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My memory is that you didn’t really like Trump, but felt it was more important to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House, so you voted for him. Id submit that Trump is a greater threat to how our country operates; one of the best things about the US is that we trust our succession, and that the person fills the position, not that the position is wrapped around the person. But that was threatened in 2020, and Trump has made it clear that he doesn’t intend to accept a loss this year, that he plans to pardon people who consider an invasion of the Capitol and the shenanigans that went along with it to be OK. In addition, his need for personal loyalty (rather than to the position) is very concerning. Personally, I consider this to be a significant threat to the structure of the country. Wendy P.

I get all my power from solar. California now goes hours getting all its power from renewables for weeks on end - and all that is time we are not burning natural gas, thus saving that gas for the less developed parts of the US. As a result, natural gas prices are dropping, and air quality is improving. Solar fabrication equipment is one of the few things we export to China. US companies that make solar equipment are making billions and employing hundreds of thousands. So the citizens of the US will - and are already - benefiting from this. Jealousy is such an ugly emotion. Become a scientist or engineer, discover/invent something important and you too can be a millionaire! Only in your imagination. I am perfectly happy for you to think I am stupid. Like George Santos calling someone dishonest, or like Trump calling someone a liar. It's more a badge of honor than anything else.

If the mandate of NPR is to report facts wouldn't republicans be excluded by definition?

The reality is that based on where we’re at today, Biden is the only alternative. Maybe in 7 months, we’ll look at President Elect Trump and wish that there had of been another option, but at this stage in the game, Biden’s our horse. No doubt that Trump is a threat, but I wouldn’t write Biden off as nothing more than the lesser of evils. He’s done some good thinks like the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPs act, student debt….that are materially improving lives for lots of people. It’s hard to imagine that the trend wouldn’t continue if he gets another 4 years.

As an outsider it's interesting to see the polarised debate. I am not sure that I would vote for someone in their 80's. Trump is awful, but I find it hard to believe Biden is the best alternative. Overall it is a really sad indictment of the state of US politics. The US have lost all moral authority on democracy and it's going to be interesting to watch.

This thread has been going for three years now. What is puzzling is the fact, that apart from his enablers getting verdicts and having to face some serious consequences, the main goon has still managed to escape all efforts to dish out a vital conviction that Puts him into the place any normal joe blow would have been in no time

Are you gonna tell that to the guy in the other thread who think taxes are just pointless envy? I don't think he wants to redistribute any money from wealthy people to poor people.

I will argue that the biggest things damping Tesla sales are: 1. Tesla lying about range. 2. Tesla lying about capabilities of "Autopilot", (and Elmo making annual announcement that FSD will be here in "a few months", for ten years running). 3. Elmo being a gigantic all-around asshole. There is no way in hell I will ever own a Tesla as long as Elmo has any control over it.

It might have been you who posted about the loathsome man who was called in the kill all of the rats in a city -- how no matter how loathsome he was, the rats were a worse problem. Of course, that was an analogy for Trump. Personally, I think that Trump is the loathsome man who will encourage worse pests than the rats that he was originally "hired" to kill. So I'll vote for whoever has the best chance of keeping him out of the presidency. No, Biden was never my first choice. But Trump is my last. I'd rather have RFK Jr than him. But barring someone dropping dead (if only!), the race is between Biden and Trump, so I'm voting for one of them. Biden hasn't done a bad job. He's by no means perfect, but with a Congress who's happy to hurt the country as long as it also hurts Biden's chances of being re-elected, I'm not sure what he could accomplish. Wendy P.

Curtis, you're profile lists you as jumping at AZ, with two jumps. It would be irresponsible for someone on the Internet to guide you on a purchase at this time. There are great Instructors and Riggers at the DZ there. Please ask them to give you some guidance on what you should be jumping this early. We don't know your skillset. My advice to new jumpers has always been - Finish your A License and then let's sit down and talk about gear choices. And, we would begin with your reserve size first and build a rig around that.

“A man came up to me - big man, strong man - with tears in his eyes”…..

No shit, Sherlock. That’s the problem not the potential or viability of renewables. By that logic why fight crime at home when Haiti is so ridden with theft, drugs, and murder?

1) He didn't fart 2) OK he farted but there's this explanation that it's not like regular gross farting 3) Obama did it first.

Keep in mind that someone, somewhere also calculated the percentage of those that would not comply with the mask mandates, so additional mandates were added. At that time, we did not know what we were facing, how bad it was going to be, if it was natural or manufactured, nor could anyone forecast the extent up to and including the end of human and/or animal life. I had no issue with every arrow in the quiver being used to defend against whatever this "was" to be, mask mandates, social distancing, accelerated vaccines, and lockdowns and will still maintain that the lockdown was a month too short. I am not a science guy, so for those with advanced degrees - we rely on them to guide us. Which they did. Were mistakes made; yes. But, we had to try anything and everything. And, to this day; I look around and think, "We made it through it." ~MINO

New episode out now! DB Cooper and the JFK Assassination with my good friend John Limbach. https://thecoopervortex.podbean.com/e/db-cooper-and-the-jfk-assassination-john-limbach/ Enjoy!

