This is what the US has now, and could do it quickly if it wanted to. You then MIRV the 450 Minuteman III, and we go from 450 land based warheads to 1350. So with EXACTLY what we own today, the US could go from 1550 to 5382, before building a single new thing. Not 30,000 but a big dent.

So how do we get to 30,000? Build a lot of what we already have.

In terms of landbased missiles, the Minuteman III costs $7 million each. If the US was to engage in a big nuclear expansion, it could use the existing retired silos, and build another 1000 Minuteman IIIs, for a total of $7 billion + $2 billion in warhead costs for $9 billion. This will give the US 4350 land based missiles.

But what it could also do is make a new missile similar to the Peacekeeper MX of the 1980s. The Peacekeeper still flies, as an Orbital ATK space launch vehicle, so support facilities for it exist. Only 110 were ever built, but as the basis of a new launch vehicle, it could carry 12 warheads. So if the US chose this route instead, a new ICBM probably a $20 billion program with a unit cost of $70 million, for 1000 "Peacekeeper IIs" let's call them, a total programmic cost of $90 billion to loft 12,000 warheads.

As you can see, $90 billion is a lot of money, but we're getting no where close to "trillions upon trillions". And we're making a pretty big dent in the 30,000 warhead target.

Now let's talk SLBMs. 14 Ohio class subs. They're in pretty great shape. We life extend them and build 14 Columbia class subs. That is 28 Ballistic Missile subs... still far short of the '41 for freedom" that was the backbone of our at-sea deterrent during the Cold War. But they would have a full armament of 4032 on the Ohios and 12 warheads *16 tubes * 14 Columbias for a total of 2688 waheads, and a grand total of 6720 at sea warheads.


We now stand at 18,720 warheads. Using just what we could buy for relatively cheap or what we're going to buy anyway.

Now we're going to talk bombs. A huge portion of the Cold War max stockpile was in bombs, and it will be the same here. David Axe's conclusion that the Air Force would have to build "thousands of B-21s" is an outright lie. The Air Force didn't even have thousands of B-52s for crying out loud. It hasn't had thousands of any bomber since World War II.

The Air Force currently plans to buy 100 B-21s in lots of 20, but the real number is likely going to be around 180-200 as later, more advanced B-21s replace not just the B-2 itself, but also things like E-8 JSTARs. It's a multirole big stealth aircraft that can bomb, not just a stealth bomber, which reduces the need of other aircraft, but means we need more of it (economies of scale apply which will be nice).

The specs of the B-21 bomber are not public, but we can make educated guesses based on what is likely and known. First, it will be smaller than the B-2 (which is a very good idea)... around 2/3rds the size. It will have a smaller bomb load than the B-2's utterly excessive, completely pointless this day in age, bomb load... probably about half. This means it will be able to carry 8 B61-Mod 12 nuclear bombers per B-21 (B-2s carry 16). 8 * 200 (for easy math)... hell since it's an arms build up let's say 300... and that gets us 2400 bombs. 300 B-21s will cost, by the way $165 billion.

So let's do costs so far. $90 billion for "Peacekeeper IIs", $165 billion for B-21s, and $100 billion for the Columbia class. Let's throw in a nice round $40 billion on warheads, and we're at 21,120 warheads for $395 billion. Less than what we spend on Medicaid in one year, and we wouldn't spend that in one year. And we're not even approach many thousands of missiles, or thousands of bombers or hundreds of subs. And we haven't even gotten into Cruise missiles yet. SO let's get to that

We have a hard number for that. The next gen cruise missile has a program + procurement cost of $20 billion for 1000 cruise missiles. Let's add another 2000 cruise missiles for a total cost of $25 billion. And we're at 24120 warheads.



