The Joe Biden Drops Out thread

[BlackBellamy]

Originally Posted by Jimjam [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Doesn’t that mean it is in most politicians’ favour to install as impotent and manipulable president as possible? Doing so removes a check/ balance against them self?

You want a President with charisma and strong personality who can unite the party and move legislation forward. Even though it's the responsibility of Congress to advance legislation, they have abdicated that (the useless gits!) and depend on the President to lead the charge, to unite the wings and to hammer out a compromise. This is why the President is always involved in forming the legislation instead of just enforcing it like he's supposed to according to the Constitution.

The Congresscritters depend on passing legislation they can crow about back home how effective they are so they get re-elected. They need a strong President to make that happen.

Also, the President usually serves as the Party leader so you need some strength there too.

[Danth]

I haven't yet talked to a single person face-to-face who regards Biden as a serious candidate. Pretty well everyone on both "sides" seems to agree the man's a front.

Danth

[Daloon]

He literally sniffs little girls.

[Castle2.0]

Sorry, Joe sold us out to China. He is weak on China. For 8 years they had no plan to deal with China - can't deal with another 2.0.

Trump is bad on so many levels, but at least he is taking the right approach on China that prior admins and other countries (Germany!) haven't done.

Let's not even get into Hunter, yikes.

Source: 10+ years living in China, fluent Mandarin speaker, reads up on current events and economics

[Kich867]

Originally Posted by Castle2.0 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Sorry, Joe sold us out to China. He is weak on China. For 8 years they had no plan to deal with China - can't deal with another 2.0.

Trump is bad on so many levels, but at least he is taking the right approach on China that prior admins and other countries (Germany!) haven't done.

Let's not even get into Hunter, yikes.

Source: 10+ years living in China, fluent Mandarin speaker, reads up on current events and economics

I'm not familiar enough with economics, but this seems well researched and thought out:

https://www.piie.com/blogs/trade-and...ed-enterprises

Essentially:

By signing a deal that left in place Chinese tariffs on tens of billions of dollars of American exports, Trump has relegated to the sidelines the buyers who determine nearly 75 percent of Chinese purchases of imported goods.

To summarize, the article goes on to explain that China might not reasonably be able to meet the trade agreement goal because the primary importers of our goods still have those tariffs in place, disincentivizing them from doing so. This would lead to China pushing their state-owned enterprises to pick up the slack, which makes their economy more state-owned which is potentially its own problem (apparently, again, genuinely ignorant of this sort of thing).

They suspect this may be a problem though because China's SOE's don't really import the goods we're exporting very much, the private sector does.

It's unclear to me though, what happens if China can't actually meet the agreement due to those conditions? Does anyone know if there's some language in the agreement that holds them accountable somehow if they can't?

Also, if someone could clarify, what are people's concerns about China's economy becoming more state driven than it already is?

[BlackBellamy]

Originally Posted by Kich867 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It's unclear to me though, what happens if China can't actually meet the agreement due to those conditions? Does anyone know if there's some language in the agreement that holds them accountable somehow if they can't?

Also, if someone could clarify, what are people's concerns about China's economy becoming more state driven than it already is?

SOEs are less efficient players because they cater to too many masters. If we were looking to destabilize China we would want to make them rely on these so that way their private sector is hurt and less able to compete on the world market. Whether they fully own up on their end is immaterial as long as they're given incentive to rely on less efficient producers for the next 'agreement'.

Our advantage is that even though they know this they are helpless to resist. Having your own protected market segment is such a goldmine they will convince themselves they can stop.

My concern is this will take too long to destabilize China by itself. I would prefer a more direct provocation. I've been playing Harpoon for a long time now and I'm quite sure China is a paper tiger. I think if we baited them in and then showed them a good time they would have a hangin hard time splaining how come everything was done blown up real good in under an hour. I can only dream.

Anyway, I see these agreements as salvos in the war. There will never be a meeting of the minds. The only future both systems envision is one where the other doesn't exist.

