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Showing content with the highest reputation on 02/21/2020 in all areas

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    Jane Fonda has an inherently negative connotation via her label as Hanoi Jane and it's very difficult to have her at an event recognizing events from that era without evoking that context. There are many speakers who's history would not overshadow what they're trying to do.
  5. 1 point
    Forget about resale price. At best, the MARD will make it sell quicker. You need to be alive to sell this rig a couple of years down the road. A MARD slightly improves your chances of surviving the next couple of years. The way to improve your 2020 survival chances is participating in Safety Day refresher training.
  6. 1 point
    Hi Mark, Only for those who have their heads in the sand. Jerry Baumchen
  7. 1 point
    I have no clue if you did or didn’t. But the president you support certainly does.
  8. 1 point
    All over the news today. Let me help you: https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+purge&oq=trump+purge&aqs=chrome..69i57.3647j0j3&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
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    Way to miss the point. And stop trying to make strawmen arguments. This isn't about what MIGHT have happened, or who it's about. I get really tired of this nonsense form of arguing of yours. We don't know what Russia was doing. It was a closed door hearing.. If it was something sketchy then our government should know about it (which is the job of the intelligence services) and do something, but they won't be able to do this in future because they won't get the information they need because it'll all be kept secret by Trump sycophants who place their employment and prosperity above the welfare of the country. What MATTERS to us as an electorate is Trump's reaction to this news. He instantly strikes out at anything he doesn't like and sees anyone reporting it as 'disloyal'. That's not healthy for a democracy.
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    Jane Fonda's actions were those of an immature young woman choosing an inappropriate response to an obvious evil. Continuing to harp on it decades later are the actions of bitter old men.
  11. 1 point
    The opening scene was for sure, (at least for us young males).
  12. 1 point
    You're right and both people are examples of the truths regarding them being muddied by propaganda and history. In comparison what Jane did (posing on the guns and speaking on the radio) is nowhere near as bad as the events of Kent State (And do I even invoke My Lai). BUT even Jane has said that she terribly regrets interjecting herself as she did as if the NVA/VC forces were somehow free of aggression and atrocity. She's simply a distraction. Bring out John Kerry to speak, bring out anyone who was there, bring Neil Young.
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    Was Rommel a traitor for participating in the plot to assassinate Hitler? Or was he a hero?
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    Let's just all continue to ignore the facts in front of our faces, pretend nothing is happening, leave the almost 400 bills sitting in the Senate - including the ones meant to protect us from Russian interference in our politics and leadership, and blame each other. Should work out well. I have always thought our leadership was reasonable too, politics never bothered me, didn't seem to matter much in day to day life. The last year, and now the acceleration since the republican led senate gave Trump a golden ticket to crime away, it's getting beyond serious. Ignoring and dismissing our intelligence agencies will prove to have been very dangerous and painful. We are losing our democracy. But sure, I'm unreasonable, just being dramatic.
  15. 1 point
    Feb. 20, 2020 at 1:00 p.m. CST The Colorado River’s average annual flow has declined by nearly 20 percent compared to the last century, and researchers have identified one of the main culprits: climate change is causing mountain snowpack to disappear, leading to increased evaporation. Up to half of the drop in the Colorado’s average annual flow since 2000 has been driven by warmer temperatures, four recent studies found. Now, two U.S. Geological Survey researchers have concluded that much of this climate-induced decline — amounting to 1.5 billion tons of missing water, equal to the annual water consumption of 10 million Americans — comes from the fact that the region’s snowpack is shrinking and melting earlier. Less snow means less heat is reflected from the sun, creating a feedback loop known as the albedo effect, they say. “The Colorado River Basin loses progressively more water to evaporation, as its sunlight-reflecting snow mantle disappears,” write the authors, USGS senior resource scientist Chris Milly and physical scientist Krista A. Dunne.
  16. 1 point
    Deficit 2008: $1.3T Deficit 2015: $0.5T You were saying? Or he was lying through his teeth and gullible supporters bought his lies?
  17. 1 point
    I see a couple of people as hard left, but a decent number of disaffected republicans and liberal-leaning independents. Wendy P.
  18. 1 point
    I'd like your post but I don't want to give my peeps the wrong idea :)
  19. 1 point
    He's got slack from me. I'm not engaging this silliness anymore.
