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

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BeardOfKnowledge

The Most Consistent Motherfucker You Know
Jul 22, 2015
60,547
56,268
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).
I liked this quote:

"The African greys gave the token beak-to-beak with their partner," Brucks says. "It was not just one token. Many of them transferred all 10 tokens, one after the other, always watching how their partner got the food for it, whereas they themselves did not get anything."
It sounds a lot like income tax.
 

Splinty

Shake 'em off
Admin
Dec 31, 2014
44,116
91,095


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.
I've been deployed with beautiful Danish women soldiers with unisex bathrooms (not showers). You rapidly learn that a decent-sized woman can be in great shape and make a capable soldier. You also learn that any hint of sexy ideal about "beautiful Danish women soldiers" is gone when you are both pinching a constipated dehydrated loaf in a combat zone in Iraq in adjacent trailer stalls. Cheers, I hope that image is as good for you as it was for me.

Starship Troopers lied to me.
 

BeardOfKnowledge

The Most Consistent Motherfucker You Know
Jul 22, 2015
60,547
56,268
I've been deployed with beautiful Danish women soldiers with unisex bathrooms (not showers). You rapidly learn that a decent-sized woman can be in great shape and make a capable soldier. You also learn that any hint of sexy ideal about "beautiful Danish women soldiers" is gone when you are both pinching a constipated dehydrated loaf in a combat zone in Iraq in adjacent trailer stalls. Cheers, I hope that image is as good for you as it was for me.

Starship Troopers lied to me.
It sounds to me like you're just carting around a negative attitude.
 

jason73

Yuri Bezmenov was right
First 100
Jan 15, 2015
72,781
134,158
I've been deployed with beautiful Danish women soldiers with unisex bathrooms (not showers). You rapidly learn that a decent-sized woman can be in great shape and make a capable soldier. You also learn that any hint of sexy ideal about "beautiful Danish women soldiers" is gone when you are both pinching a constipated dehydrated loaf in a combat zone in Iraq in adjacent trailer stalls. Cheers, I hope that image is as good for you as it was for me.

Starship Troopers lied to me.
some guys pay big bucks for that kind of action
 

Disciplined Galt

Disciplina et Frugalis
First 100
Jan 15, 2015
26,030
30,881
I've been deployed with beautiful Danish women soldiers with unisex bathrooms (not showers). You rapidly learn that a decent-sized woman can be in great shape and make a capable soldier. You also learn that any hint of sexy ideal about "beautiful Danish women soldiers" is gone when you are both pinching a constipated dehydrated loaf in a combat zone in Iraq in adjacent trailer stalls. Cheers, I hope that image is as good for you as it was for me.

Starship Troopers lied to me.
Had one woman in my platoon in basic, she was a judoka. I was scared shitless of getting a boner in the shower since there was 37 guys and 3 girls. After 2 days both of the other girls had washed out. Judoka made it all the way and fucked 8 of my platoon mates like @Slutman Lars
 

Splinty

Shake 'em off
Admin
Dec 31, 2014
44,116
91,095
Had one woman in my platoon in basic, she was a judoka. I was scared shitless of getting a boner in the shower since there was 37 guys and 3 girls. After 2 days both of the other girls had washed out. Judoka made it all the way and fucked 8 of my platoon mates like @Slutman Lars
Swedish soldiers shower together?
 

KWingJitsu

ยาเม็ดสีแดงหรือสีฟ้ายา?
Nov 15, 2015
10,311
12,758
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.
Funny, I've actually read up on that guy. Impressive human.
 

Hauler

Been fallin so long it's like gravitys gone
Feb 3, 2016
45,412
57,814
December 2019 housing starts in US hit a 13 year high. It was the highest since December of 2006, well before the housing crash and the great recession.

Main factors being attributed to the outstanding start numbers are low mortgage rates and a very strong job market.

The growth isn't sustainable due to a shortage of available labor across the country, but it's a great sign of a very strong economy.
 

Freeloading Rusty

Here comes Rover, sniffin’ at your ass
Jan 11, 2016
26,916
26,743
Trump's Russia adviser was escorted from the White House after 2 months on the job, as part of a mysterious security probe
  • The National Security Council's senior director for European and Russian affairs has been placed on administrative leave, and escorted out of the White House, the Associated Press and Axios reported.
  • Andrew Peek was put on leave pending the result of an as-yet unknown security-related investigation, the reports say.
  • Peek was appointed to the role in November. The National Security Council is the main foreign-policy unit at the White House.
  • His predecessors, Fiona Hill and Tim Morrison, testified to the House last year as part of President Donald Trump's impeachment probe.
  • Before his White House appointment, Peek worked for the State Department, and focused on Iran and Iraq.
 

