Donald Trump loses Aircraft Carrier--this is NO JOKE
Donald Trump has done something a normal person would never do (although admittedly POTUS is not normal). It is something he would never do after playing golf at Mar-A-Lago, such as lose a golfball in the rough. No the Trumposaurus has now done something that boggles the imagination--even considering it's Trump who did it.
What did he lose? The the USS Carl Vinson.
For those of you who are not up on US admiralty, the Vinson is a huge aircraft carrier. Here are a few statistics
Pictures make more sense than dry statistics. Let's look at the Vinson from the front:
Even more impressive is when we compare the Vinson to familiar land-based structures:
So how did the Trumpopsaurus lose a huge floating city that cost more to build out than the city in which I live? Firstly, he plays golf more than half of all the weekends during which he has been in office, already rolling up a tab of $20 M and even Republicans are not happy about that.
He was hired to do a job, and that wasn't golf or selling time shares at resorts. It was to govern. The Trumposaurus now governs like Godzilla, breathing fire and flames onto existing protections we serfs have left remaining.
Want to know how he lost a huge floating military colossus? He did what every amateur golfer/president does--he didn't keep his eye on the ball (i.e., aircraft carrier).
Here's the REAL itinerary of the Vinson: at dock in Singapore on April 8, 2017
Then Trump was rattling sabers at North Korea for daring to exist, but he certainly was not sending a "very powerful" armada--"very powerful". Seems that some how the Vinson was heading south towards Australia for a few weeks until somebody tapped Trump on his head, telling him of the true facts. The Vinson, alas, was not headed to North Korea to threaten Kim Jun Un. Instead it was going to terrorize kangaroos.
This revelation did not penetrate Trump's limpid brain until 5 days after the Vinson got "lost".
MSNBC jumped on this story with nice maps (already displayed) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGS4qI1D6aM
Now, the Trump team has to play catch up with the missing Vinson, so he details "Chaos" Mattis (his preferred call sign--and now well-earned) to explain things. (1:55).
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vT5e8HQRSu8]
There may be a silver lining to this story of a totally inept president. First, soothe your fears, he is too incapable to be a war-monger when he can't even keep track of his weaponry. Therefore the Neocons will seek to depose him along with the #NeverTrump folks. He's getting a lately very rough treatment from fellow Republicans. The McCain-Graham wing is mad because he's not warlike enough. Other Republicans are mad at him for his self-aggrandizement at the expense of not only the taxpayers but taking care of governance.
Early on, I was skeptical that Trump will be impeached. Now I think it is inevitable--triggered not by the HillBots but by his base and the American people in general. His level of incompetence is staggering. If we're going to have a jingoist president, maybe we could draft Marine LePen. If she wins or loses in her election, maybe we could borrow her.
Trump will be a one-term president. Even his own party won't re-digest his bullshit a second time.
The Dumbocrats will be the recipients of Trump's incompetence by winning seats in Congress that otherwise they wouldn't have won in 2018. It appears as if the Jackass party will live until at least 2020.
Comments
It is what Pelosi and the rest of Dems are counting on.
It is why there is "no reason to change". She only needs to tweak how they present bullshit.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
You are correct but this is only a short-term policy
Yes but note:
That point was not lost on me
Gratuitous slap at lizards.
would have expected you to be more sensitive.
The water was cold so my thinking was slow
Lol, are we certain that he
Lol, are we certain that he was not getting a really 'grate' yuuuuuge personal deal from a sale of the carrier to some Australian/New Zealand billionaires planning on defending those NZ billionaire escape-plan 'get-aways' from the Poors, their rafts and their pitchforks When The Revolution Comes?
On the plus side, this (for whatever reason/lack of reasoning ability,) has at least delayed the triggering of the onset of Mutual Assured Destruction, since I'm pretty sure that the moment the crazed US Psychopaths That Be start firing off nukes at anyone/everyone, everyone else is going to throw everything they've got in our direction, because there simply is no other choice permitted to them and they'd do better to go down fighting.
And even a small regional war involving an exchange of today's more powerful, if smaller, nukes may well be sufficient to cause global dimming sufficient to kill off all oxygen-dependent life on the planet.
