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| Lawyers, Guns and Money  |
About an hour in he gets into the expansion of the federal government through the 16th and 17th amendments, recent Supreme Court cases, and bureaucratic over reach, and the combination of government and big tech. It's not really anything you haven't already heard or known about but in my opinion he explains it in an informed, yet down to earth way. He's not an academic, but well studied in history. He's actually doing something about it like starting a company called Unplugged with the guy who developed Pegasus for Israel. Of course, only you can decide if it's worth your time or not. "Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." -- Justice Janice Rogers Brown "The United States government is the largest criminal enterprise on earth." -rduckwor | |||
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m Around the 5th of Neveruary | |||
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| No More Mr. Nice Guy |
The Republicans need to take control of the language on this one. Judges either decide based on the law or on personal preferences. A SCOTUS Justice either applies the original meanings of the Constitution or is an activist who will intentionally change it. Understandably it can be difficult sometimes to determine how the original intent fits a modern issue. Shouldn't decisions nearly always be unanimous or close to it? So many important cases end up split 5/4, with one group being originalist and the other activist. Trump gave us some good judges. We need more! | |||
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I'm in! IF it applies to congress as well. _________________________ | |||
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Bad dog! |
The main stream media are putting together an advertisement campaign for Kamala worthy of the 1970s Madison Avenue. They are constructing, let's say, a glitzy, compelling series of ads for the brand new Shitmobile. Gorgeous photos of aeronautical fins! Enormous grills of all chrome! Gushing praise for high speed performance! They will make gullible consumers pine for a Shitmobile even though it stinks. Trump should ignore the whole thing. They would like nothing better than for him to be drawn into an angry, insulting response. Instead, he should return to the demeanor and tone of the historic convention speech. Calm and quietly determined to complete something like a divine mission. If he does this, he will crush her in a landslide. ______________________________________________________ "You get much farther with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone." | |||
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| Left-Handed, NOT Left-Winged! |
A little history: All Presidents after George Washington honored his self-imposed two-term limit. Until the marxist democrat FDR decided to go for 4 terms, even though he was near death at the end of his 3rd term and died shortly into his 4th term. Then a constitutional amendment was passed to prevent this from happening again. FDR was a communist sympathizer that threatened to pack the Supreme Court when they decided against his marxist ideas. Biden spent decades in the Senate with no term limits. Almost all of the marxist democrats demanding term limits for SCOTUS Justices will not vote for term limits on themselves. And those complaining about Justices accepting gifts or trips or whatever from friends that do not have any actual cases before the court, accept millions in legal bribes from wealthy donors, PAC's, and lobbyists. So yeah, as long as Congress is willing to accept everything they propose for SCOTUS to be imposed on Congress, then we can talk. Otherwise, pound sand. | |||
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| Member |
I wouldn't drink too much of what Prince is saying. He has the means and connections to be in touch on certain strategic discussions, however one of his 'ideas' was to outsource security in Afghanistan to private contractors to be 'administered' by a governing head...basically a Viceroy. Without saying as much, he was looking to recreate the administrative conditions of the British Empire on the subcontinent. Those were historically fun times.  | |||
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| Member |
You are completely off base on the Afghanistan proposal. The plan was for a smaller footprint of private contractors subject to UCMJ, led by a contingent from SOCOM. It is how the war probably should have been fought from the get go. Here's an article about Prince's proposal from 2018. https://www.militarytimes.com/...the-afghanistan-war/ Here’s the blueprint for Erik Prince’s $5 billion plan to privatize the Afghanistan war By Tara Copp, AP Sep 5, 2018 Blackwater founder Erik Prince thinks the time is right to try a new approach in Afghanistan, one that he says will reduce war spending to a sliver of its current levels, get most troops home and eliminate Pakistan’s influence on U.S. policy there: Let him run it. In an exclusive interview with Military Times, Prince shared new details about his proposed force and why he believes a small footprint of private military contractors and even smaller footprint of U.S. special operators may be able to accomplish what hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops and NATO forces over the last 17 years could not. Prince first presented the idea as President Donald Trump took office last year, hoping that the president’s long-stated opposition to keeping U.S. forces in Afghanistan would open the