tbrown

Edwards said that he's willing to take a test for paternity. I want the bluff checked. Is he counting on the idea that we won't demand the check simply because he dared us to do it and claimed he doesn't fear it? CHECK HIM OUT. I want to know if he's compounded the initial lies with another whopper about whose kid it is. What does it matter if the child is his? He comitted adultery and admitted it. Yup, he sure did. Just another pol thinking with his dick. P.S. Regarding my earlier post about Grover Cleveland, I forgot to mention that he was single at the time he fathered a child out of wedlock. Cleveland later married in the White House, during his first term as President. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

True, Russians have more or less always considered that expansion = security, but after the end of the Cold War the west could have behaved with at least a measure of magnanimity. Instead we've rubbed it in their face and with NATO and the EU advancing towards Russia's borders I'm not at all suprised the Great Bear is lashing out like this. Question is though, what can be done? Calls for restraint don't seem to be doing anything (apparently there's been a second uprising in Abkhazia, and more Russian airstrikes recently), no-one's going to pick a fight with Russia for various reasons, and speaking from the British perspective the UK isn't in a position with any voice, never mind leverage just at the moment (Google 'Alexander Litvinenko'). Strikes me as a very dangerous situation. I agree. This is a very tricky situation. Not only is Russia rebuilding as a superpower, but as an energy giant that supplies a critical amount of gas and oil to all of Europe, east and west. Russia's already used their energy leverage, against Georgia in particular, by cutting off natural gas supplies in the dead of winter over a price dispute. There's nothing to stop them from doing that to anyone else if they want. The west really did rub Russia's face in it during the nineties, which is something I think we'll regret - did we learn nothing from the way we treated Germany after World War I ? On the other hand, if I lived in a former eastern bloc country like Hungary or the Czech Republic, I'd sure as hell want my country in the EU and NATO with all possible speed. As for the Litvinenko case, the Russian Duma, during the Putin years actually passed a law that sanctions the killing of Russian citizens anywhere in the world if the interests of the Russian state are deemed to be at stake. In other words, Litvinenko's murder is actually LEGAL under Russian law. Say what you will about our repeated attempts to assasinate Castro, or our role in other assasinations (Allende in Chile, Lumumba in The Congo, Diem in South Vietnam, etc), we've never actually passed a law saying it's okay. So what are we going to do about this ? Bomb the Russian gas pipelines to Europe ? I think not.... This is one more reason to rethink attacking Iran, as Russia is deeply involved in Iran's nuclear program. We might just have to tacitly admit to a Russian sphere of influence, the way we did during the Cold War. We may not have a choice. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Wow.....sure am glad to hear that everyone's alright. This sounds like a load worth scratching off before it even left. A $27 lesson in clusterfuge is worth writing off sometimes. That or landing with the plane, which might even be a beer moment if it's the first time you've actually landed in one of those things. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Not only the government, but the media is just as guilty, if not moreso. Everyone has seen the media on a tear, convicting people of crimes long before any evidence is presented in the courtroom. I'm just waiting for the supermarket tabloids to link Dr. Ivins to the JonBenet muder. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

So they intend to continue to hold him indefinitely after he's served his sentence. What exactly was the purpose of the trial? He's got about six more months to serve. By then a new administration will be running the show in Washington - and at the Pentagon. If the Dems are running things, he'll be a free man. But even if McCain is elected, the stink and outcry will be so great that he'll be freed soon. Most interesting of all is that the Military Judge at the head of the tribunal rebuked the government for even bringing the conspiracy charges, then told Mr. Hamdan that he (the judge) hoped Mr. Hamdan would soon be re-united with his family in Yemen. And this judge then returned Hamdan's "Inshallah" reply to him. You getting any signals out of this ? I sure am. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Yep, that ought to take care of his Presidential aspirations. It's certainly not something I'd condone, but it's not as offensive (to me) as trying to score with a dude while he's on the shitter. Believe it or not, Grover Cleveland was ELECTED President after admitting to knocking up a woman out of wedlock - and this was in 1888 ! Of course he manned up and admitted it right off the bat, and also provided for the upbringing and education of his child. Edwards is so far denying paternity, but if one of his campaign shills is volunteering to take the rap for him - why is no father named on the birth certificate ? Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

