Phil1111

Be thankful that you hear of cases like this. Hear of cops charged with corruption, drinking driving, etc. It shows that there is a modest level of integrity in the justice system. Be very leery about governments and political systems for which everybody seems honest, law abiding and filled to the brim with "integrity". "The Panama Papers, a collection of leaked documents covering the tax-sensitive offshore business of world political leaders, has prompted the prime minister of Iceland to resign and put his British peer David Cameron on a Q&A defensive. The papers point also to China, suggesting that family members of eight current or former senior Communist Party leaders have offshore companies set up by the document aggregator, Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca. The brother-in-law of Chinese President Xi Jinping is among those named. The legal and financial records emerge as China tries to stop corruption. With that irony closing in, the criticism-wary country ruled by a single party has responded as it usually does to slaps from offshore: angry rejection. “In China, Web postings are taken down, foreign publications blocked, Communist Party media blames the West, and leaders act as if nothing had happened,” http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphjennings/2016/04/10/china-plans-a-single-chilling-response-to-the-panama-papers/#37451072ccd1

Meanwhile in Europe: "Ariane 6.1 and Ariane 6.2 In June 2014 Airbus and Safran surprised the ESA by announcing a counter proposal for the Ariane 6. They also announced a 50/50 joint venture to develop the rocket. This joint venture would also involve buying out the French government's (CNES's) interest in Arianespace.[15][16] This proposed launch system would come in two variants, the Ariane 6.1 and the Ariane 6.2.[17] While both would use a cryogenic main stage powered by a Vulcain 2 engine and two P145 solid boosters, the Ariane 6.1 would feature a cryogenic upper stage powered by the Vinci engine and boost up to 8,500 kg (18,700 lb) to GTO, while the Ariane 6.2 would use a lower-cost hypergolic upper stage powered by the Aestus engine. The Ariane 6.1 would have the ability to launch two electrically powered satellites at once, while the Ariane 6.2 was intended mostly for government payloads. French newspaper La Tribune questioned if Airbus Space Systems could match promised costs for their Ariane 6 proposal, and whether Airbus and Safran Group could be trusted when they were found to be responsible for a failure of Ariane 5 flight 517 in 2002 and a more recent 2013 failure of the M51 ballistic missile.[5] The companies were also criticized for being unwilling to take the risks of development and asking for higher initial funding than originally planned to start development - €2.6 billion instead of €2.3 billion. Proposed launch prices of €85 million for Ariane 6.1 and €69 million for Ariane 6.2 were also deemed too high by the La Tribune in comparison to SpaceX[18] During the meeting of EU ministers in Geneva on 7 June 2014 these prices were deemed too high and no agreement with manufacturers was reached.[19]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_6 "PARIS—The head of the European Space Agency’s launcher directorate on July 7(2015) issued a surprising endorsement of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket during a French parliamentary hearing that was ostensibly about the status of Europe’s next-generation Ariane 6 vehicle. Gaele Winters, who is expected to ask ESA’s check-writing body on July 16 to approve a nearly $3 billion contract with Airbus Safran Launchers to develop Ariane 6, said the June 28 Falcon 9 failure in no way changes ESA’s assessment of SpaceX. “We have seen the outstanding success of Falcon 9,” Winters said. “Despite the issue of about a week ago, it is a fantastic track record for this launcher.” Winters was addressing the French Parliamentary Office for the Evaluation of Scientific and Technological Choices, which regularly reviews Europe’s and France’s space policy. - See more at: http://spacenews.com/spacex-looms-large-as-esa-readies-ariane-6-contract/#sthash.tJuiX3sX.dpuf Three billion Euro for a rocket that cant match Space X costs today. Let alone if Space X establishes reusable first stages and reduce launch costs another 30%. They should rename Ariane, Europork.

