The Old Hack

The Moderator: By popular request, I am relaunching the political discussion thread. Once again, however, I must stress that it will be very strictly monitored. Adherence to the forum courtesy rules will be enforced with especial care here. This is a particularly contentious topic and no flames, personal attacks, scandalmongering nor slurs of any kind will be permitted. People have a great range of opinions and while it is hard to remain calm and civil at times we should nevertheless strive for that to the best of our ability. Use of particularly offensive terms about other posters (including but not limited to 'RWNJ', 'SJW', 'Nazi' and others) will result in immediate warning points. We had some good and beneficial discussions on the old thread and largely managed to remain civil and respectful. I hope we can accomplish the same here. Remember: do not post here in the heat of anger and always keep in mind that your fellow posters are people, too. Last point: as in the old thread, when I do post here it will be in my capacity as moderator only. It will be easier for me to moderate here if I do not allow myself to become personally involved. While I do have a political bias, I will do my best to not let it affect me. And remember that as always, you have a right of appeal to the admins if I make a decision you disagree so much with that you find it unacceptable. The Old Hack

Thing is, he couldn't do it for a much more pressing reason. He had picked himself a staff of genuinely competent and dedicated people, and they would have refused to carry out any such order even if he had been willing to give it. And the devil of it is that no democratic (small d) president could conceivably do it. It would be handing victory to the fascists. We may joke and even laugh at the jokes, but the problem is that in the deepest sense it isn't really funny. Until that ruling is rightly overturned it will lie like a loaded gun on the steps to the White House for any authoritarian president to use. All they need to do is assemble a staff of unscrupulous grifters and fawning sycophants, and Bob's their uncle.

I started to think about some military matters that I feel do not belong in the politics thread and am therefore creating a new thread for it. Recently I started to think about the use of conscripted troops versus volunteers, training and equipment (or absence thereof), and situations they are deployed in. (Disclaimer: I myself was a volunteer and I personally find the use of conscripts highly problematic. Still, I can see that there are times where grim necessity may compel their use.) All else being equal, volunteers tend to be superior to conscripts. But there are situations where conscripts may function quite serviceably. This happens if: They are well motivated, for example if deployed in defence of their homeland. They receive a decent amount of training. They receive equipment and munitions that are if not necessarily modern at least capable of keeping up. They are not used beyond what may be reasonably expected of them. (Holding a pre-prepared defensive line is good. Frontal assaults, not so much.) This is all of course subject to change. Conscripts may also battle harden, for example, and as time passes, they may gain in capabilities and receive better training. And taking time to build their morale is never a bad idea. Unfortunately not all leaders have the foresight to use conscripts in such a way. In a certain war I do not think I need to name one side has found itself being driven out from areas it seized in the opening months of the conflict. It has suffered painful losses in equipment and experienced troops and the morale of its troops is... not good. The Great Leader of this side has determined that the correct response is to engage in, shall we say, a leveé en masse, in which a large number of civilians is conscripted into fighting. Few of these have had any active military experience for years, some of them have never been trained. They are being shipped to the front line in a haphazard way, their organization is poor, they have a desperate shortage of NCOs and what equipment they do have available is old if not obsolescent. (I must point out that 'obsolescent' is not quite the same as 'obsolete.' An aging bolt rifle might fairly be considered obsolescent. A muzzle-loading smoothbore musket? Probably obsolete.) The scenario they are headed for is not a happy one. They are facing a smaller but much better motivated and trained army largely consisting of volunteers, one with half a year of battle hardening to bolster it. Its leadership is superior and they are riding high on a wave of recent victories. They are pushing their opposition back and have momentum on their side. I am having trouble seeing any scenario in which the conscript forces, large numbers notwithstanding, is headed for anything but disaster. If their leaders do have the foresight to have them prepare a defensive line and attempt to hold it, that might help. Some. I can see only two hopes for these hapless conscripts. One, the weather might provide it with some cover; autumn rains might turn the fighting zone into a morass of mud and temporarily slow or halt fighting. This might buy them time to train and get at least some improved weaponry. Two, there could be agreement on an armistice or a peace. The latter is hard to see happening but I do not wish to rule it out. I'm interested in hearing the opinions of other posters, if you can either spot any mistakes I have made or if you can add anything. Discussion of different scenarios in which conscripts are employed would be very welcome. Lastly, this is a general thread for discussion of matters military, be they real life, speculative fiction, wargames and computer games. Go nuts. Humor is also welcome. Thank you all for your attention. ~tOH.

She could always just order the six conservative judges lined up against a wall and have them shot. They've okayed that, after all.

