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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
@Captain, not quite. As far as we know, the only time the nuclear codes (on either side) were brought out was after the Cold War (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident)
. During other periods of tension, launch procedures didn't get that far/didn't go beyond elevated alerts.
The President doesn't actually have that much direct power. They can't make laws (that's Congress), can't declare laws illegal (that's the Supreme Court) and are generally not given the tools to turn themselves into a dictator. For, well, good reason. This is one of the main reasons Trump is so utterly unconvincing to anyone who understands these things: even if you agreed with his goals, he promises a lot of things that aren't within the power of the President. You might even say he doesn't understand what the job actually entails.
That's not to say the President is powerless—they're in charge of the "get shit done" branch of government—but a lot of their time will necessarily be spent convincing other people to do things.
I sort of miss when Chretien was Premier of Canada.
edited 19th Oct '16 8:57:22 PM by Ghilz
And now for something completely different:
Taco trucks build wall in front of Trump's tower in Vegas to protest him
.
About the abortion thing: my mom pointed out that what Trump was describing wasn't actually an abortion. It was a really exaggerated c-section. Because no one gets an abortion that close to the due date unless the fetus is already dead and killing the mother, but c-sections really aren't that rare around that time-frame, and in a really technical sense, a c-section is a type of abortion. It does terminate the pregnancy, but the baby is viable at that time, so it lives just fine.
edited 19th Oct '16 9:15:00 PM by Zendervai
Clinton actually pointed that out, as well. She said Trump's scenario was extremely unlikely, and very far from representative of even a so-called "late-term" abortion. Those are done almost exclusively (and I almost didn't include "almost" there - even though I'm repeating it now) for medical reasons, and those reasons tend to be noticed and acted on much sooner.
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.@Caspase
And yet not a single one of those issues was caused by shooting down Russian planes. Making your point irrelevant. No one starts a nuclear war over a jet. They start it when their computer system tells them the other side has launched already. Which can happen even when we have good relations with everyone.
I believe in the American experiment. There is a lot wrong with this country, but there's a lot right too, and what's right has been preserved through the will of the people and the peaceful transfer of power. You can argue that the rules around our elections are broken, that things like gerrymandering imperils our democratic process, and I will absolutely agree, but, while politicians work to rewrite the rules to their benefit, the truth is that whatever rules are in place are honestly and earnestly followed. The vote itself is sacrosanct. Our whole system is set up to actually make widescale election fraud nearly impossible and every study ever done on voter fraud shows that it's vanishingly small. More people mismark their ballots every year than we have fraudlant votes cast.
So vote. I don't care who you are voting for but if we give up on our democratic process because we start believing that "it's rigged", if we abandon nearly 250 years of peaceful democracy because we've sold on the idea that our vote will be stolen, then we give up on one of the greatest steps forward for humanity and pave the way for strongmen and tyrants in an age where the world truly can't afford that.
-JP
It should work now. If not, go to their Facebook page. Should be the first thing up there as of this writing.
edited 19th Oct '16 9:25:17 PM by tclittle
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."Well I got preached to by one of the unfortunately many Trump supporters on my Facebook friends list after the debate because I said Trump lost his composure after Clinton mocked him about choking with Mexico (which he totally did).
Then again she apparently never went to college and got married and pregnant right out of high school so I'm not surprised. Like a lot of Trump supporters she can't even come up with a reason why Hillary is bad other than "Dur hur she lies a lot." Yeah, and Trump doesn't?
edited 19th Oct '16 9:30:14 PM by theLibrarian
Trump's resume (according to Team Clinton)
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.They usually try to avoid politics, but year what Trump's saying is dangerous.
The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.This says it all about what kind of year it is in politics
. Nice to see Ivanka may be as bad as dad in that regard.
I'm pretty sure that "mulatto" is a pretty racist way of saying mixed-race (specifically half-Black, I believe?).
Oh God! Natural light!

The war machine springing to life. opening one eager eye, and focusing in on the sky is not something that any sane person should want. note It's stunning how many people don't get an itchy trigger finger is a bad thing when the "gun" is really a nuke missile.
Those who forget the past...
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)