nitflegal

On 3/4/2024 at 7:08 PM, sunday said:

They are likely to commit suicide before their forties, sadly.

End of family line.

There are not many more evil things a parent could do to a child.

Agreed, they've managed to make their children perform the physical abuse on themselves.

13 hours ago, sunday said:

 

With four kids if, God forbid, they have surgical mutilation in service to this the destruction to their family down the line is going to be profound.  While you can brainwash and condition people at an early age to the point that it's hard to shake the sheer medical complications they will endure will be with them for decades.  How many surgeries to try and keep open wounds from resolving, how many permanent changes to the way their body functions based on a mismatch of remaining anatomy and hormonally adjusted physiology are those kids going to experience in their childhood and adulthood.  What is the level of resentment and hatred these parents will receive by the permanent physical and chemical mutilation they inflicted on their children for the approval of their immoral peer group?  Every justified resentment African Americans have for the Tuskeegee experiments will be multiplied to a number I can't even guess at.

2 hours ago, Skywalkre said:

You're leaving out some pretty important context for this portion.  Maher is making comments about a Republican field that was overwhelmingly in the MAGA camp and loyal to Trump.  Many of these candidates, running for state positions that had power/influence over elections, openly talked about how they would not follow the law if an election like '20 happened again or that they wouldn't have followed the law if they were in charge back in '20.  Ds jumped on this, for good reason (the fact that the Rs as a party were ok with this from their silence [and the simple fact these nutjobs won their primaries] is rather disturbing), and turned this into a major them in '22.  Voting for Ds vs Trump's nominees was voting to protect democracy.  Exit polling showed this was a major concern with voters in that midterm and helped prevent the R wave that should have happened if Trump's cronies weren't running everywhere.

This isn't just Maher shitting on Rs (maybe he's done that every other election, I don't know) but Maher bringing up some very valid criticism that Rs welcomed on themselves by putting forward so many terrible (and frankly, scary) nominees back in '22.

That's the thing.  He said the same things about milquetoast Romney ("Romney's only foreign policy experience was "trying to brow-beat Frenchmen into joining his cult") McCain (It's hard to imagine a president being worse than Bush. But I could see McCain pulling it off), Bush Jr was a war criminal, etc.  Maher has a long history of being "reasonable" but then strangely every single election the Republicans are all crazed anti-democratic threats.  Then after they lose (when it's convenient) he suddenly gets super-sorry for denigrating them and telling his followers to vote for their oppents (when it mattered).  Again, how many times does he get to run the same play before the right stops falling for it?

Note: When he decided to attack Trump suddenly he was so very sorry for slandering his predecessors. . “I know liberals made a big mistake because we attacked your boy [President George W. Bush] like he was the end of the world,” Maher told panelist David Frum, a former speechwriter for Bush. “He wasn’t.”

Maher continued: “And Mitt Romney, we attacked that way. I gave Obama a million dollars, I was so afraid of Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney wouldn’t have changed my life that much, or yours. Or John McCain.”

“They were honorable men who we disagreed with. And we should have kept it that way. So we cried wolf. And that was wrong,” Maher said.

4 hours ago, Ssnake said:

Clearly the question brought up, like in all comedy it's about his timing.

Dispensing critique left and right isn't balanced when one side is being picked consistently shortly before decision moments.

He criticizes the left when its safe, he criticizes the right when elections are coming up.  It lets him play to those who think "see, he criticizes both sides" without observing how he always has the Republicans being worse and way worse when it comes to actual candidates at election time.

31 minutes ago, JWB said:

I have never heard him use those words. 

Those exact words?  No.  But let's look at right before the last election.

"“Democrats, for all their flaws, still see democracy as the essence of America. They see America and democracy as inextricably linked. They see one without the other as unthinkable,” Maher explained. “Republicans? Thinkable.”"

When it looked like the Republicans were going to take the House and Senate last year? "“Democracy is on the ballot and unfortunately, it’s going to lose,” Maher said on his show “Real Time.”  "

"“Republicans: I’ll start with you, because I really want to know, what do you like about America? It’s not democracy,” "

“So,” Maher uttered as he started to bring the thing to a point,” I ask again. If you don’t like democracy, voting, the FBI, military and cops, what about America do you like? Oh, I know, the constitution. That’s right, the grand old– what’s that? Congresswoman Lauren Boebert says what? She says, ‘I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk that’s not in the constitution.”

