Walter_Sobchak

Rest in peace Harry Dean Stanton.  One of the best character actors ever.
 
Now I want to watch Repo Man again.
 
 

Apparently, Mr. Trump's attack on Syria made Alex Jones cry like a little child.  So at least it accomplished that.  Although, I guess he cries quite a bit on his show.
 
 

No, not a fan of any president, regardless of party, being able to conduct acts of war without congressional approval.  I think the US has become far too comfortable with the idea that the president can just drop bombs on anyone they want to.  I remember when Bill Clinton launched cruise missiles at Sudan in what was obviously a pathetic attempt to deflect from his domestic problems. 
 
Anyhow, the fact that the British and French were onboard with this action makes me even more suspicious.  When have they ever had altruistic motivations in the middle east?  (remembers the Suez war of 1956)

So, uh, we are attacking Syria.  Honestly, I don't even know what the heck to think about this.  Can the president do this without an act of congress?  I know, dumb question.  

No, not a fan of any president, regardless of party, being able to conduct acts of war without congressional approval.  I think the US has become far too comfortable with the idea that the president can just drop bombs on anyone they want to.  I remember when Bill Clinton launched cruise missiles at Sudan in what was obviously a pathetic attempt to deflect from his domestic problems. 
 
Anyhow, the fact that the British and French were onboard with this action makes me even more suspicious.  When have they ever had altruistic motivations in the middle east?  (remembers the Suez war of 1956)

No, not a fan of any president, regardless of party, being able to conduct acts of war without congressional approval.  I think the US has become far too comfortable with the idea that the president can just drop bombs on anyone they want to.  I remember when Bill Clinton launched cruise missiles at Sudan in what was obviously a pathetic attempt to deflect from his domestic problems. 
 
Anyhow, the fact that the British and French were onboard with this action makes me even more suspicious.  When have they ever had altruistic motivations in the middle east?  (remembers the Suez war of 1956)

Now that I think about it, it's kind of funny that the staunchest Trump supporters on this forum, Doward, Roguetechie and Jeeps live in the liberal bastions of Seattle, Portland and California, while the strongest Trump denouncer (me) lives in the very conservative locale of Kent County Michigan.  Perhaps we all just like being contrarians in our local environment?  Just a thought.
 
 
Edit: Also, I have no idea what sort of environment is responsible for Colli.  It must be a strange place indeed.  

Now that I think about it, it's kind of funny that the staunchest Trump supporters on this forum, Doward, Roguetechie and Jeeps live in the liberal bastions of Seattle, Portland and California, while the strongest Trump denouncer (me) lives in the very conservative locale of Kent County Michigan.  Perhaps we all just like being contrarians in our local environment?  Just a thought.
 
 
Edit: Also, I have no idea what sort of environment is responsible for Colli.  It must be a strange place indeed.  

Now that I think about it, it's kind of funny that the staunchest Trump supporters on this forum, Doward, Roguetechie and Jeeps live in the liberal bastions of Seattle, Portland and California, while the strongest Trump denouncer (me) lives in the very conservative locale of Kent County Michigan.  Perhaps we all just like being contrarians in our local environment?  Just a thought.
 
 
Edit: Also, I have no idea what sort of environment is responsible for Colli.  It must be a strange place indeed.  

Yes, I understand there is a lot of anger out there and a lot of it translated into Trump votes.  It's been obvious for a long time that both parties are essentially corporate whores, that the middle class has been losing ground for decades, and that on average, most people from Gen X onward cannot expect to have the same level of prosperity as their parents had.  There is anger on social issues as well.  It doesn't help that Liberals seem to have lost the script when it comes to biological realities such as the difference between men and women. 
 
Trump was really effective at taking advantage of that anger, using his celebrity status and the fact that the well of resentment had been primed by 20 years of conservative talk radio and Fox News.  His opponent was also spectacularly bad, ran a shitty campaign and truly inspired very little of her base.  I don't think I met a single person who was excited about voting for Hillary, even though many of them did.
 
As to the mid-terms:
 
Elections are won by who turns out their base to vote, not who has the bigger base.  Will Trump voters turn out for the mid-term?  History suggests no.  The party with a sitting president almost* always loses the midterm election in their first term.  Look at Obama.  Despite the fact that Obama had about a 505 approval rating after two years, the tea party movement really galvanized the energy of conservatives unhappy with his presidency and they knocked the ever-loving shit of the Dems in that election.  It's because Dems were complacent, they had "their guy" in the White House.  For the Tea Party, the midterm was a chance at revenge, and they turned out at the polls.   
 
