Phil1111

"As for Chicago, the Pew Research Center published a report in 2014 that found that while Chicago had seen a lot of murders in raw numbers, smaller cities had a higher rate, adjusted for population. Using FBI data — with the caveat that it is reported by local police agencies and not always consistently — the Pew Research Center determined that the top cities in 2012 for the murder rate were Flint, Michigan; Detroit; New Orleans; and Jackson, Mississippi. Chicago came in 21st. An August 2013 CDC report looked at rates for gun homicides in the 50 most populous metropolitan areas. It found that for 2009-2010, the top gun murder rate areas were, in order: New Orleans, Memphis, Detroit, Birmingham, St. Louis, Baltimore, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Philadelphia and Chicago. Six of those cities are in states with poor scores for their gun laws, while the other four get a “C” or better. Chicago, which placed last in the top 10, had a ban on handguns at the time. There’s no discernible pattern among those cities, nor clear or convincing evidence in these statistics that shows more gun laws lead to more or less gun crime." http://www.factcheck.org/2015/10/gun-laws-deaths-and-crimes/ "There’s been much talk recently — including from President Obama — about there being a substantial correlation between state-level gun death rates and state gun laws. Now correlation obviously doesn’t equal causation; there may be lots of other factors that are the true causes of both of the things that are being measured. But if we do look for now at correlation, it seems to me that the key question should focus on state total homicide rates, or perhaps (for reasons I describe below) total intentional homicide plus accidental gun death rates. And it turns out that there is essentially zero correlation between these numbers and state gun laws." https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/10/06/zero-correlation-between-state-homicide-rate-and-state-gun-laws/ Where did the fatality flawed study come from? "According to a recent National Journal analysis of data from 2013, "the states that im­pose the most re­stric­tions on gun users also have the low­est rates of gun-re­lated deaths, while states with few­er reg­u­la­tions typ­ic­ally have a much high­er death rate from guns... Some states were excluded from these analyses, and the reason is revealing. The fine print at the bottom of the charts says "Alaska, Idaho, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming had too few homicides in 2013 to calculate a reliable rate" (emphasis added). These are all states with permissive gun laws, and three of them are among the seven states with the highest overall gun death rates, which highlights the importance of distinguishing between suicides and homicides. Had National Journal's main analysis excluded suicides, some of the states with few gun controls, including Alaska and Wyoming, would have looked much safer. "The states with the most gun laws see the fewest gun-related deaths," say the headline and subhead over the National Journal post, "but there's still little appetite to talk about more restrictions." The implication is that the data prove a cause-and-effect relationship. But the question of whether stricter gun control policies cause lower gun death rates cannot be addressed by this sort of static analysis. Gun laws obviously are not the only way in which Alaska, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Wyoming differ from Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Jersey. Furthermore, while the latter states have both low suicide and low homicide rates, the former states (with the notable exception of Louisiana) are distinguished mainly by high suicide rates. To get a clearer idea of what's going on, you would at least want to see whether the adoption of certain gun controls is associated with reductions in gun death rates, as compared to pre-existing trends in the states that adopt them and ongoing trends in the rest of the country. In any case, it clearly is not true that permissive gun laws are inevitably accompanied by higher gun death rates, especially if you focus on homicides, which is the main threat cited by proponents of new gun controls." http://reason.com/blog/2015/09/02/do-strict-firearm-laws-give-states-lower