“But it is in the constitution,” Maher correctly pointed out, “and it’s another one of those pillars of this country that, if you don’t believe in it, it makes me wonder why you’re fighting so hard for this place at all.”

And just a couple of months ago, while we've all been watching Biden crater and Maher has been feted by the Reublicans for criticizing him:

“My biggest issue is [Biden] lies a lot,” Rogan said.

“Well, certainly not more than Trump,” Maher countered.

“They both lie. I don’t think comparing [Biden] to Trump does anybody any good.”

“They’re running against each other, so it’s necessary,” Maher shoots back.

“… He’s mentally compromised…”

“As if the other guy isn’t!”

“[Trump] speaks much clearer,” Rogan replied. “He might be crazy. He might be a sociopath. It still doesn’t take away from the fact there’s something wrong with Biden. He makes up words. He stumbles through things. He doesn’t seem to know where he is half the time. That’s my problem with him.”

“We’re living in a world where ‘perfect’ is not on the menu,” Maher said. “These are the choices…”

So again, he's been criticizing the left for years whenever it's safe but when an election is up?  The Republicans are always worse.  And the Republicans keep treating him like an ally. . .

4 hours ago, Murph said:

Proof the left causes you to become dumber and mentally unhinged NPCs:

 

Does it make them dumber or are they just fascist cowards who tweet what they really think and then try and hide from their beliefs when they get sufficient pushback?  Tweet #1 is what she thought, tweet #2 is what she said to try and save her ass; aka lying.

49 minutes ago, futon said:

I guess he just serves the center left in the democratic party to either make strategic concessions about the far left or to jab them as part of serving the center left but jabs at the republicans more, all in typical US satire.

Bush year republicans did seem pretty bad. Which proabably made an opening for Trump in 2016 on the Republican side. Maybe a few other upcoming republicans would prove worthy enough heading towards 2016, like Cruz, but that opening was for only something different. Something different had to be different, some thought it a good idea for another Bush to appear, Jeb, there all the same, only to be beat to a pulp on stage by Trump. 

There's only so many times that i can watch the okie doke where he has a conservative on and they talk amiably and agree with each other on so much up until the moment an actual leading Republican candidate or the party gets brought up and he immediately starts hammering them as uncaring evil monsters.  Doesn't matter who.  Conservative pundits and social media types gleefully tweet his clips where he "talks truth" about the left, conveniently leaving on the clips from the same conversations where he flat out says he could never vote for a Republican because they are worse.  He'll crap all over Biden and then the instant Trump comes up he'll immedately say how much worse he is.  Miracles can happen I suppose and maybe next year he'll finally have his road to Damascus moment and endorse the Republican candidate but i ain't holding my breath. . .

8 hours ago, JWB said:

Why did Desantis go  on his show?

 

 

I'd assume to pitch himself to the audience.  Just because the host won't vote for him doesn't mean some of his viewers won't.

12 hours ago, futon said:

He's learned several years ago actually. Being from the democrat camp, he's bluntly stated on his show reasons that Trump won in 2016 for whacky left, abusive MSM, among other reasons which I don't recall but he ranted off a lot and sounded quite reasonsble. Lots of stuff the "resist" camp don't concede.

He hasn't learned sh*t.  He cosplays as a traditional liberal and hell, maybe deep down he is.  However, the instant it turns to conservatives or Republicans he starts ranting about them being evil and intolerant and that while he thinks the left is misguided and wrong (but never evil) he will always support the Democrats because they aren't evil.  In non-election years he blathers on like some throwback elder statesman but in an election year?  Immediately downplays the worngs of the left and with great public crocodile tears tells his supporters that they need to hold their noses and vote straight Democrat ticket because they are salvageable while the evil Republicans are still irredeemably evil.  It's as much an act as when Pelosi or Biden say they care about black people.

