Bajingo

I'm trying to remember how long South Park said you had to wait until tragedies are funny.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

22.3 years.

stratosteve

iTrader: (1)

And the lower undamaged floors provide no slowing of the momentum of the collapsing section?

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

poormxdad

Gentlemen,

I work for a large company supporting the DoD. I work at the client site, an Air Force Base, rather than at a company location, so I have Air Force email accounts. Yesterday was 9/11 and there were no emails from any Air Force or DoD leadership commemorating the attacks, nor were there any from my company. We did lose a few folks that day. I asked around to confirm I didn't overlook something. Everyone I asked agreed there were no emails. I believe it's the first time. The fact that both my company and the Air Force didn't throw out a few words cannot be a coincidence.

I'd be interested to hear from anyone else either active duty or supporting the DoD if they had a similar experience yesterday.

Thanks,

Roda

I think a lot of it just has to do with 20+ years passing...

Since I've retired I still do some volunteer instruction at our regional law enforcement academy, and this week is driving week so I'm doing some driving instruction. Each class day starts with the Pledge and a memorium for a fallen officer, and that is the responsibility of the recruits to research and present. None of the class of 35 recruits realized it was 9/11. Less than half the class had even been born on 9/11... In talking with the other instructors (all active LE), none were working in LE or active military in 2001... all were in grade school, high school or college.

9/11 is a vivid memory for many of us 'of a certain age', but for the younger folks coming up, not so much. Just like Kennedy's assasination and Pearl Harbor were major events for our parents, but less so for us.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Sadly, this.

In the FB "Broadcast Engineering" group, one of the guys there posts the same photo every year, showing a close-up of the UHF & VHF antenna stacks on the top of the former 1WTC, with the names of the six TV engineers (and the station they worked at) who were up on 110 at the time.

For the first time this year, a younger fellow asked what the significance of the photo was.

I'd wager that a fair number of the airmen who poormxdad encounters every day were born after Sep 2001. And some of the officers were likely too young to remember it.


I wouldn't expect the average American alive today to remember the specific date of Pearl Harbor Day. Or the date that the Eagle touched down on the moon. Heck, I don't even remember the exact date of the Challenger accident off the top of my head.

cordycord

iTrader: (2)

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

There is, in fact, a small movement of people affected with (or sympathetic towards) a mental disorder known as Body Integrity Identity Disorder, arguing in favor of precisely this.

Specifically, they argue that it should be legal for medical professionals to amputate the limbs of people whose self-image is that of a person without an arm or a leg, the eyes of those who feel that they were meant to be blind, etc.

I'm not making this up, or even embellishing slightly. Here, for instance, is a paper published in the Cambridge University Press on the topic, which actually references existing treatments for gender dysphoria as supporting evidence: https://www.cambridge.org/core/servi...althy-limb.pdf

Here's one published by Columbia University, which documents one specific case, that of a woman named Jewel Shuping who successfully convinced a psychologist (whose name is withheld) to blinder her by numbing her eyes and then dripping drain cleaner into them: https://journals.library.columbia.ed...728/3657/12354

And in the National Library of Medicine... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3326051/


Give it time. We'll start seeing pediatric cases.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Moving on, the "Keep Trump off the Ballot" theme is gaining traction mostly in blue states.

Why do blue states matter here? Because they're focusing on primaries. And even states which tend to vote blue in general elections still have right-leaning primary voters, and some of the bluest states also have the largest populations, and therefore the most Republican delegates.

The most recent filing is in California, in which attorney Stephen Yagman, on behalf of registered voter A.W. Clark, has filed suit in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles against California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, alleging that Trump is unqualified to appear on California's primary ballot in 2024.

California hosts 169 Republican primary delegates (of roughly 1,230 needed to win the Republican nomination), so keeping Trump off of California's primary ballot in March will go a long way towards keeping him off of the ballot nationwide in November.

A similar action is presently underway in Colorado, in which just yesterday Chief U.S. District Judge Philip A. Brimmer dismissed a motion made by Trump's attorneys to remove the Colorado case, thus allowing it to proceed in state court.

Ditto New Hampshire, Michigan, Arizona and Minnesota.


Now, some Secretaries of State, including Democrats, have already gone on record as saying that it's not their place to make such a determination, and that this should be decided by the US Supereme Court.