Freeloading Rusty

Here comes Rover, sniffin’ at your ass
Jan 11, 2016
26,916
26,743
McConnell Unveils Rules for Trump Impeachment Trial
Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, unveiled ground rules on Monday for President Trump’s impeachment trial that would attempt to speed the proceeding along and refuse to admit the evidence against the president unearthed by the House without a separate vote.

Mr. McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, showed his hand hours after Mr. Trump’s legal team called on the Senate to “swiftly reject” the impeachment charges and acquit him, arguing that Democrats would “permanently weaken the presidency” if they succeeded in removing him from office over what the team characterized as policy and political differences.

In a 110-page brief submitted to the Senate the day before Mr. Trump’s trial begins in earnest, the president’s lawyers advanced their first sustained legal argument since the House opened its inquiry in the fall, contending that the two charges approved largely along party lines were constitutionally flawed and set a dangerous precedent.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers dismissed the validity of both articles of impeachment lodged against him — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — because they do not state any specific violation of the law, advancing a constrained and widely rejected interpretation of the power to impeach a president. While the lawyers did not contest the basic facts of the case, they maintained that Democrats’ accusations in effect seek to punish the president for foreign policy decisions and efforts to preserve executive prerogatives.

“They do not remotely approach the constitutional threshold for removing a president from office,” the brief said. “The diluted standard asserted here would permanently weaken the presidency and forever alter the balance among the branches of government in a manner that offends the constitutional design established by the founders.”

Mr. McConnell’s trial rules, which also limited each side’s arguments to 24 hours over two days, gave the White House a helping hand at the outset and drew a swift anger from Democrats. The rules left open the possibility that the Senate could not only decline to hear new evidence not uncovered in the House impeachment inquiry, but could also sidestep considering the House case against Mr. Trump altogether — although such a vote is considered unlikely.

“Under this resolution, Senator McConnell is saying he doesn’t want to hear any of the existing evidence, and he doesn’t want to hear any new evidence,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader. “It’s a cover-up, and the American people will see it for exactly what it is.”

He promised to propose changes during what promises to be a rancorous debate in the Senate over the rules on Tuesday.

In their own detailed legal brief submitted on Saturday, the House impeachment managers outlined their case that Mr. Trump corruptly solicited foreign interference in the 2020 election for his own benefit by pressuring Ukraine to announce investigations into his political rivals while withholding nearly $400 million in security aid the country desperately needed as well as a coveted White House meeting for its president.

“President Trump did not engage in this corrupt conduct to uphold the presidency or protect the right to vote,” the seven House Democratic impeachment managers said Monday in a second filing that rebutted many of the president’s assertions. “He did it to cheat in the next election and bury the evidence when he got caught.”

“Mr. Trump’s answer to the charges offers an unconvincing and implausible defense against the factual allegations in Article I,” the managers wrote. “The ‘simple facts’ that it recites confirm President Trump’s guilt, not his innocence.”

The legal brief filed by Mr. Trump’s lawyers did not deny that Mr. Trump asked Ukraine to announce the investigations into Democrats, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., nor that he withheld military aid that Congress had approved for Kyiv. But his lawyers said that the president never tied the investigations to a White House meeting or the security assistance. And in any case, they argued that the president has the right to conduct relations with other countries as he sees fit and that he had valid reasons to raise those issues with Ukraine because he wanted to root out corruption there and get other countries to share the burden of providing military aid.

The lawyers dismissed the notion that doing so was an abuse of power, as outlined in the first article of impeachment, calling that a “novel theory” and a “newly invented” offense that would allow Congress to second-guess presidents for legitimate policy choices.

“House Democrats’ concocted theory that the president can be impeached for taking permissible actions if he does them for what they believe to be the wrong reasons would also expand the impeachment power beyond constitutional bounds,” the brief said. “It is the president who defines foreign policy,” it added, and said that Mr. Trump had “legitimate concerns” in raising the issues involving Democrats with the Ukrainians.

The lawyers argued that the second article, accusing Mr. Trump of obstructing Congress by blocking testimony and refusing to turn over documents during the House impeachment inquiry, was “frivolous and dangerous” because it would invalidate a president’s right to confidential deliberations in violation of the separation of powers.

In making their case, the White House lawyers themselves embraced novel interpretations of the history of impeachment. Far from newly invented, the concept of abuse of power was envisioned by the framers from the start. Alexander Hamilton specifically described impeachment as a remedy for the “abuse or violation of some public trust.”

The House Judiciary Committee adopted articles of impeachment accusing both Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Bill Clinton of abuse of power.

Many constitutional scholars have long said that impeachable offenses do not have to be specific violations of a criminal code, but could be broader violations of a president’s oath of office or offenses against the republic. In the case of President Andrew Johnson, one of the articles against him alleged no violation of law but impeached him anyway for speeches bringing Congress into “disgrace, ridicule, hatred, contempt and reproach.”

While the White House brief argued that the articles against Mr. Trump did not allege an actual crime, a report released last week by the Government Accountability Office, an independent, nonpartisan government agency, found that the Trump administration violated the law by withholding the security aid allocated by Congress.

The president’s legal team took issue with the Government Accountability Office’s conclusion and said that, in any case, it was irrelevant because it was not included in the articles of impeachment themselves. The White House brief stressed that Mr. Trump ultimately met with President Volodymyr Zelensky and released the aid even though the Ukrainians never announced the investigations the president had sought. But the money was delivered and the meeting set only after a whistle-blower had filed a complaint alleging impropriety by the president and lawmakers had opened their own investigation into why the money had been blocked.

The dueling filings rolled in as both sides braced for a contentious trial on the Senate floor over whether to remove Mr. Trump, only the third such impeachment proceeding in the country’s history. Mr. Trump visited the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington on Monday ahead of his departure scheduled later in the evening for Davos, Switzerland, where he planned to meet other world leaders at an economic conference as the Senate begins weighing his fate.

In the Capitol, the House managers and the president’s defense team took turns on Monday privately touring the Senate chamber and surrounding offices, transformed over the weekend into a court of impeachment that will open on Tuesday with the debate on the rules for the trial. According to Mr. McConnell’s timetable, oral arguments by the House managers would begin on Wednesday, followed by a presentation by Mr. Trump’s team.

The president’s lawyers used their brief to revive complaints about the House impeachment process, calling it “rigged.”

On Monday, House Democrats sought to dismantle the president’s case. In arguing that abuse of power is not an impeachable offense, they said, Mr. Trump’s lawyers were ignoring the intentions of the founders and in effect asserting that “the American people are powerless to remove a president for corruptly using his office to cheat in the next election.”

The managers also said the president’s attempt to justify his obstruction failed to account for the House’s broad prerogative to conduct their inquiry. The House investigation was “properly authorized,” they insisted, and they pointed out that Mr. Trump never actually invoked executive privilege, but merely raised the threat of doing so to discourage officials from testifying.

The nine-page filing was technically a response to a shorter pleading submitted by Mr. Trump’s team on Saturday.

The president weighed in himself, complaining that he had not been treated fairly and dismissing demands by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, for a trial that would include witnesses and testimony that the president has so far blocked.

“Cryin’ Chuck Schumer is now asking for ‘fairness’, when he and the Democrat House members worked together to make sure I got ZERO fairness in the House,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. “So, what else is new?”

Mr. McConnell had said repeatedly that he was modeling his rules on the procedures for Mr. Clinton’s 1999 impeachment trial, but he made key changes that tilt the playing field in Mr. Trump’s favor. While the Clinton-era rules imposed no limits on the 24 hours of oral arguments allowed on both sides, Mr. McConnell condensed them into two marathon-session days, which would allow the Senate to blaze through them by Saturday.

Senators could then pose questions to the two sides next week before debating whether to allow the prosecution and defense to try to call witnesses or seek documents. A senior Republican leadership aide conceded on Monday that Mr. McConnell had deviated from the 1999 rules, which admitted the House impeachment record into evidence at the start of the trial, in requiring a separate Senate vote to do so this time around. The change was necessary, argued the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity to detail internal strategy, because the House had denied the president proper due process rights.

The House invited Mr. Trump to mount a defense before the House Judiciary Committee during its impeachment proceeding, including requesting witnesses and documents, but the president’s legal team declined, saying it would not dignify an inquiry it deemed illegitimate with a response.