7 hours ago, old_goat said:

Maybe Im wrong, but in my opinion, Bovington lacks perspective. They stuck with these Tiger days and such, but its the same (more or less) every time. I certainly dont see any new stuff, at least what is theirs. Other museums around the world arent stagnating like them. The french restored lots of stuff recently, the St.Chamond was probalby the most impressive, even though lots of its components arent original. The australians are also full on projects. In Poland there are also lots of restorations. In Russia, Kubinka also slowly but surely do their things. And of course they have that little gem that is called Museum of Russian Military History, in Padikovo... EVERYTHING they have is in perfect running order!  

As you said, Bovington is a business. But stagnation usually leads to bad things. If they dont change their mindset, sooner or later they will run out of things to show. Fist german stuff, then british, and in the end, it is quite likely they will have to stop Shermans too. 

Probably true.  I got the impression when I was there that they were very much on a shoestring budget and still getting finacially ba k on their feet after 2020/2021 and a lot of the renovation during Covid was driven by funding of WoT and what they dictated, which is why a lot of the tanks i wanted to see (eg, A43 Black Prince, AC1 Sentinel, etc) were shoved into the conservation building where they used to be on museum display.  I wonder how much money they have to throw at multi-year restorations?  For now at least Tiger Day is a consistent sell-out so the push isn't there.  I guess looking at it from a revenue standpoint, would a running Luchs drive additional revenue that would counterbalance the costs?  Dunno.  

On 10/4/2023 at 2:42 AM, Stuart Galbraith said:

Is it really that bad?

I must admit, they did have a hell of a job with the ABRO getting the job done, not least an ourside contractor supplying incorrect ball bearings and wrecking a perfectly good engine. I didnt know the rest of it was such a dogs breakfast.

That's how it was described at the  least.  It's old and beat up any everything from washers to larger parts have to be hand made and the tank wasn't exactly babied for the decades before it got restored.  Plus, I think of how much work and effort it takes to keep a M4 going and those things have spare parts (at least until recently) extremely available.  Run it for a couple of hours on one day and spend a week reparing it.  If something designed for easy maintenance and logevity with available parts is that much work, I shudder to think how much effort is required to keep a luxury design going that even back when new required vastly more time and effort to keep in good shape.  

7 minutes ago, Strannik said:

That's basically the answer (why fight) from the bottom (the top obviously have the political agenda)

 

This would actually engender some sympathy if they weren't abducting children and the elderly and raping, murdering, and mutilating civilian women and girls.  

43 minutes ago, crazyinsane105 said:

Killing Hamas is one thing. Governing Gaza is completely different, and there is nothing to stop a new group from forming. 
 

I don’t think Israel’s leadership has a plan set in place on what to do regarding Gaza beyond some statements they made. So far 180 hostages, but that number will go up significantly in the coming days as more people are unaccounted for. Then there are the dead bodies Hamas will drag back (Israel has traded thousands of prisoners for the bodies of Israelis before). So Hamas has a massive bargaining chip.

Unless the Israelis decide to simply not care one bit regarding anyone Hamas has taken captive and go all in…and risk hundreds more Israeli deaths. I guess we will see what happens 

 

I don't think they have an answer.  Honestly, I don't think anyone does.  They can't leave them on their own without constraints, they are too dangerous.  They can't do a one state solution both because of their Jewish national identity but also because the potential new citizens in poll after poll want the Jews dead.  They can't utterly destroy Gaza because of the international implications and because the avereage Israeli doesn't support genocide.  They can't bargain with Hamas because they can't do anything to encourage them that this is a good idea.  At a minimum, they have to retaliate hard enough that they minimize the chances that this seems like a good idea in the future.  Since HAMAS leaders are now openly stating that Iran helped them plan, train for, and gave the go ahead for thier attack Israel also has that to deal with.  We've got an ongoing 2 year war in Europe, may as well settle in for one in the middle East as well.

29 minutes ago, ex2cav said:

I wonder how many hostages Hamas took. I haven't seen a total number, but looking at random videos it looks like a bunch. IMO a re-occupation plan for Gaza is in the works. 

I don't know what sort of support Hamas can expect. There might be some political flag waving around ME, but I can't see anything substantial or game-changing. Israel has been blockading the strip since 2015. The "holes" will be plugged and nothing will be allowed in. Power will be turned off.....