door to a privatized presence. But Trump listened to his national security team instead, including critics of the plan like Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster. Now, more than a year later, Prince senses opportunity again. McMaster and Tillerson are no longer working for the White House; Mattis' ability to influence the president seems to have waned and new National Security Adviser John Bolton told ABC News this month he’s “always open to new ideas.” “When I floated this idea last year a lot of people shot it down,” Prince told Military Times, referring to his initial pitch as Trump took office. “I floated it again this year, because I know even days after [Trump] made the decision [to extend the U.S. mission in Afghanistan] last year, how reluctant he was to make that decision.” Mattis remains opposed to a privatized force and was blunt in his criticism when asked about it by Military Times at a Pentagon press briefing last week. “When Americans put their nation’s credibility on the line, privatizing it is probably not a wise idea,” Mattis said. Nevertheless, Prince is undeterred. He suspects that interest in his plan at the White House will grow as senior national security staff remaining from McMaster’s days depart and new staff under Bolton increase their sway. Prince also thinks that, ultimately, cost savings might convince the president to try something new. Prince said his plan would cost $5 billion a year, a fraction of what it currently costs the U.S. to operate in Afghanistan. The U.S. government estimates that the 9/11 attacks, which originated in Afghanistan, cost Osama bin Laden $500,000 to plan. Since the U.S. responded in October 2001, U.S. taxpayers have spent $753 billion in war operations, based on a 2017 defense department assessment; $126 billion in reconstruction, based on SIGAR’s most recent audit; and about $45 billion each for continued operations in 2018 and 2019. Total cost to date: almost $1 trillion. Or as Prince puts it, “$1 billion a week to infinity.” “Every day the U.S. has to keep that many forces in Afghanistan is another day OBL wins,” he said, referring to Bin Laden. The basics of Prince’s plan: Swap out the people: There are 23,000 multinational forces in Afghanistan (including about 15,000 Americans and about 8,000 NATO-member country forces) and about 27,000 DoD-supporting contractors. Prince wants to replace them with a smaller footprint of 6,000 contractors and 2,000 active-duty U.S. special operations forces. The 6,000 contractors would be made up of 60 percent former U.S. special operations forces and 40 percent former NATO special operations forces. The NATO forces, Prince said, “would come as individuals not from a NATO unit, thus they would not be hampered by the myriad of national restrictions on each NATO country.” No more NATO mission: Prince would not say if he had discussed his plan with other NATO-member countries, but his force would serve as a replacement for the NATO forces on the ground as well. “The idea of our concept is to provide an embedded structural support to the ANSF, making all conventional forces redundant,” Prince said. Command and control: The 2,000 U.S. special operations forces that would augment the 6,000 contractors “would remain the lead element and provide the U.S. unilateral direct-action capabilities and provide quality assurance over any contracted elements,” Prince said. No rotations: Those contractors would stay with their Afghan units, instead of moving in and out in a more typical military deployment cycle. Those contractors “would be retained for the long term, at least three years minimum,” Prince said. “Typical 90 days on, 30 off rotations going back to the same unit and same geography each time.” A private air force: About 2,000 of Prince’s contractors would be there to operate a fleet of medevac, close air support and helicopter air assets and run two western-style combat surgical hospitals that would also treat wounded Afghan soldiers. A fraction of the cost: Prince said he can execute this mission on a budget of roughly $5.5 billion. Specifically, $3.5 billion for the contractors, aircraft, warehouses for logistics and the field hospitals; about $2 billion for the 2,000 U.S. special operations forces. What accountability? The contractors and military forces would both be subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and Afghan law. Each aircraft would also have an Afghan crew member who would be the one to fire munitions, not the contractor. “Contractors serving as adjunct in the Afghan forces under Afghan [rules of engagement] would be accountable for any misconduct under the UCMJ,” Prince said. “A JAG element, similar to what’s assigned now for U.S. Forces, would have jurisdiction over the U.S. and foreign contracted personnel. Any investigations and trials would be conducted in Afghanistan. Any incarceration would be by their home country of citizenship or U.S. as acceptable,” Prince said. What about long-term care in case of injury? The contractors would be covered by Defense Base Act insurance, which covers the costs of full medical treatment, evacuation and lost wages. Military personnel would be cared for under the VA. Even with the attractiveness of a far cheaper price tag, Prince’s name is forever tied to Blackwater USA, the former private security company he founded in 1997. And Blackwater’s reputation from Iraq may become the No. 1 reason Prince’s Afghanistan proposal is so far finding fewer supporters. In 2004 the State Department found itself ill-prepared to provide full security