53 minutes ago, Jingthing said:

Bannon's take. 30 percent chance only of completing his first term. Interesting. Remember, the clown moron in chief has the nuclear codes ... 

 

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/10/donald-trump-is-unraveling-white-house-advisers/amp

I assume that somehow the world will survive the Trump presidency, but this is how the world ends.  There will be some crisis, like the Cuban Missile Crisis, requiring clear thinking on both sides, but the clowns in charge will not be capable of clear thinking.  Like the start of WWI, but with a war lasting hours instead of years.

32 minutes ago, Srikcir said:

Can you clarify that?

Civilian control is a constitutional matter that can't be revoked by congressional legislation. Trump did exempt retired military generals from the minimum 3-year separation requirement in order to serve in the Trump administration.

Civilian control of the military is not mentioned in the Constitution.  Neither are the Cabinet or political parties.  In the absence of a cabinet the president as commander-in-chief would always be in direct control of the military and there was nothing to prevent the election of a general as president, as many were, starting with Washington. 

However, the tradition of civilian control of the military was established by statute after WWII, the National Security Act of 1947 (the same law which established the national security state apparatus such as the CIA) requiring that a former military officer could only become Secretary of Defense/War after having been retired ten years from service, later amended to seven year.  This requirement was waived by Congress to enable George Marshall to become Secy of Defense in 1950.  The Republican Congress similarly waived the requirement to enable Mattis to become Secy of Defense with only mild objections from the Dems.

To those Americans who imagine that a written constitution is any more reliable guarantee of restraint of governmental abuse, by comparison with the unwritten constitution of the British, for instance, should note how much of our democracy rests on traditions like this one and the tradition that the president not seek to profit from holding office.

8 hours ago, Jingthing said:

Sorry, the risk of nuclear war is just too high under trump. Also there is the risk that the damage he is doing to American institutions may become permanent the longer he occupies the oval office.

 

Some things "trump" partisan concerns. 

It's true that we are all more likely to die in nuclear winter with DT as president.  Nevertheless, I think it's better having him in the WH than Pence, because Trump's incompetence impedes the Republican program.  If Pence were president, I think it more likely that the Rs would pass more of their agenda, which aside from nuclear holocaust, is the real problem facing America.  The Rs have done quite a bit of damage to American institutions all on their own, e.g. refusing even to hold hearing on Obama's Supreme Court pick, passing a law shelving civilian control of the military, and let's not forget Gore v. Bush or the Patriot Act. 

What I expect is that Mueller will bring indictments againt Flynn, Manafort, Kushner, DT Jr, and others some of whom will flip and testify against Trump making major revelations of Trump criminal and treasonous activity.  At that point the Congress will be unable to do anything other than deal with the Trump issues.  That would suit me.

10 minutes ago, jenny2017 said:

 

Thailand 2047. Foreigners, from Thais, also called Farrang have realized that LOS is a rip off country and they go to other destinations where they're welcome and wanted. No more I love you too much, then. And no more cash for all. 

Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia are more developed than Thailand in 2047.

Hardly the case.  Thailand has the second highest number of tourist visits per year in Asia, after China.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_rankings#Asia-Pacific

The notion that Thailand will enter the fully-developed countries just can't be taken seriously.  Japan, S. Korea, and Taiwan manufacture and export high-value products that can compete on the international market.  Japan and S. Korea rank fourth and fifth for exports.  Taiwan is fifteenth while Thailand is number twenty-two.  However, the exports of the NE Asian countries are high-value manufactures while Thailand's exports are agriculture.  This is not by accident.  In the Park Chung-hee era S. Korea permitted Japan to build factories there, but insisted on technology transfer enabling the eventual creation of Korean companies manufacturing autos and pianos of sufficient quality to compete on the international market.  After initially following the Japanese examples the Koreans developed their own technology and became global leaders in flat screen tvs and LPG tankers. 

