The original Markus Kloos short story it's taken explores the anthropormorphized relationship between a pilot and a ship in a superstitious and interesting way...The wartime autobiographical memoir that the genre seems taken from is similar to Robert Mason's book on his experience as a Vietnam era Huey pilot---"Chickenhawk"...

Pitt reminds me of Robert Redford more than ever in this. Matching haircut and aviators helps.

If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough - Robert Capa

List of people in Trump's administration that have quit or been fired. The Trump Administration has seen the highest rate of turnover among White House staff in decades.

During the president’s first year, the administration saw a 34% turnover rate. This is the highest of any recent White House, according to a Brookings Institution report that tracked departures of senior officials over the last 40 years.

The next-highest turnover rate for an administration’s first year was Ronald Reagan’s, with 17% of senior aides leaving their posts in 1981.

Former presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton saw much lower turnovers during their first year in office—9%, 6%, and 11%, respectively.

------

John Kelly – December 2018. The retired Marine Corps general was hired in July 2017 to bring order to the White House.

Matthew Whitaker – December 2018. Named acting attorney general in November this year, replacing Jeff Sessions. Immediately came under scrutiny over past remarks about the investigation into possible Russian collusion with Mr Trump's presidential election campaign.

Nikki Haley – December 2018. Stepped down as US ambassador to the UN at the end of the year.

Jeff Sessions – November 2018. After months of being attacked and ridiculed by the president, the former senator was forced out as attorney general.

Don McGahn – October 2018. Mr Trump revealed in August that the White House counsel would leave following strains between the two over Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Scott Pruitt – July 2018. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief quit after he came under fire over a series of ethics controversies.

David Shulkin – March 2018. He left his position the Veteran Affairs secretary, telling the media he had been fired rather than resigning.

HR McMaster – March 2018. Mr Trump’s national security adviser was replaced by John Bolton.

Rex Tillerson – March 2018. The secretary of state was fired by the president on after a series rifts.

Gary Cohn – March 2018. The National Economic Council director and former Goldman Sachs president said he resigned his advisory role.

Hope Hicks – February 2018. The White House communications director, a long-serving and trusted Trump aide, decided to resign.

Rob Porter – February 2018. The White House staff secretary stepped aside following accusations of domestic abuse from former wives.

Omarosa Manigault Newman – December 2017. The former star of The Apprentice was fired as assistant to the president.

Richard Cordray – November 2017. The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s first director quit his administration role.

Tom Price – September 2017. The Health and Human Services secretary quit under pressure from Mr Trump over travel practices.

Stephen Bannon – August 2017. Mr Trump’s chief strategist was fired in after clashing with other top White House figures, including the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Anthony Scaramucci – July 2017. The White House communications director was fired by Mr Trump after only 10 days on the job. Mr Scaramucci had openly criticised Mr Bannon.

Reince Priebus – July 2017. Replaced as chief of staff by John Kelly, Priebus lost Mr Trump’s confidence after setbacks in Congress.

Sean Spicer – July 2017. Resigned as White House press secretary, ending a turbulent six-month tenure.

Walter Shaub – July 2017. The head of the US Office of Government Ethics, who repeatedly clashed with Mr Trump.

Michael Dubke – May 2017. Resigned as White House communications director.

Katie Walsh – March 2017. The deputy White House chief of staff was transferred out to a Republican activist group.

Michael Flynn – February 2017. Resigned in as Mr Trump’s national security adviser. Mr Flynn later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. He is set to be sentenced later in December.

Sally Yates – January 2017. Mr Trump fired the acting US attorney general after she ordered Justice Department lawyers not to enforce is immigration ban.

Lockheed Martin and the Pentagon say the F-35’s superiority over its rivals lies in its ability to remain undetected, giving it “first look, first shot, first kill.”

Hugh Harkins, a highly respected author on military combat aircraft, called that claim “a marketing and publicity gimmick” in his book on Russia’s Sukhoi Su-35S, a potential opponent of the F-35. He also wrote, “In real terms an aircraft in the class of the F-35 cannot compete with the Su-35S for out and out performance such as speed, climb, altitude, and maneuverability.”

Other critics have been even harsher. Pierre Sprey, a cofounding member of the so-called “fighter mafia” at the Pentagon and a co-designer of the F-16, calls the F-35 an “inherently a terrible airplane” that is the product of “an exceptionally dumb piece of Air Force PR spin.” He has said the F-35 would likely lose a close-in combat encounter to a well-flown MiG-21, a 1950s Soviet fighter design.

Robert Dorr, an Air Force veteran, career diplomat and military air combat historian, wrote in his book “Air Power Abandoned,” “The F-35 demonstrates repeatedly that it can’t live up to promises made for it. … It’s that bad.”

The development of the F-35 has been a mess by any measurement. There are numerous reasons, but they all come back to what F-35 critics would call the jet's original sin: the Pentagon's attempt to make a one-size-fits-all warplane, a Joint Strike Fighter.

History is littered with illustrations of multi-mission aircraft that never quite measured up. Take Germany's WWII Junkers Ju-88, or the 1970s Panavia Tornado, or even the original F/A-18. Today the Hornet is a mainstay of the American military, but when it debuted it lacked the range and payload of the A-7 Corsair and acceleration and climb performance of the F-4 Phantom it was meant to replace.

