Except that's literally how the executive branch works. Are you not familiar with this thing we call the Cabinet?

This is straight-up a citizenship test question. It's the baseline of knowledge you need to be an informed voter. Don't tell me you don't know how executive branch appointments work. Even the core advisory committee that would help with further appointments is picked by the president.

I mean, if you want something more insider, check out Condi Rice's biographies: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=21vqpZywXWgC&source=productsearch&utm_source=HA_Desktop_US&utm_medium=SEM&utm_campaign=PLA&pcampaignid=MKTAD0930BO1&gl=US&gclid=CIievb7cpc4CFcWQNwodtNoE_A&gclsrc=ds

Or those of any other Cabinet Secretary. It gives you an idea of how things actually work outside "I bet there's a special secret committee that does X" speculation-land.

Edited 8/3/2016 17:01:56

Yes, they are appointed officially by the president without confirmation of the senate. I'm just saying, I doubt he's the one personally choosing them, even if he does appoint them.

Edited 8/3/2016 17:04:52

This twitter feed seems extremely relevant.

https://twitter.com/noonanjo

Former national security adviser for Jeb and Mitt. Previously sat in a Minuteman Launch Control Center (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_launch_control_center#Minuteman_facilities) as an officer of USAF at FE Warren AFB.

Oh well, didn't see this above (didn't bother reading the Trump-ian drivel somehow justifying his position/candidacy)

Edited 8/3/2016 17:13:48

There's no governmental mechanisms for him to receive advice. Anything he's told would be ad-hoc, and at that point we're relying on Trump having good judgment. Without the baseline of knowledge he clearly lacks, I seriously doubt that he'd be able to properly process advice.

Look at Manafort, for example. Or Lewandowski. These were/are his biggest advisors, and Trump clearly didn't/doesn't listen to them. They've got no mechanisms to hold him in check.

Manafort's worked for actual dictators before- Mobutu Sese Seko, etc. And yet Trump's the one who finally managed to break his spirit.

@Sharpe: haha beat you to it :P

Edited 8/3/2016 17:08:47

Don't worry, it can get way worse.

Vladimir Zhirinovski, leader of the "Russian Liberal Democratic" party. He said, if he was president, that he would nuke Chechnya the next time there would be restistance there. He also advocates for blasting a warhead in the middle of the Marmara Sea to beget a harbour wave that would kill millions of Istanbuler, after Turkey shot down that Russian skyglider. He's publically threatened to kill his opponents, and he has gotten in fistfights with a few (such as the dead B. Nemtsov). He upholds deporting all Jews from Russia, as well as Chinese, Japanese, and Turkic folk. He's banned from entering Kazakhstan.

But don't worry, his foreign policy is awesome.

>RESTORE THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE BORDERS 1867

He's said "Alaska would be a great site to put Ukrainians in", and that the Baltic countries would be great for throwing away core waste.

He also doesn't want women as politic leaders, saying this of Y. Tymoshenko, old prime minister of Ukraine: "Yulia Tymoshenko, I'm sorry, is a woman. I don't like them...Women are more compliant, and it's dangerous."

During the bird flu scare of 2006, he upheld arming every Russian grownup with a gun and shooting every bird they see.

Just awful bloke. At least Trump is not directly upholding the wielding of core bombs or kicking out all blackskins from America or something.

Edited 8/4/2016 04:36:20

Okay, this thread was originally about why we cant just use nukes, but got derailed by another US-American Politics talk.

I agree that we should drop some nukes over the USA :)

Nagasaki and Hiroshima look so fancy, dont they? :)

Cata, this thread was originally about the use of nukes as a segue to American politics discussion. The only reason it was posed in the first place was due to the report that Trump repeatedly asked that very question. It was not derailed but instead went to the exact destination that the original poster, knyte, desired.

having nukes and not using them is what maintains world peace

I dont know if the discussion is still about the nukes, but i will add some points:

1- The movie "Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb" is a funny and interesting thing about this question - the one that have my image <- ;

2- The game Fallout, and its story about a world after nukes;

3- Noone has any idea what will happen after nuking. It may lead us to other bombs, contamination all over the atmosphere, huge instabilities, wars.. the possibilities are just one worst then the other.

MAD.

The Cold War may be over, but we still realize how dangerous nuclear weapons are. I believe there's something in the UN about not using them, as well as just the fact that the countries that would use nukes would eventually use them on each other.

A threat of violence is as powerful as actual violence, because you can get the enemy to comply without wasting attacks.

Also, the pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have made it clear how dangerous nukes are.

We've advanced so far in nuclear weaponry that the destruction a single bomb does would dwarf the two used on Japan.

I don't think MAD is a thing. We've gotten very very close to total warfare in the Cold War, in some cases, taking direct disobedience from the protocol to avoid full-on warfare. Radar bogeys heading to Moskva, core underwaterboatmen being fired at by American flares mistook for torpedos, and the truth that this was precisely the same argument wielded by "the Great Illusion" in 1911, saying that no big war would come about in the great European strengthes, as it would beget so much wrecking with the machineguns (https://youtu.be/-ucjJ7SQ5eY?t=5m).

Vladimir Zhirinovski

That's what I'm talking about. These folk gain credibility whenever America expands east with a new base. There's Eurasian nationalists, national communists, this insane prick, and they're all gaining traction when America moves farther east. It's going to be bad when a president that's proven she's poor at planning in the long term (Libya, Syria) decides that Limonov or Vladimir went too far and kills a bunch of folk and starts a war.

Contradictory to common belief, nukes are devices of peace not war.

For every war a nuke cause, there are mathematically v infinite wars a nuke ended. This is excluding ww2 because the use of nukes was flamboyant and irrational at best. This is all to say that up till now nukes have never caused a war, but have stopped many like in India and Pakistan or in the Cold War.

It's a shame that some want them to become devices of war.

but have stopped many like in India and Pakistan

They didn't stop the Kargil War

To be fair, Pakistan didn't have the capability to nuke India at the time of the Kargil War. India just called their bluff.

Seems like a fair question. If a country is going to invest billions of taxpayer's money into nukes instead of merit goods, at the very least we should be dangling the threat over our enemy's head. Mutually assured destruction, huh.

A nuke can't stop a war.

Yes, but it can prevent a war.
For decades, the threat of it's own destruction have prevented world's superpowers from waging war at each other.

Edited 8/4/2016 08:27:03

a quote of one of my frieds

''one nuke, bye bye world''