This is a 5 megaton bomb, which is a baby compared to some of the other bombs that have been tested. Rather scary.

The simple point is that as soon as we realized the capability of the Zero we easily and quickly designed a plane(s) capable of combating it.

The Yak-3 didn't enter the war until 1944, at which point the war had massively turned in Western Theatre. For the bulk of the conflict, they were using the Yak-1.

The Mig 25 and Mig 31 are both interceptors, they are designed to fire from distance and evade. The Su 35 is designed for Air Superiority. We have held the edge in our capabilities for years compared to them.

Every expert I know of is skeptical of China's claimed Railgun weapon. As to why they would bother mounting it and making claims, why not? It is brinkmanship, making us think they have more capabilities than they do.

The laser rifle is a crowd deterrent weapon. It would serve almost no purpose in infantry combat because it cannot kill. Yes, it can burn things and cause pain, but that is all. Again, this was claimed to be far more effective than experts think during our diplomatic arguments over China's use of blinding lasers on aircraft. We have no hard evidence of it's capability.

Yes, Russia could sell such a missile to our enemies versus using it directly against us. The problem is that as soon as they do so, the genie is out of the bottle. It will be reverse engineered quickly and could be USED AGAINST THEM. No country gives or sells away it's absolute top level weaponry except to it's most trusted allies. Allies which, for all intents and purposes, know that using such a weapon against another nation state risks full out retaliation against not only them but the country that sold it to them.

Our carriers are excellent mobile platforms, but they are not our only way of mounting air strikes. If we were somehow in a conventional war situation, we could easily fly over and base our aircraft in allied countries for combat. Most of our nuclear capable aircraft are not carrier launched anyway. Even if somehow all of our carriers were taken out and somehow our SAC bombers were destroyed as well, we would still have more than enough land launched and submarine launched nuclear warheads to easily blanket our enemies.

My points remain:

1. It is in the greatest interest of our enemies to boast about weapon capabilities even if they are not effective yet.

2. Most well regarded experts consider many of these weapons to either be still in the research stage, early production stage (IE not available for years), or they are wildly over hyped.

3. There is no logical reason for our enemies to use these weapons or proliferate them to their closest allies unless the weapons can prevent a nuclear response. Merely mentioning a weapon that would have such a capability creates a situation that could lead to nuclear war, like SDI did. I don't know if you recall, but I do clearly, how massively freaked out the Soviets got over our SDI claims. For two years they started threatening nuclear war as being inevitable if we continued on the path we were, all the while aggressively trying to destabilize our relations with our allies. 1983 to 1985 was pretty fucking tense, not Cuban missile crisis level maybe, but damn scary. Putin has acted similarly over our attempts to set up a missile barrier in former satellite states of Russia, although we still haven't got to the SHTF level of the early 80's.

Warren could be good. I'm not 100% sold that she can play the political game particularly well -- the "Pocahontas" thing should have been pretty gracefully manageable, but she kinda fumbled there a bit. Still, if the Democrat primary system can avoid being the train wreck it was leading up to 2016, I think she could go through that and prove that she's got what it takes. So, maybe.

I love Sanders, but he's divisive because of the "Socialist" thing, which is still quite a scary word for Cold War-era people. I think that is surmountable by calmly explaining exactly what his brand of Democratic Socialism means, but there's always going to be that easy Fox News narrative against him. So between that, age, and other factors, he's not a slam dunk.

Obama? I'm assuming you mean Michelle? Name recognition yes. Firsthand political experience, not so much. I don't think I've ever heard her say anything about wanting to get into politics directly.

I concur about Avenatti.

I hope the D's don't screw this up. All of these celebrity / political celebrity candidates seem risky and hit or miss to me. Might be better to go with a relative unknown -- somebody who's been through a hairy campaign or two (because we know Trump will attack and try to rattle) and knows how to walk the line between giving those attacks legitimacy by responding to them and seeming too milquetoasty by ignoring them. (Barack) Obama was quite good at having that calm outer demeanor while also having a quick wit and knowing when to get counter-jabs in. Seems like someone with those kinds of skills could really lure Trump into a bunch of pitfalls.

What about a celebrity politician like Warren, Sanders, or even Obama? They all have name recognition and experience.
Abonetti is like nominating Clinton, not exciting and a bit scary for many Democrats and independents, totally divisive, and a reason to go vote for Republicans. Please let's not make that mistake again.

Lots of good comments here... this might take a while so bear with me.

@Mordhaus, I haven't read that book but I'd be interested to see his sources. Everything I've googled suggests the rate is really low.

As for Ford, obviously, I can't say for certain whether she is telling the truth. She may even believe she is telling the truth and still be wrong. I think she was entitled to the benefit of the doubt in terms of an investigation. Of course, it's possible she was doing this for political reasons, but that feels like a stretch to me.

@bcglorf
In some ways, I can understand the desire to remove the vexatious complaints cause. Coming forward with a report of sexual assault is traumatic enough already.
A) you may not be believed
B) even if you are, you're in for an experience many assault survivors have described as "being raped a second time"
If you add the possibility that your complaint could potentially get you sanctioned if no one believes you, that's a pretty awful situation to be in.

Now, I don't necessarily agree with this stance, but I can understand it. I think you would need to clear a very high bar to prove a complaint is malicious. Presumption of innocence applies to the complainant also.

