yoink

You don't have to deal with the current state of military equipment either, but it seems to be pretty important to you. I'm pretty certain Ron will have some military-grade rifles kicking around his compound. He just wants to be able to buy personal Stinger missiles and Star Trek phasers in the future too, because 'MURICA! By the way Ron, you never answered WHY you think more money needs to be spent on 'beefing up' the infantry. Given that they've already got some of the most advanced weaponry on the planet available to them it smacks of paranoia (gotta love a good arms race!) and a new-toys-for-the-boys mentality. No need for them, but it sure would be nice!... Plus, you'll be putting yourself in a bad place when the milita uprising that you dream of happens against the corrupt government and they come at you with 22nd century weapons... I'd have thought you'd have been advocating that they should go back to muskets.

I'd be fine with a Southern uprising. Let them split off and form their own independent country. We could even build a wall around them. And get them to pay for it.

So while I'd love this debate to be about you know, policies and stuff, Trump is going to focus almost exclusively on Hillary's emails and dual-message stance to banks in private talks, while insisting that everything is rigged against him, while Hillary keeps hammering on about the claims of sexual assaults and fact-checking everything Trump says. The whole thing will be a circus. Clowns performing for the gawking masses full of 'he would do this!' 'but she would do that!!' hyperbolic bullshit. Come one, come all. Look at how we pick the leader of the free world, folks! It's going to be a fucking embarrassment. I genuinely hate (and I don't use that word often) everything about this election cycle.

I hate that stowless bags are a thing. It's a perfect example of skydivers choosing cool over what works... From the video the only question I can see is if the stowless bag is more likely to result in an out of sequence deployment / bag strip. At freefly speeds with weak magnets I can definitely believe it. That said, at freefly speeds it's possible that it might have happened with a traditional D-bag as well. There's just no way to tell. The premature deployment and everything that happens after line stretch is immaterial to the D-bag discussion. You got REALLY lucky none of those lines wrapped you. Figuring out why you had a premature deployment is the first thing to do, because it's either poor maintenance, poor packing or not checking your shit before exiting. All of those are easy fixes and are only on you. Break that link in the chain and nothing else happens... Don't fix what ain't broke.

Rush, do you read any of the things you post, or do you just regurgitate stuff from your favourite websites verbatim? There are a few things in that list that I would have thought that even you would have a hard time attacking.... You're all about proof when defending the Trump allegations but don't apply the same suspension of judgement when it comes to anything Wikileaks produces. Don't you see that the organization itself has a political agenda and therefore needs to be questioned as a reliable source of truth? I'm going to say that EVERYONE, ever, has stuff in their email accounts that can either be taken several different ways or they might be embarrassed about or might be damaging to them if it was brought to light without context. I'll admit that I've lied outright to clients occasionally in an email. But by only releasing Hillary's emails, and then only a selection of them it provides a bias to their data. Either release ALL emails from everyone so that the public can really see what's going on, or stay out of it. Trump talks about the media having a bias for HRC but Wikileaks is the opposite. It's [probably] not the holy grail of transparent and truthful information many people think it is. As you're so fond of telling everyone, people should think about what they're being spoonfed.

You say that like it's fact. At least be honest with yourself - you don't think any of these happened. Fair enough. Lots of us can believe some of them did. But to say 'It did not happen' like you actually know something... that's fundamentally dishonest. We're all in the dark until proper investigations are done - you know, like the countless Clinton email ones. Of course following that logic then even if he was found not guilty of all of those charges after repeated investigations Clinton should still lock him up when she's president. Have I got that right? That's the way it works?

Now I want to see what Trump would be like on mushrooms. It'd be hilarious.

You've been saying that for a while now, Ron. Doesn't it get tiring or depressing living with perpetual paranoia?

... says the guy who has gone off to live in a special sheltered enclave with the minimum possible risk of encountering people who he might not get on with. Irony meter is off the scale.

That's been the elephant in the room this whole election cycle. That Trump can get this far shows that I (at least) didn't understand as much about vast swathes of the American public as I thought I did. And it's depressing to suddenly find out that you're living in a country where that many people are so sexist, racist and bitter.