There was at least one occasion where Stalin had intended to have Zhukov executed. This was during the initial moments of Barbarossa. Stalin was absolutely panicking and Zhukov lost his temper and told him to either pull himself together or get out of the way. A vast silence filled the room, Stalin stared at Zhukov in shock and then vanished into his office and got falling down drunk. Zhukov shrugged and went to work. Stalin didn't emerge for something like two days. When he finally did and ran into Zhukov, he stared at him in bafflement. "Why haven't you been shot?" he demanded. Zhukov shrugged and told him, "No-one was ordered to, I suppose." Stalin stared at him for another moment, then shrugged and went on, apparently dismissing the matter from his mind. He got so drunk that he forgot to order people shot. That must have been a serious binge.

Well, the current GOP strategy seems to be, "We've stacked SCOTUS so we win everything in the end if we can just drag it to court." So if it were to happen, I predict the lawsuit would follow shortly.

Apparently Crowdstrike violated every single good practice rule in existence for patch releases, including new ones that haven't been made yet but probably should be.

Ironically she cannot run for president as she is too young. She won't turn 35 until this October. (Or is that only for assuming the office, not running for it? Ehhh. I am sure some GOP goober would sue over it if she did run.)

Possibly it was because Stalin against all odds had somehow grasped that purging his best military personnel was not the road to victory. Executing Tukachevsky on trumped-up charges may have been the single most boneheaded move Stalin ever did.

To be fair it was a commonly held attitude that Russia won in spite of Stalin, not because of him.

Sense from the point of view of High Command who did not themselves have to use them. Rather less so from the point of view of the hapless grunts on the front lines. I do like the bit where it didn't make any betraying flash or sound when thrown. Staying hidden after throwing has to have improved your odds of survival.

That depends. If it is controlled by Star Trek: TOS computers, the controls will randomly explode if anything happens to the quad-copter. I think that I would still prefer a Panzerfaust or a Bazooka. Or even a bollocking PIAT. In fact anything that would not require me to stand right next to the goldarn tank as I set it off.

The Japanese actually had a weapon kind of related to this. It was a long pole with an explosive on the end. The soldier using it was supposed to run up next to an enemy tank and jam it into its tracks or similar vulnerable spot, then set the explosive off with the pull of a trigger at the other end of the pole. This would quite often kill the soldier wielding the darn thing. Of course, this was always supposed they managed to reach their target and weren't shot down on the way. It wasn't particularly popular among the Japanese troops. I can only assume this was due to some sort of odd prejudice against using pole arms.

And catapults and trebuchets. You could use fired generals for ammunition, for example. I think I would prefer them with the pointy bit of metal for improving armour piercing quality in case you are trying to take an Abrams out. It wouldn't help, but the sound when it bounces off would be nicer.

The pun is flightier than the sword, if you please.

By now I have long given up any hope of expecting decency out of the muskrat. *sigh*

I am reading the EGS OOC forums. ...this suddenly seems a bit recursive.

One reason that they had trouble spotting him in time was that he was a complete amateur. Pros can at least be predicted. Amateurs will do something so mind-bogglingly stupid (using an officer staging ground as your base springs to mind) that eventually one will slip through due to a combination of unorthodoxy and the law of large numbers. There's a lot of amateurs in the world, far more of them than professionals. We are not in danger of running out of them any time soon.

Perun's latest video deals with this exact topic. One thing he pointed out was that they didn't actually need to empty them out to run out. They just needed to take all the vehicles that could reasonably be restored, often by cannibalizing the rest. The storage parks might still hold a lot of vehicles, just not any usable ones.

Darn cats. My partner is convinced that her cat possesses both her internet password and credit card numbers and regularly orders high quality cat treats on Amazon.

Ah. But still concerning, and I just realized that this actually makes it more convenient for foreign agents looking for chance spills of vital information. Then again I wouldn't expect them to loiter on Total War: Rome forums hoping to obtain vital information about the latest generation of onagers or siege ballistae.

The net is full of conspiracies but there is a depressing likelihood that the shooter was just a bullied kid who wanted to make a name for himself. Admittedly all possible reasons for the shooting I can think of strike me as depressing. It's just that this particular one strikes me as especially sad and futile.

I find it a little concerning that such leaks occur with predictable regularity and even more so the inference that it happens on multiple game forums.

So? According to SCOTUS, that is completely legal. I can't see what their problem is.

Fair. A friend of mine told me another phone story just earlier today. He had an old, old phone that could barely run a not completely outdated Android OS upgrade. He was so happy because now it could just about keep up. Then a week later he accidentally ran it through the laundry. That was too much for it, which I really can't blame it for.