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The media reports what they can prove. They're ignoring the "Biden/Ukraine" story because it's provably false. Highly regarded, career intel officers (Fiona Hill is one) testified before congress that the whole story was Russian propaganda. Giuliani got the information from a known Russian intel officer. When it didn't gain the traction that was desired, the 'child porn' suddenly appeared. Why wasn't that mentioned from the beginning? Maybe because it's a standard FSB tactic. The whole story is so stupid, I can't believe anyone can buy into it. The whole Trump/Russia thing has not been 'proven phony' anywhere but in the imagination of Trump and his supporters. The Mueller report did NOT say there was 'no collusion'. Mueller himself said if there had been proof of no collusion, he would have said so Of course, we don't know exactly what was in that report because Trump and his toadies won't release it (despite what he said on Twitter). Funny that he won't release the very info he claims exonerates him. The Trump spawn have been involved in a wide variety of dubious ventures. Some should have resulted in felony charges (except daddy paid off the prosecutor). Don Jr's dealings with Saudi Arabia are as bad, if not worse than Hunter Biden's purported Ukraine involvement. It's been reported. But the Trump backers just call it 'Fake News' and ignore it. If you want the 'tree of liberty' watered with the blood of tyrants, start with the guy who called Nazis & KKK 'very fine people'. The guy who has called for the arrest (without charge) of his opponents. The guy who supports vigilantes who murder protesters. The guy who called for violent insurrection against elected governors, and when it almost came to pass, has yet to say anything bad about the actors, instead having his supporters chant 'Lock her up", directing those chants towards the target of the insurrection.

Year 2020: Advocacy. Random simple things like the maintenance people subscribing to electric-plane news/sites. Or the DZO emailing a turbine supplier about their future plans of ePlane conversions later in decade. Or participating in aviation (FAA/airport/etc) public information centres where they're asking for comments on new regulations. Or attending a Magnix test or another ePlane vendor's test if they're happening within a few hours drive of you. Ask them questions. Bring a skeptic friend. Write a Parachutist article about your personal experience attending Magnix tests and also corroborate lithium battery industry observations into the same article. Ask for an interview with the point contact of your power company's new battery farm. Even personally test drive a Tesla car (or electric Ford F150, or electric Hummer, when they come out) with one of your skeptic aviation friends. Convince your electric-doubting mechanic coworker. Contact your aviation-nut congressperson. Talk to your friend at FAA. All kinds of random advocacy steps to lower the laughingstock background noise down to a quiet din. Baby steps. Advocacy. Dispel myths. Learn. Disbelieving people can inject years of delays in pushing the gearwork (slower advocacy, slower FAA rules, slower convincing, less ePlanes knowledge, etc). The live-under-rock factor is strong. Flap those butterflies so the Chaos Theory so dominoes can fall sooner. Random Theoretical Examples: - [2020-Begin] Hypothetically, seven DZOs asks three turbine vendor about future ePlane plans, three turbine vendors contacts Magnix or another ePlane motor/battery supplier, Magnix realizes there's a jumpplane market, Magnix contacts FAA about theoretical jumplane rules, Magnix goes into the jumpplane conversion biz [2030-End] - [2020-Begin] Hypothetically, somebody's brilliant Parachutist article causes 3 people do a Tesla test drive, 5 people to research Magnix, 2 exhibition jumpers to ask if they can test-jump the magnix eCaravan, 2 DZO accountants to do the math only to suddenly get surprised and speeddial all FAA friends. Then, say, 7 FAA readers, prodded by articles/dropzones to start writing draft documents on time to become final when those good jump-capacity aviation batteries arrive, a dropzone finally buys an ePlane conversion a couple years sooner when they are mature earlier than expected, etc. [2030-End] - Or whatever, etc. Infinite number of theoretical dominoe paths. Other dominoes to tip. Many dominoes take 5-10 years to finish falling. Yes, Some advocacy steps are ridiculous and longshots, but a lot of mudane skydiving innovations over the last 70 years sometimes came from surprisingly simple advocacy or manifest watercooler talk or pilot/instructor lounges. And now are instructor/SIM material. Lots of Chaos Theory Butterflies happened there already... Also, in another industry (gaming industry, since I operate a research laboratory on high-performance display screens), some of my discussion forum posts incubated an invention that are now in a peer reviewed science journal & my ideas were implemented in certain virtual reality headsets and gaming monitors, with confirmed credit. Just in September, Samsung Electronics cited me; I now have over 20 research papers that cited either me or my business (Blur Busters / TestUFO), and a few that I am even co-author of (in one paper that included a NIST.gov researcher in a U.S. government-funded peer-reviewed conference paper that I am a co-author of), from something originally incubated in a forum. From something more casual than this forum thread, that progressiely dominoed all the way there. So, this is not my first tango at online advocacy (in a different high-skill industry)... In a sense, just doing these dropzone.com falls under the "Advocacy" umbrella. Make a few in the skydiving industry a smidge more aware, recruit people who agree, etc. I've written a few times for CanPara and Parachutist before (e.g. Canada Big Way, Rainbow Boogie, etc). Happy to co-write a Parachutist article, I would want help from at least 1 co-author working with me in Google Docs and at least 3-4 proofreaders, maybe even one or two bleeding edge pilots/dropzone accounts/jumpdrivers/DZOs to review, add useful commentary, and fix errors in the article. So it's a proper electric jump plane wake-up-call article in a national skydiving magazine instead of 1-person speil. If you also have writing experience, and movement is desired on a Parachutist article, Google my full name (Mark Rejhon) and reach me through any channel (LinkedIn, email, etc -- I have rarely visited here after the forum upgrade so that's why I still am at 0 rep despite 2766 posts since rep system didn't exist before then).