At the same time, a number of legal scholars, including some right-leaning ones, have said "Well, actually, it is your responsibility." I summarized a paper a couple of weeks ago by Baude and Paulsen which reaches this conclusion.

Another paper, written by law professor Steven Calabresi (who served under Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, wrote campaign speeches for Dan Quayle, and has strongly condemned the Mueller investigation as unlawful) recently put ink to paper in an article in Reason entitled Trump Is Disqualified from Being on Any Election Ballots.

I won't copy-paste the whole thing, but the core of the matter, according to Calabresi is summarized:‎

poormxdad

I have to disagree. 9/11 is still very much on the minds of folks in NYC. Fire fighters and other first responders are still dying from the aftereffects. The administration could have decided not to send anyone—the notion that it’s just fading away—but they sent the VP. Either they thought her probable behavior would be disrespectful enough, treating the occasion as a social gathering, or that Joe’s brain just couldn’t handle the slow, repetitive nature of the proceedings. Remember him checking his watch as the coffins of the fallen from Afghanistan passed him. The time advancing confirmed he wasn’t just imagining the same thing happening over and over.

Meaningless **** comes out of the SecDef, SecAF, and CSAF offices all the time. DEI nonsense. Reading lists. Juneteenth. Female empowerment in the military. Voting. Holiday safety. Safeguarding classified. Air Force birthday. Etc. There had to be a coordinated effort to tell the staffs not to update last year’s 9/11 email and send it out.

I’d still like to hear from the squids and grunts if their services or clients didn't acknowledge the date either.

Thanks,

I wanted to add my company put out a "9/11 Remembered" piece as part of a weekly newsletter thingy on the 12th...

LeoNA

There are a few issues with keeping Trump off of the ballots. First, it is not fair to the citizens, there is still the will of the people. The real issue is that Trump has not been found guilty of anything that would disqualify him from being on the ballot. The only indictment that would lead to disqualification would be the J6 and he is obviously not guilty of insurrection.

FWIW the people in power are trying to change the definition of insurrection and freedom of speech in an effort to get a guilty verdict. How much do we have to lose over the competitiveness of the two parties?

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Meanwhile, the GOP in California has quietly pulled off a bit of, let's call it... "election optimization" of its own.

Under the new rules, any Republican candidate who wins more than 50% of the popular vote in California's primary will be allocated 100% of that state's 169 delegates at the national convention. If no candidate wins more than 50% of the popular vote, then it reverts back to the original system in which delegates are awarded on a district-by-district basis, meaning that the runner-up candidate will also receive representation at the national convention.

It would be presumptive and cynical to assume that this change is intended by the California GOP to ensure that Trump is awarded the maximum possible number of delegates from California in 2024, rather than having that state's representation at the convention reflect its actual popular vote.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

It certainly isn't fair. Very little in life is.

What if there were a candidate who was extremely popular and a lot of people wanted them to be President, however they were blocked from appearing on the ballot because they were not a natural-born citizen? Would disqualifying them, against the will of the people, be fair?



That... really is not an issue at all, much less "the real issue," no matter how much a lot of people think it ought to be.

I know that this seems like a logical argument, but it's just not true. Not according to the historical implementation of the 13th during the reconstruction years, and not according to the overwhelming majority of legal scholars who have expressed an opinion on the matter.

There is no requirement that a person be convicted of a crime in order to have participated in insurrection. Just like no court has to rule that a candidate is under the age of 35, or a foreign citizen, in order for them to be disqualified from office on such grounds, so too does this rule apply.


Given a long enough timescale, very nearly everything.

LeoNA

Does there need to be proof that one was involved in an insurrection? If so, what is the proof?

Could we say that every citizen that voted for DJT was part of the so called J6 insurrection?

What if J6 was the fault of the government for lack of security and having antagonists in the crowd?

By definition one could call J6 a peaceful protest that had a very small quantity that got agitated & aggressive. The old definition of insurrection was an armed group.

cordycord

iTrader: (2)

Cash price for my MRI today: $395 Insurance deductible price for my MRI today: $475.80

cordycord

iTrader: (2)

Things that make it a protest, not an insurrection:

--If they didn't bring guns or grenades.
--If they were allowed in by the staff.
--If they took selfies instead of hanging Nancy Pelosi by the neck.
--If the "leaders" of the insurrection weren't there.
--if the people yelling to "get inside" were actually FBI plants

Prolly not an insurrection.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

Ask Ray Epps.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

good morning sleepy heads!