Make Pyongyang Glass Again: On Reddit, Trump superfans cheer for a nuclear strike on N. Korea

To quote from the NPR article:

FBI agents raided former Trump campaign ChairmanPaul Manafort’s home, a spokesman for Manafort tells NPR’s Tamara Keith. Manafort’s name has come up as part of the U.S. investigation into Russia’s attempt to meddle with last year’s election.

The raid reportedly took place in late July, one month after Manafort registered as a foreign agent.

News of the raid in Alexandria, Va., was first reported by The Washington Post. A spokesman for Manafort, Jason Maloni, tells NPR:

“FBI agents executed a search warrant at one of Mr. Manafort’s residences. Mr. Manafort has consistently cooperated with law enforcement and other serious inquiries and did so on this occasion as well.”

Watching all of this unfold is nerve-racking.

Veterans may have supported Trump in part because we’ve had 15+ years of uninterrupted wars with no clear progress or success. Trump blames “liberal elites” for that, and hence pro-military people can have a “politically correct” reason for backtracking and admitting the Iraq War was a mistake.

@Diego Duarte
Personally, I call people “foolish” and hardly ever “dumb” or “stupid”.
A fool, after all, isn’t necessarily lacking in intelligence, but mostly in judgement and willingness to learn. Heck, I worked with mentally handicapped people and elderly people with dementia for years and even though some of them couldn’t use long words or keep a long conversation, they were some of the kindest and most emphatic being on the planet.

I’m old enough to remember when the major argument against Hillary was “She’ll get us into a nuclear war”.

Mueller and Schneiderman must be getting uncomfortably close. Expect more of this shit in coming days, to try to distract from the Russia news cycle. Trump was also tweeting about the “failing NY Times” earlier this week, so I wouldn’t be surprised if another big story is about to drop.

Meanwhile, Putin’s achieved one of his major goals: destabilizing and weakening the US. These chest-thumping Reddit putzes don’t realize how hard they’re getting played, and that they’re directly to blame for this new, unraveled America. They think they’re on the winning team. They’re convinced 45 is on their side, when even a cursory glance at his past reveals that he always, always, ALWAYS stiffs people. Contractors, customers, underpaid models, ripped-off Trump University students, Russian presidents interested in the lifting of sanctions…it’s how he does business. His standard MO: 1) refuse to pay people what he owes them 2) make them go to court 3) bankrupt them with legal fees 4) force them to accept pennies on the dollar 5) lower the settlement even further because they accepted too readily 6) proclaim himself a “tough negotiator”.

What makes his supporters think they’ll fare any differently?

@Alan

Interesting, thanks.

“…often just barrels on simple frames or concrete bollards”

Whoa….wow. Well, I guess that’s one way to do it. And if it’s just a big barrage to terrorize I guess they don’t need sophisticated targeting. I wonder if their air defenses are worth anything.

Recent TV show (within 10 years?) made the point that some of the “barns” in Switzerland were in fact hidden artillery mounts. I believe they still have an AFB tunneled into a mountainside. Swiss may be “neutral”, but good luck winning any battle to take them over.

@ pavlov’s house

I wonder if their air defenses are worth anything.

Don’t know anything about NK’s airforce, but supposedly they have the densest air defence system in the world. The bulk of that is locally produced copies of cold war Soviet stuff. In the last decade though they’ve worked on a much upgraded system based on Chinese technology. It’s mobile and has a pretty state of the art radar system. How that would fare against the B1, B2 and F-117 is anybody’s guess.

(And let’s hope it stays a guess)

So roughly 20% officers. They can vote for whoever they want and not make a huge difference in the overall force’s voting preference. I’m assuming you’re mostly teaching officers.

Good catch on enlisted *men*. Gah.

@JS
Yeah, we have those too in Austria. They put tank-towers in the middle of forests overseeing mountain passes with enough shells for the next decade. Impossible to find by any weather (needlewoods swallow heat) but with a very good sight on the nearby roads. You just shoot two tanks and the whole convoy stops because the surrounding area is impossible to maneuver with vehicles.

JS:

Recent TV show (within 10 years?) made the point that some of the “barns” in Switzerland were in fact hidden artillery mounts. I believe they still have an AFB tunneled into a mountainside. Swiss may be “neutral”, but good luck winning any battle to take them over.

There’s a photo gallery here of former Swiss artillery and bunkers.

Re: Conscription in NK

I heard somewhere that all North Koreans have 5-10 years of mandatory military training. If that’s true, I highly doubt they all become real reservian soldiers. That kind of training would be hugely expensive, and most of the able-bodied adult population couldn’t be mobilized anyway for practical reasons. They also couldn’t be all equipped in a way that makes any sense in a modern war.

Most likely, ordinary conscripts are just taught karate and obedience when they aren’t being used for whatever slave labor. Military is good for obedience training and propaganda infusion, and those must be in high demand in a country like NK.