flotsam
flotsam's JournalWatching the hearing
It becomes obvious for the first time since Kavanaugh was nominated we will get to examine 100% of someone's writings. Too bad it's one of his rape victims...
Is the NYT complicit
or going for the Guinness record for newspaper most often punked repeatedly by serial liars???
Today's actions by the administration
would give perfect cover for Mueller to announce further indictments due to extreme circumstances and fear of the investigation being shut down. This should easily "trump" the 60 days guidance.
A humble suggestion...
Most people agree that an income tax indexed to income level is fair. How about if we went to an indexed military draft? Suppose the entire military was draftees and every draftee passed thru basic with the best being offered military academies or officer candidate schools. By indexing the draft itself to family income levels it would be expected that both the quality of those drafted and the involvement of influential families would rise and that as a result deployment of troops would be much more fully debated. The quality of the military AND the level of civilian involvement in military oversight would be improved. And when rich kids got killed it just might matter a bit more...
Just a memory...
One more intriguing footnote to this story: a note that Lewis Libby sent to Judith Miller upon her release from prison. Quote, "You went into jail in the summer," he wrote. "It is fall now. Out West where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters because their roots connect them. "
Remember?
As long as we are remembering, does anyone remember how we punished Saudi Arabia who provided 18 of the 19 hijackers and much of the funding??? Why do we never discuss the root causes of the attacks? "In February 2012, former U.S. senators Bob Graham and Bob Kerrey made sworn statements filed in federal court as part of this litigation commenced by the 9/11 victims' families in which the former senators stated that the government of Saudi Arabia might have played a direct role in the 9/11 attacks. The two senators had reviewed top secret information concerning the 9/11 attacks when they were in the Senate. "I am convinced that there was a direct line between at least some of the terrorists who carried out the September 11th attacks and the government of Saudi Arabia," stated former senator Graham in his sworn court document. According to Graham's sworn statement, unanswered questions remain regarding Saudi-sponsored financial links to Al Qaeda and the role of Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi citizen living in San Diego with ties to two of the 9/11 hijackers and to officials of the government of Saudi Arabia.[118] There remains substantial unreleased documentation related to these issues.
On February 4, 2015, former al-Qaeda operative Zacarias Mousaoui who is imprisoned for life for his role in 9/11 attacks, told lawyers that members of the Saudi royal family, including former intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal Al Saud, supported al-Qaeda to carry out its attacks.
Our purported "ally" has a lot to answer for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_for_the_September_11_attacks
The Op-Ed is written by a piece of shit
To be a senior administration official they were an early and strong supporter. Which would be bad enough if you were stupid and a true believer. But within a month or two by his telling they were hiding paperwork to stop the boss from assassinating foreign heads of state...What the fuck do you see in the first 45 days-normally a honeymoon-that changes enough to commit a silent coup and yet leave a madman's hands on the levers?
It's greed and theft of course-beyond being dangerously unstable the "president" was passing tax cuts of the type corporations pop amyl nitrate and beat off to. 50 years of environmental regulation was staked down in the Golden Arches parking lot, buried under french fries and ketchup and left to the seagulls. For the first time since the English Raj ICE beaters were allowed to drive the most dangerous game into the open where their young could be caged. But senior official kept, you know, really bad stuff from happening...
But end game is arriving early and if you can still rub two brain cells together it's pretty plain that when the USS Fatass goes under the suction is going to drag down every staffer without a life jacket or at least a legend- Yours is about how you are a patriot, not an opportunistic parasite who achieves a goal and strolls away whistling a happy tune.
But I'm betting I'm not like some lonely glowing intellect, just a guy who thought this through. And on this board there are a few actual smart people who are looking too. You can tell your tale, but you are also fucked. You ain't no patriot. Go kill yourself.
23 trips downtown and why we honor John McCain
You have to get that he didn't have to join the family business. And then having joined there was no need to join one of the most dangerous positions. Sure getting into the Academy was a lock but graduation wasn't. By the skin of his teeth he made it. So they gave him a jet, right? Bullshit-past academy there are two years of flight training you can wash out of every day. He crashed several airplanes but because of either family pull or perhaps flashes of brilliance he was allowed to continue. Onboard Forrestal he flew 5 missions doing SAM suppression which is just as bad as it gets with each being kill or be killed the stakes. As he waited for in his plane for a launch on his 6th mission a plane sited cross deck suffered a voltage surge that accidentally fired a zuni missile which struck either McCain or the next plane to him. This was the initiating event of the Forrestal fire. 138 sailors died. Video shows McCain climbing over his cockpit bow and sliding down the nose before jump clear of the flames from the forward mounted refueling probe. Less than 1 minute later 1000lb bombs that were of Korean vintage and were known to be sweating and unstable exploded killing nearly half of the aircraft fire emergency crews. McCain claimed minor shrapnel wounds but declined treatment when he saw how overtaxed sickbay people were.
The Forrestal returned to the states and their airwing spent a half year in Florida but McCain requested a combat slot and was assign to USS Oriskany CV34. Months before Forrestal returned to action McCain had flown 17 more sam suppression missions. Now on his 23 mission "as part of a twenty-plane strike force against the Yen Phu thermal power plant in central Hanoi that previously had almost always been off-limits to U.S. raids due to the possibility of collateral damage. Arriving just before noon, McCain dove from 9,000 to 4,000 feet on his approach; as he neared the target, warning systems in McCain's A-4E Skyhawk alerted him that he was being tracked by enemy fire-control radar. Like other U.S. pilots in similar situations, he did not break off the bombing run,
and he held his dive until he released his bombs at about 3,500 feet (1,000 m). As he started to pull up, the Skyhawk's wing was blown off by a Soviet-made SA-2 anti-aircraft missile fired by the North Vietnamese Air Defense Command's 61st Battalion.
I don't even need to discuss how badly he was injured or how badly or how long he suffered. He worked six years to get the job and once he had it he took the worst missions (after the sam suppression guys finished other pilots attcked in an area where the sams had just been challenged).
Twenty Fucking Three times he joined into life or death combat voluntarily. He lost and paid the price without whining. You didn't so don't tell me what came after. He paid the fucking toll.
I have a question about blind trusts...
I know the person who places his finances in trust can no longer make monetary calls, but is he equally banned in talking to his trustee, even in a general manner, about any future decisions he would be involved in? In short I knowthe guy who's finances are in trust is blind but is it possible his fiduciary is merely near-sighted??? Can someone describe the legal bounds?
John McCain was offered a release from imprisonment...
...He was indeed, however accepting such release would have disgraced him and likely would have cost him a court martial and dishonorable discharge.
Article three of the Military Code of Conduct "If I am captured I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy."
This code is taught to all military people and has been since the Korean War. Although not having the force of law under the UCMJ it is considered military bedrock and behavior in contravention of the code would almost certainly be considered "Conduct unbecoming of an officer".
So yeah-he behaved well. But don't pretend he got a golden ticket and could have taken the prize at no cost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_the_United_States_Fighting_Force
For those who wonder, I very much admired Senator McCain though not his party or most politics.
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