And now the question is, will Trump be flying the 51 star American flag, one of which can be seen across Lafayette Square, from the White House, hanging on the side of a government building

This is what Stephen Miller has been talking about, something called 'remigration', as a way of making America more white:

Also, the two new 100-foor tall flagpoles, which Trump is so proud of, one on the North Lawn of the White House and the other on the South Lawn, people are starting to wonder whether the Pentagon had any say in their placement. You see, when the president arrives and leaves the White House on Marine One helicopter, it traditionally lands on the South Lawn. It would seem that the Marine pilots will now need to be extra careful avoiding these two new 100-foot tall obstacles, particularly the one on the South Lawn (let's hope they've placed anti-collision lights on the tops of the flagpoles). Besides, it's not as if there were no flagpoles on or around the White house, there are several, just that none of them reached a height of 100-feet.

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I hope no one was surprised...

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Every single soldier in the US Army has to learn to march and does so for weeks in while in Basic Training and have a large company level parade when they graduate. They wear their best class A uniforms and spend weeks getting ready for the event.

#84 | Posted by Wildman62 at 2025-06-16 11:17 PM

Yes, and that's on a parade ground, generally no more than a football field in length. Try marching like that for over a mile, which was the span of Constitution Avenue that was designated as the viewing area where spectators were allowed to gather to watch the parade.

And before you ask, yes, I learned to march like what you're talking about. In fact, I was a member of an Army exhibition drill team, so we knew how to stay in step while performing specific moves, including various formations which sometimes involved spinning, tossing or exchanging riles while we were on the move.

OCU

But then if you wanted to carry this to the extreme, one could be discriminated against for being left-handed or having red hair. I suspect that we'll see this in court if someone actually does try to single out individuals based solely on the fact that nowhere was it written down that you couldn't.

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I don't know if anyone noticed, but many of those soldiers were not actually walking in step, They were simply walking down the street. Given that they are trained to march when in formation, I'm wondering if this was some sort of insult directed towards Kansler und Fuhrer Trump.

#11 | Posted by Zed at 2025-06-15 11:25 AM

I know from personal experience that this is called 'route step', and it's how soldiers have been trained to march, while staying in formation, but who are expected to cover a relatively long distance. I know Trump was expecting something like what you'd see at a North Korean military parade, but American soldiers are NOT trained for that sort of exhibition style marching.

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So it's okay that car washes and lawncare services and mom & pop restaurants can go without employees but the big agribusinesses or the luxury hotels and resorts, they need to remain fully staffed. Wait until they start to raid nursing homes and daycare centers, or picking up the janitorial staffs at schools and hospitals, then the people will see who Trump and Stephen Miller really care about.

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So it's okay that car washes and lawncare services and mom & pop restaurants can go without employees but the big agribusinesses or the luxury hotels and resorts, they need to remain fully staffed. Wait until they start to raid nursing homes and daycare centers, or picking up the janitorial staffs at schools and hospitals, then the people will see who Trump and Stephen Miller really care about.

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This is what I think Trump's real long term goal is, to establish a subclass of low-paid workers, who will accept jobs without benefits and with poor working conditions, so that his corporate supporters, particularly in the agriculture and leisure industries, can increase their profits.

And Trump can then hold over their heads that if they complain about their wages or their working conditions, he'll simply revoke their 'legal status' and deport them.

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This is what I think Trump's real long term goal is, to establish a subclass of low-paid workers, who will accept jobs without benefits and with poor working conditions, so that his corporate supporters, particularly in the agriculture and leisure industries, can increase their profits.

And Trump can then hold over their heads that if they complain about their wages or their working conditions, he'll simply revoke their 'legal status' and deport them.

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Now it turns out that the major TV networks are NOT going to cover the parade on their normal broadcast channels. They may provide a video feed on their internet news outlets, but that's about it.

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Does anyone remember Kent State?