I think the same situation will play out in reverse this November.  Midterm election voter turnout is always much lower than in Presidential elections (usually by about 20% points), so having something to galvanize the base is essential.  And right now, Trump sure as fuck has the Democratic base motivated.  As to his own base, he is slipping.  If you look at the polls, his overall approval rating is holding steady, but his number of "strongly approves" is low.  If you look at the data, only about 24% of the population strongly approve of Trump, 20% somewhat approve, 12% somewhat disapprove and 42% strongly disapprove.  Those are not good numbers, essentially Trump has almost twice as many people that hate him as love him. The handful of special elections that have taken place so far do not bode well for Republicans.  Sure, there were some mitigating factors in some of them, such as the Republicans nominating an accused child molester in Arkansaw, but still, the trend is not positive for Republicans right now.  The other issue they face is that candidates from the fringes keep winning primaries.  Roy Moore was not an aberration.  The Tea party movement was responsible for a number of Republican candidates over the last ten years that were unelectable in a general election, and it hurt the Republican party. Remember Christine O'Donnell?
 
Right now, as I see it, the conservative movement is eating itself.  While there is always tension in any political party between the centrists and the fringes, it seems to me that this phenomenon is particularly apparent in the current right wing in the US.  The constant complaints about Cuckservatives and RINO's is not constructive to actually moving forward an agenda.  Politics is about the art of compromise (something American's used to pride themselves in, believe it or not).  When there is no room for compromise or for being able to find common cause around issues, a political party is in bad shape. Yes, there is division in the Democratic party as well.  However, Trump has given the Democratic leadership a powerful tool with which to unify their voting block when the time comes.  At the same time, he has managed to split the conservative movement, separating the traditional small government fiscal conservatives, aka, the Never Trumpers, from the rather ludicrously mis-named "basket of deplorables."
 
But anyway, I understand that everyone is angry.  We have a media system that feeds off it, amplified by the internet and social media.  The economy is shit for the average person, and activists seem more concerned with social issues such as gay rights and abortion than they do with actually helping people get access to decent jobs, medical coverage and education.  Instead, everyone is living in their own little media bubble, whether it be liberals who live off a diet of Rachel Maddow and Huffpo, or conservatives safely surrounded in a Fox News and Limbaugh cocoon ( or worse, Infowars.)  People don't talk anymore to those they don't agree with and that's a problem.  For me, I like to come here and argue with all of you about this stuff, it keeps me on my toes.  
 
As to the gun issue, I don't have any answers.  I will say this though.  To the average non-gun owner, people like Ted Nugent and Dana Loesch come off as crazed lunatics.  And that's who they think of as representing the pro-gun side.  Strictly speaking from a perspective of optics, when one side is represented in popular culture by teenage school shooting victims and the other side by Ted Nugent, that's not good news for the pro-gun side.  Again, I'm not taking a side here on the issue itself, I'm just saying the pro-gun side is in trouble if this is their media strategy.  
 
Also, the Democratic party is not "my" party.  I've always considered myself a left leaning independent.  
 
* I added the "almost" to clarify based on Sturgeons post further up the thread.

I cobbled this together from the video I took last September at the open house at the tank farm in Nokesville VA.  It made me realize how far I have to go in terms of working on my video camera and editing skills.
 
 

I cobbled this together from the video I took last September at the open house at the tank farm in Nokesville VA.  It made me realize how far I have to go in terms of working on my video camera and editing skills.
 
 

Nice work! Cameos were made, lol. I'll be there again this year.

I cobbled this together from the video I took last September at the open house at the tank farm in Nokesville VA.  It made me realize how far I have to go in terms of working on my video camera and editing skills.
 
 

Grease gun in service far past when it should have been.

I cobbled this together from the video I took last September at the open house at the tank farm in Nokesville VA.  It made me realize how far I have to go in terms of working on my video camera and editing skills.
 
 

Ironically, it could be an actual post warGerman Army vehicle.  After the Korean war, the US gave out a number of M7B1 Priests to Italy and Germany.  
 

In case anyone was wondering where that fake tiger tank in Kelly's Heroes came from, it first appeared in the film Battle of Neretva.  If you want to punish yourself, you can watch the whole thing here.
 
 

Good lord, I had not heard of this film before.  What a load of shit.  It's based on a book by Sven Hassel, so you know it's going to be crap.  Apparently, it's a ripoff of the Dirty Dozen, only German style.  The characters in the movie are from the  "The 27th Penal Panzer Regiment".  Now, I'm pretty sure there was no such thing as a Penal Panzer regiment.  The Germans did have penal battalions, but they certainly were not issued tanks.  Of course, the SS were happy to have criminals in their ranks.  But I suppose a movie about the Dirlewanger Brigade wouldn't make for a fun war film about plucky misfits on a secret mission behind enemy lines.

Hell, if Ken Starr was allowed to investigate blowjobs, seems fair that Mueller gets a similar degree of latitude.  

Biological urges be damned, I am ready. 
 

 

 

Apologies if this has been posted before, I don't think I have seen it  before.
 
 

Going through the stuff I pulled out of my father's house, I found a document on X1100 transmissions.  It's basically a paper copy of a powerpoint so it's a bit light on info, but I have scanned a few pages that had interesting data. There is a lot more, let me know if you want more scans of details.