Leaderboard

The other card-carrying woman here (though I have been absent a bit!). Anyone impregnated should be able to get her own treatment from a provider who is trained and still willing to perform the procedure. "Late term" is not a thing. "Later abortions" happen after a fetus is expected to be developed to viability and can survive outside the uterus but are necessary due to something non-viable about the fetus (it will never be viable outside a uterus). To force someone to continue growing a fetus that will never grow a brain, or statistically speaking has a 98% chance of not surviving due to ruptured amniotic sac or other complications, or for myriad other medical issues that none of us NOT trained in obstetrics fully understand, is cruel, dangerous and unethical. Anyone trained in the science who is willing to perform the procedure in-office or by medications (has taken an oath to do no harm and still feels the procedure is appropriate), should be able to provide that health care to the patient who wants it.

Sexual immorality is just a construct. The only immorality would be if someone is taking advantage of a child or a person otherwise not able to give informed consent. Homosexual sex is not immoral. Men entering the priesthood then using the posistion of trust to take advantage of children is immoral. Likewise it is not immoral for a boy or a girl to feel they don't fit your expectations of their sexuality. It is a struggle, and it may be very difficult for them, but it is not immoral.

The Liberal justices really missed an opportunity to ask: If Biden were to order the assassination of the conservative members of this court because of their inability to place law before politics, do you believe Biden would have presidential immunity?

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.

New episode out now! DB Cooper was a Metallurgist with my good friend Drew Daniel. https://thecoopervortex.podbean.com/e/db-cooper-was-a-metallurgist-drew-daniel/ Enjoy!

I'm good with it not being my, your, or the government's, business.

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.

Late term abortions done for shits and giggles do not happen so going there is going nowhere. Nor is the decision made by a back room coin toss. I can hardly think of a more serious, weighty, and difficult decision to be made. As such, it must be made without any interference by any organization and only by the woman and her doctors. What that means is that I would always err on the side of the chance for abortions being made in error or owing to bad medical advice and not at all owing to some arbitrary point in time you and I agreed upon for what can only be seen as specious reasons.