..."Sometimes you come across a headline and story that is stunning in its implications. Not that you expect people who live in a modern version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis rarefied atmosphere to get how it must be for the great masses below.... (Of course I'm quoting from the story and not implying or suggesting that you [normiss] fly to the DZ in your private Gulfstream jet above the unwashed masses below.) “I find the whole thing astonishing and what’s remarkable is the amount of anger whether it’s on the Republican side or the Democratic side,” the Wall Street mogul said at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “Bernie Sanders, to me, is almost more stunning than some of what’s going on in the Republican side. How is that happening, why is that happening?” America is the richest and most unequal nation in the world — at least when you look at the wealth in 55 of the more conventionally developed countries. Median income has largely fallen behind economic growth as corporations continue to retain a bigger share of the benefits, turning into a reverse of what is usually claimed as the danger of income redistribution. Perhaps that will change, as Tim Worstall has argued elsewhere on Forbes,... People in the U.S. don’t tend to think that way. What many perceive now is a basic economic unfairness. They work hard, play by the rules as they’ve learned them, and keep getting further behind. The debt funding for college and large purchases seems to be never ending for large portions of the populace, which cements in a sense of unending inequality. Then there is the realm of politics. Elected officials on the left and right are acknowledging what has been obvious for many years: Money owns influence. Large corporations and wealthy individuals pour cash into campaign coffers and it’s generally not out of the goodness of their hearts. As Donald Trump said to the Wall Street Journal, “As a businessman and a very substantial donor to very important people, when you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.” There’s social unrest over historic treatment of minorities, fear of the “other” (immigrants, refugees, overseas competition, and even those with opposing views), and worry about being marginalized. How could anyone expect anything other than anger? http://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2016/01/21/blackstone-ceo-surprised-american-voters-are-unhappy-with-economy-politics-life/#196f38e970d9 It's amusing to hear Trump complain that his personal donations are apparently unrewarded but further(from a separate story): "“THIS country is a hellhole. We are going down fast,” says Donald Trump. “We can’t do anything right. We’re a laughing-stock all over the world. The American dream is dead.” It is a dismal prospect, but fear not: a solution is at hand. “I went to the Wharton School of Business. I’m, like, a really smart person,” says Mr Trump. “It’s very possible”, he once boasted, “that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.”... Mr Trump is not in thrall to the hobgoblins of consistency. On abortion, he has said both “I’m very pro-choice” and “I’m pro-life”. On guns, he has said “Look, there’s nothing I like better than nobody has them” and “[I] fully support and back up the Second Amendment” (which guarantees the right to bear arms). He used to say he wanted a single-payer health service. Now he is much vaguer, promising only to replace Obamacare with “something terrific”. In 2000 he sought the presidential nomination of the Reform Party. A decade ago he said “I probably identify more as Democrat.” Now he is a Republican.... he has a genius for self-promotion, unmoored from reality (“I play to people’s fantasies. I call it truthful hyperbole,” he once said). Second, he says things that no politician would, so people think he is not a politician. Sticklers for politeness might object when he calls someone a “fat pig” or suggests that a challenging female interviewer has “blood coming out of her wherever”. His supporters, however, think his boorishness is a sign of authenticity—of a leader who can channel the rage of those who feel betrayed by the elite or left behind by social change. It turns out that there are tens of millions of such people in America." http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21663225-why-donald-dangerous-trumps-america The actual numbers since the last recession: "2009–present The distribution of household incomes has become more unequal during the post-2008 economic recovery as the effects of the recession reversed.[65][66][67][68] CBO reported in November 2014 that the share of pre-tax income received by the top 1% had risen from 13.3% in 2009 to 14.6% in 2011.[1] During 2012 alone, incomes of the wealthiest 1 percent rose nearly 20%, whereas the income of the remaining 99 percent rose 1% in comparison.[23] If the United States had the same income distribution it had in 1979, the bottom 80 percent of the population would have $1 trillion — or $11,000 per family — more. The top 1 percent would have $1 trillion — or $750,000 — less. Larry Summers[69] According to an article in The New Yorker, by 2012, the share of pre-tax income received by the top 1% had returned to its pre-crisis peak, at around 23% of the pre-tax income.[2] This is based on widely cited data from economist Emmanuel Saez, which uses "market income" and relies primarily on IRS data.[67] The CBO uses both IRS data and Census data in its computations and reports a lower pre-tax figure for the top 1%.[1] The two series were approximately 5 percentage points apart in 2011 (Saez at about 19.7% versus CBO at 14.6%), which would imply a CBO figure of about 18% in 2012 if that relationship holds, a significant increase versus the 14.6% CBO reported for 2011. The share of after-tax income received by the top 1% rose from 11.5% in 2009 to 12.6% in 2011.[1] Inflation-adjusted pre-tax income for the bottom 90% of American families fell between 2010 and 2013, with the middle income groups dropping the most, about 6% for the 40th-60th percentiles and 7% for the 20th-40th percentiles. Incomes in the top decile rose 2%.[34] The top 1% captured an estimated 95% of the income growth during the 2009-2012 recovery period, with their pre-tax incomes growing 31.4% adjusted for inflation while the pre-tax incomes of the bottom 99% grew 0.4%. By 2012, the top 10% (top decile) had a 50.4% share of the pre-tax income, the highest level since 1917.[67] Tax increases on higher income earners were implemented in 2013 due to the Affordable Care Act and American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012. CBO estimated that "average federal tax rates under 2013 law would be higher—relative to tax rates in 2011—across the income spectrum. The estimated rates under 2013 law would still be well below the average rates from 1979 through 2011 for the bottom four income quintiles, slightly below the average rate over that period for households in the 81st through 99th percentiles, and well above the average rate over that period for households in the top 1 percent of the income distribution."[1]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States#2009.E2.80.93present

