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Francisco 2.0

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by Francisco 2.0

  1. Oh my God.

    https://www.axios.com/trump-nuclear-bombs-hurricanes-97231f38-2394-4120-a3fa-8c9cf0e3f51c.html

     

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    President Trump has suggested multiple times to senior Homeland Security and national security officials that they explore using nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from hitting the United States, according to sources who have heard the president's private remarks and been briefed on a National Security Council memorandum that recorded those comments.

    Behind the scenes: During one hurricane briefing at the White House, Trump said, "I got it. I got it. Why don't we nuke them?" according to one source who was there. "They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they're moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can't we do that?" the source added, paraphrasing the president's remarks.

     

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    Asked how the briefer reacted, the source recalled he said something to the effect of, "Sir, we'll look into that."

    Trump replied by asking incredulously how many hurricanes the U.S. could handle and reiterating his suggestion that the government intervene before they make landfall. 

    The briefer "was knocked back on his heels," the source in the room added. "You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting. People were astonished. After the meeting ended, we thought, 'What the f---? What do we do with this?'"

     

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    Trump also raised the idea in another conversation with a senior administration official. A 2017 NSC memo describes that second conversation, in which Trump asked whether the administration should bomb hurricanes to stop them from hitting the homeland. A source briefed on the NSC memo said it does not contain the word "nuclear"; it just says the president talked about bombing hurricanes.

    The source added that this NSC memo captured "multiple topics, not just hurricanes. … It wasn't that somebody was so terrified of the bombing idea that they wrote it down. They just captured the president’s comments."

    The sources said that Trump's "bomb the hurricanes" idea — which he floated early in the second year of his presidency before John Bolton took over as national security adviser — went nowhere and never entered a formal policy process.

     

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    White House response: A senior administration official said, "We don't comment on private discussions that the president may or may not have had with his national security team."

    A different senior administration official, who has been briefed on the president's hurricane bombing suggestion, defended Trump's idea and said it was no cause for alarm. "His goal — to keep a catastrophic hurricane from hitting the mainland — is not bad," the official said. "His objective is not bad."

    "What people near the president do is they say 'I love a president who asks questions like that, who’s willing to ask tough questions.' ... It takes strong people to respond to him in the right way when stuff like this comes up. For me, alarm bells weren't going off when I heard about it, but I did think somebody is going to use this to feed into 'the president is crazy' narrative."

     

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    The big picture: Trump didn't invent this idea. The notion that detonating a nuclear bomb over the eye of a hurricane could be used to counteract convection currents dates to the Eisenhower era, when it was floated by a government scientist.

    The idea keeps resurfacing in the public even though scientists agree it won't work. The myth has been so persistent that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. government agency that predicts changes in weather and the oceans, published an online fact sheet for the public under the heading "Tropical Cyclone Myths Page."

    The page states: "Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems. Needless to say, this is not a good idea."

     

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    About 3 weeks after Trump's 2016 election, National Geographic published an article titled, "Nuking Hurricanes: The Surprising History of a Really Bad Idea." It found, among other problems, that:

    Dropping a nuclear bomb into a hurricane would be banned under the terms of the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. So that could stave off any experiments, as long as the U.S. observes the terms of the treaty.

    Atlantic hurricane season runs until Nov. 30.

     

  2. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/briannasacks/greg-abbott-governor-letter-defend-texas-el-paso?bftwnews&utm_term=4ldqpgc#4ldqpgc

     

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    Dated the day before a white supremacist gunman opened fire at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart — known to be frequented by people in Mexican and Latino communities — killing 22 people, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sent a fundraising letter imploring Republicans to “take matters into our own hands” and “DEFEND” the state from immigrants.

    Marked Aug. 2, the mailer came stuffed in an envelope lashing out at Democratic lawmakers Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer for refusing to do anything about the “CRISIS on the SOUTHERN Border.”

    “45,000 illegal immigrants CROSSED into Texas,” the front of the envelope states in big red text. “THAT’S WHY WE MUST DO THIS...”

     

     

    sub-buzz-4240-1566587955-1.jpg?crop=1152

     

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    The letter, which was first reported by the Texas Signal, then begins, “If we’re going to DEFEND Texas, we’ll need to take matters into our own hands,” and again states that “45,000 illegal immigrants” were caught crossing the “Mexican border into Texas.”

