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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
The only thing the President carries on their person a one-time use card which has codes used to prove their identity to the DoD. These cards are switched out regularly. If a President wanted to launch a nuclear attack they’d use their card in conjunction with the communications gear in the nuclear briefcase to tell the DoD which war plan (out of a set of pre-planned ones) they want to execute. The briefcase is carried by a military attaché, who has a legal obligation to refuse unlawful orders as a military officer.
There is no “nuclear button”. The codes themselves are essentially useless to anyone who isn’t the President, and the President can only pick from a list of preset war plans, not dictate the nature of the strike in particular. When you hear about presidents calling up the joint chiefs and asking for a nuclear strike, what they’re asking for is for new strike packages to be added to the “menu” they can use the football to choose from. The President cannot order a nuclear strike via any method other than the football.
Edited by archonspeaks on Oct 16th 2020 at 12:39:07 PM
They should have sent a poet.Yeah, the thing with Nixon is that he was known for getting drunk and demanding a bunch of stupid shit, and then either forgetting about it or changing his mind in the morning after he'd sobered up. There was an informal process in place to keep that from causing problems, including a decision to basically ignore him if he ordered a nuclear strike when he'd been drinking.
Obviously, this was all extremely high-level stuff and was certainly not public knowledge at the time.
Edited by NativeJovian on Oct 16th 2020 at 3:40:50 PM
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.Yeah and a strike plan is a big complicated document that needs lots of consultation on it, even if Trump somehow got the making of a strike plan to happen, the Do D could easily drag their feet long enough that he’d be out of office before it was ready. That’s assuming that the plan doesn’t get started on and then scraped because the Do D ‘accidentally’ came under the belief that Trump didn’t want the plan anymore.
You can fight bureaucracy with enough determination and authority, but it’s near impossible to win that fight unless you first spend decades changing the bureaucracy to somewhat agree with you. To get an actual madman nuclear launch to happen Trump would probably have to personally work out who has the unlock codes for a specific group of nuclear devices, find that person (or persons) and personally order them to hand him the unlock codes, then personally go to the people at the physical nuclear device and personally order them to input the unlock codes and launch the devices at a target.
And he’d have to pull all of that off without anyone knowing about it and scuppering the entire plan by ‘randomly’ choosing to change either who has the codes or the codes themselves. Even then he’d still have it all fall apart if one person he’s giving personal specific orders to either refuses or plays a bureaucratic game.
Edited by Silasw on Oct 16th 2020 at 7:52:25 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranDemocratic Super PAC cancels further ad buys in Colorado senate race.
They have more money than they know what to do with in Colorado. Hickenlooper's lead is so strong and he already has so much cash, the PAC is redirecting funds to where there will be more bang for the buck.
With the Trump vs. Biden ratings, I already saw a headline earlier claiming that Biden's was due to people watching on multiple devices to give him an artificial boost. I wish I was kidding.
And in Cluster F-Bomb news, the Trump administration has formally rejected California's request for $350 million in disaster relief funding
.
California asked for federal assistance in recovering from fires that have ravaged nearly 2 million acres – the Creek Fire in Fresno and Madera counties, the Valley Fire in San Diego County, San Bernardino County's El Dorado Fire, the Slater Fire in Siskiyou County, the Oak Fire in Mendocino County and the Bobcat Fire in Los Angeles County.
The Creek Fire alone – the state's largest-ever single fire, not counting fire complexes — damaged more than 550 structures and forced nearly 25,000 people to evacuate, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Edited by ironballs16 on Oct 16th 2020 at 4:33:23 AM
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"Folks, remember. For our collective sanity, there is little point in worrying about what Trump will do next to top his horribleness. Either he will or he won't, and the way we stop him is to vote and, as necessary, to make our voices heard.
There is every likelihood that this administration will get worse before January, especially if it loses. Trump and his cronies will pull out all the stops to dismantle the institutions of government in order to make it as difficult as possible to get things back to normal. We shouldn't be fatalistic, but we should be realistic.
There's also the possibility that, having lost, Trump will fold completely, give up trying to break things, and trade his resignation for a pardon from Mike Pence. If that happens, I don't think Pence would pursue a scorched-earth policy, but the Senate might.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
x4
An election less than 3 weeks away and an apparent willingness to blockade relief because of the President's personal grudge would be an unmitigated disaster for the GOP - so I find it likely that even McConnell would have a few words in private with Trump over it.
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Update - apparently Rep. Tom McClintock, one of the few GOP Reps from California, was the first to tweet about Trump reversing course
- and I wouldn't be the least surprised if Trump tried to hog the credit for overriding FEMA's decision in the matter. The GOP Reps wasted no time in blaming FEMA for the initial decision.
He said elected officials were working on the administration to reverse the decision. “Quite frankly, FEMA just blew it," he said. "The fact of the matter is that they are reconsidering now. There's a lot of effort from elected representatives and we think that there's a high probability that they will recognize the problem and will fix it."
Sounds about right - always willing to cast blame on the Gub'mint while accepting no responsibility for why the government might fail to work.