Of course, the 'geoengineering', pumping even more billions of tons (or whatever damage they have time to do, prior to Earth life's expiration point) of pollutants up into the stratosphere to block sunlight and shower down upon the Earth globally, (in order for polluting corporations to continue freely and massively pumping 'cost-cutting' industrial pollutants into the air, food and water, as this is 'cost-cutting'/more profitable for the corporations responsible for nearly all of the worst pollution/most damage,) will do that anyway, albeit more gradually and painfully, via the combination of reduced sunlight, also reducing oxygen production and the capture of pollutants (thus increased - and ever-increasing, since the resultant destruction of the ozone layer renders the sunlight required for planetary life deadly, making the lucrative-for-some-at-public-expense processes creating increased and perpetually increasing industrial ecological poisoning in order to maintain permanent sunlight deficiency 'difficult to stop') as well as drought increase, acidified water, universal toxic loads and dysfunction until death occurs, etc., along with, of course, increased susceptibility to disease among complex organisms generally.
What was I reading recently (pretty sure it was posted on/linked from a post on C-9,) about some lunatic wanting to explode a nuclear bomb on Mars to melt water so that they could grow vegetables (with radioactive water and unknown other and potentially toxic quantities, among other issues,) in order to 'feed the colonies' - where the owners will be their own arbitrary law free of any restraint?
These idiots base everyone else's survival on concepts taken from ancient speculative fiction and an absolute ignorance of basic biology, history and reality itself, yet they influence/run policy which is killing off life itself for soon-to-be-worthless profits all to accrue to themselves, so that they may perhaps briefly reign in a self-created hell wrought out of paradise lost...
It is these lunatic self-interests, not merely their political puppets, who must be cleaned out of policy and politics now, if life is to survive and civilization be regained.
How appropriate that this is playing now, as I write...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF_xdvn52As&list=RDEF_xdvn52As#t=133
Muse - The 2nd Law: Unsustainable
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Ellen, you're hard core
Sending the Vinson to NK was just for show. We have enough nuclear subs with oodles (that is a number greater than neurons owned by Neocons) of luscious nuclear ballistic missiles. Kim knows this. The US military knows this. The mighty armada is already at NK--on both sides of this peninsula. Just more Trump chest beating. But he can't find his ass with both hands if he can't find the Carl Vinson.
@Alligator Ed
Lol, also wondering if they'll be methane breathers by that time. If not now... s/
Threatening other people's countries - especially with massive military engines of death and destruction on their borders - is more than a show; it's a sign of rampant pathology.
Personally, I rather suspect that the neocons only possess neuroffs, which would certainly explain a lot.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Yes, more OFF than ON
Hey! Wait a minute. I saw this in a movie.....
"Just call me Hillbilly Dem(exit)."
-H/T to Wavey Davey
@Hillbilly Dem
Well, they seem to have come up with some form of feasible light-bending invisibility cover.
This doesn't copy well, but is, in any event, better read at source. And I don't much feel like trying to sort it out properly only to have it mess up in other ways, as often seems to happen.
https://georgetownlawjournal.org/articles/38/legality-of-invisibility-te...
The Legality of Invisibility Technology in Modern
Warfare
KAITLIN J. SAHNI*
... Put simply, Quantum Stealth is an invisibility cloak. Quantum Stealth
reportedly can render an object or person ninety-five to ninety-eight percent
invisible and displays few flashes of color when a person moves behind it.
4
As the President and CEO of HyperStealth explains, “Unless you walked right into
[the cloaked objects], you wouldn’t know they were there.”
5
Although the exact details of how this technology works are not publicly available (and reasonably so), the basic concept is that the fabric forces light waves to bend around the
cloaked object.
6
The shield is passive technology, meaning that it works without cameras, batteries, lights, projectors, or mirrors, making it relatively lightweight and inexpensive to produce.
7
Additionally, it protects the cloaked object against detection by infrared and thermal optics.
8
Granted, Quantum Stealth is still a work in progress. Environmental conditions, such as background color and lighting, continue to have a pronounced effect on its efficiency in minimizing background distortion.
9
Nevertheless, Quantum Stealth is a significant advancement in invisibility technology designed specifically for military use. According to HyperStealth, the U.S. Government has pledged financial support for the Quantum Stealth project, primarily
for use in U.S. Special Forces operations,
10
and both the United States and Canada have classified the material.