Yes, US rates are too high: https://home.kpmg.com/xx/en/home/services/tax/tax-tools-and-resources/tax-rates-online/corporate-tax-rates-table.html But the US is still a competitive jurisdiction: http://reports.weforum.org/global-competitiveness-report-2015-2016/competitiveness-rankings/

That is the way the corporate tax law is written. US corporations do not pay tax on foreign earnings reinvested overseas unless it is repatriated into the US. Or if the foreign subsidiary invests in US property. If there was a tax law change, or a tax holiday on foreign dividends, these companies would be happy to bring it back. 100% legal, and it is their duty to shareholders to comply with tax law in the way that best maximizes shareholder value. Shareholders also happen to be 401k's, mutual funds, and pensions. Completely correct. Any CEO has the primary duty to shareholders. The problem with tax laws is they allow profits generated in one jurisdiction to be sheltered in another. Thats a result of lobbying by special interest groups and corporations. Its not like politicians don't know whats going on. US citizens pay the highest drug costs in the world and companies like Merck and Pfizer sidestep US taxes using offshore tax shelters. http://healthcareforamericanow.org/2013/04/15/pfizer-merck-tax-dodgers/

"Fortune 500 corporations are avoiding up to $695 billion in U.S. federal income taxes on $2.4 trillion in offshore holdings. While this figure is higher than “official” estimates—a report by the Congressional Research Service estimated that large corporations are avoiding $100 billion in US taxes—the CTJ uses a number of assumptions based on company accounts to create a more complete picture of corporate tax avoidance. For example, it notes that Pfizer PFE -0.27% , which has subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands, Ireland, the Isle of Jersey, Luxembourg, and Singapore, holds almost $200 billion in what is called unrepatriated income. This is not disclosed directly anywhere in Pfizer’s accounts, but since the company estimates, in a footnote, a figure for the deferred taxes it would owe if it brought the cash back to the U.S., the CTJ worked backwards to calculate a total offshore cash figure. Pfizer’s contemplated tax inversion, whereby it would reincorporate in Ireland, would move this cash permanently offshore. Apple is another such company. Its offshore cash, which it calls “cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities,” rose from $158 billion in 2014 to $200 billion in 2015, the CTJ says. Apple AAPL -2.18% declined to comment for this story and referred me to the company’s annual report. However, CTJ’s figures come from the company’s latest quarterly report. Fortune was able to confirm those figures. " http://fortune.com/2016/03/11/sanders-trump-offshore-tax-havens/ Lets see... its OK for Fortune 500 companies to avoid taxes using existing tax laws but not OK for a small businessman or small corporation?

I really do wish that when caught in the act US politicians resigned the way Japanese politicians traditionally do. Like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_A0GigrQl0 Or like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcO4MMzdYE8

Not since 1970 has this happened.Forty six years ago. The Prime Minister should order a national review of this situation to see if conspiracies, NHL corruption, Gary Bettman or other unknown factors are involved. Clearly citizenship needs to be revoked from someone.