Despite thirty years or so of making hard disk drives and autos for foreign companies there is no Thai company manufacturing and exporting either hard drives or autos.  No foreign companies have set up R&D centers in Thailand as Microsoft and IBM have done in India.  There is no Thai company that international recognition like Samsung or Toyota, nor is there any Thai designed export product with any global recognition.

The Thai development model is to rent out its labor cheaply to foreign companies.  This model has in fact worked very well to bring Thailand to its current level of development, but without high-value exports and technological innovation Thailand will remain stuck in the middle-income trap.  This is true, because the vested interests in Thailand are quite satisfied with the status quo, which is a local economy divided into monopolies and duopolies controlled by Thai interests.  They have not been interested in trying to export into the competitive global market. By far the largest Thai exporter is Charoen Pokphand, a producer of food products.

Thailand, like the other SE Asian countries, but unlike the countries of NE Asia, lacks a military incentive to develop its economy since it has no reason to fear invasion by its neighbors.  The economic leaps achieved by Meiji Japan, the S. Korea of Park Chung-hee, and Taiwan after the Communist Revolution were driven by exactly this motivation.

My wife and I use about 15 units per month on average.

So, now I have been using my State Department Federal Credit Union account for six months or so and can recommend them.  I use SDFCU for bill payment and ACH transfers to my Bangkok Bank account.  The money transfer function has a couple of nice features.  The maximum transfer is $15,000 per day up to $25,000 per month, which is much more than my other banks.  Also, they have an expedited transfer feature that they claim speeds up the delivery of the cash by a couple of days and only costs $3.  I haven't used it yet, but it might be valuable on occasion.

They also have a 24 hour help line manned by native speakers.

As noted above I was able to open the account using my Bangkok address.  So, that's a big plus also. 

For those already receiving benefits.  When you set up to direct your monthly benefit to a bank, is it possible to divide the payment between two banks?

23 hours ago, ubonjoe said:

Including the 20th in the count tomorrow is 15 day before that day.

What did you mean when you wrote it did not accept it. I assume you may gotten the check with your local office message when trying to submit the first page.

I suggest you double check that you entered all the required fields correctly and only those with the * beside them.

 

I did the application again today and it worked, so the problem must have been my faulty date count.

Thanks for the help.

35 minutes ago, wwest5829 said:

Quite so, it was written so that the colonies would have a "well-regulated militia". At Williamsburg one is told how each male over 16 (if I remember correctly) was required to have a weapon, powder and shot ready if the militia was called upon to provide a defense. Drills of the town's militia were regularly held, which included target practice. And while the 2nd was not passed with the purpose of game hunting, that hunting was understood as a common practice which did not need to be addressed as allowed.

In fact, the Second Amendment was added to reassure Southern States that they would be able to maintain their militias whose purpose was to protect against slave uprisings.  The Southerners had been afraid that the anti-slavery North might eventually cut funding or otherwise disable the militias.

So, yet another legacy of American slavery polluting the body politic.

48 minutes ago, Boon Mee said:

There isn't a gun law on the books anywhere in the States that would have prevented the Vegas massacre.

 

But there is in Australia.

9 minutes ago, ubonjoe said:

Including the 20th in the count tomorrow is 15 day before that day.

What did you mean when you wrote it did not accept it. I assume you may gotten the check with your local office message when trying to submit the first page.

I suggest you double check that you entered all the required fields correctly and only those with the * beside them.

 

Yes, I got the contact the local office message.  I tried again double-checking all the entries, which are correct.

Will try it again tomorrow.  Since getting the new passport last year I have done several 90-day reports in person.

I just tried to do an online report, but it didn't accept it.  The situation is I got a new passport last year and this would be my first online report since then.  I exited Thailand and returned on July 23, 2017.  So, counting 90 days from that date (really 89 days since we count including July 23) gives Oct. 20.  Counting back 15 days from Oct. 20 gives today, Oct. 5.

Now did the system reject my application because I am making a mistake in counting the days or does it still not recognize my new passport number for some reason?  Is it likely to go through tomorrow?