11
In late 2014, a team of researchers at Rochester University unveiled the
“Rochester Cloak,” a three-dimensional, continuously multidirectional invisibility technique that makes objects seemingly “disappear” within a designated
area.
12 ...
Some time back, there was a news clip (which I now can't seem to locate, probably due to ongoing search issues and perhaps even more likely, to my using the wrong search terms) showing a distorted (but obviously human, going by the movements,) blur attempting to cross a busy road near woods, which looked to me like a probable military field test of the light-bending invisibility material DOD had been developing and also planned to use on planes. Haven't been following this at all, though.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Ya Sure You Betcha
Right, and I have this surefire way to get rich in Reno ...
PR, I invite your ideas on my comment below yours
This is not as far-fetched as it sounds
I have seen a Japanese video of a man walking wearing a garment which projected images from his right side to his left side so that he would not appear to be there. Obviously this was not a passive system as it required active imaging and optical transfer to the emitting source on the opposite side of the body.
A proof of light-bending as predicted by Einstein decades ago was finally proved a few years ago when astronomers detected the phenomenon when light from a star was deflected by an intervening star. Obviously that required a huge magnetic/gravitational field to accomplish. I cannot imagine what a passive device would be able to do that. It would require two-way passive imaging of each fiber making up the cloak, such as a fiber-optic cable flexible enough to allow reasonable mobility.
Meta materials and a negative index of refraction
For some time now laboratory demonstrations of cloaking have drawn a lot of excitement and speculation. So far successful cloaking has been demonstrated for very selective frequencies for objects up to a few millimeters2 cross-section.
Here is a top secret bit of information: If someone actually makes a real "Harry Potter", or "Lord of the Rings" cloaking cloak the rest of the scientific community would be on it like [redacted]. The point is the only way the technology could be kept secret would be for the inventor to not share its existence with anyone. Stated another way, the only real secret is: That it can be done.
I spent a summer at Los Alamos sans security clearance. I learned all sorts of secrets. Scientists are incapable of keeping secrets. It's in there DNA to "spill the beans", as it were.
Thanks for your response, PR, I was hoping you would.
Followed the link to find this footnote
Kaitlin was about to graduate (3 year) with a J. D. from Georgetown Law. Third year law students at Lincoln Law write papers like this. For example the space law students write papers for scenarios that may not occur for several years if ever, grounded in projections of what might happen in technology. Some law schools publish most if not all such papers in their Law Journals as Notes. That's what this looks like, particularly with the style of the "special thanks".
@PriceRip
Quite possibly, and you'd obviously know more about this than I, lol. It was stated to be a work still in progress, not claimed to be perfected by any means. And I'd certainly have no idea as to whether that specific project was a theoretical example used in a paper or something which represented a significant advance, which you seem to imply is likely not the case?
The company and product apparently exists, or at least has a webpage and claims up; apparently they wish to sell a modified and less functional version to the public, should this be possible.
(Dates given starting from 2010)
http://www.hyperstealth.com/Quantum-Stealth/
Frankly, I lack the energy or inclination at 2 AM to bother checking into any of this and in any event lack any knowledge in the area.
There does seem to be a great deal of work being done in this area, however, and it's nice to think that somebody's considering potential legal ramifications - even if legality no longer seems to be a concern for many governments...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Consider that these seemingly preposterous claims
When corrected, the Admin questioned the idea
of turning the fleet around!!! Another example of trying to cover Trump's idiotic statements.
Good post, I believe this story will go down in history as a major blunder.
To thine own self be true.
There is no way Trump can save face about his blunder
I'm still doubtful on this
As much as people hate Trump, that's not an indicator that they'll back Dems for congressional seats. The Dems stepped on a lot of people's toes (with cleats) while spitting in their faces, and they're insistent on continuing to do that (forcing Perez into the DNC, abandoning winnable seats in "red" states, etc). I think they may end up even weaker after 2018.
At this time, admittedly forecasting the 2018 race is like
Predicting 2018 election is like predicting a horse race
Only the vote will tell. Maybe the Greens or the DSA will seats. Who knows. If more people stay home than usual we will get same old same old.