Our office was in the path of totality..big boss catered BBQ and we all went out and watched it together. Was a great show, but I'm in the same boat for lack of photos. I figured there'll be literally millions of pictures, many of them taken by better photographers than me. I'd prefer to watch it with my eyes rather than through my phone.

Hi Keith, Re: I don't think either team has a good choice and am faced with not voting for a P at all. The best instructor I had in college was a math teacher. His position was that if had not tried your homework, you could not ask questions about it in class, later. My position is that anyone who does not vote for POTUS, should not comment on the outcome. Once I became eligible, I have never failed to vote in ANY election that I was allowed to do so. IMO it is our most important civic responsibility. Jerry Baumchen PS) I've voted for POTUS 15 times; IMO only 3-4 times were there good choices. C'est la vie.

Indiana provides an example of unintended consequences: ‘Severely decreased their sexual intimacy with their husbands’: Indiana appeals court uses Mike Pence’s religious liberty law to block abortion ban

And that's mostly always a good thing. An exception would be when the nation is on the verge of an autocracy by electing a demented, narcissistic, madman who is being enabled by a corrupt political party that, at best, represents a minority of Americans. In that situation it's important to see the other side of the aisle for what they have become: blindered and brainwashed enemies of the nation, not a font of good ideas. Later, after we beat the bastards back down into their holes, we can reengage in polite and meaningful dialogue.

I'm glad to maintain my sense of open-mindedness to receive and consider good ideas from both sides of the aisle.

They're probably just ticked off at some troll trying to be cute

I think personal transfers of weapons should take place at an FFL or the local Cop Shop. Background checks on every weapon movement of ownership. Well regulated should actually mean something, and be enforced.

Unfortunately you can WALK from Chicago to a gun store in Indiana in 15 minutes, buy a gun in a state with weak gun laws (ranked 30/50), then 15 minutes later be back in Chicago with a gun that you couldn't legally buy in Illinois. With a car you can do it even faster. Which is why a national solution is the only one that will work.

I always have an issue with the idea of 'illegal guns'. There is no such thing as an illegal gun. That's like saying there is an illegal car. It is another gun lobby/NRA talking point distraction. Remington, Winchester, S&W do not have an assembly line that creates illegal guns for criminals to use. We have guns that are obtained, trafficked, or owned illegally BECAUSE we do not have any laws to track guns. If we tracked every gun from its manufacture until its disposal, we would go a long way to finding out how guns get into the hands of criminals. But we don't do that, nor do we even try to.

Comparing any gun law to 'the rest of the country' is meaningless given that the rest of the country has ineffective guns laws as well. If the country wants to reduce gun violence, then we need to model gun laws on the countries that have less gun violence and stop pretending that the causes are judges, or mental health, or open carry, or good-guy-bad-guy, or suicides or whatever. The reason we have so much gun violence is that guns are readily accessible to pretty much anyone in the country and there are no laws worth talking about. Look at what it took to get two parents convicted of manslaughter when they bought their mentally ill kid a semi-auto rifle and then he shot up his school. In any other civilized country, that original purchase would never have happened.

Ask your canopy coach. If you're thinking crossbraced, you should definitely be working with one. I can see a few things potentially wrong with your plan. 1. You are jumping from a super docile canopy (spectre) to super aggressive (xb) with no intermediate planforms. Usually people will jump an aggressive elliptical non cross braced such as a katana or crossfire or x-fire for a long time before cross braced. 2. 1.6 seems too low wing loading for cross braced. Go work with a canopy coach, don't ask the Internet for advice.

The FBI was so honed in to the skydiving community and the community itself then was so tight knit, that I doubt "one of their own" would be able to pull it off and either A. not be found out or B. not eventually spilling the beans.