Just can't help shooting off childish bullshit can you? It's a shame what the younger generation has let themselves become. True, Trump has been setting such a great example and with millions thinking he is the best candidate to be President of the United States of America, he is quite the role model. Yeah.. He's the best of the worst. And he's gone and done it again... Made an exception to his statement about banning Muslims from entering the U.S. by saying he would let "rich Muslims" in. " WikiLeaks cables portray Saudi Arabia as a cash machine for terrorists Hillary Clinton memo highlights Gulf states' failure to block funding for groups like al-Qaida, Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba Saudi Arabia is the world's largest source of funds for Islamist militant groups such as the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba – but the Saudi government is reluctant to stem the flow of money, according to Hillary Clinton. "More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups," says a secret December 2009 paper signed by the US secretary of state. Her memo urged US diplomats to redouble their efforts to stop Gulf money reaching extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. "Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide," she said. Three other Arab countries are listed as sources of militant money: Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The cables highlight an often ignored factor in the Pakistani and Afghan conflicts: that the violence is partly bankrolled by rich, conservative donors across the Arabian Sea whose governments do little to stop them. The problem is particularly acute in Saudi Arabia, where militants soliciting funds slip into the country disguised as holy pilgrims, set up front companies to launder funds and receive money from government-sanctioned charities. One cable details how the Pakistani militant outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out the 2008 Mumbai attacks, used a Saudi-based front company to fund its activities in 2005. Meanwhile officials with the LeT's charity wing, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, travelled to Saudi Arabia seeking donations for new schools at vastly inflated costs – then siphoned off the excess money to fund militant operations. Militants seeking donations often come during the hajj pilgrimage – "a major security loophole since pilgrims often travel with large amounts of cash and the Saudis cannot refuse them entry into Saudi Arabia". Even a small donation can go far: LeT operates on a budget of just $5.25m (£3.25m) a year, according to American estimates. Saudi officials are often painted as reluctant partners. Clinton complained of the "ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist funds emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority". Washington is critical of the Saudi refusal to ban three charities classified as terrorist entities in the US. "Intelligence suggests that these groups continue to send money overseas and, at times, fund extremism overseas," she said. There has been some progress. This year US officials reported that al-Qaida's fundraising ability had "deteriorated substantially" since a government crackdown. As a result Bin Laden's group was "in its weakest state since 9/11" in Saudi Arabia. Any criticisms are generally offered in private. The cables show that when it comes to powerful oil-rich allies US diplomats save their concerns for closed-door talks, in stark contrast to the often pointed criticism meted out to allies in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Instead, officials at the Riyadh embassy worry about protecting Saudi oilfields from al-Qaida attacks. The other major headache for the US in the Gulf region is the United Arab Emirates. The Afghan Taliban and their militant partners the Haqqani network earn "significant funds" through UAE-based businesses, according to one report. The Taliban extort money from the large Pashtun community in the UAE, which is home to 1 million Pakistanis and 150,000 Afghans. They also fundraise by kidnapping Pashtun businessmen based in Dubai or their relatives. "Some Afghan businessmen in the UAE have resorted to purchasing tickets on the day of travel to limit the chance of being kidnapped themselves upon arrival in either Afghanistan or Pakistan," the report says. Last January US intelligence sources said two senior Taliban fundraisers had regularly travelled to the UAE, where the Taliban and Haqqani networks laundered money through local front companies. One report singled out a Kabul-based "Haqqani facilitator", Haji Khalil Zadran, as a key figure. But, Clinton complained, it was hard to be sure: the UAE's weak financial regulation and porous borders left US investigators with "limited information" on the identity of Taliban and LeT facilitators. The lack of border controls was "exploited by Taliban couriers and Afghan drug lords camouflaged among traders, businessmen and migrant workers", she said. In an effort to stem the flow of funds American and UAE officials are increasingly co-operating to catch the "cash couriers" – smugglers who fly giant sums of money into Pakistan and Afghanistan. In common with its neighbours Kuwait is described as a "source of funds and a key transit point" for al-Qaida and other militant groups. While the government has acted against attacks on its own soil, it is "less inclined to take action against Kuwait-based financiers and facilitators plotting attacks outside of Kuwait". Kuwait has refused to ban the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society, a charity the US designated a terrorist entity in June 2008 for providing aid to al-Qaida and affiliated groups, including LeT. There is little information about militant fundraising in the fourth Gulf country singled out, Qatar, other than to say its "overall level of CT co-operation with the US is considered the worst in the region". The funding quagmire extends to Pakistan itself, where the US cables detail sharp criticism of the government's ambivalence towards funding of militant groups that enjoy covert military support. The cables show how before the Mumbai attacks in 2008, Pakistani and Chinese diplomats manoeuvred hard to block UN sanctions against Jamaat-ud-Dawa. But in August 2009, nine months after sanctions were finally imposed, US diplomats wrote: "We continue to see reporting indicating that JUD is still operating in multiple locations in Pakistan and that the group continues to openly raise funds". JUD denies it is the charity wing of LeT. • This article was amended on 15 December 2010. The original caption referred to the Chatrapathi Sivaji station in Mumbai. This has been corrected." http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/05/wikileaks-cables-saudi-terrorist-funding "5–The Bin Laden Family, $7 billion. The Saudi Bin Laden Group towers over the Middle East construction business through its Saudi Bin Laden Group. Its Dubai arm is building two new cities in Djibouti and Yemen, along with a bridge to connect them. The company has also started forging ties to China. The company’s founder, Mohammed Bin Laden, left 54 sons and daughters from several marriages. Thirteen of his sons sit on the board of the family’s business—the most prominent being Baker, Hassan, Islam and Yehya. Baker, Mohammed’s second son, is now head of the company." http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2009/08/31/the-five-richest-saudis/

Trump has suggested that "taking out" the families of terrorists would control the problem. Europe | Memo From Moscow NY Times Russia Shows What Happens When Terrorists’ Families Are Targeted By ANDREW E. KRAMERMARCH 29, 2016 "MOSCOW — Donald J. Trump, the leading Republican presidential candidate, was widely condemned when he called for the United States to “take out the families” of terrorists. His approach — even after he clarified that he was not talking about killing the relatives — was dismissed by many as immoral and unlawful. Yet, it is the very tactic that Russia has pursued for decades. It is the signature, though officially unacknowledged, policy behind Moscow’s counterinsurgency and counterterrorism strategies, and Russia’s actions in smashing a Muslim separatist rebellion in the Caucasus provide a laboratory for testing Mr. Trump’s ideas. The family ties that bind in terrorist groups came into focus last week after the police in Brussels disclosed that two of the three suicide bombers in the attacks there were brothers, Ibrahim and Khalid el-Bakraoui. All told, analysts estimate that a third of the participants in terrorist acts are related to another attacker. In the conflict that began in Chechnya and has since metastasized into a loosely organized Islamic rebellion throughout the Caucasus region, Russian security services routinely arrest, torture and kill relatives, rights groups say. The Russian approach, enough to make supporters of waterboarding wince, has by some accounts been grimly effective. Abductions of family members unwound the rebel leadership in Chechnya, for example. And siblings have a bloody track record here, as elsewhere. In 2004, Chechen sisters blew themselves up in an airplane and a subway station a week apart. In 2011, the police say, a teenager and his older sister from Ingushetia, another troubled region, helped build a bomb that their brother exploded in the unguarded arrivals hall of Domodedovo Airport in Moscow, killing himself and 36 other people. In the Russian view, the family is the thread that needs to be pulled to unravel the terrorist group. “He should understand his relatives will be treated as accomplices,” Kirill V. Kabanov, a member of President Vladimir V. Putin’s human rights council, said of a potential suicide attacker. “When a person leaves to become a terrorist, he can kill hundreds of innocents,” he said. “Those are the morals we are talking about. We should understand, the relatives must fight this first. If the relative, before the fact, reported it, he is not guilty. If he did not, he is guilty.” By law, Russian security services have no authority to specifically target relatives. But the intelligence forces seldom let a detail like the lack of a legal basis interfere with their activities. In Chechnya and neighboring Dagestan, they routinely burn or demolish the houses of people suspected of being insurgents or terrorists. Most strikingly, whole extended families are rounded up in high-profile cases, and are often held until the militant either gives up or is killed. Maryam Akmedova, from Kabardino-Balkaria region in the North Caucasus, has seen it firsthand. Distressing though it was, she says she understood when Russian prosecutors accused her eldest son of participating in a terrorist attack, as he had never denied his involvement. But her woes hardly stopped there. Soon enough, security agents were questioning her younger son, though there was no evidence linking him to the attack his brother was accused of in the city of Nalchik in 2005. Eventually, the younger brother was shot and killed in 2013 by Russian security forces during an attempted arrest under murky circumstances. “He had no involvement with anything,” Ms. Akmedova said in a telephone interview. “They killed him because his brother was in prison.” The most sweeping application of the tactic came during the pacification of Chechnya, after Mr. Putin engineered the recapture of the separatist territory early in his tenure. Relatives were used as “hooks” to lure in militants. If the militant did not switch sides, the family member disappeared. Chechnya had about 3,000 to 5,000 unresolved disappearances from 2000 to 2005 or so. The policy, executed by the Chechen leader, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, the scion of a prominent Chechen family that itself switched sides, broke the organized resistance. The Russian security services have also manipulated relatives for various ends, such as to inadvertently pass poisoned food to suspected militants on the run. The practice, not surprisingly, has spawned dozens of cases in the European Court of Human Rights and widespread criticism of tactics that, while seemingly effective in the short term, have deeply alienated extended families whose members bear grudges to this day. “There is systematic abuse of the family members of insurgents,” Ekaterina Sokirianskaia, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, and an expert on the Caucasus, said in a telephone interview. “There can be short-term results, but I wouldn’t call it success,” she said. “You can prevent some episodes of violence at the moment, but you are radicalizing whole communities.” “When innocent Muslims are targeted for the expediency of security services, this legitimizes the jihadist cause,” she said. Ms. Akmedova explained how the sense of injustice and outrage develops. After her younger son was killed in 2013, she said, the police came by and told her and her son’s widow that the grandchildren, despite being in kindergarten and elementary school, would be put on watch lists. “The children go to kindergarten,” Ms. Akmedova, 63, a retired drugstore clerk, said. “They are no different from any other children.” In perhaps the highest-profile operation, Russian security services detained in 2004 several dozen members of the extended family of the Chechen rebel defense minister, Magomed Khambiyev, including the wives of his brothers. Aslanbek Khambiyev, a 19-year-old cousin with no known ties, other than familial, was abducted from a university, beaten semiconscious and shoved from a car in the rebel leader’s home village. “Yes, they detained my relatives,” Magomed Khambiyev told the Kommersant newspaper after he surrendered to save their lives. “But they were guilty. Do you understand? Because they were my relatives.” “If I’m a bandit, then they’re bandits, too,” he explained." http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/30/world/europe/russia-chechnya-caucasus-terrorists-families.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Really? I have four National ratings, and next year will pursue FAI. My profile info is all correct. I was also a very experienced DZSO before I even had my A license (I bring that up because someone made a comment about it once). Might be surprised who's judging competitions, certifying records, or "pulling dirt!" And this explains a lot about some of the judging I have seen at some of the competitions over the years.... lots of credentials, but not much experience. top Everyone has to start somewhere and in my experience you work your way up the judging totem pole. In addition finding qualified judges is difficult in every sport. Especially so if there is no compensation.

According to the FAA if they are a hot chick, their name and phone number is required in case the FAA needs to verify the jump/signature.

Single payer system. Yea!!!! More Bureaucracy!!!! (Said no one ever.....) http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21618788-americas-health-care-system-remains-dysfunctional-it-could-be-made-better-how-fix http://www.economist.com/news/21678669-americas-big-spending-health-care-doesnt-pay http://medicaleconomics.modernmedicine.com/medical-economics/news/modernmedicine/modern-medicine-feature-articles/why-canada-beats-us-controlli

Like this one? http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/17/politics/russia-putin-trump/ "Russia's Putin probably approved London murder of ex-KGB agent Litvinenko: UK inquiry" http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-russia-litvinenko-idUSKCN0UZ0Z6 It no wonder why Putin is in love with Trump. "In an interview with The Washington Post, the Republican frontrunner chided the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO for its expense. He said the U.S. might need to reduce its involvement in NATO in coming years, a move that would flout Washington’s long-standing support for the 28-member military alliance. “We certainly can’t afford to do this anymore,” Trump said. “NATO is costing us a fortune, and yes, we’re protecting Europe with NATO, but we’re spending a lot of money.” http://fortune.com/2016/03/22/donald-trump-nato/ Then there is foreign policy. "One of Trump’s foreign policy advisers is a 2009 college grad who lists Model UN as a credential"... Schmitz slowed or blocked investigations of senior Bush administration officials, spent taxpayer money on pet projects and accepted gifts that may have violated ethics guidelines, according to interviews with current and former senior officials in the inspector general’s office, congressional investigators and a review of internal email and other documents.... He later became a senior official at the Prince Group, the parent company of defense contractor Blackwater. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/03/21/meet-the-men-shaping-donald-trumps-foreign-policy-views/

You know I have just come back in here, but I have a feeling you have posted this sort of thing numerous times. And I bet on every occasion, it has fallen on deaf ears. No, not even deaf ears. Ears that have been cut off, and canals that have been filled with cement. FWIW - I think a couple of the people you are referring to genuinely aren't smart enough to understand their own arguments, let alone anyone else's. Post concussions from swooping small canopies perhaps? All kidding aside: "For a long time, psychologists believed that allowing yourself to go ahead and think about white bears was the only solution - eventually, since your brain wasn't on the lookout for these thoughts and actively trying to block them anymore, they would fade. But thoughts can be blocked, without rebounding. To do this, there are two things you need to know... So the first step to blocking an unwanted thought is really embracing the idea that you don't really need to think it. 2) Second, you need a strategy for handling the thought when it does come. A good if-then plan is just what the doctor ordered for coping with unwanted thoughts and disruptive feelings (see my previous post, Be Careful What You Plan For, for more on planning). The key is to plan out, in advance what you will do when the thought pops up in your mind. It can be as simple as saying to yourself, "If the thought comes, then I will ignore it." Some may prefer to replace the unwanted thought or feeling with a more positive one. " https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-science-success/201004/yes-you-can-stop-thinking-about-it Its important for personal peace of mind to ignore the obvious and ignore what someone has said if they otherwise like that person.