I'm thinking this may be an even bigger revolt: http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/first-read-republican-party-brink-coming-apart-n527901 Or is it panic? Jerry Baumchen Quite right, panic all around: " SALEM, Va. — "He's 6'2," Marco Rubio said of Donald Trump Sunday night, "which is why I don't understand why he has hands the size of someone who's 5'2. You know what they say about men with small hands." It was perhaps the most explicit small-penis joke in the history of presidential politics. Rubio has crawled into the mud with his vulgarian opponent. This may be necessary if he is to beat Trump, but it clearly carries dire risks for a man who wants to come across as presidential." http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/with-penis-jokes-and-spray-tan-riffs-rubio-gets-in-the-mud-with-trump/article/2584485 "Thus the support for Trump among evangelicals in South Carolina and Nevada, which, in all likelihood, will hold up elsewhere. Religious conservatives feel they have been pushed aside in today’s cultural politics, just as the working class is increasingly sidelined by economic changes. Both are seen as dead weight by an establishment dominated by the “creative class.” Trump is a brash pugilist. He called former president George W. Bush a liar for saying there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Commentators were shocked. Bush has been a darling of the religious right. Shouldn’t this crude broadside undermine Trump’s support among evangelicals? No. They’ve voted and voted and voted for candidates put forward by the Republican establishment. Where has it gotten them? Like so many people in Middle America, religiously and socially conservative voters are ready to smash things." https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/evangelical-christians-are-so-sick-of-losing-that-theyre-voting-for-trump/2016/02/26/d0efa184-da39-11e5-925f-1d10062cc82d_story.html US voters are frustrated and mad at the state of the economy. The elitism of politicians and their parties. Thats where Sanders support comes from. There as been enough juicy political add-munitions generated to keep Democrats writing a new 30 second TV add every day till the presidential election. Revolt...revolution...

Ok, let's try this; you posted: 'Sure there are, but doctors, lawyers, judges, etc. cover for each other as well, I bet in much greater numbers.' This is what I am asking you to prove; not something regarding LEO's and their firing or not firing their guns. Put up or stay quiet. Jerry Baumchen I'll state for a fact that OVER 99.1% of lawyers cover for each other. Doctors I'm guessing is substantially less than that percentage. It's difficult to get doctors to testify against other doctors. But push comes to shove they will seldom commit perjury to protect another. When the attitude of a organization is its "us against them". them being outsiders. The propensity to protect the group becomes more prevalent. Medical malpractice is usually a mistake or error in practice, not a crime in itself. Its a mistake committed by a medical practitioner thats not up to the standards of the profession. The problem with LEO is that its a shitty job. They deal face to face with victims and its easy to take the "law" into your own hands. To apply "justice" yourself to level the playing field.Be it in the streets or the courts. Its almost a byproduct of the propensity of the accused to lie and make unwarranted counter-accusations to avoid liability for their crimes.Which when successful lets the guilty walk free. I'm generally pro-LEO and I've seen both sides of that equation.Bad and lazy policing that has cost me allot. Together with professional work that is the norm. LEO reputations get hurt by unwarranted shootings and the deaths of suspects that seem undeserving.Frequently trials take place where bystanders testify wrongly that the LEO was unwarranted in shooting.Sometimes telling barefaced lies against LEO because of deeply ingrained hatred and distrust of LEO, within that local community. But when the police cover up each others unlawful conduct public trust is destroyed.

Trump is RIGHT that America was great. Trump is RIGHT that America will be great again. After Trump leaves the Presidency. Berlusconi the ex PM of Italy for whom a book was authored suitably titled "Berlusconi: The Epic Story of the Billionaire Who Took Over Italy" By Alan Friedman. Served nine years a PM. Hopefully US citizens will tire of pandering, self promoting, bluster and his out-sized ego before then.

Wait until the Japanese get a-hold of this technology! http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/japanese-sex-dolls-now-life-like-4040718

