Coffee Talk with Tiff

October 30, 2025 12:00 pm EDT Halodoc Coffee Talk with Tiff 0
Coffee. Photo by Jonathan Thursfield.

This Is An Open Thread

Hey TNBers! Boss is off being wild and crazy so you are my captives for the next 5 days of Afternoon Thread. 😝

President Shit’s public schedule for today is flying back from South Korea on his broomstick after embarrassing himself for the last several days, blah blah, open presser, ending with the psycho and his illegal alien useful idiot pole dancer Russian asset (oh, I’m sorry, did I say that out loud? My bad, I meant “Einstein” “model”) participating in a Halloween *waves hands in the air* whatever with their minions’ sacrificing their children at their feet. Poor babies.

So this happened yesterday:

Powell said during the conference that a December rate cut ‘is not a forgone conclusion.’

Highlight: I’m not saying he explicitly said it was Trump’s fault, but he implicitly said it was Trump’s fault.

Show more: “… it’s mostly a function of the change in supply”

Meanwhile: …

A. U.S. attempting regime change with covert and overt machinations

B. Oil

C. Russia and China

D. All Of The Above.

Is this why the international community is so silent on the extrajudicial murders?

Evidently, we are now also attacking from the Pacific Ocean.

Eastern Pacific Ocean rendering is shaded blue area.

Meanwhile: Trump green lights drawdown of US NATO forces in Romania:

Summary Key Points:
-Romania says it was notified of US troop downsizing
-US focusing on own borders and Indo-Pacific region
-NATO says alliance in close contact about deployments
-Permanent allied presence in Romania ‘sufficient’ at 3,500, minister says
-Some powerful Republican lawmakers criticise the move

Reuters – US to withdraw some troops from NATO’s eastern flank, Romania says

In “Oh” News:

Show more: “and investments into our Country by wealthy South Korean Companies and Businessmen will exceed 600 Billion Dollars…. I have given them approval to build a Nuclear Powered Submarine”

Side Bar:

I’ll just leave this here so everyone understands that criming baboon’s ass is still trying to his shakedown crimes.

S. Korea unable to pay US$350 bln in cash to U.S. for tariff deal: security adviser
Kim Eun-jung
All News 16:40 September 29, 2025

Snip:

SEOUL, Sept. 29 (Yonhap) — National Security Adviser Wi Sung-lac said Monday that South Korea is unable to fulfill its US$350 billion investment pledge to the United States in cash under a framework deal that lowered tariffs, after U.S. President Donald Trump said the investment package would be made “upfront.

“Wi made the remarks as Seoul and Washington have been hammering out the details of the investment package to finalize a framework deal in July that lowered the U.S. tariffs from 25 percent to 15 percent.

“From our perspective, it is not possible to pay $350 billion in cash,” Wi told reporters.

YONHAPNEWS AGENCY

ICYMI: In OMFG News we were hit with another New Fresh Hell low from Psycho Old Man yesterday:

Overview:

The last time the United States conducted a nuclear weapons test was on September 23, 1992, with the Divider test as part of Operation Julin. This test occurred underground at the Nevada Test Site, following a moratorium on testing and the passage of Congressional legislation to halt them. 

  • Date of Last Test: September 23, 1992.
  • Test Name: Divider.
  • Location: Nevada Test Site.
  • Context: The test was the final one in a series called Operation Julin and came after a period of moratoriums and legislative action in the U.S. to end nuclear testing.
  • Post-1992 Policy: Since 1992, the U.S. has relied on alternative methods, such as stockpile stewardship programs, to ensure the safety and reliability of its nuclear arsenal without live testing. 

Just so you know:

According to Library of Congress Congressional Research Service (CRS) Products

The United States has observed a voluntary moratorium on nuclear explosive testing since 1992, although it has maintained the ability to resume these tests at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS). Since 1993, it has used a program known as Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship to maintain confidence in the “safety, security, and effectiveness” of its nuclear arsenal. Press reports in May 2020 indicated that Trump Administration officials had discussed whether to conduct an explosive test of a U.S. nuclear weapon. Since then, the first Trump Administration and subsequent Biden Administration statements have reaffirmed the moratorium.

In an August 2024 video, the Department of Energy (DOE) National Nuclear Security (NNSA) Administrator stated that the United States has “no technical reasons” to conduct nuclear tests. Some analysts have expressed concerns that NNSA development of new warhead designs could “result in demands to resume explosive testing.” Congress may continue to face these issues as it considers authorizing and appropriating funds for the stockpile stewardship program, as well as modernization of the nuclear security enterprise.