Agreed. However, I don't see a murder by an illegal immigrant to be any better or worse than a murder by a US citizen. Hopefully this means you will support the next border control bill. They do. I volunteer at a homeless shelter here that targets the over-55 and homeless veteran population in San Diego. There are hundreds of others who volunteer there as well. And as a nation we spend $250 billion a year on veterans in the form of pensions, VA benefits including medical care, education, rehab, loan guarantees, construction of new facilities and housing support. You mean conservative border policies. Republicans just killed a bill that would have gotten billions for more border patrol, more overtime for them, better unmanned assets (drones) better scanning technoloy at ports of entry and more judges/jails/lawyers to process them. They opposed it to hurt Biden, but the result is that they are hurting Americans. I didn't say anything about ignorant red states, just that they are (on average) less educated. Yep. Heather Heyer REALLY got a taste of Southern hospitality (at the hands of a Trump supporter.) And when Trump supporters marched to vandalize, deface, loot, kidnap and kill in DC, they learned how the US Justice system works. My electric bill is $6 a month and I pay less than $100 a year for fuels (mainly natural gas for our stove and hot water heater.) But yes, on average they are lower. So are electrical reliability rates. Red states also tend to have much higher pollution levels than blue states. You get what you pay for. Same here. The people who have worked in the startup I am at now are Asian, white, black, Hispanic, Arab, cis, trans, straight, gay, male and female. The people who live at the homeless shelter I volunteer at are a similar mix, and are unfailingly polite (if sometimes a little odd.) My neighbors are Italian, Chinese, Filipino, Mexican, Pakistani and Iraqi immigrants, along with a bunch of San Diego natives. The other kids at my kids' school are also fairly diverse, and include nonbinary kids. I like it that way. And I am glad the trans and nonbinary people I know are not living in a place where conservatives mock and attack them, and try to pass laws against them.

New episode out now! DB Cooper is like playing Best Ball with my good friend Chris Broer. https://www.podbean.com/eas/pb-mdyit-15c5483 Enjoy!

Man, that’s just appalling. Unless, I suppose, that you think people do not as a matter of their true nature adopt a different approach to their gender than is listed on their birth certificate. Unless, that is, that you do not believe our perceptions of ourselves and the world around us happens at the level or our brains. And unless you are convinced that any deviation from an accepted norm is a matter of choice. If that’s what you think, oh well. What I see are people trying to live the only life they will ever have as comfortable with themselves as they possibly can.

I want to say that she joined the convent sometime in the very early 80's, because I believe she worked for NWA for another 9 or 10 years after the hijacking. I think a lot of the Cooper witnesses and participants were somewhat media shy because of what happened in the late 70's with the Coffelt stuff. Flo, Tina, Rat, and others were talking pretty freely to this movie producer from Hollywood who was trying to make some production based on Coffelt's story. There's a 302 where the FBI admonishes all of them and basically says "we can't stop you from talking to whomever you wish, but you need to understand that if you provide anyone with any information that could hurt the investigation in any way, you can be prosecuted." So I think that shut them up for quite a while. Tina was always a very religious and empathetic person. I don't think her going to the convent had anything whatsoever to do with Cooper. My list of suspects is just compiled of names in the FBI Files and names that others have put forward. I'll PM it to you.

Yeah, the fact that there are only roughly 50 when 35 years ago there were 350 is irrelevant. And if I gain enough weight to be obese, but not super-obese, that means I'm not fat, right? Wendy P.

Skydiving first started at the Ovid Airport, D82, in August 1967. The original Parachute Jumping Center License from the New York State Department of Commerce Bureau of Aviation is hanging on the wall at manifest. The DZ moved to Seneca Falls, N.Y. in April 1972. I opened Finger Lakes Skydivers DZ in Ovid in May 1982 and operated until November 2015. The business was sold and new operators began in April 2016 under the name Skydive Finger Lakes. The business was sold again and the next operators took over in April 2018 and operated through October 2021. They sold their aircraft and moved out of the area. There was no skydiving business operation during the 2022 and 2023 skydiving season. There was occasional skydiving by invitation only for experienced jumpers during those summers. A completely new skydiving operation, Skydive Seneca Lake, skydivesenecalake.com, will begin on April 25, 2024 with a Cessna TU-206 and a C-182. They are in no way associated with any of the past operations. I purchased the Ovid Airport in 1989, it has a 2800 X 40 paved runway and 2200 X 60 turf runway, 20+ acres of landing area, heated and air conditioned clubhouse with kitchen, lounge, restrooms with showers, and indoor packing area. It is locate in the center of the Finger Lakes Region of New York State. You can see 7 of the finger lakes from jump altitude plus Lake Ontario and on a clear day you can see Canada. John King

Global energy investment in clean energy and in fossil fuels, 2015-2023 I'll spell it out for you. Worldwide green energy investments surpassed oil and gas by 75% or $750 billion last year. Start some more B.S. threads but this is from the IEA. Its no wonder that you identify so closely with the GOP. Facts don't mean squat with them either.

One of the original Herd members and instrumental in bringing big planes to the United Parachute Club. Also organized the annual Herd boogie.

It's all about religious freedom; The GOP is sponsoring these bills at the behest of The First Church of Appliantology.