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    Hey, at least she didn't get out of going to Vietnam by faking "bone spurs" and then bragging that she was heroic for avoiding STDs. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/natemcdermott/trump-in-1993-the-dating-scene-is-like-vietnam
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    I continue to appreciate that Paul is the only BOD member that offers his perspective on this matter. Shows Character My biggest issue has been that the BOD decided to donate part of members dues to it. I said so in my 1st post. Still is. Near half century this has been going on is bad. It's just not the worse. When Bill Ottley died, clearly nobody stepped up to finish this project. That happens. Volunteer projects are often plagued like that. So it sat for awhile. Bush jumped, he got nominated and interest was sparked again. So far so good. Why didn't someone suggest to him to help find some space in a national museum? A great opportunity came and went. Nothing can be done about that now. Or is there? More later... As far as quadrupling the amount of funding, how was that achieved? Well, a person was hired and getting paid quite well, pitched the BOD to give away members funds to this. With no input from the members themselves. No fact checking on the BOD's side. Just takes his word that this will get this done. He then used that donation to convince other parachute assoc. from around the world to contribute because the USPA did and they changed the name to International.. Gotta to admit, that was slick. Maybe you can share the number of folks that live outside this country that the "professionals in organization or management of Museums": have to say will visit? "So to me, the situation is like this...I go to work for a business that has been around for 40 years, but never grown. In about 8 years, I quadruple the money in the bank, sign up almost a dozen of the top people in the industry to work for free, develop and catalog an inventory of over 1000 pieces of huge skydiving historical value and warehouse them for free, develop a concept where people and organizations from all over the world are sending money, and finally have some kind of definite goal line, and end result. Should I be supported & rewarded for my last 8 years of huge success and progress? Or should I be penalized for the previous 40 years where not much was done, and I had no control or input?" Is this you or are you talking as the 3rd person? I suspect the latter. Who are these dozen top people in the industry? You must mean the Trustees. The one's I researched that have the full time jobs outside of this business of getting projects of this nature done. Those Dozen? The organizing of the items was very commendable. Sandy Reid was involved in that. Took about a week from what I understand. Don't know if they were paid but, I hope they were. Had to be a lot of work. Still like to know where Bob Sinclairs van is. Saying that hustling money from folks and organizing :over a 1000 items a "Huge success" in 8 yrs, is a stretch. Saying yer being penalized for the fact that not much did happen in the 40 yrs prior is petty. It's an historical fact and my pointing it out doesn't "penalize" anyone. Get over it. "True, the end result is not yet accomplished. Yes, there may be some mistakes and compromises getting from “now to then”. But there is movement, there is forward progress." I suppose the politically correct thing to do wude be to give everyone that shows up, a medal for doing so. Never understood that but, if that's what yer lookin for OK. I still don't see why some simple due diligence can't be implemented. When funding is being saught, the normal route is to develop a plan from start to finish, figure out how much it's gonna cost. how it can continue as an entity and how long it's going to take to implement and THEN get the money. That's normal. Not here. We are gonna go out and raise as much money from whatever sources we can saying whatever needs to be said to do so. Forget that there is STILL no firm plans. Even after we use your 8 yr scenario. Wanna do something that can restore credibility? Start by getting 5 yrs worth of detailed financials from the ISMHOF. Let's see where the funding is actually going. And I'm not talking about a 990 IRS form. Need to see the details of the numbers on there. Tell them to put a REAL plan together. No more of these ridiculous, pie in the sky concepts that have little if any chance to happen.. Of course, you can ignore my advice. Ignore my and other member requests to act like a responsible stewart of other folks funds and continue down the same path. Or... you can be the only Board member that actually looked into this. Choice is yours.....