Well way back in November of 71, Northwest Orient was kind enough to give me 20,000 unmarked Andrew Jacksons. They initially gave me a couple old T-10 World War 2 parachutes to make my first jump. But instead got them to provide a nearly new para commander. Made it out of the 727 over Washington state and never looked back.Should have taken a first jump course first but it was fun none the less.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxU-U0oSJ_U An endangered baby dolphin was killed on a beach in Argentina last week after the animal was plucked from the water and passed around by beach-goers for petting and photos. The incident, which took place at the beach resort town of Santa Teresita, has drawn wide condemnation from animal lovers and activists, including the Argentine Wildlife Foundation (AWF), which released a statement urging people to return dolphins encountered near the shore to ocean waters. La Plata dolphins — also known as Franciscana dolphins — are only found in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, and fewer than 30,000 of them remain in the wild, the foundation said. The only type of river dolphin to inhabit saltwater, Franciscana dolphins are categorized as "vulnerable" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species. The IUNC notes that the main threats to the dolphins are gillnets, which are known to drown, injure or attach to marine mammals, causing extreme fatigue, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But as it turns out, curious swimmers and other beach-goers are also a top threat. Video footage of last week's incident shows the animal being scooped up by a man and quickly surrounded by a curious mob eager to touch the animal. The miniature dolphin, no more than a few feet long, is eventually left to die in the mud, where it can be seen lying motionless. At no point in the footage does it appear that anyone in the crowd intervened or attempted to return the animal to the water. "The potential for recovery of this species is very low," the AWF said. "The Franciscan, like other dolphins, can not long remain above water. It has a very thick and greasy skin that provides warmth, so the weather will quickly cause dehydration and death." NOAA describes La Plata dolphins as "extremely shy and evasive by nature" and notes that what little is known about them is "surrounded by superstition." With video and photos of the animal's death circulating online, the reaction has been furious. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/02/18/endangered-baby-dolphin-dies-after-swimmers-pass-it-around-for-selfies/

He (the Imam) is a "Salafist". Enough said. Its sort of like Trump quoting scripture. Proverbs 16:5 'Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the Lord; be assured, he will not go unpunished." Someday, ...perhaps... a atheist will be nominated by the Republican party. I'll be long dead by then.

"A town in western Germany has banned male refugees from a swimming pool after complaints of harassment from female bathers and staff — news that comes as a national poll Friday showed that Germans are becoming increasingly concerned about the country's ability to integrate the huge numbers of asylum-seekers who arrived last year. Markus Schnapka, who heads the social affairs department in Bornheim, said other visitors had complained of sexual harassment by men living in a nearby asylum-seeker shelter. He said none of the complaints were on the criminal level and the pool had agreed the ban would end once social workers confirmed the men "got the message." Bornheim is a few miles south of Cologne, which saw hundreds of robberies and sexual assaults during New Year's celebrations that police blamed largely on foreigners. The attacks have stoked a fierce debate in Germany about how to integrate the almost 1.1 million asylum-seekers who arrived last year. In the poll published Friday, 66% of the 1,203 respondents said Germany can't handle the migrant influx, up from 46% in December. The percentage who thought the country could manage so many refugees fell from 51% in December to 37% during the Jan. 12-14 poll conducted for public broadcaster ZDF." http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/german-town-bans-male-refugees-swimming-pool-article-1.2498156

Coffee Saves Lives and according to this study it reduces the chance of death by any cause by 1/3. I therefor submit that it should be free. If it can save the life of one skydiver. It should be provided by all DZ operators. I suggest that the stimulative effects bring focus to the coffee drinker vr the non coffee drinker! The Study: " according to the study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These patients were 42 percent less likely to have their cancer return than non-coffee drinkers, and were 33 percent less likely to die from cancer or any other cause. Two to three cups of coffee daily had a more modest benefit, while little protection was associated with one cup or less, reported the researchers, led by Charles Fuchs, MD, MPH, director of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Center at Dana-Farber. First author is Brendan J. Guercio, MD, also of Dana-Farber. The study included nearly 1,000 patients who filled out dietary pattern questionnaires early in the study, during chemotherapy and again about a year later. This "prospective" design eliminated patients' need to recall their coffee-drinking habits years later -- a source of potential bias in many observational studies. "We found that coffee drinkers had a lower risk of the cancer coming back and a significantly greater survival and chance of a cure," Fuchs said. Most recurrences happen within five years of treatment and are uncommon after that, he noted. In patients with stage III disease, the cancer has been found in the lymph nodes near the original tumor but there are no signs of further metastasis. Fuchs said these patients have about a 35 percent chance of recurrence." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150817161201.htm

