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If a genie showed up and said I got to pick between guaranteeing a Biden win but Mitch remaining, or another Trump term but Mitch turfed forever, another 4 years could look like a reasonable sacrifice.

Then what are you waiting for?

Release all documents? No, redactions!

What, you mean downplaying it, lying about it, ignoring it, blaming others isn't the way to a landslide re-election? Quick, someone tell Trump!

At least the fly kept to its allocated 2 minutes.

Maybe so, I'm not going to argue one way or the other over the legalities. But I would never send an aircraft up without adequate fuel to fly the load plus enough to get to an alternate strip in case something closes the field, plus a reserve on top of that.

So do actions. There was a time (it seems long ago) when elections were bitterly contested, but when the survivors made it to Congress they would roll up their sleeves and try to get some work done, and this meant working across the aisle. Hard though it may be to believe, Republicans and Democrats often socialized together and even had some pretty solid friendships. For some time now though, Republicans have adopted a scorched-earth strategy of total obstructionism when they are the minority, and ram-it-up-your-ass policy making when they are in the majority. This policy has been carried to the ultimate extreme by McConnell, who has pretty much destroyed the Senate as a deliberative body. Once upon a time the Senate required 60 votes to confirm Cabinet appointments and senior judgeship's including the Supreme Court. In Obama's first term McConnell was minority leader but still pushed the Republicans in the Senate to block several of Obama's nominees for his Cabinet, and also many nominees the judiciary. He was not coy about using the filibuster to try to castrate the Obama administration, so that Obama could not seat a full cabinet or fill judicial appointments in a timely manner. This forced the majority leader, Harry Reid, into a Hobson's choice. A Hobson's choice is where you have to make a choice but you only have one option. He eliminated the filibuster (the 60% rule) for most positions that required Congressional approval, but he did not eliminate it for Supreme Court appointments, arguing that such an important appointment should require more than a bare 51 votes to confirm. Leaving the Supreme Court at 60 votes meant any nominee would need to attract at least a few votes from the minority party, so they could not be too extreme. The problem with the Democrat's approach is that they still assumed some measure of good faith on the part of the Republicans. Instead, when the Republicans gained control of the Senate, McConnell blocked almost all of Obama's judicial nominees, creating a huge backlog of empty positions and also a huge backlog of cases waiting to be heard, and ultimately of course he blocked Obama's nominee for a Supreme Court seat. Then when Trump nominated Gorsuch, McConnell eliminated the 60 vote rule for the Supreme Court so he could ram through Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and now Barrett with not one Democratic vote. What I meant by "actions have consequences" is that McConnell's legacy will be a Congress in which Democrats will have learned the lesson to never allow the Republicans one inch, because if you do they will fuck you. The Senate is dead as "the world's greatest deliberative body". It will for a long time be focused far more on screwing over the other side than on doing any actual bipartisan legislation. Good job, Mitch. I have voted for Republicans in the past, when I thought they were the best candidate. Not for president it is true, but I would not have been too alarmed if McCain or Romney had won as I was confident they actually had the best intentions for the country. No longer. The Republican "party" has shown itself to be interested only in cementing their own power in place, establishing one party rule, and prostrating themselves before Trump and their corporate masters. Even if I think a particular individual is OK the party is so corrupt I can never again consider a Republican for any level of government.

There was a lengthy discussions on another forum regarding Static line and IAD jumps and their credit towards licenses. As a SLI/IADI who regularly gets both Cadets from the Air Force Academy and jump students from several military bases in our area who have military static line deployments, there was a lot of confusion regarding these jumps. The USPA defines a skydive as leaving any aircraft in flight with the intention of landing under a parachute. It took many emails between myself, Jay Stokes, Ron Bell and regional director Ray Lallo to get clarification. Static line amd IAD jumps are considered freefall jumps because there is a short period.o time before deployment that the person is consodered in freefall.. Military Static line jumps do count towards total number of jumps for USPA licenses. They obviously do not tick off the freefall time or freefall skills requirements. I just finished a SL course with an Army jumper who arrived with 34 SL jumps including intentional water landings. After he completed his course with us and through some back and forth with Ron Bell and some others. He needs only a small amount of freefall time and a canopy course for his B license. The junps he had before the course count. He completed all requirements in 22 jumps and recieved his A license.