You ever seen The Flintstones pal ? Fred used to WORK in a gravel pit on a dinosaur. I should think that should settle the question for all time..... But seriously folks, christians are like skydivers. some of them are really smart people, who use the brains God gave them the way he intended. And then some Christians are dumb as a sack of hammers (like some skydivers, and you ALL know one who is....). Just tell him, "Pray for me dude, and do it quietly". Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

This is going to be a workers' paradise for the "process abusers", who run to the EEO inquisition committee with every imagined slight by someone they think is picking on them. I once knew of one little asshole at Boeing who actually ratted a woman to EEO because she had a 6 inch statue of Godzilla on her desk. It "insulted" the little cocksucker's "Japanese heritage". Rather than telling him to knock it the fuck off and get back to work, they told HER to take Godzilla home or face disciplinary action. Nowadays, I suppose the little shit could actually extort a living out of her, except she quit Boeing and found a job that made her happy instead. Maybe this is why the founding fathers wanted us to own guns ? Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Ah, but here is a reason. Russia, the Soviet Union, whatever they're calling themselves, has ALWAYS been an expansionist empire. Historically, Russia has always invaded neighbor states like Ukraine, Georgia, the Baltic countries, and Poland. As well as the Islamic camel dung states, like Kazakhstan and the like. It shouldn't surprise anyone that they're doing it again. Under Putin (oh wait - he's just the Prime Minister anymore...), er, Medvedev, they sense the opportunity with this ethnic Russian uprising in the southern Ossetia province. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

They only do it to more effectively smother you with a death fart. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I remember Norman Kent when he was the local up & coming camera guy at perris, back in 1980. We still have an 8 x 11 in. print of the pic he took of my wife's one and only static line jump from the Michael Alpha DC-3. He was always the nicest guy - and still is ! Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Hmmmm.....I didn't vote for any of your choices. I don't think Ivins killed himself out of a guilty conscience as much as the dread of being taken away to death row and being executed. I'm almost pretty sure that he was the guilty one. But after the way the Feds hounded Steven Hatfill and pretty much ignored Ivins for years, I really have to wonder. Because Ivins is dead, the case will never go to trial. There are calls for a Congrssional investigation, but the Pelosicrats will just turn it into another opportunity for an "Impeachment Lite" hearing. There will be no vigorous defense presented by a good lawyer intent on defending the man's life or reputation. So really, the FBI and Justice Department are now the sole custodians of the evidence and they're stage managing the release of the evidence as they see fit. One has to ask how much unfavorable evidence is being witheld, how truthful and convincing ALL the evidence is, whether we will ever even hear about ALL the evidence, and sadly, whether some of the evidence is just sheer fabrication. I'm quite willing to consider that Dr. Ivins was in fact responsible, or even "solely responsible" as the Justice Department is now saying. The story as we are now hearing it, complete with innuendo about the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority (to add a nice sexy tease to the story), is getting a little bizarre. But this is what happens when the government - any government - hides, distorts, and fabricates for years, pursuing and harassing innocent people, and then suddenly expects us to believe an entirely new story. The "Boy Who Cried Wolf" was the fable, this is the real thing. Nobody believed the boy when the real wolf finally came and killed his sheep. And now I'm not sure I can ever completely believe that this "mad scientist" was responsible for the anthrax terror of 2001, no matter how good the genetic evidence may be. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I've only done around 500-600 jumps in the last 12 months... My goal for the next 12 months is to do 1000 jumps with a minimum of 600 dedicated swoop jumps for training. AI CHIHUAHUA Dave !! Quite an accomplishment & quite a goal. The last five years, I've been plodding along at about 70 jumps a year. But I've still got a goal of making 100 in the coming year, and every year if I can. All I gotta do is make 4 jumps a day, twice a month, plus one extra jump every 3 months. Doesn't sound THAT hard to do, but it hasn't happened yet. But now I'm psyched to crack my first grand, just another hundred to go. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Kathy Hilton called the candidate's attack ad comparing Barack Obama to Hilton's daughter Paris "frivolous." Yeah, especially after the sizeable contribution the elder Hiltons made to McCain's campaign. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

