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NYT, 1/1/20 Sometimes it’s worth stepping back to look at the full picture. He has pressured a foreign leader to interfere in the 2020 American presidential election. He urged a foreign country to intervene in the 2016 presidential election. He divulged classified information to foreign officials. He publicly undermined American intelligence agents while standing next to a hostile foreign autocrat. He hired a national security adviser who he knew had secretly worked as a foreign lobbyist. He encourages foreign leaders to enrich him and his family by staying at his hotels. He genuflects to murderous dictators. He has alienated America’s closest allies. He lied to the American people about his company’s business dealings in Russia. He tells new lies virtually every week — about the economy, voter fraud, even the weather. He spends hours on end watching television and days on end staying at resorts. He often declines to read briefing books or perform other basic functions of a president’s job. He has aides, as well as members of his own party in Congress, who mock him behind his back as unfit for office. He has repeatedly denigrated a deceased United States senator who was a war hero. He insulted a Gold Star family — the survivors of American troops killed in action. He described a former first lady, not long after she died, as “nasty.” He described white supremacists as “some very fine people.” He told four women of color, all citizens and members of Congress, to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.” He made a joke about Pocahontas during a ceremony honoring Native American World War II veterans. He launched his political career by falsely claiming that the first black president was not really American. He launched his presidential campaign by describing Mexicans as “rapists.” He has described women, variously, as “a dog,” “a pig” and “horseface,” as well as “bleeding badly from a facelift” and having “blood coming out of her wherever.” He has been accused of sexual assault or misconduct by multiple women. He enthusiastically campaigned for a Senate candidate who was accused of molesting multiple teenage girls. He waved around his arms, while giving a speech, to ridicule a physically disabled person. He has encouraged his supporters to commit violence against his political opponents. He has called for his opponents and critics to be investigated and jailed. He uses a phrase popular with dictators — “the enemy of the people” — to describe journalists. He attempts to undermine any independent source of information that he does not like, including judges, scientists, journalists, election officials, the F.B.I., the C.I.A., the Congressional Budget Office and the National Weather Service. He has tried to harass the chairman of the Federal Reserve into lowering interest rates. He said that a judge could not be objective because of his Mexican heritage. He obstructed justice by trying to influence an investigation into his presidential campaign. He violated federal law by directing his lawyer to pay $280,000 in hush money to cover up two apparent extramarital affairs. He made his fortune partly through wide-scale financial fraud. He has refused to release his tax returns. He falsely accused his predecessor of wiretapping him. He claimed that federal law-enforcement agents and prosecutors regularly fabricated evidence, thereby damaging the credibility of criminal investigations across the country. He has ordered children to be physically separated from their parents. He has suggested that America is no different from or better than Vladimir Putin’s Russia. He has called America a “hellhole.” He is the president of the United States, and he is a threat to virtually everything that the United States should stand for.

Trump's vision is to screw everyone involved, not pay them or keep agreements, then screw everyone while pocketing as much money as possible. Diversity my ass.

That only fits if you accept Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism, as being correct in the same way that Christianity is correct.

4) Fools believe Russian propaganda

And homophobia, too! Awesome way to end 2019. Congrats on maintaining your party's agenda all the way to the end of the year.

On his website, Eric Ulis has some pics of a 727-22 airstair area. A few things.. That plane is not equipped with the optional emergency airstair release which the "Placard" refers to. The optional emergency release system has a "pull handle" behind a second interior panel and another behind the exterior access door. This plane's airstair release, like all North American commercial passenger 727's was modified after NORJAK.. The main handle was not just a simple push... it had a release button on the top which must be pressed. Looks to be missing in this plane. If it was dark Cooper could easily miss the top button and struggle with the handle. We don't know if Northwest 305 had the optional emergency or the same handle.. This is a schematic for Northwest Airlines 727-51 airstairs and the handle looks different. All 727 handles were replaced and updated at some point. It may be impossible to find an example of the same system today..