FARNBOROUGH - ASL Aviation Group, owner of Safair, the South African-based C-130 operator, has signed a letter of intent with Lockheed Martin for up to 10 LM-100Js, the commercial variant of the C-130J military airlifter. First deliveries are expected in late 2018 pending the completion of FAA certification. “We started the FAA certification process at the beginning of this year and we expect it to go through the end of 2017,” says Orlando Carvalho, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics executive vice president. “At which point we will enter the test period for validation, which will extend through 2018, so we are looking at first deliveries towards the end of that year.” Lockheed is focusing on FAR Part 25 certification of the stretched version of the C-130J and says the commercial variant will be priced at around $65 million. “We have sold over 100 C-130s to commercial operators so the idea made a lot of sense to us. Right now our belief is at between 12 to 15 aircraft we will break even on the investment we are making,” Carvalho says. “So we are pursuing it actively and we believe the market may be up in the order of around 300 aircraft.” The LM-100J “is essentially a replacement” for the current Safair fleet of nine aging C-130s, says ASL Aviation Group chief executive Hugh Flynn. “What we are talking about with Lockheed is a gentle transition. We have been backing up the L-100 fleet with 737 Combis. But they can’t do what a Hercules can do, things like oil slick spraying and so on. In the long term the objective is to grow the fleet across [cargo] integrators, oil spill and humanitarian aid and relief.” http://aviationweek.com/farnborough-2014/lockheed-signs-first-order-civil-c-130j FAA search shows 21 commercial US Registered C-130 http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/AcftRef_Results.aspx?Mfrtxt=LOCKHEED&Modeltxt=C-130&PageNo=1

http://www.privateislandsonline.com/islands/walkers-cay For 10 million http://www.controller.com/listings/aircraft/for-sale/1394891/1984-shorts-sd3-30 Another 4 million Leaves about $Zillions00000000000000 left over more or less

It is useful to understand what the Iranian government really is: A strange blend of attributes of a republic and an oligarchy/theocracy: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8051750.stm The two most interesting parts are: - The Guardian Council: Half of which are appointed by an elected parliament, and half appointed by the unelected theocrats, i.e. it is like a republic and a theocracy sharing power. - Assembly of experts: An elected group which appoints the Supreme Leader of the theocratic side of the government. i.e. the republic has some control over the theocrats. Or more accurately: " Sham in Iran Today's topic: Was the Iran presidential election truly fraudulent, or is there any way incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could have won by a 2-1 margin? Why would the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, show his hand like this?Point: Matthew Duss I think there are two ways to look at the first part of the question. In the sense that all candidates for president in Iran must be vetted by the Guardian Council -- a group of unelected clerics that rejected hundreds of applicants -- then clearly yes, the elections were fraudulent and would not nearly meet the standard of openness that we enjoy in the United States. This is not to say that "democracy" does not occur in some respects in Iran, or that the peoples' voices are not heard. It does, and they are, albeit in a relatively narrow space. But even recognizing the tight constraints within which democracy exists in Iran, it's hard to take seriously the idea that controversial incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could get 63% of the Iranian vote, taking 24.5 million votes to leading challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi's 13.2 million. We can, of course, not know for sure, but we can take note of a few things that give off a distinct whiff of shenanigans. The first is that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had previously made very clear that he supported Ahmadinejad's reelection, appeared on television to hail the incumbent's victory soon after polls had closed. As Middle East scholar Juan Cole pointed out, "the Electoral Commission is supposed to wait three days before certifying the results of the election, at which point they are to inform Khamenei of the results, and he signs off on the process. ... In this case, Khamenei immediately approved the alleged results." As BBC Iranian affairs analyst Sadeq Saba noted, in past elections, as votes were counted, the results were announced province by province. In this election, "the results came in blocks of millions of votes -- in percentages of the vote," with little variance in the vote distribution. Saba noted that this suggested that Ahmadinejad did equally well in rural and urban areas; the voluble populist has consistently enjoyed far greater support in rural areas than in cities (though there was recent evidence that even his rural support was waning). Another puzzle is that Mousavi, an ethnic Azeri Turk, was beaten by Ahmadinejad in Mousavi's home province of Azerbaijan. As Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace put it, , "This is the equivalent of Barack Obama losing the African American vote to John McCain in 2008." As to the second part of the question, there is a way that Ahmadinejad could have won by a 2-1 margin: If reformers had stayed home and didn't vote. That didn't happen. There was record turnout, which the supreme leader himself recognized in his televised address as "a real feast." The more interesting question to me, then, is why. Why would Khamenei, who has until now been more subtle and meticulous in exercising his control over the Iranian government, show his hand like this? Popular consent has played a small yet significant part in maintaining the legitimacy of the Iranian system, so why have Khamenei and his cohorts apparently decided to dispense with it now? Matthew Duss is a national security researcher and writer at the Center for American Progress. Khamenei couldn't tolerate another pro-reform president. Counterpoint: Michael Rubin There is no such thing as a free election in the Islamic Republic. The religious regime seeks the legitimacy of democracy but not the idea of subordinating leadership to popular will. The supreme leader and the Guardian Council carefully monitor campaigns and massage the process. This year, as you mention, Matt, the Guardian Council eliminated more than 99% of the candidates who sought to run for president. It is easy to falsify the results at any stage: The Iranian government forbids independent monitoring. In the 2005 election, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who led exit polling, claimed fraud after he went to sleep in first place and woke up in third. You imply that Western analysts underestimate incumbent Ahmadinejad, and I agree. Western journalists and academics hang out in the bookstores around Tehran University and the cafes of northern Tehran where Iranians embrace the reformist tendencies voiced by Mousavi. But, in the projects of western Tehran and the slums of the south, Ahmadinejad's demagoguery is attractive. Many Iranians resent both the fabulous wealth accumulated by the Islamic Republic's elite and their nepotism. This is why, in the last days of the campaign, Ahmadinejad made former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (perhaps the richest man in Iran) and his extended family the target of his attacks. Iranians juxtapose Rafsanjani's luxuries with Ahmadinejad's ascetic lifestyle. Finally, while the campaign officially was just three weeks long, Ahmadinejad campaigned for four years, spending more time in provincial towns and villages than any of his predecessors. That said, the numbers don't pass the smell test. The Interior Ministry reported turnout greater than 99% in some provinces. While such numbers are unlikely, both consensus inside Iran and anecdotal accounts from election day suggest that high turnout would benefit Mousavi. As you said, Matt, it seems strange that Ahmadinejad would beat Mousavi in east Azerbaijan (even though Mousavi squeaked by in west Azerbaijan). Or that Ahmadinejad would win former President Mohammad Khatami's home province of Yazd after Khatami campaigned so heavily for the challenger. Matt, you put your finger on the right question: Why would Supreme Leader Khamenei show his hand like this? Let me take a crack at that. Remember, in the Islamic Republic, sovereignty comes from God; it doesn't matter what the majority of people think. Khamenei became supreme leader after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's death in 1989. Khamenei was a compromise candidate. He didn't have Khomeini's charisma or religious credentials. Khamenei ruled by balancing factions. Whenever any politician would get too powerful, Khamenei would cut that person down to size. It hasn't always worked. In 1997, reformer Khatami won a surprise victory against the supreme leader's favorite candidate. Khamenei later regretted letting the results stand after Khatami unleashed passions that threatened regime stability. Indeed, next month marks the 10th anniversary of the student uprising in 1999, which I witnessed firsthand in Iran. When the Guardian Council approved the soft-spoken Mousavi's candidacy, no one expected his message to resonate. But when it caught on, Khamenei decided to nip the problem in the bud. The next couple days will show whether he was successful. Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School." http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-oew-duss-rubin17-2009jun17-story.html IMO politics is almost always a dirty corrupt business. The corruption of which is only brought to light by free, fair elections, an independent judiciary, and active inquisitive journalists. None of which is in abundance in most of the Arab world. Of course sympathies should be shown to the average Iranian citizen, the average Saudi citizen, who hold little sway in the directions of their countries.