That would be a contradiction, because the death penalty is for unlawful murder and an execution is at least in theory a lawful killing of a criminal who was afforded due process. In a perfect world anyway. It's a very poor argument for using - or extending - the death penalty. Who would ever serve on a capital jury ? Who would sit on the bench, or prosecute - or for that matter defend, since they're usually the ones who do a lousy job ? Interesting aside on the death penalty - originally Charles Manson and several of his followers were sentenced to death for the Tate-LaBianca murders. More than one of the women have stated that they wish they had been executed, because it would have been so much easier for them. They'd have died and it would have been over for them. Instead, they've had to live with it and the living death of a life sentence for all these years. One of them, Susan Atkins is dying of brain cancer in a hospital and has already had a leg amputated. And she's been denied compassionate release by the governor. I guess that sends a message to the rest of the Mansonites that they can pretty well kiss off ever being paroled, or even released to die when they're old. So you tell me they're not being punished. Besides, if we can't even trust the state to deliver the mail, why would we ever want to let the state kill anyone ? Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

With a gun in the hands of a good guy, the other dead person would have been the looney with the knife, so that one doesn't count. And that would have ensured that he couldn't continue to kill others. That would be a good thing, believe it or not, even though it would involve the use of a gun. I notice that you didn't bother to comment on the other two methods of mass murder mentioned. Didn't "bomb vests" and "arson" fare well enough for you in comparison with guns? Tsk tsk. I think it's reasonable to admit that it's painfully easy to kill people with guns, quickly and at a distance. It does no harm to recognize that's what frightens people about guns. But that's no reason to take them away from law abiding gun owners who use them responsibly. Especially not after what happened in New Orleans after Katrina. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Just to mention, as an Orange County local, it's always worth looking into flights to Long Beach or to the John Wayne Orange County airports. Both offer substantially lower fares than LAX and are reasonably close to the Perris-Elsinore dropzones. Most locals consider LAX their airport of last resort, when none of the others can get them where they need to go. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Mug optional ! Nothing like a good frothy head ? (And by the way, how does SHE pour ?) Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I started out at a two Cessna DZ in 1974 and did a lot of my early jumps at another single Cessna DZ on a farmer's back forty. And I have a lot of fond memories of both. But I really fell in love with the DC-3's too and nowadays I don't mind the turbos one little bit. Our whole life in America has changed a lot since the seventies. If you really think back, those weren't the greatest years. We'd just been humiliated in Vietnam, had our first oil crisis (with gas leaping to 60 cents a gallon), a serious recession with high unemployment, and then we elected some loser from Georgia who spent the next four years apologizing to us for his failures to lead the country. Thank God for skydiving is all I can say about the seventies (well, there was a lot of sex too, we WERE young then). But skydiving, as different as it is from the mainstream, is still inescapably part & parcel of the world we live in. Do you know any kids from Darfur who go skydiving ? I'm not saying that to put you on a guilt trip, but do any of us realize just how incredibly LUCKY we are to amuse ourselves with leaping into the sky from an airplane ? If we're not as groovy as we used to be thirty years ago - and we were - neither is the rest of modern society. And in the meantime, we have SUCH a faster learning curve. We have kids with just fifty jumps who do a competent job docking on and tracking away from 30 Ways. And our biggest concern now is no longer if the damn thing opens, but how to handle the thing when it DOES open. I'll call that progress and LIKE it. As for USPA, well......they sucked back then and still suck now. Anybody up for a CONFEDERATE States Parachute Association ? Let me know, I'm listening..... I sympathize with what you're saying, but there's no return to the romanticized past either. At least WE have the memories. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

The only thing the Republicans have to complain about is that they didn't think of this $1000 giveaway first. Of course it's a bad idea, but so was the "economic stimulus" giveaway. Not to mention McCain's proposal for a summer gas tax holiday. Tax and spend: it's an idea we can live with ! Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