A thought about the idea of Cooper disconnecting the parachute canopy from the harness/container after he landed. And I'm not saying this to confirm or dispel whether he actually did it, because I don't know. I'm just putting some info here. Might also help to identify the Amboy chute. First, to detail the components of a 'parachute', imagine an open parachute hanging in the sky. At the top, you have the parachute canopy itself, the big round nylon (silk) part (the pilot chute would be part of this). Then, coming down, you have the suspension lines (only a whuffo calls them 'shroud' lines). The lines then gather into four risers (right/left/front/back, those straps that kind of look like seat belts). The risers then attach to the harness/container at the shoulders. Now, it sounds like Cooper was hoping/expecting to get 'sport' gear. The 'back' chutes would have been sport mains, the 'front' chutes would be the reserves that attach to them. (If he had gotten military paratrooper rigs, which were basically the same as sport rigs of those days, they would have most likely been set up for static line deployment, rather than freefall/ripcord, and would have been difficult to use unless he found a place in the stairwell to attach the static line.) But that's not what he got. Instead, the back chutes they gave him were pilot bailout rigs. The front reserves do not attach to them, because the bailout rigs ARE reserves. (Actually, the totality of what they gave him puzzles me, but that would have to be a different post.) On sport mains, the risers attached to the harness/container by way of these thingamajigs called capewells. They come apart simply by pulling open covers, then pulling rings, to separate the risers from the harness. This would have been easy for Cooper to do by hand. (I'm not sure exactly when capewells were developed. Perhaps Mark 377 can tell us. Later on they were used to make emergency procedures safer, as a jumper would 'cutaway' a malfunctioned main in-air before deploying the reserve. This wasn't the practice at the time, but capewells were originally developed so that paratroopers could easily detach from their mains after landing to avoid being drug by winds or being entangled in trees or what-not. I'm all but certain that they did exist in '71.) But, on the pilot bailout rig that Cooper had, the canopy does not separate from the harness so easily. The risers are an integrated part of the harness. The lines attached to the risers by a metal link. In those days I believe that would have been an 'L-bar' type of link. Those are held together by screws, and when undone separate into two parts. I'm sure a rigger would make those screws pretty tight. So for Cooper to detach the canopy from the harness/container, he would have to have either a screwdriver, the right sized coin and a strong wrist, or most likely a knife. So a question would be, how were the bottom of the lines on the Amboy chute? If they were attached to full risers with the top half of the capewell set-up, then not Cooper's. If the lines were on a complete set of L-bars, probably not Cooper's, because I can't imagine him taking the time to reassemble them. If they were on a half set of L-bars, or on a set of cut risers, or the lines themselves were cut, then maybe Cooper's.

Sitting here on the verge of 2020 I can't blame anyone for being a blatant draft card burning protester during the Vietnam War. Americans need to be willing to fight for their country and Trump has no business wrapping himself in a flag regarding military matters but I don't hold draft dodging against him. He's not the only one who did it and there were many good reasons to not fight and die in that war. Our government defrauded the trust of the Americans we sent to die there. They fought for the best purposes of patriotism and slowing the crawl of Communism in South Asia only to be used as political pawns.

Sssssshhhhhh. This was going to get good.

The ground doesn't give a shit if you're part time or not... You're only ever as good as your last jump..

Yes, the tariffs are a drag on the economy however you cannot view them in isolation. One has to take into account the simulative effect of the tax cuts and deregulation. As a whole, Republican economic policies have proven to be beneficial. (hence the unprecedented economic expansion and record low unemployment) The tariffs are tapping the breaks on what might otherwise be an overheating economy. We are not imposing tariffs on Chinese goods because it is fun, they are a tool to improve our trade balance, diversify our supply chain and protect our intellectual property rights.

Stop making it so complicated. God loves all of his children equally. But that certainly doesn't mean he likes them all equally. Maybe they were assholes who shorted the bake sale one too many times. You never know, it's just mysterious.

But celebrating Archaic/Ancient Roman traditions some of which even date back to neolithic/bronze ages really isn't anything different, nor does it represent change. Nigel is one of the nastiest haters here when it comes to Christianity. He wants to celebrate pagan traditions, but only those that aren't typically associated with Christmas - and I suppose that's fine, but it doesn't really say much when you have to start a thread bashing another's beliefs just to make yours seem "cooler" - and then get all uptight when someone starts poking back, giving you a taste of your own medicine. Ya, that's an easy one to miss. Throughout the year we go to the beach and celebrate 4 days of the Waxing/Wanning Gibbous. As an uneducated and ignorant Christian incapable of grasping rocket science, I always stand in awe of how the Canadians manage to launch such a celestial being over Lake Huron into the night sky. They also have the best fireworks:

Can't we all enjoy the birthday celebration of an immigrant bastard child born to a cheating woman in peace? Time for a beer to go with the carrot cake I think. The roasted and grilled lambs were the best I've ever made or had. Everyone loved them. Merry Christmas everyone.