10 minutes ago, selftaopath said:

I wonder if these money grubbers would have a different outlook if Congress was targeted? I bet if 59 of them were killed they'd enact laws faster than on could imagine. 

Doubtful.  Neither Ronald Reagan nor Scalise, the Republican who was shot at the baseball diamond and who nearly died, changed their pro-gun views as a result.  Support by the gun lobby has been a crucial element of Republican funding to say nothing of rabble-rousing.

The question is why America has so many loser men eager to empower their shabby lives by buying guns? 

1,516 mass shootings in 1,735 days: America's gun crisis

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/oct/02/america-mass-shootings-gun-violence

US has the most guns per capita in the world and the most shootings per capita.  Who could have known?

The US is beginning to look like a failed state that cannot provide basic safety for its citizens.  The National Rifle Association, the propaganda arm of the American gun industry, has already bought and paid for Trump by contributing $30 million to his campaign last year.  They have similarly bought and paid for the Republican senators and many members of the House of Representatives long since.  So, any attempt to control guns will fail. 

But that's how things are supposed to work in a plutocracy.

6 minutes ago, craigt3365 said:

And as that article says, you'll never know all the details.  They'll never be made public.  I trust the statements made by the intelligence community.  Some won't. 

 

Please, don't bring up Iraq.  It ruins your argument.

There is a big difference, which apparently escapes you, between not knowing "all the details" and not knowing any of the details.

The Iraq War is an excellent example.  Finding evidence of WMD was a "slam dunk" according to CIA Director George Tenet.  But, turns out there were no WMDs.  So, upwards of one million Iraqis die, about whom the one thing we do know for sure is that not a single one of them was responsible for 9/11. 

But then there is the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, which the intelligence community assured us adn the Congress was clear aggression by North Viet Nam.  Only that turned out to be fabricated. 

I find it hard to understand why anyone would believe anything the CIA has to say, even though some of it is probably true.

27 minutes ago, craigt3365 said:

Wow.  There's lots of evidence out there.  But you don't seem to like any of it.  Just news stories trying to debunk it.

 

As for that Slate article, it's seems they were on to something.  Interesting you dismiss findings from the best authority on it. LOL

 

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10/was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html

 

An excellent article. As it says, no smoking gun, but along the same lines as others are pursing.  Plus, that connection with Alpha bank was all over MSM.

 

You're grasping at straws.

You don't seem to grasp what I am saying.  I am not dismissing the claims of various kinds of Russian interference nor of a possibly criminal relationship between the Trump campaign and the Russians.  What I am saying is that the truth is unknowable.  That is just a fact.  So, a group of computer scientists, with names like "Tea Leaves" for example, claim they have found evidence of DNS activity pointing to a connection between Trump Tower and Alpha Bank.  Did you see the DNS transaction log?  Could you understand it if you did see it?  If you did understand it, could you trust that it was genuine?  This is not evidence like O. J. Simpson's glove, is it?  The glove we can understand and we can review the chain of custody to make our own judgment if its significance is likely to be as it is presented.  There will never be evidence of that kind in any cybercrime situation.

So, in the complete absence of evidence that I believe I might actually be able to evaluate on my own, I have to trust someone else's evaluation.  Do I trust "Tea Leaves" or James Clapper or Donald Trump?  Certainly not.  So, we will never know.  In the runup to the last Iraq war we had Colin Powell lying through his teeth to the UN about the weapons of mass destruction.

At the same time there is abundant evidence of various crimes committed by Trump for which he should be punished.  To take one minor example, why isn't he in jail for swindling the victims of his "Trump University" scam to the tune of $25 million at least?  He should be removed from office for his non-feasance in directing aid to Puerto Rico.  And on and on.

With respect to crimes for which there is not and will never be any actual evidence we should cast a skeptical eye, which is not the same as claiming the crimes did not occur.

12 minutes ago, Srikcir said:

Sooo shocking - an alleged 122 targeted voter roll tamperings out of about 136,600,000 total votes cast from almost 219,000,000 registered voters.

Doesn't even fall within the range of statistical error - more of a random aberration.