[Lune]

Originally Posted by BlackBellamy [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

SOEs are less efficient players because they cater to too many masters. If we were looking to destabilize China we would want to make them rely on these so that way their private sector is hurt and less able to compete on the world market. Whether they fully own up on their end is immaterial as long as they're given incentive to rely on less efficient producers for the next 'agreement'.

Our advantage is that even though they know this they are helpless to resist. Having your own protected market segment is such a goldmine they will convince themselves they can stop.

My concern is this will take too long to destabilize China by itself. I would prefer a more direct provocation. I've been playing Harpoon for a long time now and I'm quite sure China is a paper tiger. I think if we baited them in and then showed them a good time they would have a hangin hard time splaining how come everything was done blown up real good in under an hour. I can only dream.

Anyway, I see these agreements as salvos in the war. There will never be a meeting of the minds. The only future both systems envision is one where the other doesn't exist.

Gonna have to disagree with you there on China being a paper tiger. Their defense scheme is directly managed under a cohesive set of objectives and parameters, while the US has kinda evolved into a government-sponsored profit enterprise that produces a whole lot of assets that are ineffectual in modern war.

Consider the F-35 program which has been a colossal waste of money and produced a substandard fighter with a very niche role that would probably lose to 1 or 2 F-15's, and costs more than 20 F-15's. China and Russia both have highly advanced anti-ship missiles that we are nowhere close to being able to reliably defend against. (For an interesting foray into this, read about how many British ships got trashed by primitive Argentinian exocets in the Falklands War, and then imagine hyper advanced ship-killing missiles currently employed by Russia and China). It's highly unlikely American ships would be able to operate within 1,000 miles of the Chinese coast.

China may not yet have the precision manufacturing aptitude or R&D in place to produce the truly cutting edge hardware that we make in America, but corruption in the US has produced a fighting force that is so bloated, ill-suited, and ineffectual that I'm pretty sure we'd get roflstomped the way we routinely do in wargames.

In essence, the corruption of our politics is permeating every aspect of our civilization and turning it into shit.

[Woke Locc]

Originally Posted by Lune [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Gonna have to disagree with you there on China being a paper tiger. Their defense scheme is directly managed under a cohesive set of objectives and parameters, while the US has kinda evolved into a government-sponsored profit enterprise that produces a whole lot of assets that are ineffectual in modern war.

Consider the F-35 program which has been a colossal waste of money and produced a substandard fighter with a very niche role that would probably lose to 1 or 2 F-15's, and costs more than 20 F-15's. China and Russia both have highly advanced anti-ship missiles that we are nowhere close to being able to reliably defend against. (For an interesting foray into this, read about how many British ships got trashed by primitive Argentinian exocets in the Falklands War, and then imagine hyper advanced ship-killing missiles currently employed by Russia and China). It's highly unlikely American ships would be able to operate within 1,000 miles of the Chinese coast.

China may not yet have the precision manufacturing aptitude or R&D in place to produce the truly cutting edge hardware that we make in America, but corruption in the US has produced a fighting force that is so bloated, ill-suited, and ineffectual that I'm pretty sure we'd get roflstomped the way we routinely do in wargames.

In essence, the corruption of our politics is permeating every aspect of our civilization and turning it into shit.

You're supposed to lose war games, moron. That's the point.

[BlackBellamy]

Originally Posted by Lune [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Gonna have to disagree with you there on China being a paper tiger. Their defense scheme is directly managed under a cohesive set of objectives and parameters, while the US has kinda evolved into a government-sponsored profit enterprise that produces a whole lot of assets that are ineffectual in modern war.

I agree the procurement process was the greatest boondoggle, but when money printer go brrrrrr it's not really a prime concern. We'll do better next time, maybe. Operationally the plane is a monster.

The Department of Defense (DOD) has sunk so much money into the F-35 — which is expected to cost US$1.5 trillion over the 55-year life of the program — that the Air Force has taken steps to make sure that the unmitigated disaster that the F-35 has become does not happen again.

But despite these issues, US military pilots have given rave reviews to the F-35, claiming extraordinary battlefield situational awareness. Some experts say a wave of F-35s would decimate anything within an operational theater.

https://asiatimes.com/2019/07/stealt...vs-usafs-f-35/

Yes, pilots are raving about it.