See, but the thing is, the last time this happened, republicans swore up and down "this is NOT a power grab. If the roles were reversed I'd do exactly the same thing - wait for the next president." Lindsey Graham said that “I want you to use my words against me. If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination." So no, I don't buy that premise. It's not a case of "well, they didn't think about that, and so of course they did what the other side did." They DID think about that, and made a promise to not be hypocrites. And then, of course, they went back on their promise. And you support them for doing that. Amazing. I imagine there is nothing a republican could do that would result in you not supporting them. Rape? Sexual assault? No worries; you still support Trump. Murder? Trump says his supporters wouldn't care - and I have no doubt you wouldn't either. Supporting a pedophile madam? Sure, you may say you have an issue with that, but heck yes you still support him.

It really ties the room together

yes. and it is very expensive, in terms of time and money. you can't expect most people to value skydiving high enough to pay that cost. even skydivers usually eventually find it not worth the cost anymore (sometimes after 5 jumps, sometimes after 50, sometimes after 500, sometimes never it depends)

So someone created a website to promote Trump's Covid Plan

That one was debunked immediately. Audio only? Yeah it was credible to assess that he may have said "good" instead of "go ahead". With video, you see him clearly make eye contact with the moderator who was waiting for Biden to finish and says "go ahead" for her to continue - he blurs the words together but he's not saying "good". There's literally thousands of things to attack Trump on, this isn't one of them.

Ah, so your fantasizing about watering the earth with blood of your political opponents is because you're part of a political death-cult! You seem to be describing yourself more and more. well...

Gotta disagree with this. At 55, I've got a pretty long 'dead friends list'. Only 4 or 5 were jumpers. Only one died jumping.

Does this include the freedom of practicing any religion you want? Except Islam, of course. We know the slurs you've said about it. I'm not a fan of any religion but your hypocrisy is quite obvious. But rest assured you have more in common with islamic extremists than non-hypocritical liberals.

Oh don't worry; she'll piss you off again and then she'll be a liberal bitch. Wendy P.

Maybe the * substituted for two letters, like "li" c*nt becomes Clint. Or could it have been "cent"?

Why don't you do that? I can think of lots of them -- unfortunately, most of them come with social sanctions these days. What a loss for good white red-blooded men; you just can't call people by slurs anymore without consequences. Like people's opinions of you, like their willingness to do business with you, like their willingness to deal with you. Used to be a guy had some power, eh? Wendy P.

That's only the point of view of someone who used to have easier or exclusive access to something. The tallest guy might have been selling play-by-play commentary based on his ability to see -- would elevating the others then be a loss to him, even though it really just elevated the others? Your perceived superiority or superior access is generally at the expense of someone who is being cut off at the legs. Wendy P.

Boom. My ex and I started jumping together. He did about 300 jumps, broke his leg and was done. I kept jumping for another 20+ years. Talking with him awhile ago and mentioned that I am surprised I made it to my 50th birthday. When he asked why, I said "Skydiving. That shit is dangerous." And I meant it. Jumping is something that I would recommend to anyone interested, but very few will actually ever go to a dropzone even if they say they want to. Cant remember how many people I encouraged to jump. Very few actually did it, maybe two did more than a tandem. I don't bring up jumping to anyone now. Not worth the effort for the low possibility that they will ever do it. Their loss, but at least they won't end up with a dead friends list like most of us have.

And I know that a well known centrist on this forum will have explanations and excuses for all of the above. As for the forum rules: AFAIK there is also a rule against blatant trolling. Makes me wonder why said person is still allowed to post

Every single fucking time you do this. If the situations were reversed, if it was the democrats, if the left were the ones being power obsessed hypocrites... but they're not. It's still the Republicans doing it. It's always the repulicans doing it, and every time you resort to 'if...' it means you can't defend what they're actually doing.

That's simple. Its not a power grabbing charade now because the liberals aren't the ones in power. If the liberals were in power, and it was their appointee, most here wouldn't see issue with it. Then - it would be a power grab.

https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2018-update/ The top 1 percent paid a greater share of individual income taxes (37.3 percent) than the bottom 90 percent combined (30.5 percent) I would say that is a fair share