Society The Donald J. Trump Show - 4 more years editions

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Zeph

TMMAC Addict
Jan 22, 2015
24,355
32,126
Bernie looking and sounding more and more like Uncle Junior from Sopranos



“Senator Sanders, for the record, you’re saying you never told Senator Warren that she- quote: ‘Never had the Makings of a Varsity Athlete’ ?”

“I told him that I lettered in rain dancing and Dreamcatching, but he insisted that wasn’t college ball.. I found it very demeaning and told him it was exactly the thing I was trying to teach my son NOT to do. At which point Sen Sanders repeated the insult.”

“Mrs Warren how did you feel when Mr Sanders asked you to let this all go and ‘smokum peace pipe’?”
there was an attempt
 

Freeloading Rusty

Here comes Rover, sniffin’ at your ass
Jan 11, 2016
26,916
26,743
Trump recounts minute-by-minute details of Soleimani strike to donors at Mar-a-Lago

In his speech — held inside the gilded ballroom on his Mar-a-Lago property — he claimed that Soleimani was "saying bad things about our country" before the strike, which led to his decision to authorize his killing.
"How much of this shit do we have to listen to?" Trump asked. "How much are we going to listen to?"
Trump did not describe an "imminent threat" that led to his decision to kill Soleimani, the justification used by administration officials in the aftermath of the attack.
Instead, he described Soleimani as a "noted terrorist" who "was down on our list" and "was supposed to be in his country" before traveling to other nations in the region.
Trump described in detail watching remotely as Soleimani arrived at Baghdad International Airport, where he was met by Iraqi paramilitary leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the head of Kata'ib Hezbollah.
Trump claimed erroneously that Soleimani was meeting "the head of Hezbollah" (the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group is separate from group led by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis).
And he claimed the strike he authorized took out "two for the price of one."
He went on to recount listening to military officials as they watched the strike from "cameras that are miles in the sky."
"They're together sir," Trump recalled the military officials saying. "Sir, they have two minutes and 11 seconds. No emotion. '2 minutes and 11 seconds to live, sir. They're in the car, they're in an armored vehicle. Sir, they have approximately one minute to live, sir. 30 seconds. 10, 9, 8 ...' "
"Then all of a sudden, boom," he went on. "'They're gone, sir. Cutting off.' "
"I said, where is this guy?" Trump continued. "That was the last I heard from him."
Trump's detailed recounting of the strike goes further than what he or other officials have said about the evening in early January that took out Iran's top military and intelligence commander. The strike led to increased tensions in the region and fears the US and Iran could go to war.
Trump acknowledged the outcome Friday, saying the strike "shook up the world."
"He was supposed to be invincible," Trump said of Soleimani.
In his remarks, Trump also repeated claims that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi died "screaming" following a US raid on his compound.
"He was screaming, going crazy," Trump said. Other US officials have declined to provide further details of al-Baghdadi's final minutes.
And Trump joked the Belgian Malinois dog that assisted in the Baghdadi raid "got more credit than I did" for the killing.
"The dog Conan became very famous," Trump said.
 

Freeloading Rusty

Here comes Rover, sniffin’ at your ass
Jan 11, 2016
26,916
26,743
One stunning chart undercuts Trump's favorite economic scorecard — and shows why its misleading
  • Trump has repeatedly touted the stock market as a scorecard to show the economy is strong and reaching new highs.
  • But the stock market doesn't entirely reflect the state of the economy.
  • There's a widening gap between wage and stock growth, and its only accelerated in the Trump era.
  • The S&P 500 has climbed more than 40% since Trump took office in 2017, compared to only a 9% bump in wage growth during the same period.
  • Even with larger paychecks, employees now have to deal with the rising price tags of education, housing, and healthcare.
 

Freeloading Rusty

Here comes Rover, sniffin’ at your ass
Jan 11, 2016
26,916
26,743
House releases new impeachment evidence linking Nunes aide to Parnas
House releases new impeachment evidence linking Nunes aide to Parnas

House impeachment investigators sought Friday to pull Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, deeper into the Ukraine scandal at the center of President Donald Trump’s upcoming impeachment trial.