Congress.gov

Limits on U.S. Nuclear Tests

By its own count, the United States conducted 1,054 explosive nuclear tests between 1945 and 1992. Of these, NNSS hosted 928 tests, including 100 atmospheric tests. In 1990, Congress created a program to compensate some individuals whose health may have been affected by this testing. DOE also engages in environmental remediation at NNSS.

The United States has been a party since 1963 to the Limited Test Ban Treaty, under which it is obligated to refrain from conducting nuclear weapons test explosions in the atmosphere, outer space, or under water. The United States is also party to the Threshold Test Ban Treaty of 1974, which bans underground nuclear weapons tests having an explosive force of more than 150 kilotons.

In 1992, Congress passed and President George H.W. Bush signed into law the Hatfield-Exon-Mitchell Amendment establishing a temporary unilateral moratorium on underground nuclear testing (P.L. 102-377, §507; 50 U.S.C. §2530). It states that “no underground test of nuclear weapons may be conducted by the United States after September 30, 1996, unless a foreign state conducts a nuclear test after this date, at which time the prohibition on United States nuclear testing is lifted.” Several foreign states have conducted nuclear tests since 1996.

The United States then participated in negotiations on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). This multilateral treaty, which opened for signature in 1996, would ban all nuclear explosions. President Clinton signed and submitted the treaty to the Senate for advice and consent to ratification in 1997. Amid expressions of concern among some Members of Congress about CTBT’s potential national security implications, the Senate rejected the treaty on October 13, 1999, by a vote of 48 for, 51 against, and 1 present.

Congress.gov

For further intellectual edification, NPR did a piece back in January:

Step inside the secret lab where America tests its nukes
January 29, 20255:00 AM ET
Geoff Brumfiel

“The risk is significant,” says Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. The talk of testing comes at a time when nuclear weapons are resurgent: Russia is designing nuclear weapons to attack satellites and obliterate seaports; China is dramatically expanding its nuclear arsenal; and the U.S. is undergoing a major modernization of its nuclear warheads. After years of declining nuclear stockpiles, the world looks poised to begin increasing the number and types of nuclear weapons being deployed.

Going underground

Amid these growing tensions, the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, the civilian agency that maintains America’s nuclear stockpile, allowed a small group of journalists to tour a secretive nuclear weapons laboratory beneath the Nevada desert this winter. The effort was part of outgoing NNSA administrator Jill Hruby’s effort to display more transparency about what the U.S. is doing with its nuclear stockpile and why.

NPR

“You didn’t need to do nuclear tests to do what you needed to do for the foreseeable future, which is to make sure the nuclear weapons you had worked,” he says.The stockpile stewardship program broadly consists of two arms — supercomputers at the nation’s major nuclear weapons labs are used to conduct large-scale digital simulations of nuclear weapons from “button to boom.” Highly classified nuclear experiments, like those that take place at PULSE, supply real-world data that ensures that the simulations are accurate.

Critical questions

The experiments are a far cry from full-scale nuclear tests. They are all “subcritical,” meaning that they simulate conditions inside a nuclear weapon without triggering a nuclear chain reaction. That runaway chain reaction, in which some atoms split apart and others fuse together, is what gives a nuke its incredible power. Since the testing pause began, the world’s nuclear powers have informally used the subcritical threshold to define what constitutes a nuclear test.

NPR

Because Of Course it is the Heritage Foundation P2025. And they know EXACTLY how to play to the Psycho baboon’s ass fevered dreams. Getting him to play with nukes is his psycho wet dream because He Is A Fing Psycho.

[Snip]

The increased activity has led some in the U.S. to call for a return to testing. In the July issue of Foreign Affairs, Trump’s former national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, wrote that to keep up with China and Russia, “Washington must test new nuclear weapons for reliability and safety in the real world for the first time since 1992 — not just by using computer models.”

Project 2025, a conservative agenda for the U.S. government published by the Heritage Foundation, stops short of calling for a return to testing, but it does say the government should be able “to conduct nuclear tests in response to adversary nuclear developments if necessary.”

The idea “is not just to start testing for giggles,” says Robert Peters, the Heritage Foundation’s research fellow for nuclear deterrence. Peters worries that the current lack of test-readiness might unduly constrain the president in a crisis. “If you’re engaged in high-stakes poker with nuclear weapons, I don’t want to box the president out,” he says.

NPR

Hell of a note to end on for the day. Can’t wait to see what new fresh hell the baboon’s ass has for us tomorrow. ✌

This Is An Open Thread

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