for the rapidly growing population of diplomats in Baghdad operating under the Coalition Provisional Authority. The State Department selected Blackwater that year to fill gaps in its Worldwide Protective Services Contract, with an initial award of $106 million, according to a State Department inspector general’s audit. By 2009, Blackwater had been paid more than $1.35 billion for security services in Iraq. Blackwater quickly became a symbol of what government watchdogs said was out-of-control war spending. Contractors were criticized for acting as if they were above Iraqi law. Blackwater convoys ran Iraqi civilian drivers off the roads and frequently used machine gun fire as a default warning when locals got too close. Their behavior angered and alienated the local population, even as some of the U.S. ground forces came to rely on Blackwater in gun battles where additional military assets could not respond. Then came Nisoor Square. On Sept. 16, 2007, after several previous hostile engagements that day, Blackwater contractors fired on a crowd of Iraqi civilians, killing 17. The Iraqi government ordered the security firm out of the country. The State Department ended Blackwater’s contract the next year. Some former employees involved in that shooting incident remain in jail, awaiting sentencing in the U.S courts. Prince said that incident was not representative of the whole firm, and said layers of bureaucracy by the State Department and specific requirements for movements, such as requiring four vehicles, “brand-new Suburbans washed and waxed that morning” to drive in every convoy — instead of lower-profile local vehicles that would blend in — added to the tension the firm encountered and generated in Iraq. “For the media to define a company by one event is probably not fair,” Prince told Military Times, saying the Nisoor Square incident was the most-reported civilian casualty event of the war. Prince points to data collected by the non-profit Iraq Body Count, which estimates that at least 180,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the U.S. launched Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 — and more than 92,000 of those occurred after the 2007 Blackwater incident. Since the Nisoor Square shooting, Blackwater has changed its name at least twice and is now known as Academi. Even if it’s not named Blackwater anymore, the idea of contracting out U.S. war policy gives some Afghanistan experts cause for concern. “I think its a recipe for corruption. I think it’s a recipe for potential for human rights or other abuses by forces on the ground because they are not government forces,” said Seth Jones, a former plans officer and adviser to the commanding general, U.S. Special Operations Forces, in Afghanistan who is now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Security. “When I’ve looked at successful counterinsurgency campaigns since World War II, I see almost no cases of governments essentially contracting out significant parts of a war effort,” Jones said. Prince says Afghanistan would be different. When out in the field, each contractor would have a body camera, which he said would be made readily available to the Defense Department if an event required further military investigation under the UCMJ. “Certainly we’ll put body cameras on guys because we’ll certainly have ‘shoot/no shoot’ events that come into question,” he said. There would be no more black Suburban convoys either. Each contractor — whom he calls “mentors" — would be embedded with Afghan units and stay with those same units, on the same terrain, in an Afghan uniform, vehicles and subject to both the UCMJ and Afghan law, they would not rotate out, instead they would spend several years with the same units. Prince also envisions being able to sharply reduce the logistical support and costs, not only by having a smaller force that needs less, but by finally addressing what has been one of the costliest parts of the war: fuel. Through 2008 to 2016 alone, U.S. forces in Afghanistan consumed 2.8 billion gallons of fuel, at a cost of $13 billion. Prince said he would build two on-site refineries that could turn regular diesel into jet fuel, saving millions on having to truck it in through Pakistan. He estimates it would cost $150 million to build the refineries. “We’ve been spending a fortune flying in, and trucking in, jet fuel,” Prince said. By taking that approach, he said it could also free the U.S. from some of its reliance on Pakistan, which happens to be one of the president’s goals as well. Since Trump announced the South Asia Strategy last August, he’s remained largely quiet on the issue. He’s only tweeted twice on Afghanistan this year, both times in January, according to the twitter archive Fact Base. One tweet attacked Pakistan for its role in destabilizing Afghanistan; the other lamented Afghan police officer deaths after an attack in Kabul. The silence could be viewed as a signal that Trump is satisfied for now; however in a July 2018 press conference in Brussels, he left the door open for additional change. “When is the war going to end in Afghanistan?,” a BBC reporter asked. “Because people are fed up and want to know.” “I very much agree,” Trump said. "It’s been going on for a long time. We’ve made a lot of progress, but it’s been going on for a long time. " Prince, a former Navy SEAL, estimates that in the 17 years U.S. forces have been on the ground in Afghanistan there’s probably 30 or more major unit turnovers, sending seasoned soldiers home and replacing them with new, unfamiliar forces who had to relearn routes, threats and re-establish relationships with local Afghan leaders. “I would call repeating that insanity for the 31st or 32nd time unwise,” Prince said. “The president rightly campaigned on ending our endless wars,” Prince said. “He has an opportunity to do it.” About Tara Copp, AP Tara Copp is a Pentagon correspondent for the Associated Press. She was previously Pentagon bureau chief for Sightline Media Group. | |||