Rush, the VAST majority of voters (on both sides) keep themselves ignorant. It's one of my pet peeves. There is simply no excuse for deliberate ignorance in today's society. I'd guess that well over 50% of the voting public make up their mind on complex issues based upon at best a single source of information, or from what they've been told by the bloke down the pub. I've said for a while that voting on a subject should be a right that needs to be earned by showing a competence in that subject. Not a bias, but an understanding of the details. No, it's not democracy and that will immediately make people hate the idea but as far as I can see as long as you have deliberately-ignorant joe public making their voice heard on issues they know basically nothing about then it's always going to be a shit show. Look at the UK's 'Should we leave the EU' referendum for an example. People asking WHAT the EU is after voting to leave. And the result? The lowest pound vs the dollar for well over 10 years... The same goes over here for taxation, gun reform, healthcare and foreign policy. The sad truth is that most people aren't in a position to make an educated decision. That's the fault of the media, but that's also a reflection of the people they serve.

Yup. Like I said originally I don't actually doubt that Trump did most of these things, just that without corroboration we should be skeptical of the ALL being true. Didn't Trump & Pence say they were going to produce evidence that these allegations were all false today? Still waiting... At best it's going to be more leaked Hillary emails showing that she's closer to the media than is appropriate.

Yup. Not all the time. But reasonably regularly.

More of the same - general non-policy based mudslinging? Trump having a meltdown? Trump pulling a wild card and destroying Clinton? What do you reckon?

The problem is that even if these allegations DID happen (and I'd guess that many probably did), they lose all credibility in being announced at this particular time in this particular way. Without corroborating evidence from the time of the assault (charges, letters etc.) even a anti-Trump person like myself has to ask 'well why didn't any of these people say something at the time?' Saying something now seems to show you have an agenda beyond justice, and that immediately makes me suspicious. Yes, I can believe Trump would do it, but that shouldn't be enough to convict him in the eyes of the public. There have been a number of assault charges just being fabricated out of thin air by crazies who want attention. I have a horrible feeling that some of these charges will be either inflated or outright falsified just in order to get either attention or to damage Trump. Rather than the raft of claims coming forward I just want to see 3 that say 'this is what he did and here's a record of my report to the police at the time'. THAT would be news. This is mostly just unwanted noise.

That's what I thought. Good to know.

So you're saying misogyny and sexual battery are seen as 'manly' behaviors?

Sam, another option would be to save up your cash then do an AFF course somewhere abroad. Spain has a bunch of really good DZs and if the weather is good there you can knock out your entire AFF course in a week. It's not my favorite way of learning, but might make sense for someone in your situation as you could then rock up to Nethers, probably do 1 refresher jump with an instructor then be on your own. There are issues with this plan, although it's a popular one in the UK. Making friends just by hanging around the DZ in off-time is a big factor in not reaching the end-of-AFF burnout that's quite common, so you'll have to make more of an effort when you do turn up. I did static line and made a grand total of 28 jumps in my first year, and that was being at the DZ nearly every weekend. I did however learn a load about DZ operations, rigging, packing and everything else that makes a skydiver. It's not all about the freefall.

Ron - out of interest, is there anything Trump could do that would convince you to vote for Hillary?

We don't really laugh like Americans do. It's not that we don't have a sense of humor, we just display it differently. A grin and a quiet chuckle is like a big laugh for a lot of Brits. Like any country we've got our good'uns and our assholes.

I think it's probably fair to say that many people believe that both candidates will make things worse for everyone. That's not anti-american, it's just a reflection of the awfulness of this election cycle. I wish I could say that I don't believe Trump could win it anymore, but with the way things are going who knows? Russia might release scandalous emails that shows Clinton was personally torturing babies the night before the election... It wouldn't surprise me at this point.

lolol! I've seen this a couple of times over the years - news stations have shitty generic reports written for either outcome and upload the wrong one or do it too early. Always funny. I'm sure all the online polls will say Trump won it too...

No considering required. I've read the 'scary stories from the old days' thread. You guys were batshit crazy.

I probably know no more about the immigration laws than you do. However, I am thinking that if he is a US citizen, then he is ours. If not, then I would think that he can be deported to whatever country he has citizenship in. Jerry Baumchen I agree. You'd think so. But how? I am a legal resident here, but a citizen of the UK. If I commit a crime and am deported but the UK says 'No. We're not accepting him. We won't give permission to a flight carrying him to land.' what could you do? You're not going to i'nvade' the UK over it... The fact that the government tried to deport him twice would suggest that he wasn't a citizen, but a legal resident. Otherwise he'd have to be denaturalized first, and that's pretty rare. I can't find any confirmation of that though. Seems like a horrible loophole if that's the case.

and the news link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/09/29/unarmed-black-man-killed-by-police-near-san-diego-had-twice-been-ordered-deported/?utm_term=.aa14aa246134