I am sick of one special interest group or another getting a pass by their claims of intolerance. If I really like or totally despise someone, I can think of no case where it is simply because of their gender, sexual preference, race, religion, favorite sport or whatever. After going against Kamikazes in the Pacific, my father could not bring himself to buy a Japanese car. Nevertheless, a significant number of our close family friends were/are Japanese ethnic or nationals. If I think someone is a dreadful human being, I will not give them more or less credit for being a lesbian, Norwegian, negro, Buddhist, a Physicist or whatever. Am I prejudiced? Sure, I have general expectations of various groups of people, based on a great deal of exposure. One reason I like working with people with independent credentials is that I don't have to wonder if they got their degree because their uncle donated a building to the University, or nobody wanted to give an F to the negro, or those bodacious tatas were surely worth an A or whatever. If you're a Registered Architect, you have to know the subject matter cold, no matter what school you attended. When Hillary ordered the White House staff to dress in mufti because she found military uniforms 'offensive,' that was a deal breaker for me. A reputable source witnessed her tell a Secret Service agent to pick up a glove she had dropped and, when he said "it's not my job," she slapped him. That, in addition to being a Felony, shows a complete lack of class on her part. The reports of her competing with Bill for other women are largely a matter of indifference. It is not so much that I do not trust her as it is that I trust her to remain true to form, and she has worked long and hard to earn my deep and abiding loathing. The fact that she is female is neither here nor there. Trump is a loose cannon and a complete jerk, but at least he isn't a lawyer and he has occasionally turned a profit. I am not sure that I like him any more than Hillary, when all is said and done. This election cycle is a train wreck and everybody will lose, regardless of who floats to the top. BSBD, Winsor Re the discussions be it true or false of HRC's real demeanor and character. "As Melanson also noted, Secret Service agents would have considered it a serious breach of professionalism for one of their number to have publicly disclosed this sort of personal information about their charges: The Service's unwritten code of silence dictates that agents keep their observations to themselves. Today, many agents still do not want to accept that anyone among the Clintons' protective details broke the long-understood rule: "There's no way we would have talked about it. There's an agency culture, an unwritten code. That was a pretty tough time for us [because people accused us of breaking the code]."... As Time magazine noted as far back as 1993, cranking out spurious stories that discredited Hillary Clinton and were attributed to anonymous Secret Service agents was a known political trick: A Republican consultant told a network newscaster that his job was to make sure Hillary Clinton is discredited before the 1996 campaign. Each day anti-Hillary talking points go out to talk-show hosts. The rumor machine is cranking out bogus stories about her face (lifted), her sex life (either nonexistent or all too active) and her marriage (a sham). Many of the stories are attributed to the Secret Service in an attempt to give the tales credibility."... http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/secretservice.asp

Here's one: "Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic religious congregation, which in 2012 consisted of over 4,500 sisters and was active in 133 countries. They run hospices and homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis; soup kitchens; dispensaries and mobile clinics; children's and family counselling programmes; orphanages; and schools. Members must adhere to the vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, as well as a fourth vow, to give "wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor".[7]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa IMO A good Christian gives and doesn't ask or take. Is honest and doesn't throw stones at those who aren't. Shields the weak and the vulnerable from those that would hurt or take advantage of them. The original poster may be a fine Christian and I wouldn't be so unfair to compare him to Mother Teresa. But Christians like Trump and others currently in the news have turned me aside from religion. I'm an atheist now and was an R. C. altar boy(now the politically correct term is "altar server") for three years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G4Qduvn5og