    Comparing that number to entire populations of Texan cities, the governor lashed out at Washington, DC, lawmakers, saying they refuse to work with president Trump to secure the border.

    He then called out “radical socialists like [Rep.] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” insinuating that the “Democrat machine” wants to “turn Texas blue.”

    “If they can do it in California, they can do it in Texas — if we let them,” he wrote, asking for donations to help thwart the looming “disaster” and “DEFEND TEXAS NOW.”

     

     

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    The two-page letter hammered the same flagrant, false, anti-immigrant rhetoric Republicans, emboldened by Trump, have been touting for years: that good, “law-abiding” Americans are in danger as “drug traffickers and violent gangs swarm our border.”

    He wrote, it’s up to Texan residents to take a stand and “FIGHT BACK” against the liberals and the media, who do nothing “when innocent young Americans are murdered at the hands of those who should have never been in our country in the first place.”

    Although the Houston Chronicle points out that Republican strategists say the mailer is a normal example of a fundraising rallying cry, residents and Texan Democrats say this type of inflammatory, sensationalized language is resulting in an increased hatred and violence toward Mexicans and Latinos.

     

     

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    • Like 1
  3. 10 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

    Is he taking his bimbette daughter along to fill in for him during some meetings with other world leaders?

    Dude.

    He would pimp her out in exchange for some kind of political win.  Because he sure as hell isn't getting any wins the past few weeks, and odds are extremely high he's gonna leave this meeting without any wins in his pocket.

  4. I'm anxiously awaiting our resident Trump-suckers to come along and let everyone how just how great a job the President is doing.  They were all so proud just a few weeks ago.  I'm sure their chests are swelled with pride this evening with the President "ordering" American companies around, sinking the Dow Jones, increasing tariffs on China in retaliation for their imposing tariffs, and doing his best to bring on a recession.

     

     

  5. 27 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

    I've never understood why anyone would think his income tax returns would represent the truth in any way, shape or form.

    Pretty much.  I'm still in the camp he wouldn't want them out because they are going to show he's not nearly as wealthy as he says he is.

    I'm pretty certain his lifestyle is bankrolled by the Trump Organization, and he's received zero compensation for his "duties" over the years.

  6. 2 minutes ago, Mojo Hand said:

    While I certainly don't think he's above stock manipulation, I don't think he's smart enough to pull it off.  I think he's really just sitting in front of a TV with his phone, totally unhinged, reacting without forethought.  Maybe he coordinates some of his tweets for personal stock gain, but I don't think this is that.  He really is severely mentally ill. 

    But you see, since no one has any accounting of his income taxes, we have no idea if he's personally benefiting from the market or not.

    3D Spock Chess going on here.

     

     

  7. Just now, 4th&Five said:

    G7 is going to be...interesting.  Going somewhere he doesn't want to be, surrounded by people that fucking hate him and are all much smarter than him.  We should get some real crazy tweets/

    I'm to the point where he will show up, maybe hit a photo op, then leave and tweet he left because everyone there is anti-American or refuses to pay their NATO tax or is mean to Russia or whatever.  The MAGA faithful will cheer him on.  The rest of the world will shake their collective heads at this display of Presidential "behavior".

     

     

  8. 1 minute ago, Mo Horn said:

    He's a fucking idiot; there's just no other way to put it. 

    Yeah, but see, to those who only watch the nightly Fox propaganda broadcasts and only read their carefully curated Facebook and Twitter statements, this is the reason the Dow dropped.

    And that's all that matters.  Oh, he's speaking to the human race, but the message is solely for the true believers.  

    • Like 1
  9. 5 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

    If something did happen it’s not like we’re going to let trump name a nominee in an election year right, Mitch?

    Mitch has the press release ready and waiting for the moment she passes proclaiming the Senate is ready to begin deliberations on whoever the President chooses.

     

     

  10. 15 minutes ago, Quagmire said:


    Can’t sister just call and pretend to be her ?

    Sure.  Then they ask for the PIN.  Tried this.

    AT&T considers a PIN far more valuable than anything on this planet.  Seriously, before sister had full POA, she called aunt's credit cards, pretended to be her, and with some cursory info (SSN, address, whatnot) credit card companies were far more helpful.  With AT&T, the almighty PIN code gets in the way.

    Hey, I do get it---AT&T doesn't want to make it easy to add or change services, etc.  But with a POA, that should be more than enough. 

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