So how do we get from 24,120 to 30,000? More B61 Mod 12 bombs of course! And what's going to fly them? The B1-B bomber, the F-35 and F-16 of course. The B-1B can carry 24 B61s (24x66 = 1584 bombs). The F-35 will be able to carry two internally (2* 2400 = 4800). And I haven't even talked about the F-16 yet, which has been carrying the B61 for decades. Oh, or the B-2 itself, which can carry 16 bombs * 20 bombers and would be life extended.

The point is, is that while the US under no circumstance should build 30,000 nuclear weapons, the argument against it is political, moral and legal... not financial. And this is what happens with SO MANY defense platforms. I used round numbers on my math above, but they're not crazy numbers. Think about it. If a Trident II SLBM that carries 12 warheads, costs $54 million per Unit, and a $6.5 billion sub can carry 16 of them, how in the blue hell can you get to "trillions up trillions" as David Axe is citing when the entire life cycle cost of the Columbia class (12 subs for 40 years) is $347 billion? You can't. Which if you think about it, absolutely makes sense, because the US did have 30,000 warheads historically, and did not "bankrupt itself". The cost of the highly MIRV'd Ohio + Columbia fantasy fleet, would be lower than the far less (or unmirved) mid-early 1960s 41 for Freedom fleet. The costs of an arsenal based around highly MIRV'd fantasy Peacekeeper IIs or very real Minuteman IIIs, would be less than the ICBMs of the mid cold war that had a single enormous warhead on them but existed in enormous numbers. The financial attractiveness of this was one of the rationales behind MIRVing missiles. Hundreds of warheads need dozens of missiles. Thousands of warheads need hundreds of missiles. And it is the missiles, not the warheads that are expensive.


And none of this even touches on TACTICAL nuclear weapons, which also existed in huge numbers in the Cold War. Nuclear land mines and nuclear artillery shells also add to the total.

I bring up this point because aside from healthcare spending, defense spending is the largest part of US Federal Government expenditures, and the bill over the next decade as the late Cold War systems of all sorts are retired and replaced is pretty huge. Bad reporting, bad numbers make thoughtful debate and a national discussion on what we should be asking our defenders to do and how much we should be paying them for impossible. Bad reporting, like this, fuels Donald Trump's anti-Constitutional argument.

The US could absolutely afford 30,000 warheads if it chose to do it. It should not, but money is not remotely an issue (as we didn't even get close to $1 trillion). By adding a financial constraint, David Axe is both short circuiting necessary debate and understanding about how our tax money is being spent in the real world on nuclear weapons, and giving credence to the argument of "fake news" being a thing.

Anyway I hope folks learned something. When it comes to defense issues, if anybody says "unaffordable".... be very skeptical. It's almost always a matter of "should we" not "can we". No, the US should not build an arsenal of doom. But it absolutely can afford it.



Edit:
One last note: the biggest "choakpoint" is actually in terms of infrastructure. Los Alamos can make about 100 warheads a year give or take and PANTEX can assemble about that number of weapons. You could spend billions to expand facilities and add more shifts to ramp up production. It would take a 7-10 years to do based on previous history, and would be expensive, but not bank-busting. As it exists today, the US cannot expand its arsenal more than around 100 warheads per year however, due to how many facilities were consolidated and closed up in the Cold War. Expanding the arsenal at more than a couple hundred warheads a year would mean re-opening them.

[Cthulhu 2020]

I shall ask even you my friend. Out of the OVER SIX THOUSAND POSTS find a single unedited quote where a directly supported Trump.
If you think so strongly about your case towards me you will start searching now. I really don’t think you will find one. Good luck though.

"Directly support". I mean you don't constantly guzzle his cum, not like some of our other braindead Trumpkins, but you sure do rush to his defense A LOT. Any time he does something shitty and gets criticized for it, you're the first one to try and explain it away. Case in point: this thread.

[Warning]

Yes we do. And that dovetails with something I was thinking yesterday. I'll never again wonder how Hitler happened, how Saddam Hussein happened, how Mussolini happened, how Mao happened. Every one of those monsters - obviously far worse than Trump - could have been short circuited way early before the carnage truly began. But they were enabled by weak, destructive, perhaps even crazy (in their own way) people. Millions of them.