freebie web site?? The Economist is probably the most well-written and articulate publication available; have you ever read a copy. If you have, you may have also noticed that no articles in the Economist note the author - so no "grandstanding" or self promotion. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ TRUE Probably not a CEO or executive of any major company in the world that doesn't read it or subscribe to the digital edition. "The Economist is an English-language weekly newspaper owned by the Economist Group and edited in offices based in London.[4][5][6] Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843. For historical reasons, ... Praise and accolades In 2005, the Chicago Tribune named it the best English-language magazine noting its strength in international reporting "where it does not feel moved to cover a faraway land only at a time of unmitigated disaster" and that it kept a wall between its reporting and its more conservative editorial policies.[116] As the guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs on 31 January 2016, Bill Gates confessed to reading The Economist "from cover to cover every week".[117]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist There is a reason why the Economist's statements/opinions on Mr Trump generated such worldwide interest and alarm. Why newspapers picked up on the story from S. Africa to Argentina to Canada to Norway.

With exchange rates the way they are Russia is pretty cheap. http://www.jumpticketprices.com/tunnels.asp?currency=USD

http://www.intelligent-aerospace.com/articles/2016/01/ehang-184-autonomous-aerial-vehicle.html

I take it you've never been on either a gun forum, or a political party forum, or a environmental forum?

Everything has a start. I did not say Trump is the new Hitler or Stalin, but he is leading the way for someone who can be. None of us know the future, but you should be scared, that so many blindless followers, swallow when they are asked. Well the blind-less followers who voted for Trump will soon get what they want: "In his opening statement at Tuesday night's Republican debate on Fox Business, presidential hopeful Donald Trump said he would not raise the minimum wage and that wages were "too high." Trump made his comments in response to a question about whether he had sympathy for protesters who wanted to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Tuesday night's debate was focused on the economy. "We are a country that is being beaten on every front — economically, militarily," Trump said. "Taxes too high, wages too high, we're not going to be able to compete against the world ... People have to go out, they have to work really hard, and they have to get into that upper stratum." Trump also said the US "doesn't win anymore." This isn't the first time Trump has come out against raising the minimum wage. In August, he told MSNBC that raising the minimum wage would hurt America's economic competitiveness." http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-wages-too-high-2015-11 The non-college educated who think Trump is going to look after the "little guy" are in for a surprise. Trump stands for low wages and low taxes. To get US competitiveness going.When the Spanish speaking farm field workers, meat packing plant workers, are deported that will open up about 11.3 million new minimum wage jobs for those who will have to "work hard".

Thanks for that. Its neck and neck with the SNL parody's on Clinton. There are about 1/2 dozen of them and I think more to come. I'm thinking about buying a case of gasmasks to sell at the Republican convention. They'd be in high demand if the party thinks it can sidestep a Trump nomination. He has already stated " Trump said Wednesday that a contested GOP convention could be a disaster if he goes to Cleveland a few delegates shy of 1,237 — and doesn’t leave as the party’s nominee. “I think you’d have riots,” Trump said on CNN. Noting that he’s “representing many millions of people,” he told Chris Cuomo: “If you disenfranchise those people, and you say, ‘I’m sorry, you’re 100 votes short’…I think you’d have problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen.”... Political commentators now routinely talk about the riots that would break out in Cleveland if Trump were denied the nomination, about how his supporters have guns and all hell could break loose, that they would burn everything to the ground. It works to Trump’s advantage to not try too hard to dispel these notions. He wants Republican delegates who control his political fate to have it in the back of their minds…" https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/03/16/donald-trump-just-threatened-more-violence-only-this-time-its-directed-at-the-gop/ Perhaps a couple cases of body armor might sell at a tidy profit as well! IMO the party will pay for ignoring the middle and low income classes of the party and electorate. If that wasn't the issue pre-Trump it is now.