In situational awareness, the F-35 is superior to all platforms, including the Raptor. I’d never been in an airplane that so effectively and seamlessly integrates information to tell me what’s going on around me—and not just from the radio frequency spectrum, but laser, infrared, electro-optical. That’s usually the first thing people notice when they get in the airplane. They know so much more than they ever knew before.

https://www.airspacemag.com/military...est-180971734/

Japan has ordered another 105 F-35 stealth fighters. This will cost $23 billion and include spare parts, including 110 engines and additional electronic and other accessories. With earlier purchases this new order will give Japan 147 F-35s. That large force of stealth fighters won’t be in service until the mid-2020s because of growing demand for F-35s and limited production capability. Japan will help by manufacturing some components and assembling their F-35s in Japan.

All this Japanese F-35 news was not welcome in China. Combined with South Korean F-35s, China now has to deal with over 300 F-35’s operating near its northern borders. In the 1990s Chinese support for an aggressive and unpredictable North Korea prompted South Korea to become a major developer, manufacturer and exporter of modern weapons. Now Japan, with a larger population and industrial base than South Korea has followed South Korean in an arms race with China.

Japan also asked to have its status as a F-35 upgraded from buyer to partner. That will mean Japan will build more components for F-35s, not just its own but for other customers as well.

https://strategypage.com/htmw/htproc.../20200731.aspx

Sure they have missiles and stuff. They need operational command and control to use them. They need working radars. Ours will by flying and nearly invulnerable, theirs are going to get turned into piles of rubble one after the other.

We have another advantage. We have have three giant unsinkable aircraft carriers parked on their borders; Taiwan, Korea and Japan. The former will be provide a nice soak-off, the latter will provide offensive capability from too many airfields for the Chinese to neutralize. We're building another one here which is conveniently just outside their effective missile range.

The Chinese defenses are all static. All those nice South China Sea islands are just sitting ducks. We can pull into range, launch a strike and leave with no repercussions. They should build another dozen targets for us like that. I've read how Van Riper cheated his way to victory, but when I wargame a fight with China I put all the assets I need at extreme range, launch overwhelming strike against target, and move out of range to rearm - because I'm not stuck in a tiny body of water, I have the entire world. After a week of this China has no ground-based radar left and all their 'helicopter' carriers and the rest of their surface navy have become new reefs. I do have some plane attrition and sometimes a carrier is disabled and a couple of frigates sunk to a sub. Oh well.

Chinese planes are held together with rice and dogma. Their J-series has trouble finding export market because no one trusts the thing to work right. Worst of all, their pilots have zero operational combat experience. They've never been over a hot zone or lit up for real, and any pilots who could pass that experience on are dead or irrelevant. This is a real problem with their armed forces. They have no experience with anything. They don't take their Navy through the Straits of Hormuz and do real battle drills. They don't fly over Syria and Iraq dodging AA fire and they don't get lit up by Iranian radar. They've never bombed Bosnia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Somalia. Their tanks only shoot at range targets. Their infantry storms building with cardboard cutouts. They don't fight a war like we do every 10-15 years.

Any conflict with China look for India to take what is rightfully theirs, further diluting Chinese power. It must suck to be surrounded by nations which totally hate you. I guess shouldn't act like a giant asshole. And China is asshole.

In two decades none of this will matter. Space Force will take care of it. You can't function if your life is inside a giant EMP.

[Gustoo]

Originally Posted by Castle2.0 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Sorry, Joe sold us out to China. He is weak on China. For 8 years they had no plan to deal with China - can't deal with another 2.0.

Trump is bad on so many levels, but at least he is taking the right approach on China that prior admins and other countries (Germany!) haven't done.

Let's not even get into Hunter, yikes.

Source: 10+ years living in China, fluent Mandarin speaker, reads up on current events and economics

Trump is terrible on china. Abandons our pacific alies in the treaty we started, demolishes our foreign service totally hamstringing our position across the globe, leaves china to expand their footprint in the south china sea where our alies typically depend on us to keep them in check. Literally worst possible fake tough on china guy ever.