Yeah, the F/A-18 was trash when it first came out and it took YEARS and multiple changes/fixes to allow it to fully outperform the decades old aircraft it was designed to beat when it was released.

The F35 is not the best at anything it does, it is designed to fully be mediocre at all roles in order to allow it to be a single solution aircraft. That may change with more money, time, and data retrieved from hours spent in actual combat, but as it stands it is what it was designed to be. A jack of all trades and master of none, not something I would want to be flying in a role where I could encounter a master of that role.

As @ChaosEngine says, it is far beyond time that we move to a design where the pilot is not in the plane. There is no reason at this time that we cannot field a plane that could successfully perform it's role with the pilot in a secure location nearby. Such planes could be built cheaper, could perform in g-forces that humans cannot withstand, and would be expendable in a way that current planes are not. However, this would mean that our corporate welfare system for huge defense contractors would take a massive hit. We can't have that, can we?

I would love to hear Brad Roberts on the vocals.

The evidence showing that cholesterol is related to clogged arteries is this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqKNfyUPzoU Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn (aka, the first person to demostate that heart-disease is curable) explains it in this TEDx Talk.

This is supported by Dr. Kim A. Williams President of the American College of Cardiology, and well as a study done by Dr. Dean Ornish, the doctor you've mentioned before.

There's also some 1300 studies by Dr. William C. Roberts and he concludes that cholesterol is the only major factor.



------


The evidence showing that dietary cholesterol is unrelated to blood cholesterol is........ funded by the egg board where they take people with maxed out cholesterol, and give them eggs, and the result is that their cholesterol cannot climb any higher.

If you like, dig up the studies, and I'll show you their scam :-)


But studies aside, you can literally test this yourself - eat no cholesterol for a week or two, and it will go down, and back up again when you start eating it. It's really that simple.

Your video, Michael Flynn Is Cooperating with Robert Mueller, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Your video, Trump to Robert Mueller: 'It Wasn't Me' (w/ Shaggy), has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Robert, Robert, Robert, Robert, Robert, Rob, Rob, Rob, Bobby, Bobby, Bobby, Robbie, Robbie, Robbie, Bob, Bob, Bob...

Which God did the Democratic party "successfully voted to remove"?

...Robert, Robert, Robert, Robert, Robert, Rob, Rob, Rob, Bobby, Bobby, Bobby, Robbie, Robbie, Robbie, Bob, Bob, Bob...

@ChaosEngine

I fully agree with you that rape/sexual assault is a bigger problem (in magnitude and frequency) than false accusations. And that being an actual victim of sexual assault would be worse than being falsely accused of sexual assault, although it seems a bit pointless to debate the relative extent of how much these things could fuck up lives when they are both horrendous.

That being said, there's a reason that presumption of innocence and requiring proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt are the law of the land. And assuming that we follow through on those things (which I think we largely do), that's all well and good. BUT, that's all pretty strictly just in the legal realm.

False accusations of sexual assault don't need to get as far as the actual legal system to seriously fuck up a person's life. Employers, partners, friends ... these connections might choose to sever ties without requiring the same rigorous proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt that the legal system does.

As much as I personally tend to believe Ford as opposed to Kavanaugh, I think that given the span of time since the incident it is nigh on impossible to prove that her version of events is true beyond a reasonable doubt. On the other hand, the hearing put his current demeanor and partisan/biased attitude on blatant display in a way that seemed to me should be disqualifying with regards to the sort of standards we require for Supreme Court Justices. Apparently the GOP disagrees, and we can hold them to account for that at the ballot box.

That's rather cold comfort given that Justices serve for life. There'd be some constitutional crisis drama if Agent Orange gets removed from office as a result of some proof-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt of misdeeds. Robert Kennedy's quote about the ancient Chinese curse "may you live in interesting times" seems apropos. Things have been entirely too "interesting" for my taste for the past 2 years...

One of my teacher's had a poster of that.
"It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber"
- Robert Fulghum

On a side note, they teach dance at school?

@newtboy

Your being dishonest and unfair to people with stuff like this:
"predicting so many of the educated would go along for short sighted, purely tribal reasoning, that's tougher."
and
"people have been claiming white men are the downtrodden powerless whipping boys.

I saw an op-ed in the nytimes back when the supreme court nomination was hot and had hoped the author's opinion were a minority. Segments of this Daily Show clip and your own feedback make rethink that. The op-ed wanted to concisely show how dangerously right wing and extremist current Justice Roberts was. To do this, the author stated that the Justice own chilling rationale for one of his decisions should tell us everything we need to know about him: "To stop discrimination based upon race, we need to stop discriminating based upon race"

Being insulting and dismissive of people's frustrations at being racially discriminated against as your post appears to do just makes for more division still.

I feel like I'm in a time warp here.

As far as I understand it that is exactly what they are saying about the Russian hacks too, they have no clear link to the Kremlin. I'm not saying they didn't do it but there is a clear smell of witch hunt going on.

What I find especially galling is Robert Mueller was FBI director at the time of the Iraq war and he was using the exact same language about how clear the evidence for WMDs was.

Damn, someone hire this man.

I think I saw the old woman who stole my triangle near the beginning, anybody have Robert Smith's phone number? I need his help retrieving it.