A set of text messages released Friday evening by the Intelligence Committee show a top Nunes aide, Derek Harvey, in frequent contact with Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani who has become a key figure in the Ukraine controversy that resulted in Trump’s impeachment last month. In one exchange, Harvey appears to pass along Nunes’ contact information two days before the Intelligence Committee’s impeachment report indicated that a phone connected to Nunes made contact with a phone connected to Parnas.

The text messages, provided to investigators by Parnas, show Harvey in contact with Parnas throughout the spring of 2019 — the same time Parnas was working with Giuliani and other Trump allies to remove the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. Yovanovitch had been viewed as an obstacle to Giuliani’s effort to convince Ukraine to investigate Trump’s political rivals, including former Vice President Joe Biden. Previously released information suggested Harvey and Parnas began communicating at least as early as January 2019.

Story Continued Below


Trump abruptly pulled Yovanovitch out of the country last May, and she testified publicly late last year in the impeachment inquiry, telling lawmakers she was the victim of a smear campaign.

The newly released text messages show Harvey asking Parnas to pursue several lines of inquiry with his Ukrainian contacts, including one regarding what Harvey calls “rumors” about coordination between the 2016 campaign of Hillary Clinton and the Ukrainian government to dig up dirt on Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort.

Harvey asked a few days later whether Parnas was preparing to send documents or if he would “keep working through [John] Solomon,” a reference to a former columnist at The Hill who was working closely with Parnas and Giuliani on the effort.

Over the next few weeks, the pair attempted to arrange Skype interviews between Republican staff of the Intelligence Committee and senior officials in Ukraine, including former prosecutors Viktor Shokin and Yuri Lutsenko, who had been working to oust Yovanovitch and had offered up allegations of dirt on Biden. Special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 election was released in the middle of their effort, and Harvey asked at one point if they could postpone a phone call while he dealt with “Mueller stuff.”

“Lev, I have not received anything to assist. I also need some additional time to prepare,” Harvey wrote on April 17, 2019. “Can we do this Thursday rather than 1pm Wednesday?”

It appears that at least one of the interviews ultimately occurred but Harvey then asked on April 19 to hold off on “any more interviews” until there were official letters exchanged and documents available.

The new text messages add another layer to Nunes’ potential involvement in the Giuliani-led effort to oust Yovanovitch and push the Ukrainian government to announce an investigation targeting Biden. Nunes' office did not respond to a request for comment.

House impeachment investigators first revealed late last year that Nunes exchanged a handful of phone calls with Parnas and Giuliani. Investigators obtained the call records from telecommunications company AT&T, and Republican lawmakers objected to the decision to publish identifying information about a sitting member of Congress, accusing House Intelligence chairman Adam Schiff of abusing his authority to smear his political opponents.

Schiff has maintained that Nunes was not subpoenaed and that the information was lawfully obtained from AT&T. He has defended the decision to release the call records as part of his committee’s final report on the impeachment inquiry, citing Parnas’ and Giuliani’s relevance to the investigation.

In an interview on MSNBC earlier this week, Parnas said both Nunes and Harvey were “involved in getting this stuff on Biden,” adding that Nunes was trying to “help out.”

Schiff has declined to directly address Nunes’ possible involvement, but he suggested at a press conference in December that Nunes was “complicit” in what Democrats have described as Trump’s impeachable conduct.

“It is deeply concerning that at a time when the president of the United States was using the power of his office to dig up dirt on a political rival, that there may be evidence that there were members of Congress complicit in that activity,” Schiff said on Dec. 3.
 

Sheepdog

Protecting America from excessive stool loitering
Dec 1, 2015
8,912
14,237
USSF is utilizing current Army/Air Force uniforms, saving costs of designing/producing a new one.
Members will look like their joint counterparts they’ll be working with, on the ground.
I think the Space Force should be moved under Marine Corps Aviation. That way the Navy's Army's Air Force can be in charge of space too.