Comparing political figures to Hitler has a long and ignominious history in the US, and has been overused so much that there's actually an Internet law about it; Godwin's Law states that if an online discussion goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will make a comparison to Hitler. Earlier, the philospher Leo Strauss had spoken of a very similar logical fallacy: reductio ad Hitlerum. The problem, of course, is that that means that if there IS a politician that proposes (for example) to exterminate a race of people, and people compare them validly to Hitler, no one takes any note of that. Just another Godwin attack. Comparisons of Trump to Hitler initially fell afoul of Godwin's law, because there really wasn't much similarity between a mealy-mouthed reality TV star and Hitler. Just another Godwin violation! Trump was something of a joke anyway. But lately the parallels have been getting scarier, and none other than Mike Godwin has written editorials stating "this time the comparison is valid." I just listened to an interview with Timothy Ryback, author of "Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power." Ryback is an historian, and he wrote this book not by going through historical records, but by reading contemporary accounts of the time (newspapers, meeting minutes, pamphlets) so he could get a better sense of how this happened from the perspective of the people living through that time. He never mentions Trump in the book. But the parallels are astounding. While Hitler was building his power, he regularly used Polish immigrants (who were pouring across the border due to unrest in Poland) as a scare tactic. During this time, two Germans brutally tortured and murdered a few Polish immigrants; the Germans were sentenced to death for their crimes. Hitler decried that, and stated that if he were elected "never would a foreign life be put above a German" again. He made up bizarre stories to enrage and infuriate his party. He claimed that German children were being sold as sex slaves to foreign countries, and claimed that this was required by the Treaty of Versailles. (Pizza had not been invented yet, so no pizza places were involved.) His stated goal with this sort of disinformation was to "hollow out the middle" - remove the moderates and drive them to one of the two camps, so that he could frame his quest for power as a choice between only two options. Hitler regularly vowed to destroy democracy through democracy; he promised to use the mechanisms of democracy to destroy the right of the people to govern. He planned to give himself more power if he was appointed chancellor. He was very open about this, but the German people assumed he was just making speeches. "The soup is hotter during the cooking than during the eating" was a popular German phrase, indicating they thought that Hitler would calm down once he was in power. It is noteworthy that he almost didn't make it to the Chancellorship. Due to his profligate spending and his lack of respect for the law, he was often in court in the years leading up to his chancellorship. He didn't mind this; he used the courtroom as a pulpit, and one of his fellow Nazis once said that every time Hitler went to court he got another 1000 votes. The justice system was closing in on him, for his crimes, his unpaid debts and for his refusal to pay taxes. His only chance to avoid jail was to do what he did - become chancellor and suspend civil rights and the justice system. His campaign was based largely on vengeance - against the Treaty of Versailles, against the Communists, against Hindenberg and his other perceived enemies. Even his own people became enemies once they crossed him, or told him that maybe perhaps he was being a little racist. "Once I'm in power, heads will roll," he told several of his supporters. And roll they did. Hitler could not get any support with just the Nationalist party behind him, so he allied with the Socialists (and specifically with socialist leader Gregor Strasser) to get a larger percentage of the electorate. Even with that, the best he ever did was 37% of the vote. He publicly supported the Socialists but privately detested them. Strasser was a big socialist - an anti-capitalist polemic of his caused Hitler to repudiate him at the 1926 Bamberg Conference. He was briefly elected to the vice-chancellor position while Hitler was rising to power, but retired when he could no longer stomach the changing Nazi goals. Then, in 1934, Hitler had Strasser arrested and executed for being a socialist. He could not do this alone, of course. Maintaining his bizarre claims of sex slavery and victimhood required a media apparatus. And that came in the form of Alfred Hugenberg, a media mogul who had his sights on world domination as well. At first Hugenberg and Hitler couldn't stand each other, but once Hugenberg realized that Hitler was rising in power, he allied himself with him. At that point Hugenberg owned the Scherl publishing house, the news agency Telegraphen-Union, several newspapers and the Universum-Film-AG (Ufa), a major film producer. This let him churn out not only news about the evil Polish immigrants and the child sex slavery thing, but also publish glowing articles about "Hitler at home" "Hitler with children" and most importantly "Hitler as a victim of the evil Europeans." This went a long way towards steering public perception about Hitler. Hitler took every opportunity to "gum up the works" of government when he could through his position as one of the leaders of the Nazi party. The worst provisions of the Versailles Treaty were due to end in two years, and there was a movement to delay the passage of new laws until that time, so that they would be passed in a less reactionary environment. Hitler did everything he could to push as many new laws through as possible, often with conflicting goals that he could then use them to show how dysfunctional government was. The Nazi party, according to Ryback, thrived on political chaos and economic despair, and worked hard to provide that environment. The president at the time - Otto Hindenberg - was elderly, and Hitler's media apparatus spent quite a bit of time attacking him for being senile, doddering, and sleepy. Hitler could not attack him directly since he still needed his support. A month after he was appointed Chancellor, there was a fire at the Reichstag, the seat of government for Germany at the time. When police arrived, they found Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch council communist, leaving the building. The fire chief, however, saw Nazis fleeing the fire, and found evidence that they had in fact started the fire. The fire chief was then arrested and assassinated by the Gestapo. Hitler used this "attack by the Communists" to issue the Fire Decree which suspended civil liberties in Germany and allowed Hitler to start eliminating his political opposition. And of course there are the growing similarities in their speeches. Trump speaks of "poisoning the blood" of America with immigrants; Hitler spoke of "The rats that poison our body-politic gnaw from the hearts and memories of the broad masses" and that "this poison was allowed to enter the national bloodstream and infect public life without the Government taking any effectual measures to master the course of the disease." Trump talks about how "we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country" - and Hitler said he "the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like vermin." Trump: "The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within." Hitler: "Never in our history have we been conquered by the strength of our outside enemies but only through our own failings and the enemy in our own camp." Finally, in a speech in 1940, Hitler said that the various German political factions could be "blended into one strong new idea to carry new strength which would make Germany great again." It's not funny any more.

No. You keep wanting to define when the fetus is 'alive'. Well, the sperm cells are alive before fertilization and conception. I'll guess you don't want to go back that far. In ancient times, a baby was considered in various situations after 'quickening'. That is, once it started to move in the womb. There were legal ramifications after that. Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quickening That's typically around 20 weeks, roughly halfway. Ironically, modern medicine can keep a premature baby alive from about the same time. I'd be mostly comfortable with free access to abortion until the fetus is viable outside the womb. After that, for the health of the mother. Which, despite what all the self righteous morons claim, is how it's been. The idea that people are aborting viable fetuses for 'birth control' is ludicrous. And a lie.