When the President of the United States is saying this, anyone who has ever professed a love of this country should be calling for his immediate removal from office. As in, by noon tomorrow. But that won't happen, because the Trump supporters don't love this country. Not in the slightest. The love a thing they mistake for this country - a kind of weird creation that exists in their head that looks like them, talks like them and holds the same values as them. But the country that actually exists? They'd burn it.

The reason America will avoid that fate is because our history has inoculated most of us, and our constitution and democratic norms are among the most developed in the world to defend against this sort of thing. But it's easy to see how more nascent democracies, or country's on the cusp of transitioning (perhaps) to Democracy fall to it.

The long tail of the Trump reign of error is that millions of his supporters will have murdered any notion that they have the slightest bit of legitimate patriotism. They've revealed themselves to be in the long and terrible tradition of the worst partisan enablers, who made so much horror possible.

America will be a better country-post Trump, because what this is doing for the majority of us who are fighting him. And it will be despite the deplorables.

You're quite right. America basically got the same test Europe got roughly 80 years ago along with the answers and still failed. In fact with Trump one could even say it was the multiple choice version of the test we got. Fortunately for you guys this seems to not be the kind of test that will determine your final grade, but hell yes we're gonna be talking about this during parent teacher conference.

Donald Trump is a warning to you guys (hence the name) to realize the threat of populism. It's likely going to be a permanent part of your politics from now on, because there will be politicians out there smarter than Donald J Trump who will gladly and more cunningly exploit the idiotic part of the population that cower from debate on this forum daily. From now on no one gets to pass on going out to vote for a reasonable candidate. Not because of rain, or because you're pissed, or because your boy Bernie got a raw deal.

That said these events have been a learning experience for many of us, for example I'll admit that I foolishly underestimated the threat of Russia until recently. It's clear now that reasonable people must actively defend the values we stand for at all times.

[rogueMatthias]

I'm curious to see how this all plays out with the press vs the government.

I've always been all for a free press, but since they've had to start competing online, most media outlets have just sold out and become click-whores. "Freedom of the press" apparently now means "Freedom to do or say whatever the fuck you want, with no real sources needed, as long as it'll get you a few more clicks/shares/likes". They've all become so politically polarised, that most "news" is now just highly opinionated emotional think-pieces presented as fact.

This is on ALL sides politically. I feel I have to chase the news now, if there's a story out I keep having to check multiple sources to have any idea what really happened. It's nonsensical.

One of the only reasons Trump gets away with so much is that most of the public think the entire media is as much a pointless POS as it does Trump these days.

SOMEBODY needs to bring all of the standards, accountability and objectivity back to the press, because if Trump has to stand in to sort it out then it's not going to end well for anyone.

[Felya]

I'm curious to see how this all plays out with the press vs the government.

I've always been all for a free press, but since they've had to start competing online, most media outlets have just sold out and become click-whores. "Freedom of the press" apparently now means "Freedom to do or say whatever the fuck you want, with no real sources needed, as long as it'll get you a few more clicks/shares/likes". They've all become so politically polarised, that most "news" is now just highly opinionated emotional think-pieces presented as fact.

This is on ALL sides politically. I feel I have to chase the news now, if there's a story out I keep having to check multiple sources to have any idea what really happened. It's nonsensical.

One of the only reasons Trump gets away with so much is that most of the public think the entire media is as much a pointless POS as it does Trump these days.

SOMEBODY needs to bring all of the standards, accountability and objectivity back to the press, because if Trump has to stand in to sort it out then it's not going to end well for anyone.

The problem is Trump, not the media. This was not an issue worthy of the president, until Trump became president. You know what happened to news Trump calls actual news, before last November? It got rightfully written off as just conspiracy theory. The fact that Trump is president, doesn't mean that Alex Jones is real news.

Your complaint is literally that there is too much information. That is not a bad place to be...