Edited by ironballs16 on Oct 16th 2020 at 4:59:24 AM
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"I strongly recommend you back from this view because it implies that malice is greater than stupidity. Both go hand in hand here. The idiots really do believe Democrats are vampires.
Official orders were passed down from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to not obey any orders for nuclear war from the President and instead consult with the chiefs of staff.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Oct 16th 2020 at 2:30:22 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.@Charles Phipps Yes-and-no. I'd argue their conspiracy theories, while genuinely held, are essentially a justification for their political agenda and what they want to do.
This is worth keeping in mind when dealing with them and similar groups like Flat Earthers. Their actual beliefs about how the world works exist primarily to justify their conclusions. This is a big reason why you can't beat them just on factual grounds: They're merely a servant, even if you did force one to admit they were wrong, they'd just make up a new cosmology that justifies their actions.
Leviticus 19:34
x2 I'd say its more a 90/10 situation. 10% of Qanoners, the founders and the few who know how to bank off of it, really just want to arrest and kill Democrats with Vampires as a mask, while 90% of Qanoners literally believe in the cabal of Pedophilic-Cannibalistic-Vampires, that are also Jewish, control the entire world in order to maintain power, and can pull stunts like giving Osama Bin Laden a body double for reasons (and yes, this is a real Qanon belief
).
Edited by DingoWalley1 on Oct 16th 2020 at 5:40:25 AM
I feel this argument falls into something I've had to deal with regarding people who can't believe religious people really believe. Sane Cannot Comprehend Crazy (and they're not mentally ill—they're just assholes with stupid beliefs).
The thing about the three conmen who popularized Qanon is they're making 200K a month. They're not even necessarily true believers. That's just "betray your country" money.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Oct 16th 2020 at 2:59:51 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.This isn’t exactly correct. The Secretary of Defense at the time supposedly had an “understanding” with White House employees that military orders be vetted by him before Nixon picked up a phone, but there was never anything on paper and the Joint Chiefs were never involved, since they’re military personnel who have an obligation to obey the President. At the time there was very little debate on the legality of a nuclear first strike.
They should have sent a poet.One billion dollars in debt and still intimately involved in your business operations is still a national security level of debt. It both gives a lot of leverage over the president and is a gateway to using government powers to avoid the ramifications of said debt.
The thing about cults like Qanon is, it doesn't matter whether or not members believe the conspiracies. Cults brainwash their members by constantly changing the story, changing the rules and beliefs, until the victim breaks down and simply accepts anything they are told as gospel truth. The whole point is to break followers down into believing anything the leaders say without question or resistance.
So if the cult leaders say Democrats are vampires, it doesn't matter whether or not the cultists believe that, but they will do anything in their power to defend that idea.
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The thing is, Charles, this is not a religion with a set of clearly defined beliefs and rules, it is a cult where beliefs and rules are constantly changing in order to break down members into blind obedience. In a way, a cult is the antithesis of religion: whereas religious believers believe in something, cultists believe in nothing and everything at the same time.
And the weirdest thing is, this is a cult without an actual leadership. It is basically a self-sustaning system of cultist indoctrination, but without a goal that would normally be provided by its leadership. This is why Qanon (and its predecessors) latched on to Trump: the movement has identified him with the mythical Q, itself a conspiracy theory, and declared Trump its leader. And while I very much doubt Trump is actually Q (I don't think he gives two shits about such things, frankly), Qanon still uses him to gain purpose, to eke out "secret orders" from Trump to give a target to their anger and frustration. And Trump, desperate as he is for something, anything that can give him an advantage, is willing to lean into this, even though he has no real understanding of what Qanon is or what they want.
Edited by Redmess on Oct 16th 2020 at 1:50:55 PM
Hope shines brightest in the darkest times

The nuclear codes aren’t something you can sell, there’s no website you put the codes in on that lets you launch nukes (the closest equivalent is the nuclear football, which is a physical object the secret service have), there are hundreds of redundancies in place, with the final unofficial one being the human at the end of the chain who will ask what the hell is going on if they get a launch order when the world is relatively calm.
When it comes to state secrets Trump could actually sell, my expectation is that they’ve been kept from him the entire time, not via hard barriers but by soft ones, he can’t sell a secret he doesn’t know exists.
If Trump isn’t told a state secret (nominally because he didn’t ask) then he can’t sell it, likewise if he asks the relevant people can always ‘forget’ to get back to him with the answer, he’s not exactly know for his follow through.
Hell even if he pushes to be told a state secret, I suspect that the relevant people could tell him in such a way that he doesn’t understand what he’s been told, and is thus unable to pass the secret on.
I’m pretty sure the president doesn’t actually have the codes physically, he has a secret service agent with him that has the codes (I think the codes are part of what’s in the football). So all it would take it for the secret service to refuse to open the football without good reason, or even the military to agree that if the football calls they’ll go “sorry who’s this?” unless there’s a good reason.
I know the secretary of defence under Nixon agreed to not confirm a launch order actually came from Nixon (without conformation the order isn’t acted on) if Nixon gave said order while drunk.
Edited by Silasw on Oct 16th 2020 at 6:55:06 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran