THE ERA OF TRUMP

[StCapps]

I would submit; New START actually favours the United States, as it is primarily focussed on ICBM's/SLBM's, which Russia is heavily reliant upon, but treats strategic bombers as "one warhead" when they can actually carry dozens, and it doesn't cover tactical weapons such as B61 and Nuclear Tomahawk at all, which are the weapons the United States is most likely to employ, from SSN's, SSGN's, B-52's, B-1's, B-2's, and the forthcoming F-35's and B-21's.

The United States is extremely unlikely to employ Minuteman III for anything other than launch-on-warning, when the advantage the United States would be seeking would actually be counterforce, and in terms of counterforce, New START blunts the Russian retaliatory capability while not restricting US offensive capabilities at all.

Trump is going to portray any deal that he didn't personally negotiate as not being favorable to the US, if he thinks he can get more out of a new deal that he negotiates in the old deals place. Any deal that Trump negotiates while in office he will portray as being in the USA's favor.

Simple, yet effective.

[Smitty-48]

Whatevs, Lockheed Martin shareholders salivate at the prospects of a new arms race of course, so far Trump has gone from panning the F-35 to praising it, after meeting with Marilyn Hewson, so MIC Mavens are pleased with Trump's tendency to reverse himself at this juncture.

Trump could in fact turn out to be the biggest Russia Hawk since Reagan. <salivates>

[StCapps]

Whatevs, Lockheed Martin shareholders salivate at the prospects of a new arms race of course, so far Trump has gone from panning the F-35 to praising it, after meeting with Marilyn Hewson, so MIC Mavens are pleased with Trump's tendency to reverse himself at this juncture.

Trump could in fact turn out to be the biggest Russia Hawk since Reagan. <salivates>

Well I did predict in advance that Trump would flip on the F-35 being too expensive and just wanted credit for negotiating a better deal. He always intended on reversing himself that was baked into the cake from the outrageous opening offer.

It is a lot easier to predict Trump's actions if one simply stops assuming that Trump doesn't know what he's doing when he makes an outrageous opening offers that grabs people's attention and you start looking for the method behind the madness. Thankfully that method is elaborated on in a book the man wrote, and he isn't keeping it a secret at all. The fact that people know what he's doing, doesn't decrease it's effectiveness to any meaningful degree.

It's like trying to call a good bluffer in poker, the fact that you know they are well known and effective bluffer just makes it easier for them to bluff you effectively on the regular. That's Donald Trump.

[Smitty-48]

Well I did predict in advance that Trump would flip on the F-35 being too expensive and just wanted credit for negotiating a better deal. He always intended on reversing himself that was baked into the cake from the outrageous opening offer.

Oh indeed, the idea that the Air Force would ever settle for Super Hornet was clearly a non-starter.

Mind you, the better deal he negotiated was simply to buy more of them;

Hewson; "If you buy more, the price comes down and we hire more people"

Trump; "Done"

[StCapps]

Oh indeed, the idea that the Air Force would ever settle for Super Hornet was clearly a non-starter.

It is one of the clearest examples of:

1) Outrageous Opening Offer
2) Pivot Towards The Center
3) End Up Getting More Of What Your Side Wanted

Pivoting after the outrageous offer makes you seem more reasonable by comparison to your former "extreme" self and the eventual deal you end up getting is better than if you had started negotiating closer to the center than the outrageous opening offer. If you want to sell a product at higher price then you start high and negotiate down from there, if you want to buy a product at a lower price then you start low and negotiate up from there.

Any negotiator worth their salt knows how to properly employ this tactic when the strategic situation calls for it's use. Trump is just a better negotiator than most politicians and unsurprisingly is more effective at employing the tricks of that trade than they are when he does so.

[Smitty-48]

Trump didn't actually get anything "more" though, Lockmart got everything it wanted, but the price coming down and more workers being hired was baked into the cake of the block buy, Trump didn't negotiate a better deal, all he did was take the deal that Lockmart has had on the table for awhile now.

[StCapps]

Trump didn't actually get anything "more" though, Lockmart got everything it wanted, but the price coming down and more workers being hired was baked into the cake of the block buy, Trump didn't negotiate a better deal, all he did was take the deal that Lockmart has had on the table for awhile now.

Well he'll claim he got a better deal whether it is actually the case or not, and a lot of people will believe him because the price came down and more workers got hired after he made a big stink. They don't realize all of that was already baked into the cake and he's just being an opportunist by taking credit. Trump is pretty good at taking credit for things he had nothing to do with, if his track record thus far is any indication.

[Smitty-48]

Indeed, Trump can make it look like he negotiated a better deal with alternative facts, and I don't think Lockmart has a problem with that at all, Lockmart wants it to be a good news story, but in reality, there's no margin in the F-35 right now, the margin comes at the end when they have built 2400 of them, so what Lockmart wants is block buys, to entrench the F-35 beyond the point of no return, in order to shut down the Boeing Super Hornet production line, at which point Lockmart has the market cornered.

[StCapps]

Indeed, Trump can make it look like he negotiated a better deal with alternative facts, and I don't think Lockmart has a problem with that at all, Lockmart wants it to be a good news story, but in reality, there's no margin in the F-35 right now, the margin comes at the end when they have built 2400 of them, so what Lockmart wants is block buys, to entrench the F-35 beyond the point of no return, in order to shut down the Boeing Super Hornet production line, at which point Lockmart has the market cornered.

So buy Lockmart y'all, they taking over. Entrenchment ftw, Smitty needs a new truck.

[jbird4049]

Remember when I told you this legal wrangling all seems quite odious to about half of the American population? This is one of those cases.

If letting foreigners in here on a visa for just one day means we can't send any of them back, even when their demographic represents a threat to our people, or we don't really have the jobs to spare and the welfare funds to spend on them, then we should just close immigration down completely.

This type of legal bullshit is what makes me want to shut down the entire federal government and start over.

And it's equally true that there's a substantial number of folks who care about seeing that the Constitution isn't violated. To my thinking, that's a little more substantial than some "legal wrangling." Had Trump taken the time to have the OLC review the order, I'm fairly sure he wouldn't be in this bind.

I would add that he's already talking about amending the order.

If you have a green card you are supposed to be a permanent lifelong resident, unless you do something like terrorism. It does take a few years to get it.

This annoys me about politics, too many people on all sides saying we don't need no stinking laws, or justice, or even common sense, we wanna!