How about this prison break Canadian style. They got away because prison guards in Quebec are "unarmed". In Canada the guards can't be polite to the inmates if they are armed. http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/video-shows-prisoners-struggling-to-climb-rope-in-que-helicopter-escape-1.2818211

It can't happen in the US because there are three branches of government. Two trump one so to speak. Executive orders only go so far..... But: " The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Columnist NY Times The Trump-Berlusconi Syndrome Roger Cohen MARCH 14, 2016 In the mid-1980s, when I was covering Italy for The Wall Street Journal, I profiled a brash, bruising, billionaire businessman named Silvio Berlusconi who had made a fortune in real estate and parlayed that into control of an almost unrivaled private television empire. Berlusconi invited me to the book-lined office in his Milan mansion. He’d made his money building a garden city called Milano 2 on the eastern outskirts of Italy’s financial capital. Then he’d made his real money — billions of dollars — through TV networks gathered in a controlling company called Mediaset. By the time I met him, a big chunk of Italy’s television advertising revenue was going into his pocket. What I recall is the talk — a lot of it — and the voice — he’d worked as a crooner on cruise ships — and the self-confidence and the vulgarity (I had the impression that there was nothing inside the leather-bound books on the shelves). Berlusconi whisked me off in his private jet, and as we climbed over Milan he gestured to the urban sprawl beneath him and told me he was by far the “richest man in Italy.” I countered that surely Giovanni Agnelli, then the head of the Fiat group, was richer. Berlusconi scoffed. There was a lot more of his new money than that old money. Within a decade or so, in 1994, Berlusconi was prime minister, at the head of a right-of-center political party he’d concocted the previous year, thrust to power on the basis that he would break with Italy’s dysfunctional politics and that, as a self-made billionaire, he knew how to fix problems. He used television unsparingly to buttress his meteoric rise through the wreckage of Italy’s post-1945 political order, which had recently collapsed with the end of the Cold War. Widely ridiculed, endlessly written about, long unscathed by his evident misogyny and diverse legal travails, Berlusconi proved a Teflon politician. Nothing stuck. He had the gift of the gab. He had a tone. He connected. He owned a soccer club, for heaven’s sake. Many Italians thought they saw in him one of their own. He served three terms and nine years as prime minister before an ignominious downfall. Nobody who knows Berlusconi and has watched the rise and rise of Donald Trump can fail to be struck by the parallels. It’s not just the real-estate-to-television path. It’s not just their shared admiration for Vladimir Putin. It’s not just the playboy thing, and obsession with their virility, and smattering of bigotry, and contempt for policy wonks, and reliance on a tell-it-like-it-is tone. It’s not their wealth, nor the media savvy that taught them that nobody ever lost by betting on human stupidity. No, it’s something in the zeitgeist. America is ripe for Trump just as Italy was ripe for Berlusconi. Trump, too, is cutting through a rotten political system in a society where economic frustration at jobs exported to China is high. He is emerging after two lost wars, as American power declines and others strut the global stage, against a backdrop of partisan political paralysis, in a system corrupted by money. To Obama’s Doctrine of Restraint, Trump opposes a Doctrine of Resurgence. To reason, he counters with rage. In the same way, Berlusconi emerged as Italy ceased to be a Cold War pivot and the Christian-Democrat-dominated postwar political alignments imploded. Everything was in flux as the “mani pulite” (clean hands) investigation started by Milan magistrates in 1992 exposed what everyone knew: that graft and corruption were cornerstones of Italian politics. No matter that Berlusconi was also a target of the investigation: He was new, he talked the talk, he would conjure something! As Alexander Stille wrote recently in The Intercept of Trump and Berlusconi: “Entering politics, both have styled themselves as the ultimate anti-politician — as the super-successful entrepreneur running against gray ‘professional politicians’ who have never met a payroll.” Stille went on to make an important point about how the deregulation of broadcast media in the United States and Italy — in contrast to Britain or France or Germany where state media companies still “act as a kind of referee for civil discourse” and “commonly accepted facts” — has fostered the fact-lite free-for-all of “alternate realities” conducive to Trumpism. If elected president, Trump would have his finger on the nuclear button. Berlusconi did not. Trump would also face strong institutions, including judicial institutions. Berlusconi did not. Trump would be the leader of the free world. Berlusconi ruled from a city, Rome, whose lesson is that all power, however great, passes. What Berlusconi teaches is that Trump could go all the way in a nation thirsting for a new politics. The man known as “The Knight” ended up convicted of tax fraud and paying for sex with an underage prostitute — but it took 17 years of intermittent scandal and incompetence, from 1994 to 2011, for Italy to rub the stardust from its eyes. Take note, America, before the die is cast. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/15/opinion/the-trump-berlusconi-syndrome.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region