As many of have said, I would guess Hamas was doing as their masters ordered.  Derailing the Israeli/Arab peace process is worth sacrificing Hamas if you're Iran.  For Israel, I don't see how they can not eradicate Hamas for this; it's too big and too brazen.  Which means going after Hamas leadership and killing them everywhere, which puts Israel into conflict with Qatar.  And even though they know it if they don't, then Hamas recruitment goes through the roof and they get emboldened to this all again.  If an enemy went into any country and slaughtered hundreds of civilians in multiple towns and took hostages for rape and parading their corpses around that country would utterly slaughter them regardless of the consequences.  I doubt if Israel will be any different.  Which means, by the way, that the country that the US has been trying to loosen things up with took those overtures and then proceeeded to probably set the middle east aflame for years.  Thank God for no mean tweets though. . . 

11 hours ago, Perun said:

It would be more reduced if they have a job, a safe home and especially if they are not constantly killed. No militant can, no matter which side, conscript many people if those people are well fed and enjoy elementary human needs. They would achieve more, for both sides, if they opened just one factory, then with milion bombs. 

Look into the infrastructure that Israel built up before the handover to try and give the Palestinians said factories, greenhouses, and so forth to enable them to have prosperous lives.  Then note what the Palestinians did with them, along with voting Hamas into power.  I suppose the Israelis could try building the factories and marching Palestinians into them at gunpoint to work but those optics might be slightly offensive to Jewish sensibilities for some reason. . . .

4 hours ago, sunday said:

Time to do the same to Pfizer?

I am not a huge fan of them for a whole host of pre-pandemic reasons so. . .  

1 hour ago, Roman Alymov said:

What the sake of bombing Gaza now, when militants are allready in Israel? 

It does reduce the supply of future militants.  

I was unfortunately on social media and watched the Hamas videos of women being raped and shot with their bodies held up for cheering crowds, terrified children being dragged into SUV's, and so on.  Fortunately, our government is on the case urging the Israelis not to retaliate.  War in Europe, now one in the middle east, and we get to look to our drooler in chief to lead us out of it.  Yup, we're all f'ed.

On 9/30/2023 at 10:50 AM, Stuart Galbraith said:

I suppose what he is really saying is 'We have made lots of money on the back of the Tiger since 2003, and no, we arent going to reinvest that money into refurbishing the tank with new parts to keep it operating'.

And what is original on the Tiger anyway? Its been rewired. Its on its third engine, uprated from the one it was captured with. So they dont want to wreck the original Torsion bars. Ok, make some new ones, take the originals out and put them back in stock. Want to keep the original drive sprockets. Ok, make some new ones, and put them on. There is nothing else they are going to have to worry about other than stress cracks, and a mig welder is your friend. Its hardly like they go rallying with it.

Bovington does a lot right, but there is quite a lot of what it does that is just plain weird and bloody annoying. Im kind of glad I dont subscribe to their newsletter anymore.

 

I'm not sure that's completely accurate.  When I was at Bovigton's storage building last spring 131 came up as part of conversation and they way it was described to me is that it was shaking itself apart.  It isn't just the engine, it's torsion bars, steering linkages, fuel tanks are leaking, welds are breaking, etc.  They run the thing and then spend weeks trying to duct tape it together.  Things were bad enough that they allowed it to be used for Fury directly for the rental fee to keep it running but also because they had the film crew cover the repairs to make it running well enough again for the movie.  They mentioned it would take something similar to the Littlefield Panther restoration to get it in reasonable shape and thet was a 7-10 million dollar restoration (in 2008 dollars) that took a dedicated team 7 years to complete.  They just don't have the resources.  131 is their cash cow, they want the thing running and getting revenue!

On 8/23/2023 at 3:51 PM, sunday said:

I think it was in the agreements signed between governments and manufacturers.

It was but it originated in the original EUA regs, ironically at the time based around public exposure to bioweapons.  

5 minutes ago, Josh said:

Fox News has more listeners than any other single source.

The $5 mil report is literally from a single informant. There is nothing to confirm the story, which is why it is a nothing burger.

Yeah, I mean we have no history of impeaching presidents based on the word of a single informant.  