My second year in the sport, 1975. One of my Jumpmasters was killed on an RW jump. It was just a 3 or 4 Way from a Cessna, but one of the other guys had a Sentinel Mk1000 AAD on his reserve, which fired prematurely at 3000 - 3500 ft. Brad ate the guy's reserve and hit the guy. The other guy managed to land under his main, with not too serious injuries, but Brad was knocked out, if not killed outright by the collision and he never pulled. This was one of the incidents that gave AADs a bad name among relative workers in the old days and contributed to the "students only" attitude about them. But in fairness to SSE, who made the Sentinel, I also heard that the guy with the AAD had calibrated it in the plane, after takeoff, which was totally stupid. It cost somebody else his life. The first time I ever saw somebody go in was 1976. Saw a newbie with 23 jumps pull his reserve and wrap it up in a horseshoed main. I was pretty close to 100 jumps by then. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I happened to enter the sport (End of May) where I witnessed a fatality at my home dropzone while I was doing my solo jumps. 2 weeks later, another fatality happened at a dropzone only 10 miles away, and as of late, someone ended up in the hospital in a ventilator who barely had 100 jumps. The fatalities we've had this year....too many were unnecessary, and the trauma that I went through in the beginning stages of my skydiving career when I watched a dead body laying on the ground for 5 hours being surrounded by cops, skydivers, fire and coroners is something I will never forget. I can especially understand how something like the Elsinore fatality would be upsetting, especially as you were/are a newbie. Most of us get to be around a little longer before seeing the worst thing happen, it was 2 and a half years before I actually saw somebody go in. You do need to know that this was the first fatality at Elsinore in at least several years - I don't even KNOW when the last one was before this. And over at Perris, they had just gone 3 years without a death, which is pretty darn good for an operation of their size. Neither one of these accidents had to happen, both could have been prevented and both have caused a lot of broken hearts to families and friends. Both of these guys had high degrees of experience, so if nothing else they serve to remind us that it can happen to anybody and only has to happen once to be final and permanent. As for letting someone lie out in the open for five hours, that's just disgraceful. There's no excuse and I can only suppose that the public officials did it out of their own hyperinflated sense of self importance. It's disrespectful. As a newbie, your dedication to safety is commendable, if a bit rigid in the particulars. I think with time you will have a more flexible outlook on the details, but I hope the underlying spirit stays strong with you. This sport can will never be completely safe, but it can be kept reasonably safe. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Well that's because the Feds refuse to recognize the validity of voter referendums in some thirteen states now. This bill, if passed, would knock out the underpinnings of Federal policy to go after these LEGAL operations in those states. Barney Frank ! He's our man ! If he can't do it, nobody can ! (Ron Paul too, I guess he's co-sponsoring this bill.) Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I have to wonder if John McCain's flipping his lid with some of his statements and advertising this week. He seems to have gone off the deep end with personal attacks against Barack Obama. Let me say first, that although I intend to vote for Obama, I have great respect, at least so far, for John McCain. Certainly way more respect than for President Bush, who I have no respect for whatsoever. McCain is an intelligent and honorable man, who I could probably get along with if he's elected to the White House. I'm also not a wild eyed disciple of Barack Obama. I have some reasonable doubts and concerns about what kind of a president he might be. But on the balance, I have to side with Obama. Especially now with the way McCain already seems to have based his entire campaign on an "Anyone But Obama" platform. Neither candidate even holds their parties' nomination, but McCain is already running TV ads comparing Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears (WTF....over ?). And he's already accused Obama of "playing the race card", apparently because Obama said something about "not looking like the other Presidents on the dollar bills". If I were John McCain, I'd pay attention to the things that undid Hillary Clinton. Heil Hillary's campaign degenerated into an anti-Obama bashing on a daily basis, assisted by her ever lovable "husband". And finally, Heil Hillary and Bubba lowered themselves to pointing out that Obama is.... a darky (gasp !), and that the Heil Hillary campaign was the standard bearer for "hard working (i.e., white) Americans". Obama was not faultless, but in general, he stuck to a much cleaner and issue oriented campaign. So where I stand, as a voter who was actually willing to consider voting for McCain, he's already lost my vote. He not only has NOTHING new to offer, but is already stooping to the lowest tactics his party is famous for. It's going to blow up in his face, piss voters off, and cost him the election. John McCain can't even run an issue oriented campaign this early in the game, so why the hell should we allow him to run our country ? Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

It's been almost two weeks, which is normal for me. I've got a family, obligations, "a life", and don't jump the way I did when I was single, young & dumb. I try to get out to the dropzone every 2 - 3 weeks, once in a while I'll jump two weekends in a row. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !