Phil1111

Agree Agree with a caveat about the dangerous power of creating a monopoly. Not all billionaires are bad. But killing other private competition to create a SpaceX monopoly like Google would not be good. SpaceX is certainly showing NASA, Boeing, Blue Origin, Russia, China and the ESA how its done.

China has now banned the export of key minerals like gallium, germanium and antimony to the US in response to American export bans of high technology items to China. The trade war is now starting to simmer. Oh! wait too bad that China will still export those items to Canada and Mexico. Come January 21 Americans will come to Canada for their prescription drugs and EV batteries.

The west and free markets won the cold war. Putin is nothing more or less than a criminal kleptocrat. He as a temporary alliance with a communist dictator. With a family dictatorship and a Islamic theocracy. Not one of which enjoys domestic popular support. Each of which is propped up by the power of a gun. After trump's second term, American justice will come roaring back and trump will spend the remainder of his life buried in litigation. IMO

He wasn't pursued. He came to the attention of prosecutors who made a deal to let him off, more or less. It was a trump appointed judge that threw the deal out. Thats not to say that a judge wouldn't have given him a light sentence or no jail time. The fact is he admitted to the tax charges which were serious and the gun charge is a felony. Does the law apply to all equally or not? trump's pardons are an obscene exception. If a Black man was prosecuted for the same gun "crime" the president's son should be as well. Using trump's pardons as a example or precedent to justify Biden's actions is sinking to trump's level. The entire concept of the pardons is intended to be centred around making right unfair convictions. US presidents are giving pardons to people they know personally or have had involvements with. All to subvert the concept of all equally before the law.

Agree. trump's pardons are in a completely other world. "Among those receiving pardons was Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner. The elder Kushner had been convicted for crimes that included extorting his own brother-in-law by hiring a prostitute to lure him into a sexual encounter, video recording the encounter and then sending the film to his wife, Charles Kushner’s own sister." All of this pardon B.S. makes banana republics look princely compared to the US.

Sorry Nigel but you're dead wrong. Biden claims Hunter charges were politically motivated. Here are what the facts show LA Times story: "Earlier this year, a federal jury in Delaware convicted Biden of federal gun crimes, including lying about being drug-free when he purchased and briefly owned a gun while he was addicted to crack cocaine. Biden was on trial for three felony charges, and the jury convicted him of all three. In addition to lying on a federal background check form and giving a false statement to a federal firearms dealer, he was also convicted of possessing a gun while being an illicit drug user." He lied on the gun application forms....“It was not politically motivated. Politics played no part in this whatsoever. Again, we just went by the evidence,” the juror said. In September, Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to all nine federal tax charges he faced, just as jury selection was about to begin in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom. The indictment in the tax case included racy details of Biden’s life between 2016 and 2019 — the period during which now he admits he failed to pay at least $1.4 million in federal taxes — including the hundreds of thousands of dollars he spent on escorts, a pornographic website, hotels, luxury car rentals and other lavish personal expenses." Instead of letting his son face a judge who could determine if he was unfairly prosecuted when a deal was on the table. Instead of putting to rest the whole idea of a "politicized justice system". Biden just confirmed that it is.

When the mind, the facts and the debate is lost. The reliance of brain rot is brought to the fore. ‘Brain rot’ named Oxford Word of the Year 2024 "Brain rot’ is defined as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration”. Our experts noticed that ‘brain rot’ gained new prominence this year as a term used to capture concerns about the impact of consuming excessive amounts of low-quality online content, especially on social media. The term increased in usage frequency by 230% between 2023 and 2024. The first recorded use of ‘brain rot’ was found in 1854 in Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden, which reports his experiences of living a simple lifestyle in the natural world. As part of his conclusions, Thoreau criticizes society’s tendency to devalue complex ideas, or those that can be interpreted in multiple ways, in favour of simple ones, and sees this as indicative of a general decline in mental and intellectual effort: “While England endeavours to cure the potato rot, will not any endeavour to cure the brain-rot – which prevails so much more widely and fatally?”

Mmmmmm now that a purchase price is better defined! ...I'm surprised that a DZ, a manufacturer, or a major retailer hasn't bought it. IMO 2-3 active individuals are needed in the skydiving section to drive engagement. Newbies and those debating coming back need gear and not every DZ is active enough to have active FB groups.

The KC-X is an excellent example of how politicians, insiders, weapons suppliers and lobbyists drive the $800 billion machine. Although Canada and some other countries are worse when it comes to domestic jobs/politics first. Functioning of the system and value are way down the equation.

People choose to go to those sections and others can ignore them. There needs to be more participation in the skydiving forums themselves. More participation in checking out the advertising. agree

They just bought some F-15EX fighters which is the latest with digital flight controls. Israel gets its jets at about 1/2 price because of the Jewish lobby in America.

Ah the French and art. Americans and football: SoFi Stadium tops the list, costing $5.95 billion in inflation adjusted dollars.8 stadiums cost over $1 billion to build.

They sure did a nice job. A $700 million euro work of art to rebuild.

I hope that everything works out. There is a possibility that Elon can cut some fat out of Washington. A smaller possibility that the direction of leadership will be traditional GOP, i.e. cut spending such that the deficit is reduced. Having said that there are many elderly and poor that are vulnerable. I most closely identify with John McCain a compassionate conservative and one that looks for consensus.

Agree but I would suggest greed and arrogance. The Nazis believed they were the superior race. trump believes he can't be beat by the system and to date he's been right. Its kinda like a kid on a crotch rocket running from the cops. Or somebody showboating low to the ground. Sooner or later, one way or another. With no pun intended trump thinks he's the golden one.

Agree Agree And agree. But it seems as though you-all forgot what happened to Steve Bannon and his gang of fascists... er... I mean Goebbels and his henchmen. They all thought that they could exist without allies, exist without friends, war with everyone. It all ended badly and certainly never lasted 1000 years. It never lasted five. trump is coming up to the throne believing that there are no restrictions. That everyone has betrayed him and must be punished, be humiliated. That his enemies must end up like Rudy Giuliani. Does anyone believe that a dictator limits his conduct to one day? His excess to one day?

Thats restricted need to know classified. But the public one is pictured above.

AFAIK this is the same as what Billvon and Joe use. So click, click, kick the tires and light the fires.

Technically that would be one hour. Well.....plus taxi time.

I have to give the Judge credit for patience. I'd have given Rudy 10 days of state accommodation long ago. Now Rudy has a new lawyer and a new trial upcoming. I'll have to start a new thread about trump's legal actions including his enablers act two.

The current NATO standard for a combat ready pilot is 180 hours a year. Some fly less than that. But that does leave more time for a Target Rich Environment

Ah! a post using false equivalency to justify blatant lying.

More experts in trump's defence department.

Please identify these "autonomous fighters" As everyone knows trump surrounds himself with the "best of the best". If the F-35 is such a horrible aircraft why did Israel just order another 25 just this summer. Bringing its total orders up to 75 when it is the only country in the world to actually employ them in combat conditions. When it is the only country to operate them against the most modern Russian S400 SAM systems with impunity. Both in Syria and Iran. Setting aside of course the 17 countries that have also ordered F-35s. Then there is the poor NATO ally Turkey which recently discovered that Russian military equipment isn't worth a single rouble.Let alone the $2.5 billion USD Turkey paid Putin for the S-400 system. Turkey is now trying to sell the system which has never been deployed in Turkey. Its still sitting in boxes in Turkish warehouses. So it can rejoin the F-35 program, which of course the US has refused to allow.

Trump claims Nobel Peace Prize is rigged against him "Trump asserted he “would get a Nobel Prize for a lot of things, if they give it out fairly, which they don’t.”Trump was discussing the latest developments in the disputed region of Kashmir," Trump says he deserves Nobel Peace Prize not Abiy Ahmed "I'm going to tell you about the Nobel Peace Prize, I'll tell you about that. I made a deal, I saved a country, and I just heard that the head of that country is now getting the Nobel Peace Prize for saving the country. I said: 'What, did I have something to do with it?' Yeah, but you know, that's the way it is. As long as we know, that's all that matters... I saved a big war, I've saved a couple of them."...Mr Trump was referring to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. In October 2018, Trump said. “They probably will never give it to me, even what I’m doing in Korea, and in Idlib Province and all of these places. They probably will never give it to me. You know why? Because they don’t want to.” Evidently they gave one to: and it just sticks in trump's little craw that the Nobel committee won't give him one. Now the unstable genius is claiming that he is the person responsible for the Lebanon peace deal between Israel and Hezbollah.