"The first 3 levels of sexual violence ALL involve no physical contact and are entirely verbal. "
100% fine with this. You can be a creepy sleazebag without touching someone and it's still not ok.

"lots of people are very much arguing that lives should be destroyed then and there"
Sorry, I just don't see it. That said, if there are people arguing for that... I'm against them.

"We'll even right songs to laugh at them when they complain."
This song was mocking the bullshit "it's a scary time to be a man" line, and deservedly so. I'm a man, and I'm not scared of being accused of sexual assault. None of my male friends are scared either. But it fucking crushes my soul to think of how many of the women in my life have ACTUALLY experienced some form of sexual assault (and that's just the ones I know of).

@scheherazade
Completely agree that eyewitness testimony is borderline useless in terms of evidence. Go back through my comment history... you'll see I even said I doubt you could prove Kavanaugh's guilt. All I've ever said is that it warrants an investigation. (sidenote: I totally agree with @vil and @Mordhaus on this... polygraphs are junk science, but Kavanaugh's boorish behaviour should have been grounds not to confirm him).

Regarding your friend that was raped by a girl: that's awful, and yes, we really have to stop this childish attitude of somehow thinking female on male rape is either funny or that the guy was lucky. But it is unrelated to this discussion.

@MilkmanDan, I pretty much agree with everything you've said.

Being falsely accused of rape would be terrible, even if you weren't convicted. No disagreement there at all.

What sort of evidence?

- Accusation/testimonial evidence?

- Or Physical evidence that is an invariant indicator of rape, that you can hold, see, measure, etc?



Anyone can accuse. That's effortless. Takes barely more energy than breathing.

(It's also effortless for a group of sour girls to gang up on a dude that upset them. Because "f that guy'. (That attitude isn't even rare.))



Physical evidence? People are convicted day in and day out of all sorts of things without physical evidence.

(Court is after all a popularity contest.)




My scary moment was when a cop detained me and told me he was going to charge me with : reckless driving, driving without a seat belt, and with threatening his life.

Why? Because I pulled up to a road block and asked him if I could drive past his road block to go home (which was a short way past the road block)... and he was having some emotional stability/triggering issues at the time, and he instantly turned red and went full on tirade mode.

Fortunately for me, after detaining me a few hours, some switch flipped in his head again and he just went to his car, got in, and drove off. Surreal.

So I asked myself :
If I had been charged, what would be the difference in court, vis-a-vis evidence, between it being a lie, and it being the truth?
Answer : No difference.

All he threatened me with was provable only by his word, and no evidence was required. I likely would have gone to jail, and had my life turned upside down... all on some person's grimace.

My view on evidence changed that day.
I will _NEVER_ convict anyone of anything, without physical tangible evidence that I can hold in my hand and see with my eyes, or at least run forensic tests on.
Testimony doesn't mean _shit_. It's absolutely, patently _worthless_.

(I also now run a dash cam everywhere I drive to protect myself from false accusations)




Basically, unless you have physical proof, I don't care.
Whatever you have to say, prove it.
No proof, no cares.

That goes for all accusations of anything ever. Across the board. Absolute.

It's the standard I want people to have for me, and it's the standard I have for others.

-scheherazade





(Aside, unrelated : I know a dude that was raped by a girl (he was nearly paralyzed drunk at his own house party). Wasn't even a secret. People at the party knew it happened. Nobody cared. When he complained, all anyone said was "Oh whatever. Shut up get over it". It wasn't even a question of 'did it happen?', it was a matter of "so what?".)

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Regarding Perry and Counts: that was in 1991. Again it's terrible, but you can't really argue that we're suddenly "abandoning of proof and evidence".

Re Banks: That's undoubtedly terrible, but to me, that's far more of an indictment of the appalling state of the US justice system and the nightmare of the utterly broken plea bargain system (I think John Oliver did a report on it, and I'd also highly recommend listening to the current season of the Serial podcast). He chose to take the plea deal... he wasn't convicted.

I think it's also not a coincidence that all three victims are black. Juries are far more likely to convict black men... that's just a fact.

And again, these cases are notable because they're rare.

The point here is simple. Trump's "it's a scary time to be a man" line is complete and utter bullshit. There is no sudden epidemic of false rape allegations. Are people wrongly accused (and in some cases, even convicted) of rape? Undoubtedly.

But it's not a new problem and it's nowhere near as widespread as the right is making it out to be.

Meanwhile, in the USA someone is violated every 98 seconds, and the President mocked a sexual assault survivor.

One of these is a bigger problem than the other.

Can I be against both rape AND false accusations of rape? Can I be both scared of abandoning proof and evidence AND for the safety of women?

The scary part of our times is the race to pick a camp and turn on everyone who isn't your camp of thought already. It isn't actually scary, it's horrifying.

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Again? Islands and coastals are scary after big ocean quakes!


*fear

Never had these around really... but I hear they are one of the best kind of best control insect to have. I guess you just have to deal with the constant molting shells left around. I think I could easily handle these over spiders... sorry spiders you guys were born scary.

He is...the truck was dead in under 2 years, so my parents bought him a Supra.
The scary part was the tracks he would jump were at a freeway overpass (sunken freeway), and he tried to not touch the overpass with his tires. Better, the street he did this on was Hazzard st. in Houston (jumping the 610 freeway)
(No, he didn't have a confederate flag painted on the roof)