  24. 1 point
    Perhaps I can shed some light on Baronn’s biggest concern of the Museum... 48 years of nothing. Two years ago, I had the same questions. Instead of taking the approach of making accusations and insults on the internet, I chose a different road. I asked some people that knew. My good friend Gary Peek was a USPA Board member for decades, and gave me the following historical explanation. Bill Ottley was the initial proponent of the idea. It was his “baby”. When he died, he left $1,000,000 as seed money to develop the concept of a Skydiving Museum. Not much was done for about 40 years. Money collected interest, small donations were made to incrementally increase the amount. USPA supported the concept with some donated clerical support and free advertising in Parachutist. When USPA sold their original office townhouse and built & moved to their present location about a decade ago, the Museum made a deal and acquired an adjacent building lot next to USPA headquarters. The idea at the time was to build the Museum next to the USPA building. One could go in one door, the Museum, or turn the other way for USPA. If you have ever been to USPA Headquarters, it seems the main entrance is “wrong”. It faces a vacant lot, not the parking lot as one would drive in. That’s because there was a plan to build a Skydiving Museum on that vacant lot. The problem is, there would be no reason to go to the Museum. It is not a destination. It’s not near any attraction. It’s an hour away from DC. It is simply in a suburban business park. Now, it’s great for USPA, but terrible for any kind of business dependent upon tourist traffic. So, about the time of President Bush’ AFF jump, the Museum seemed to come alive again. The leadership started installing new trustees, included President Bush as honorary Chairman, and undertook a serious effort to get something done. Since that period, they have quadrupled the money in the bank, dramatically increased and catalogued hundreds of Skydiving items of historic value, installed several high profile people as trustees, hired a professional for fundraising, sought the advice of professionals in museum organization and management, and completely revamped the antiquated & unworkable original concepts. So to me, the situation is like this...I go to work for a business that has been around for 40 years, but never grown. In about 8 years, I quadruple the money in the bank, sign up almost a dozen of the top people in the industry to work for free, develop and catalog an inventory of over 1000 pieces of huge skydiving historical value and warehouse them for free, develop a concept where people and organizations from all over the world are sending money, and finally have some kind of definite goal line, and end result. Should I be supported & rewarded for my last 8 years of huge success and progress? Or should I be penalized for the previous 40 years where not much was done, and I had no control or input? What Baronn seems to not understand, all the money, inventory, donations, concepts have occurred in the last few years. So if there is blame or fault, should it be cast at the previous 40 years? Or should the last 8 years be given some credit for the accomplishments made. True, the end result is not yet accomplished. Yes, there may be some mistakes and compromises getting from “now to then”. But there is movement, there is forward progress. This is the historical perspective I was given by longtime friend and USPA Board member Gary Peek. It is not my opinion. If anyone wants to insult or trash Gary, go right ahead. I am sure it won’t bother him. If anyone cares to provide any additional first hand history, feel free. Paul Gholson
  25. 1 point
    Baronn all I see is you bitching and complaining. Why don't you run for USPA? All you have are problems with no solutions. This thread is becoming as bad as DB Cooper!
  26. 1 point
    This is coming from your own statements: Jim petitioned the USPA. Jim is a member. Ergo: A Member petitioned the USPA. I also assume that he is not the only one behind that effort. In terms of the "many, many other ways"; Jim is extremely active in the sport. I personally benefit from his organizing and coaching; he seems to be involved in many bigger events and jump organizing (example: https://uspa.org/p/Article/the-warm-embrace-of-thailand ), and as far as I know he is an S&TA. Again, I'm just saying: Obviously some members are into the funding of the museum (even in the way it's currently done), including the ones that asked the USPA to donate. To say NO ONE is, is just not matching up with reality. It seems to me that some are strongly supporting it, some (like you) are strongly opposed, and most are probably ambivalent (like betzilla).
  27. 1 point
    Not sure how many of you are familiar with the skydiving price comparison website www.jumpticketprices.com? Well, I run it, but no longer really have the time to maintain it. In theory once set up it should be good to keep itself going. However, this was dependent on the websites that I scraped the currency exchange rate data from not changing. Unfortunately they have, which has meant I'll need to recode some of the site, as it is currently not working. The whole thing is also needing a bit of a revamp and more modern look to be compatible with mobiles etc. Currently it is really only desktop friendly. I am also a novice at web page design, with the site currently written in a combo of html, asp/vbasic and some java scripts, almost all of which was learnt on the fly from web tutorials or copied without real understanding from somewhere else. That coupled with recently moving webhost, and something that worked fine on my previous host no longer seems to work on my new host, and I've no clue why. Lack of time to find out the reason has brought me to the following decision: I'm looking to pass this site on to someone else to look after, revamp and really do whatever they want with to take it forward. The domain is currently purchased until 22/12/19, so just under a year left. If anyone is interested in taking over the site, please get in touch. If required, I can provide the hosting, as my current webhosting package for this and my other website has WAAAAY more space/bandwidth etc than I need, and it is a reseller package. Not mandatory at all though. My hosting package will expire in Dec. 2020 I believe. Sky Switches - Affordable stills camera tongue switches and conversion adaptors, supporting various brands of camera (Canon, Sony, Nikon, Panasonic).
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