8 hours ago, Ivanhoe said:

https://www.today.com/popculture/movies/what-is-barbenheimer-barbie-oppenheimer-double-feature-rcna93882

 

Both of my daughters are doing this.  The funny thing is their friends didn't realize that Oppenheimer wasn't an apocolypse movie.  I must have done something right since both my girls knew who he was and what he had done.  

On 7/2/2023 at 5:41 PM, RichTO90 said:

Yep. I devoted an entire chapter in American Thunder on the changing perceptions of American tankers on the relative merits of the Medium Tank M4 to the German tanks. Fall 1944 pretty much was the tipping point of frustration.  But you got to wait until January 2024 for the release - sorry, it was supposed to be out in December.

You sir are a tease!  But I'm still buying your book . .

13 hours ago, sunday said:

"get your booster", indeed

Lancet Study on Covid Vaccine Autopsies Finds 74% Were Caused by Vaccine – Study is Removed Within 24 Hours

From the abstract of the retired paper:

 

It's an interesting paper (thank you Google cache) but it is also poorly written.  I'm going to chase down the references and see if there is clarification in them but the gaping hole (and I can understand why the Lancet pulled it) is that they don't show their work.  They state that the following conditions are examples of death from vaccine complications without demonstrating why these symptoms (which are fairly common symptoms in the elderly population they mined studies for) are defacto evidence of vaccine derived complications.  They then dance around this a bit by stating that 1-3 of their handpicked physicians read the autopsy results cited in the papers (but no mention of using the primary autopsy reports) and determined that these were definitely covid related.  You can do this kind of thing but in general you have to both show why you determined this from data reports (and not summary papers) AND demonstrate that other alternatives are not likely causes.  They don't do any of this. Thye also do not cite their previous medical histories.

Look, any vaccine kills and that's why I've strongly stated multiple times online and in person that every person needs to have the ability to make these decisions with these vaccines without coercion and that unless you are in a vulnerable population I would not advise the vaccine.  If you're in good health under 40 you don't need it and since its experiemental the risk isn't defined well enough yet.  Additionally, this hits home because my aunt was killed by complications from the vaccine.  However, she was extremely weak from a respiratory standpoint so that her decision to take the risk was probably correct but had she not gotten Covid or had the vaccine she'd be alive.  I make a living interpretating those reports so I'm convinced enough I'd put it in a report I authored.  However, this paper is simply crap and these authors know better.  I'm tempted to believe they knew it was crap and did this because they knew it would get retracted and drive controversy.  If that's the case it really angers me because we need people throwing rocks at this stuff and a shit paper now makes me call their other work into question right when we need these gadflys to pick apart the official narrative with pristine reputations.  Any tarnish leave them open for discrediting and if one of my students had submitted this for review I would have rejected it and given them a 62 at best for a grade.  These are experienced professionals and they know better.

On 6/24/2023 at 3:46 AM, Stuart Galbraith said:

I think in Blind mans Bluff it was said that a sonar array (I seem to recall it was a USAF sonar array of all things) picked up the implosion of the USS Scorpion in 1968 off the Azores. Thats something like 2000 miles away. With signal processing, it seems likely the potential range has somewhat increased.

Why didnt they release it? Well, for the same reason they didnt release information about the Scorpion or the Dakar. To be be fair to them, they did let the search team know, but they figured it was unconfirmed, and why take a chance if someone might be still alive. Which is fair enough I guess.

Yeah, the 19 year old guy is a victim clearly. But I just read an article today about one guy passed up a cut price ticket because he had scheduling problems. At that point you think these guys were probably picking up cut price tickets on a largely non proven machine. I regret their deaths, and yet you cant help but think greed and stupidity have a role here in their deaths. Pretty much like Titanic IMHO.

Cameron is perfectly correct to draw comparisons with Titanic here. She is still trying to tell us something, and we still arent listening.

Here's a counter argument, to most it probably wasn't an unproven machine.  Apparently this submersible had made multiple visits for two years with this one being the 14th visit.  Obviously the design didn't hold up after repeated visits but it also wasn't the maiden voyage.  I'm sure to the average passenger it felt like proven technology at this point.  The media make it seem like it was the first trip but it wasn't.  And honestly, if I had money to burn and saw this video (check out 13 minutes in) I'd at least have put it on my bucket list.