You might want to re-read what I wrote. I wrote nothing about Muslims. I said, and I quote, "Fuck KSA." I have no issue with Muslims. I have HUGE issues with "monarchs" who use religion to control their empires by killing people and denying rights to entire swaths of their subjects people who just happened to lose the birth geography lottery. I would think the same thing about any "King" who did the same bullshit. What about a Shia king, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who set up a puppet government to cover the last set of rigged elections where only those endorsed by Khamenei could run? Who kills three times the number of opposition members per year ( http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/death-sentences-and-executions-2014 ). I don't have any warm and fuzzy feelings for the KSA but the Iranian theocracy http://martinarcher.typepad.com/martin_archer/2009/06/iranian-theocracy.html is just as bad. The big issue with these two regimes is that they are prepared to bring the whole region to war to serve their respective views on Mohammad's ideology. To protect each respective ruling governments. Both are currently fighting two separate proxy wars, in Syria and in Yemen. With the KSA having ground troops directly involved in Yemen. With Iranian forces directly fighting in both Syria and Iraq.

and another endorsement. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/somalia/12078035/Somali-al-Shabaab-militants-use-Donald-Trump-in-recruiting-film.html

There is precedent! "In 1994 Silvio Berlusconi was standing in his first election. Nobody gave him a hope in hell of winning. He was a laughing stock, promising to create a million jobs and defeat the communists and sweep away the old politics. ... But then Berlusconi won. It was one of the most extraordinary political events of the 20th century. Even the workers of Turin voted for him. It turned into a nightmare. It won't last, everyone said. Italians will see through this plastic billionaire. The scandals will bring him down. The magistrates will sort him out. Berlusconi in government, it was said, would "vaccinate" Italians against him. Numerous other scandals, arrests, investigations and trials followed. At first the prophets and pundits were proved right. Berlusconi was brought down by scandals and by the trade unions. But he did not go away. Italians were not vaccinated against him. The diseases he had helped to create in the 1980s – populism, individualism, short-termism – continued to dominate the political scene. More elections followed: 1996, 2001, 2006, 2008. In every single campaign, Berlusconi made himself the centre of attention. He was the issue. He was the reason for voting for or against something. He was the election. Even when he lost (only in 1996 and 2006) it was not by much, and his opponents were paralysed by their own lack of unity and principles. Meanwhile, Berlusconi allied himself with a series of regionalists, racists and fascists, many of whom were elected to important positions of power. Women in Italian politics were reduced to the whims of a patriarch who saw them as sex objects or playthings. It was horrific, and the damage it has done is immense. Berlusconi was no longer a laughing stock: it was the whole of Italy that appeared to be a sick joke. The Italian language itself took a horrible beating, as political debate turned into something akin to two drunks shouting at each other in a bar. Oratory became a thing of the distant past. Footballing terms became endemic. Now we are in 2013. It has been 19 years since that first, hideous, hands-over-the-eyes election campaign. We have had more trials, more scandals, more endemic corruption: bunga bunga, accounting fraud, tax evasion. Yet Berlusconi is still there, and he has done it again. The campaign has been all about him: his gaffes (carefully calculated to capture media attention) and his promises (which have become more and more absurd – we are now up to 4m jobs, and taxation will be handed back to those who paid it out). Other populists took the stage in Berlusconi's shadow, hoping to emulate his successful campaigning tactics: Umberto Bossi from the Northern League, and even one of the magistrates behind the tangentopoli corruption investigations, Antonio Di Pietro. All fell by the wayside. Silvio, in the end, could out-populist everyone. In the meantime, in power, he managed only to look after his own private interests. Not one structural reform of note was passed by any Berlusconi government, although they did make savage cuts to public spending." http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/21/berlusconi-tainted-italian-politics

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ THIS! You could summarize the list as write a new constitution and mandate Republican Isolationist leaders.

http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=12842#.VnDFL792Hf0 "“They do try to bully smaller organizations like ourselves... They get really territorial about fundraising,” said the president of one charity with the name “wounded warrior” in their title. He asked to remain anonymous out of fear that the Wounded Warrior Project would launch legal action against his group if he spoke out. His group hasn’t been sued, but he said individuals from the WWP had pressured him to change their name. “They’re so huge. We don’t have the staying power if they come after us—you just can’t fight them.” The Wounded Warrior Project’s latest target is the Keystone Wounded Warriors, a small, all-volunteer charity based in Pennsylvania. How small? Keystone Wounded Warriors had a total annual revenue of just over $200,000 as recently as 2013. That’s less than the $375,000 that Wounded Warrior Project Executive Director Steven Nardizzi was personally paid in 2013. The Keystone group was forced to spend more than two years and some $72,000 in legal fees to defend itself from the legal actions of the Wounded Warrior Project, which brings in annual revenues of close to $235 million, according to the outfit’s most recent tax forms. “That’s money that we could have used to pick up some homes in foreclosure, remodel them, and give them back to warriors. We spent that money on defending ourselves instead,” said Keystone Wounded Warriors Executive Director Paul Spurgin, a Marine Corps Vietnam War veteran." http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/04/wounded-warrior-charity-unleashes-hell-on-other-veteran-groups.html

I wonder about the economics. I would think that you need four(or more) paying customers in it at a time. A conventionally sized tunnel can have a single paying customer. Getting groups of four,eight, or even sixteen paying customers in sufficient numbers to keep it going is going to be a challenge. But this is in Dubai. Which is hosting this: https://www.wagdubai.ae/ So I guess it can be done anywhere, why not Dubai.

How many loads a day are flown at Spaceland(Nov-Feb)? I'm familiar with the weather in the Nov-Feb. period for Florida(Z-hills/Deland) and California (Perris/Elsinore) both great areas. But i'm wondering if the winter weather hinders altitude or number of loads for Spaceland in the Nov-Feb. months. As i'm thinking of a trip there. Does winter gulf weather fronts hold things up?