What really makes no sense is that so many people support a rapist/admitted sexual predator/adulterer/proven fraud over a decent, albeit rather boring, man. And that they are willing to believe the obvious lies (well, obvious to anyone who's been paying attention and has a modicum of critical thinking skill).

Me, no. However, I do like it that you've modified an untenable standard. But the course of the life an individual, or their family, shouldn't be negotiated over like a rug in an Arab souk. That is none of you business and that is the point. Whatever belief system you rely on to make these judgements, even with evolving concessions, is bunk and imposing those views on anyone is wrong.

Trump Blasts Kristi Noem For Not Paying Puppy $130,000 to Go Away Quietly -- Andy Borowitz

I've been trying hard for a couple of days and could not sell any of my cast iron. Guess that's not for me either. Wait . . . you said OnlyFans. Damn, I was trying OnlyPans.

“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.

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

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.

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.

Laws against rape have no basis in law? Laws against fraud have no basis in law? Laws against interfering in elections have no basis in law? I can guarantee you that if you or I sold someone a house that we told them, in writing, was a 6000 square foot house, but was actually a 3000 square foot house, we'd be in court very shortly, and end up being fined (at best) or serving jail time (at worst.) That's the law for little people. It is actually great to see even billionaires having to obey the law. Yep. Sadly, many conservatives like the idea of being able to sexually assault women and get away with it. If a billionaire rapist and fraudster who owns entire buildings and pays through the nose to suppress news stories about him banging starlets has managed to convince you that he's the "little man" - don't talk to anyone selling any bridges. Yes. Trump's cronies on the corrupt Supreme Court are working to get him elected. Although I hear this time it's going to take THREE superyacht cruises to convince Clarence Thomas to support a criminal for president. So give early, give often! Funny that. The people that are closest to Biden are his strongest supporters. The people who have worked with him, the people who have known him longest, even republicans who have fought with him speak highly of him. Christine Whitman. Meg Whitman. Colin Powell. Chuck Hagel. Even Mitt Romney. The people that are closest to Trump are now his strongest enemies. Bill Barr, Mike Pence, James Mattis, Mark Milley, John Bolton, John Kelly, Betsy DeVos, and Cassidy Hutchinson. Even his own family is now warning the country about the clear and present danger Trump presents to democracy.

It doesn't count when they've been indicted alongside him.

Some more fake electors just Found Out: NBC News: Trump’s 2020 'fake electors' charged with state crimes in Arizona The indictments follow an investigation led by Arizona ETA: WaPo reporting Meadows & Giuliani also indicted.

ODOR IN THE COURT!

At our small Cessna DZ we still do 4 way. But our average age is quite high and the younger jumpers we do have are not really very interested in it. Not yet dead but definitely dying.

How about for a second you resist your impulse to take cheap shots at them for being trans sex workers, and process the larger message of the story: climate change is going to have the biggest affect on those with the fewest resources. I can grumble that insurance raised our deductible for a roof replacement due to local hail damage, or comment on the road I rode the school bus on every day as a kid has washed out 3 times in the past year due to storms larger than anybody in the area ever remembers seeing...shit that inconveniences or concerns me, but doesn't do much more right now. People who have zero financial buffer and are living in particularly affected areas are going to be hit the hardest. That's going to include Thai trans sex workers and many others living hand to mouth. You could show a bit of empathy, or at minimum keep your mouth shut and count your blessings for having the sheer dumb luck of being born a white dude in North America....or, you could have a chuckle 'cause they wear dresses but were born with penises.

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.

Interesting; the accuser in that case (Tara Reade) seems to have considerably less credibility overall than the accuser of Brett Kavanaugh. As in, no, she didn't tell anyone else; the complaint she filed with the Senate office didn't mention anything about assault; she said he made her feel uncomfortable because he complimented her looks, and made her serve drinks to Senators. To go along with the fact that she has a pretty solid reputation for lying, both in public and under oath, it seems a little shakier than either Trump or Kavanaugh in the sexual assault category. Wendy P.

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's systemic racism as opposed to the systematic denial of timelines or social injustices, for example. BTW how's that border hysteria going?