It should also be integrated with the Mounted Color Guard, which is the Navy's Army's cavalry unit, as horses, while very good at conducting maritime operations, are actually optimized for space combat, as proven during the Battle of Exegol.
 

Splinty

Shake 'em off
Admin
Dec 31, 2014
44,116
91,095
The military created different uniforms for different branches.
Along with that being a bad idea turns out that camo was really bad anyways.
The Marines had multi-cam and new joint forces leadership came in and said we want that. Multicam is an evidence proven camo and the plan was to put it out everywhere.
The company that made multi-cam tried to patent it and license it to the government. One of the smartest things government has ever done was say no slightly changed the camo and called it OCP. essentially the same effectiveness and nearly identical without one vertical pattern addition. Also with no licensing fee.
There's now a push to roll this out to a consistent uniform for all branches to save money. This is why the army and air Force already have it.

Beyond the obviousness of economies of scale, those who seem to think that space force should be wearing black spandex or something really don't understand the military.
Just like a majority of the air Force will remain ground crews with specific pilot uniforms, The space force is not created to have everybody up in space. Whether it's to centralize the low orbit and other orbital technologies that we have already. At current that includes Air Force Space Command, the Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, the Naval Satellite Operations Center, and the Army’s 1st Space Brigade.

I always wanted to be an army astronaut but it wasn't meant to be.
 

Splinty

Shake 'em off
Admin
Dec 31, 2014
44,116
91,095
Don't give up, bro. They just apporved funding for Space Force.
I was a screwed up kid. Broken home, aimless, etc.
Worked for a while, got my head together, went back to school, etc.
I was proud of what I did. I've passed most of my peers educationally and socioeconomically. I've outdone my parents (every parents goal, right?)

So in 2016 NASA opened the Astronaut Candidate program. I'm thinking, "I'm military, a doc, etc" maybe I finally could do this!

So what happened that year?

Record Number of Americans Apply to #BeAnAstronaut at NASA

More than 18,300 people applied to join NASA’s 2017 astronaut class, almost three times the number of applications received in 2012 for the most recent astronaut class, and far surpassing the previous record of 8,000 in 1978.

So I'm sitting here like this:




And who do you get when you have a 1000+:1 ratio for each seat?

Well it turns out they are pretty impressive, like this son of a bitch:

Astronaut Jonny Kim

Dr. Jonny Kim was selected by NASA to join the 2017 Astronaut Candidate Class. He reported for duty in August 2017 and having completed the initial astronaut candidate training is now eligible for a mission assignment. A U.S. Navy SEAL, Kim completed more than 100 combat operations and is the recipient of the Silver Star and Bronze Star with Combat “V”. Kim was commissioned as a naval officer through an enlisted-to-officer program and earned his degree in mathematics at the University of San Diego and a doctorate of medicine at Harvard Medical School.



ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Immigrant child story
Navy Seal
U of SD for Math
HARVARD MED
Completed EM internship but had to take a pause because...

HES ALSO A MOFO ASTRONAUT?!?!




So yeah, I'm a redneck doc army reserve member that went to a commuter college and public med school.
Astronauts are SoCal Navy Seals that went to known schools and Harvard.

I finally found my limit in life at the stratosphere.
 

BeardOfKnowledge

The Most Consistent Motherfucker You Know
Jul 22, 2015
60,547
56,268
In that experiment the bird who shared the tokens only did so when he wasn't allowed to spend them, but the other bird who could spend tokens didn't have any. Also in that experiment the bird who did share his tokens didn't get any walnuts.

So what actually happened was the "poor" bird took all of the "rich" birds money; spent it on stuff and then left the generous bird poor.
 

BeardOfKnowledge

The Most Consistent Motherfucker You Know
Jul 22, 2015
60,547
56,268
I was a screwed up kid. Broken home, aimless, etc.
Worked for a while, got my head together, went back to school, etc.
I was proud of what I did. I've passed most of my peers educationally and socioeconomically. I've outdone my parents (every parents goal, right?)

