Trump cheats at golf - the ONE and ONLY politics thread

Is it OK if you think they identify as female?

 

A good friend of mine is a state LP chair. I've had some interesting conversations with him over the last few months about the real internal conflict the party is having over Johnson. For many he's not libertarian enough and they want to do what the party has always done, which is one of the reasons it's never gained much traction outside the fringe, and that's impose a sort of purity test on their candidate. But there's a large contingent, much larger than normal, who see Johnson as mostly libertarian, having the charisma and background to make a broad appeal, and being here at the right time. They view this election as presenting an opportunity for the party to perhaps bring into the fold a significant number of new people.

He wasn't looking forward to the divisiveness of this weekend's convention. It'll be interesting to see who the nominee is come Monday.

 

Good to know Trump can deny there's a drought in California and be cheered for saying it.

 

I don't know how long you've been following politics, but people at political rallies -- regardless of affiliation -- cheer EVERYTHING the candidate says. It's sort of the point of holding them.

 

Hitler's rise to power was a 15-year process of creating a party and paramilitary force to back him. Hitler had a clear message and was a powerful speaker and writer. Trump has none of that. Not to mention 2016 USA is just a bit different than 1930 Germany. There's no way that even if Trump is elected he ever gets an enabling act to give him the kind of power Hitler attained. Comparing this to the rise of Nazi Germany is like comparing our recent recession to the Great Depression. What's going on now ain't great, but it's pretty damn insulting to the people who actually lived in that time.

 

If The Pig is elected, he's Commander In Chief. The U. S. military would be at his command. Who needs a "paramilitary force"?

The Pig speaks before roaring crowds every day. He is listed as the author of several bestsellers.

 

Hmm, too bad there are no checks and balances in place to prevent a president from using the military to create a dictatorship.

 

No. Seriously. Trump is a fascist. Even republicans say so.

 

I'm good with a truce for 48 hours.

I'll share this to kick off the cease fire. Here's a list of aviators I've known over the last nine years who've made that sacrifice.

Mike Tharp
Steve Cooley
Dave Strother
Sarah Knutson Cullen
Matt Wagstaff
Jonah McClellan
Rob Baldwin
Josh Powell
Marvin Calhoun
Ray Scott
Clayton Hickman


I went to flight school with Tharp, Cullen, Scott and Hicks. I deployed twice to Afghanistan with Tharp, and once with Cooley, Strother, Wagstaff, McClellan, Baldwin, Powell and Calhoun.

Mikey was about to retire when he died in a crash with Steve at Ft. Hood in November. He left Campbell a few months before me. He'd gone through a messy divorce and the Army was trying to send him to Korea, when he wanted to go to Texas to be near his ailing mother. He came into my office and we talked for about 45 minutes before we said our goodbyes. Both he and Steve had been in the same company for several years, which was a terrible blow for the Warlords when Steve and Mikey crashed. Steve was a car guy. He had a bright red 69 Camaro convertible and a 63 Corvette. He loved to work on them with his sons. All he wanted to do was to spend time with his sons, and make the cars faster.

Dave Strother died in last spring when the crew became disoriented in sea fog in the Santa Rosa Sound near Destin. Dave was part of the Louisiana National Guard and had been attached to my MEDEVAC unit when we needed some additional experienced aviators. Four crew members and seven members of a Marine special operations unit died in the Sound that day. Stationed at Rucker at the time, I was actually there the next morning for work on an unrelated matter. I've never seen fog like that. I was sitting in a restaurant for lunch -- on the beach -- and couldn't see the water. I probably have 75 combat hours with him. We got into a real pickle one day when our GPS took a shit about the same time the weather did. Lots of hugs when we landed that one. Someone mentioned a medal submission and Dave said, "Man, we just saved that fucking guy's life. That's all the medal I need." He ended every conversation with, "Love you, bud."

Jonah McClellan was part of a really bad crash on 21 September 2010. He'd worked with me earlier in 2010 near Marjeh, where he'd sought my advice on becoming a aeromedical evacuation officer. He died -- along with Wagstaff, Baldwin, Powell, and Calhoun -- when inserting some special operations guys into a very dark, very high LZ in Uruzgan Province. Shaggy blonde hair and really piercing blue eyes. I was on a mission early that morning with a guy who was best friends with Wagstaff. We landed at the hospital in Kandahar to drop off our patient and there were two other aircraft there. And a refrigeration truck. And the battalion and company commanders. We heard radio traffic about a DART (downed aircraft recovery team), and the guy I was flying with began to put two-and-two together. When I told him later that afternoon who died, he buried his face in my shoulder and cried for about 10 minutes.

Ray and I met in SERE school. His name was Earl Raymond Scott and mine is Russell Earl Scott. When I saw his name on the roster I thought someone had screwed up my name again. He was finished with flight school as I was starting, and we sat beside one another every day in class and at "other times" during the training. His helicopter struck wires leaving a FOB near Tikrit. November 2009, if I'm not mistaken.

Clayton and I were the two old guys in class, several years older than most of the other students. He went to Germany after flight school and crashed making an approach into an airfield near Manhiem when they encountered icing. February 2010, if I recall correctly. He wasn't even fully trained to perform his mission, yet. He was a former Marine.

Sarah and I weren't terribly close, but she was the roommate of two of my close friends. We ended up at the same functions quite a bit. I remember her bright and cheerful. Her husband escorted her home from Afghanistan after her crew became disoriented on a very dark training mission near Kandahar. A mutual friend carried her body into the hospital at Kandahar.

 

You were a racist if you didn't affirmatively state that the guy who was raised in a Muslim country, by his Muslim stepfather, while attending Muslim schools, where he studied the Koran was a Christian, and had never been a Muslim.

But let's take a serious look in the New York Times whether or not Trump is a Facist:

 

Thanks for sharing that @three_bags_full.

 

Simply clicking "like" on that post by @three_bags_full feels woefully inadequate.

t_b_f, here's to your 10 brothers and 1 sister.