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Step by step walk the thousand mile road |
No matter how you feel about the British Empire generally, and the British Raj specifically, the subcontinent was a far safer, saner, stable place under British rule than it has been since. And there were the 2.5 million native Indians who volunteered to fight for the British Empire betweeb 1939 and 1945. It was the largest all volunteer army in history. Nice is overrated "It's every freedom-loving individual's duty to lie to the government." Airsoftguy, June 29, 2018 | |||
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| Thank you Very little  |
Link Facebook Censors Iconic Trump Picture as ‘Altered Image,’ then Admits ‘Error’ Facebook has acknowledged an alleged “mistake” in censoring an iconic image of former President Donald Trump following the July 13 assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, sparking renewed debate over social media content moderation practices. Meta labeled the famous photo as an “altered image,” only later admitting it was a “mistake.” The New York Post reports that Facebook has admitted to “mistakenly” censoring the famous image of former President Donald Trump in the aftermath of the July 13 assassination attempt. The image, which depicted Trump with a raised fist and blood streaming down his face, was initially flagged as an “altered image” on the platform. The incident came to light when a user with the handle “End Wokeness” shared the image on Facebook, only to face threats of deplatforming. The censorship quickly drew attention from conservative circles, with influencer Charlie Kirk calling out the platform for preventing users from sharing the photo. Responding to the criticism, Dani Lever, a spokesperson for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, acknowledged the error on Monday. “Yes, this was an error,” Lever stated on X (formerly known as Twitter). She explained that the fact-check was initially applied to a doctored version of the photo showing Secret Service agents smiling, and the system incorrectly extended this fact-check to the authentic image. Lever assured that the issue had been rectified and apologized for the mistake. However, the explanation was met with skepticism from some users on X/Twitter, with comments suggesting a perceived pattern of errors favoring one political direction. This incident is not isolated, as Meta has faced criticism from Trump supporters on multiple fronts. The company’s AI chatbot, Meta AI, referred to the assassination attempt as “fictional” when prompted for details about the event. Screenshots shared by X users showed inconsistent and sometimes inaccurate responses from the chatbot regarding the incident. A Meta spokesperson addressed these concerns, stating, “We know people have been seeing incomplete, inconsistent, or out of date information on this topic. We’re in the process of implementing a fix to provide more up-to-date responses for inquiries.” The controversy has extended beyond Meta, with Google also facing scrutiny. Users noted that Google’s Autocomplete function failed to generate results for searches related to the Trump assassination attempt. This observation led to accusations of potential bias, with Donald Trump Jr. characterizing it as “intentional election interference” to favor Vice President Kamala Harris. These incidents have reignited discussions about the role of big tech companies in information dissemination and their potential influence on political discourse. It’s worth noting that major tech platforms had previously banned Trump from their platforms following the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, though these bans have since been reversed. The current controversies also echo previous instances of content moderation decisions impacting political news, such as the limitations placed on the distribution of reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop by both Twitter (now X) and Facebook in the lead-up to the 2020 election. | |||
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| 10mm is The Boom of Doom  |
I would like to see term limits on Federal bureaucrats. God Bless and Protect the Once and Future President, Donald John Trump. | |||
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Member |
Amen. God bless America. | |||
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| 10mm is The Boom of Doom |
Have the Democrats already started printing fake ballots, or are they going to wait until after their convention? God Bless and Protect the Once and Future President, Donald John Trump. | |||
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| Member |
I know enough guys who've worked for him and with other PMC's, while they all say he's entrepreneurial and always looking for opportunities, those same qualities have resulted in his ideas that are pretty far-fetched. I'm not going to break down his plan other than to say nobody is interested in any kind of neo-colonial operation; it all looks good on paper but, the realities are that nothing ever goes to plan and no war ever succeeds when its done on a budget. Afghanistan needed to be fought for by Afghans, OEF should've been a punitive operation by the US and anybody else who wanted to join, anything beyond that became wasteful and ripe for corruption. | |||