NY Times The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributor Saudi Arabia, an ISIS That Has Made It By KAMEL DAOUDNOV. 20, 2015 Black Daesh, white Daesh. The former slits throats, kills, stones, cuts off hands, destroys humanity’s common heritage and despises archaeology, women and non-Muslims. The latter is better dressed and neater but does the same things. The Islamic State; Saudi Arabia. In its struggle against terrorism, the West wages war on one, but shakes hands with the other. This is a mechanism of denial, and denial has a price: preserving the famous strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia at the risk of forgetting that the kingdom also relies on an alliance with a religious clergy that produces, legitimizes, spreads, preaches and defends Wahhabism, the ultra-puritanical form of Islam that Daesh feeds on. Wahhabism, a messianic radicalism that arose in the 18th century, hopes to restore a fantasized caliphate centered on a desert, a sacred book, and two holy sites, Mecca and Medina. Born in massacre and blood, it manifests itself in a surreal relationship with women, a prohibition against non-Muslims treading on sacred territory, and ferocious religious laws. That translates into an obsessive hatred of imagery and representation and therefore art, but also of the body, nakedness and freedom. Saudi Arabia is a Daesh that has made it. The West’s denial regarding Saudi Arabia is striking: It salutes the theocracy as its ally but pretends not to notice that it is the world’s chief ideological sponsor of Islamist culture. The younger generations of radicals in the so-called Arab world were not born jihadists. They were suckled in the bosom of Fatwa Valley, a kind of Islamist Vatican with a vast industry that produces theologians, religious laws, books, and aggressive editorial policies and media campaigns. One might counter: Isn’t Saudi Arabia itself a possible target of Daesh? Yes, but to focus on that would be to overlook the strength of the ties between the reigning family and the clergy that accounts for its stability — and also, increasingly, for its precariousness. The Saudi royals are caught in a perfect trap: Weakened by succession laws that encourage turnover, they cling to ancestral ties between king and preacher. The Saudi clergy produces Islamism, which both threatens the country and gives legitimacy to the regime. One has to live in the Muslim world to understand the immense transformative influence of religious television channels on society by accessing its weak links: households, women, rural areas. Islamist culture is widespread in many countries — Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Mali, Mauritania. There are thousands of Islamist newspapers and clergies that impose a unitary vision of the world, tradition and clothing on the public space, on the wording of the government’s laws and on the rituals of a society they deem to be contaminated. It is worth reading certain Islamist newspapers to see their reactions to the attacks in Paris. The West is cast as a land of “infidels.” The attacks were the result of the onslaught against Islam. Muslims and Arabs have become the enemies of the secular and the Jews. The Palestinian question is invoked along with the rape of Iraq and the memory of colonial trauma, and packaged into a messianic discourse meant to seduce the masses. Such talk spreads in the social spaces below, while up above, political leaders send their condolences to France and denounce a crime against humanity. This totally schizophrenic situation parallels the West’s denial regarding Saudi Arabia. All of which leaves one skeptical of Western democracies’ thunderous declarations regarding the necessity of fighting terrorism. Their war can only be myopic, for it targets the effect rather than the cause. Since ISIS is first and foremost a culture, not a militia, how do you prevent future generations from turning to jihadism when the influence of Fatwa Valley and its clerics and its culture and its immense editorial industry remains intact? Continue reading the main story Sign Up for the Opinion Today Newsletter Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, The Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world. Is curing the disease therefore a simple matter? Hardly. Saudi Arabia remains an ally of the West in the many chess games playing out in the Middle East. It is preferred to Iran, that gray Daesh. And there’s the trap. Denial creates the illusion of equilibrium. Jihadism is denounced as the scourge of the century but no consideration is given to what created it or supports it. This may allow saving face, but not saving lives. Daesh has a mother: the invasion of Iraq. But it also has a father: Saudi Arabia and its religious-industrial complex. Until that point is understood, battles may be won, but the war will be lost. Jihadists will be killed, only to be reborn again in future generations and raised on the same books. The attacks in Paris have exposed this contradiction again, but as happened after 9/11, it risks being erased from our analyses and our consciences. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/21/opinion/saudi-arabia-an-isis-that-has-made-it.html?action=click&contentCollection=Middle%20East&module=MostPopularFB&version=Full®ion=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article

I was on a dive boat in Cozumel in Feb with a woman diver who was a quadriplegic. She had no personal ability to clear her mask. She had a couple hundred dives. The oldest skydiver i ever trained was 79. He could not perform an arch because his arthritis was so bad. He did fine. So yes, but you will have to look around to find a match for a instructor, preferably who has dealt with disabled students before. http://www.apparelyzed.com/forums/topic/24910-paraplegic-and-quadriplegic-skydiving/

I heard wind gusts to 66kph and would speculate that the last operator didn't allow the crane to weathervane when he left it. Also speculating that that mistake would be an act of some God or another.

Agree I try to watch it but when they have an "emergency" on almost every flight to add drama it just gets too stupid to continue so off to another channel.