 

Read the Glenn Greenwald piece about the various fake news articles on Russian activity that have since been debunked.

Keep in mind that we have never actually seen any evidence for any of these claims, some of which may well be true.  In fact, it is not clear what actual evidence would look like, computer files?  I am not claiming that Russian did nothing illegal, but that we cannot trust the intelligence community, so we don't and will probably never know what is true and what is made up.

https://theintercept.com/2017/09/28/yet-another-major-russia-story-falls-apart-is-skepticism-permissible-yet/

Remember that time the Washington Post claimed that Russia had hacked the U.S. electricity grid, causing politicians to denounce Putin for trying to deny heat to Americans in winter, only to have to issue multiple retractions because none of that ever happened? Or the time that the Post had to publish a massive editor’s note after its reporters made claims about Russian infiltration of the internet and spreading of “Fake News” based on an anonymous group’s McCarthyite blacklist that counted sites like the Drudge Report and various left-wing outlets as Kremlin agents?

Or that time when Slate claimed that Trump had created a secret server with a Russian bank, all based on evidence that every other media outlet which looked at it were too embarrassed to get near? Or the time the Guardian was forced to retract its report by Ben Jacobs – which went viral – that casually asserted that WikiLeaks has a long relationship with the Kremlin? Or the time that Fortune retracted suggestions that RT had hacked into and taken over C-SPAN’s network? And then there’s the huge market that was created – led by leading Democrats – that blindly ingested every conspiratorial, unhinged claim about Russia churned out by an army of crazed conspiracists such as Louise Mensch and Claude “TrueFactsStated” Taylor?

It's like nailing Al Capone for tax evasion.  Price's main goal was to take health insurance away from 20 million Americans.  In a sane world that's what he would have been fired for.  His unjustifiable use of private and military aircraft ran to $1 million, not $400k.

25 minutes ago, Srikcir said:

There was no evidence that there was Russian tampering in the actual voting process. That was the federal government's primary concern given the short time available before the November elections. The governors and attorney generals of each state agreed that no tampering at the polls was done.

 

What was apparent in 2016 was some efforts by Russia to influence American voters to vote against Hillary through an internet-based propaganda campaign. It wasn't until 2017 that the intelligence agencies and FBI had more information as to the detailed extent of Russia's creation and manipulation of information directed through the internet to influence American voters.

 

No contradiction occurred as you suggest.

The question was that there may have been Russian tampering in the voter rolls, i.e. disqualifying voters, not in changing vote totals.  Here's an article from Bruce Schneier:  If true, that degree of tampering would have gone beyond influencing opinion or stealing HC's emails.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/06/nsa_document_ou.html

Much as I loathe Trump, I also despise the CIA and the rest of the secret government particular criminals like James Clapper who should be in prison for perjuring himself before Congress instead of retired on a generous pension.  So, it is well to be suspicious about claims coming out of the intelligence community, a number of which have been shown to be false.

For instance, there was a lot of ballyhoo about why didn't Homeland Security notify the 21 states earlier that the Russians had tampered with their election process.  Now, it turns out that both California and Wisconsin were probably not victimized by Russia as the DHS claimed. 

This ongoing process of attack by intelligence community may turn out to be like G. W. Bush's Iraq war, based on lies.  It's hard to know.

So, in the battle between Godzilla and Mothra, who do you root for?

More on debunked claims of Russia activity:

https://theintercept.com/2017/09/28/yet-another-major-russia-story-falls-apart-is-skepticism-permissible-yet/

18 minutes ago, Ramen087 said:

 

SUNY...

Well, you ought to be ashamed that your understanding of American history is still at the level of junior high school.  But I guess that depends on whether you imagine the purpose of the study of history is to understand the past or to feel good.

15 minutes ago, Ramen087 said:

Well, I do have a four year degree in it. But please feel free to stick with your opinion. It'll make you feel good about your irrational negative feelings about the man currently occupying the Oval Office. 
 

Have a nice day.

No kidding?  Nice campus there at Bob Jones University?