Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[The Oracle]

There were plenty that weren't grandstanding

[froot loops]

Talent was probably a little disappointed with AOC's performance.

[The Oracle]

I doubt it. She won the full term. And the other thing she is doing is opening a lot of offices in her district and has a significant presence in the district. It could happen but I doubt it.

Also not sure that Rep Meadows was that upset over it some of it seemed like acting.

Not to mention, she wasn't wrong. At best, what that fucking douchebag did was at best weird as fuck, or par for the course.

[iam416]

Lol.

[AlabamAlum]

[iam416]

Democrats. lol

[The Oracle]

Democrats. lol

Middle Americans who don't know any non white people. Lolololollo lo lol

[Kapture1]

The Onion? Please tell me that's the Onion...

[Ghengis Jon]

Holy shit. Trump is insanely stupid, delusional or mentally ill with detachment from reality. First it was "I believe Putin because he says he didn't do it" and now this.

Later, when asked about the treatment of Otto Warmbier, an American student who spent 17 months in North Korean detention before being returned to the US in a vegetative state and subsequently dying, Trump denied Kim had been aware of the incident. "He felt badly about it. He felt very badly," Trump said. "He tells me that he didn't know about it and I will take him at his word."

"I don't think that the top leadership knew about it," Trump added. "I don't believe that he (Kim) would have allowed that to happen."

R-r-r-r-r-r-right. In that closed dictatorship, the long detention and killing of an American citizen, whose release was publicly demanded for over a year through various diplomatic channels, whose public show trial on gov't TV and radio was front page news in the gov't controlled paper...Kim didn't know. Uh huh. You believe the word of someone who executes family members by anti-aircraft guns and flamethrowers?


is a clear and present danger to the United States of America. He needs to be removed from office by any legal way possible as quickly as possible. Where are the Trumpian ass-lickers rushing to support his ludicrous statement word-by-word? Come on ! Support Dear Leader's defense of Dear Leader!!!

[Ghengis Jon]

"God, do I wish he'd just STFU."


hanoi.JPG

[iam416]

Middle Americans who don't know any non white people. Lolololollo lo lol

That certainly is your schtick. No surprise you worship the race-baiters.

[Jeff Buchanan]

....... Sounds like that the India-Paki incident was similar to a battle between an F-105 and an early F-16.

The F105 had a notoriously bad turn rate and energy bleed rate at high G. So, yeah, the F16 had energy to burn and would have gone vertical and gotten behind the Thud and well positioned for an AIM-9 Winder launch in less than one turn if the Thud tried to engage.

I know this. We flew with an F105 Wild Weasel Air National Guard unit located in Montana - Malmstrom AFB. We'd run jamming missions against their on-board radars. We'd start at two points 30 or 40 miles apart then close head on. The pilots (two of them in the Weasel) would have their heads down in the radar boots and of course couldn't see anything because they were being jammed. At the pass, they'd realize, oh shit, go into burner and try to crank on a big turn. Needless to say, it was hopeless. Even in an EA6B loaded with jammer pods, I could get behind them. Their only hope was to go to burner, nose low, get separation and bug out. That worked .....pussies. Fun times.

BTW, thanks for the update on the Indian MIG 21s. I had no idea some of these were still in service. I actually had an opportunity to fly one in the early 80s. The mysterious "Area 51" as it was called, just outside Nellis AFB in Nevada, had a collection of just about every piece of Soviet air defense hardware and aircraft in existence at the time. They had two operational MIG 21s both from the Egyptian AF and delivered to us by the Israelis. They also had an operational MIG27 that looked like it just came out of the box. Anyway, after the flight briefing I went to man-up and couldn't get the damn thing started. Lost out on that terrific opportunity. The aircraft and the cockpit though was tiny. The seat was low and you had shitty visibility. It must have been a difficult aircraft to fly in an actual air-to-air engagement.

[iam416]

Ol' Bread Lines Are Good Bernie issues his call to complete the revolution: https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ion-we-started

Predictable stuff, but I find it hilarious that (a) he's so worried about authoritarianism under PDJT given what he wants to do; and (b) he actually takes PDJT to task for his support of authoritarian leaders given who he has supported.

Fortunately, he's too white and too male. I mean in Vermont do you ever encounter a "person of color"?

I do give Bread Lines Are Good some credit -- as always -- he generally shies away from stoking the fairy tale of rising and rampant racism in America. He remains, at heart, a socialist focused on class warfare not racial warfare. Of course, he has to engage in the myths a bit, but that's life on the wacky left.

[iam416]

The economy continues to hum along at a nice slow burn: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...p?srnd=premium

One of my new tasks is to sit in on pension board meetings. They are, more or less, dull as fucking dishwater. But, they do involve reporting from the folks in charge of the investments. And they get asked questions about what makes sense, how to guard against risk, etc. Something interesting I've heard, now, from two different financial management groups is that one way to think of how long an "up cycle" will last is to think about it in terms of total GDP growth. If you burn hot then the cycle is shorter. If you burn low then the cycle can go on for awhile. That's how they view the current cycle. They've even pushed back their forecasts for a down turn to 2021-22ish. Since I know nothing of this macro-economic stuff, I found that interesting.

The other thing I found interesting were responses to "China!" questions, in particular, the Chinese owning so many dollars and such. The point was that it's a symbiotic relationship. China has excess cash and there's only one place in the world to spend excess cash. What are they going to do? Buy Lire? Further, they're so invested in dollars that if they do a massive sell-off and value drops then they lose money. They noted that they appear to be trying to build cash investment paths through Asia to Africa, but that's decades away from realization. Again, since I found that interesting -- I mean, it's a forecast and opinion and could be wrong, but it's coming from people with enough knowledge that it's probably at least credible.

[iam416]

Finally, to reinvigorate or entirely kill off the collectible discussion -- my grandfather was a huge politicals collector. He had some fantastic broadsides from lots of different campaigns, lots of buttons, impeachment tickets from both in US history (if he were alive today, he may have to get a third) and lots of really great 19th C prints (Currier and Ives stuff). It is the essence of a limited market and the values were erratic. The general pieces seemed to drop but the special pieces rose a ton. When he passed away and they auctioned off things, a Douglas-Johnson flag sold for $75,000.

Some of things were passed down. I ended up with a Garfield-Arthur broadside, which I love, and a Henry Clay 1844 campaign ribbon.

Anyway, I love those bits of American history.

AA:

STFU.