So in 2016 NASA opened the Astronaut Candidate program. I'm thinking, "I'm military, a doc, etc" maybe I finally could do this!

So what happened that year?

Record Number of Americans Apply to #BeAnAstronaut at NASA

More than 18,300 people applied to join NASA’s 2017 astronaut class, almost three times the number of applications received in 2012 for the most recent astronaut class, and far surpassing the previous record of 8,000 in 1978.

So I'm sitting here like this:




And who do you get when you have a 1000+:1 ratio for each seat?

Well it turns out they are pretty impressive, like this son of a bitch:

Astronaut Jonny Kim

Dr. Jonny Kim was selected by NASA to join the 2017 Astronaut Candidate Class. He reported for duty in August 2017 and having completed the initial astronaut candidate training is now eligible for a mission assignment. A U.S. Navy SEAL, Kim completed more than 100 combat operations and is the recipient of the Silver Star and Bronze Star with Combat “V”. Kim was commissioned as a naval officer through an enlisted-to-officer program and earned his degree in mathematics at the University of San Diego and a doctorate of medicine at Harvard Medical School.



ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Immigrant child story
Navy Seal
U of SD for Math
HARVARD MED
Completed EM internship but had to take a pause because...

HES ALSO A MOFO ASTRONAUT?!?!




So yeah, I'm a redneck doc army reserve member that went to a commuter college and public med school.
Astronauts are SoCal Navy Seals that went to known schools and Harvard.

I finally found my limit in life at the stratosphere.
That's NASA. NASA is for nerds. Space Force will be for cool dudes.
 

Splinty

Shake 'em off
Admin
Dec 31, 2014
44,116
91,095
In that experiment the bird who shared the tokens only did so when he wasn't allowed to spend them, but the other bird who could spend tokens didn't have any. Also in that experiment the bird who did share his tokens didn't get any walnuts.

So what actually happened was the "poor" bird took all of the "rich" birds money; spent it on stuff and then left the generous bird poor.
Had to look it up...
Would be hilarious to see the opposing infographic with the same study.
"Blue headed macaws were given tokens for food and did not share them. The end"

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(19)31469-1

Transfers were affected by the strength of the dyads’ affiliation and partially by the receivers’ attention-getting behaviors. Furthermore, the birds reciprocated the help once the roles were reversed. Blue-headed macaws, in contrast, transferred hardly any tokens. Species differences in social tolerance might explain this discrepancy. These findings show that instrumental helping based on a prosocial attitude, accompanied but potentially not sustained by reciprocity, is present in parrots, suggesting that this capacity evolved convergently in this avian group and mammals.

Comparable cases of proactive instrumental helping, using a similar setup, have only been reported in orangutans and bonobos [11, 12], while other species either did not exhibit any helping behaviors (chimpanzees and gorillas [11]; ravens [3]), exhibited only passive acts of helping (capuchin monkeys and Tonkean macaques [13]), or likely acted based on simpler mechanisms, like local enhancement learning (capuchin monkeys [14]; African grey parrots [15]). Furthermore, we found that more closely affiliated dyads (higher composite sociality index [CSI] [16]) transferred more tokens than less closely affiliated ones (GLMM: β ± SE = 0.12 ± 0.05, z = 2.18, p = 0.029; Data S1D, model 2A). This finding is interesting in particular, as it indicates that although the gray parrots may possess an intrinsic motivation to help group members in general (i.e., largely independent of relationship quality) considering that transfers occurred among all dyads, their propensity to help seemed to be further affected by social affiliation. This result is in line with other studies showing that prosocial behaviors are favorably directed toward closely affiliated conspecifics (see [10] for a review).
 

Hauler

Been fallin so long it's like gravitys gone
Feb 3, 2016
45,413
57,814
If I get a chance to work my way up the gravity well I'm on it. I assure you, I'm standing by.


With any luck you'll get your chance. Hopefully you'll have the likes of Denise Richards and Dina Meyer in your crew.
Enjoy those communal showers, bro.