Another knock on effect from the mainstream right’s embrace of Trumpism. You can’t report honestly on Trump without the coverage sounding like a hatchet job, so when the majority of right wingers choose to throw away their principles and support him anyway they’re not going to want to work for an organisation that makes them feel bad about that. Now, given how much your guy moans about lack of Hunter coverage (whose misdeeds he conflates with Joe, which is a pretty big red flag) I’d be interested to know how much time NPR spent covering Jared’s far more successful influence peddling from inside the White House vs Hunter’s solo efforts. Would anyone here really be surprised if the bias was actually in the other direction?

Yeah, but I’d bet you’d vote for her over pretty much any possible democrat. Wendy P.

You mean like looking back to . . the past when they were both president? There might be something to learn there in terms of how they will perform in the future as president. Some things you might objectively learn from such history: Trump has had 13 close associates - 11 within his administration - convicted of crimes ranging from fraud to contempt of Congress to conspiring against the United States with a Russian agent. Biden has had no close associates within his administration convicted of anything. Trump was impeached twice. Biden has never been impeached, despite the GOP leadership announcing that finding something to impeach him for was a top priority. Trump has been indicted for 91 felonies, including for his actions in office. Biden has never been indicted for any felonies. A court found that Trump raped a woman. Two courts found that he lied when he said he did not rape her. No court has found that Biden raped anyone. Trump flew on the Lolita Express 7 times and has expressed support for Ghislaine Maxwell even after her arrest for child sex trafficking. Biden never has. Trump has said that the US Constitution should be "terminated" and that he would be dictator for a day. Biden supports the Constitution and has not said he will be a dictator. Trump has ridiculed US veterans, calling them "suckers" and "losers" and wondering aloud why anyone would serve in the military. Biden supports veterans in words as well as actions, and had a son who served in the military for 12 years, including Kosovo. Both are old and declining. Both are easily confused and say stupid things. Now, if you read all that and conclude "well, so they are pretty similar" then you're not learning anything by looking back retrospectively. You could as easily say that JFK and McVeigh were pretty much the same because they were both white men who were in the military, and are now both dead.

Yep. That's another big problem that should be easy to fully or partially resolve. With the few firearms I've sold, an ID and a copy of the CWP was required. That stopped one guy from obtaining a gun, at least from me. In SC the gun shows used to be "anything goes", including private sales in the parking lots. A couple years ago they changed that. No more parking lot sales and background checks are done on all transactions.

No one could have forseen this, but the people who started Trump's disastrous Truth Social are starting to go to jail for their crimes. “Michael and Gerald Shvartsman admitted in court that they received confidential, inside information about an upcoming merger between DWAC and Trump Media and used that information to make profitable, but illegal, open-market trades,” US Attorney Damien Williams said in a press release. https://www.yahoo.com/news/two-investors-trump-media-insider-171511936.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

It is not a good question. Good questions have answers yet to be known. Here, the answer is obvious: seriously enforce the ones we have and make more. Well, an A#1 place to start is to stop selling so many new and used ones to any one who wants one and on the thinnest pretext. Tax the living crap out of ammo, make registration laws with real teeth, and quit freakin' extolling the virtue of gun ownership and all of the stupid open and hidden carry laws and, finally, convince people like you that there is a way that does not include throwing your hands in the air or clinging sadly to an old and moribund constitutional amendment.

FIFY

Provocation Fridays: Anyone care to put their imagination to work? Should you choose to take this on. The assignment for the next 2 weeks is to write a fictional account of Cooper starting form one of these lead ins: - What I have to say goes like this - I landed in - It were my grudge that were my trouble - I noticed that Or chose your own lead in.. Thinking 500-800+ words or more, should take 2-5 hours to write. Narrative style from the view of Cooper or from another characters view... Will check back in two week time to see what stories percolate up. This is all for fun.

Lady Liberty keeps her blindfold on as she cries for the state of American justice. A rich White guy with 78.75 million shares of DJT stock sits $10 a share richer this morning alone than he did yesterday afternoon. She sees his new grifting of bibles, shoes, etc. to prey upon the weak minded cultists that whoreship him. He has figured out how to milk the cows dry. How to laugh at judgements and sanctions. Now recognizing what a lifetime of scamming the system has taught him.

Illegal immigrants go through a lot of trouble to leave their home and go to whatever western country they are aiming for. They tend to be highly motivated, like all immigrants tend to be. They also have good reason to keep their heads down and not attract the attention of authorities.

Elena Cardone; The wife of this guy: Financial Influencer Grant Cardone Says He Can Make You A Billionaire. His Investors Claim He Defrauded Them. A grifter launching a grift on the supporters of yet another grifter.

As promised. Video about the Clara letter. It’s about 45 minutes. The first 30 are about Stylometry and how it refutes the claims that Barb is Clara. The last 15 are on Barb in general. You should be able to play it at 1.25 or even 1.5 to get through it quicker.