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| Member |
A question for the Forum mind- Like all of us, I dread another attempt on President Trump. The report of a surveillance drone in the area the day prior to the event seriously concerns me. Does anyone know of what counter-measures are available against a drone attack? No quarter .308/.223 | |||
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semi-reformed sailor |
Electronic jamming Having a Drone already in place "Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor.” Robert A. Heinlein “You may beat me, but you will never win.” sigmonkey-2020 “A single round of buckshot to the torso almost always results in an immediate change of behavior.” Chris Baker | |||
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| Savor the limelight |
Acting Secret Service Director, Ronald Rowe Jr. testified during a Senate hearing yesterday. An excerpt: “Local law enforcement confirmed Crooks was armed at about 6:11 p.m. The local officers called out the threat through a radio, but the information was not relayed to the Secret Service, Rowe said. The Secret Service counter-snipers did not know Crooks was armed on the roof “until they heard gunshots,” Rowe said. Only about 30 seconds had passed from the time the local officer confirmed Crooks was armed to when Crooks opened fire. Rowe said that there was a “delay in reporting” and that authorities had not set up a way for all the agencies to directly communicate with one another. The process would have taken months of planning and require “a lot,” he said. “Technically you could do it, but it would take a long time to get it done,” Rowe said.“ Link I’m guessing this is why there is “command center” where people operating disparate systems yell at each other from across the room. Also from the same article, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office, Kevin Rojek, offered this: “Crooks bought more than 25 firearms through online vendors, using an alias, starting in the spring of 2023, Rojek said.” Link Obviously, that didn’t happen. Could be poor reporting, maybe he bought ammo or parts and the reporter screwed that up. Or, the FBI guy actually said that in which case: FBI. Also in the story, no social media accounts have been positively linked to the shooter. There are two accounts, one expressing liberal views and one expressing conservative views, that were possibly the shooter’s. | |||
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| Freethinker |
That statement seems to be going around. I don’t pay attention to most news business sources, but I recall a Fox reporter’s also saying he “bought guns” online. The Wall Street Journal, though, reported he bought “gun-related items” (paraphrasing). As a friend pointed out, that could have included a cleaning kit. Now that the “bought guns” has been made public, it won’t go away anytime soon, if ever. ► 6.4/93.6 “ Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one’s own understanding without another’s guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one’s own mind without another’s guidance.” — Immanuel Kant | |||
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Told cops where to go for over 29 years… |
Over the years I was involved in many mutual operations. It has gotten nothing but easier over the years as trunked radio systems have taken over. I was directly responsible at times for doing the patches between differing talk groups and systems, to include the patching of our local radio system with the Feds system in our area. Radio systems these days are all driven by computer control and there are really only a few players in the game (Motorola being the largest) The past 10+ years have seen a HUGE push for interoperability and I find this being pushed as some sort of excuse to simply be convenient assumption that they can blow smoke on something most folks have no clue about. In the “old days” it was often as simple as a dispatcher in a van somewhere with a “local” radio and either a Fed sitting next to them or a Fed’s radio and they would simply parrot between the two any information that needed to be shared. Any official “testimony” that this was some sort of unsurmountable technical hurdle is simply full of shit. Comms and coordination were clearly a full on cluster fuck. Likely because the locals were forced to defer to incompetent Feds who simply didn’t give a shit and played their usual “Respect my authorita” manner. Either way it was a failure of complacency and not taking the potential for bad shit to happen seriously. What part of "...Shall not be infringed" don't you understand???  | |||
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| Savor the limelight |
That statement and the FBI Director’s collapsible stock making and AR easy to conceal statement are disappointing. While I can forgive a reporter getting the details wrong, I thought the FBI was all about details. Before you start answering questions, you really should know what you are talking about. The former Secret Service director lost her job over that and rightly so. The collapsible stock/easy to conceal statement is telling because it ignores the obvious AR feature that actually does make an AR easier to conceal: the upper and lower are separated and combined with two pins, no tools required. | |||
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