#90 | Posted by TenMile at 2025-06-09 07:58 PM

I was a junior in college. In addition to going to classes, I worked as a freelance photographer and I covered what was a totally peaceful, yet serious protest on our campus (I sold several photos to the college and local newspapers as well as photos which appeared in that year's yearbook). Up until that point, there had been virtually no anti-war protests on our campus as we were a rather conservative engineering school, well off the beaten path (look on a map and find Houghton in Michigan's Upper Peninsula). But Kent State was a bridge too far. Classes, for the most part, were cancelled. People gathered in groups to express their horror over what happened. Speeches were given, signs were posted, but in the end the school's administrators understood that it was to their advantage to allow the students, and many of the faculty, to publicly express themselves, as long as it stayed peaceful, which it did. The one thing which resulted from this, was that by the end of the week it was decided that we needed a 'Peace Park' on campus, and over the next month or so (school let out in mid-June) many people worked on it, which some monetary assistance from the school (they also provide the site where it was built) and from several churches.

Trump has called for Newsome's arrest.

#16 | Posted by Corky at 2025-06-09 06:13 PM

And when asked what crime could Newsom be charged with, Trump response was that "Newsom's primary crime was running for governor..."

What do people in other parts of the world think when they hear stuff like that coming from the mouth of the President of the United States?

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How is this not a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act?

The Posse Comitatus Act (PCA), enacted in 1878, generally prohibits the use of the U.S. military for domestic law enforcement purposes. It aims to prevent the military from being used to enforce laws unless explicitly authorized by Congress or the Constitution. The Act primarily applies to the Army and Air Force, with other military branches governed by separate legislation.

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Before Trump was elected, the Pentagon and the Army had NO plans for any sort of 'military parade' anywhere in the country as part of their celebration of the 250th Anniversary of the establishment of the US Army. That's not the sort of thing that you expect to see in America.

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The writing was on the wall...

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This coming Saturday, June 14th, almost simultaneous with Trump's Army/Birthday parade in Washington DC, the Diocese of Chicago is going to be holding a celebration recognizing the election of Pope Leo the 14th. Now the Pope won't be there in person, but he'll speak over a live TV feed from Rome to the crowds at Rate Field, where his favorite team, the White Sox play. The event will be broadcast locally and on the internet. Tickets to attend the event live are being sold for $5 each (10,000 tickets were sold within 15 minutes of them going on sale).

It will be interesting to compare the number of empty seats a Rate Field in Chicago versus what I have to assume will be bleachers set-up along the parade route for the Washington DC event.

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What are the Cantonese words for "How far does honorable Xi wish me to bend over, and does he wish it during a 'presser'?" I don't know why he would.

#5 | Posted by RightisTrite at 2025-06-08 04:57 PM

I suspect that Xi doesn't speak Cantonese, or at least he won't admit that he does, since the official language of China is Mandarin. Cantonese is still spoken in the Southern parts of China, but the Communist Party has been trying to discourage its use as much as possible without causing a cultural war with those parts of China where it's still spoken by the average person.

Several years ago, before I retired, I gave a presentation at an engineering conference in Zhuhai, China which is in the Guangdong Province, which was once called Canton. Now I've been all over the world and have often had to work with a translator when giving a presentation. However, this was the first time that I had TWO translators, one who translated what I was saying into Mandarin and one into Cantonese. Obviously, this wasn't a simultaneous translation. I had to break my presentation into 15-30 second segments and then wait for the Mandarin translation and then the Cantonese translation before I could continue. That was one of the hardest presentations that I've ever given. In other places like Russia, Ukraine, Japan or Mexico, we could get by with a simultaneous translation, which while I still had to speak slowly, at least I didn't have to stop and start all the time. Now when I was presenting in places like Germany, India, Singapore, Netherlands or any of the Scandinavian countries, English was just fine. Even in places like Brazil and Indonesia, I had no real problems with English, just that I had to be more careful about using idioms and slang.

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Can you imagine the outrage if Joe Biden or Barack Obama had 'sold' a private tour of the White House to someone with links to the Chinese Communist Party.

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Because those are 'woke' lives and 'green' money. He can't have that, as it's more important to pour taxpayer's money into subsidizing oil, gas and coal production. He's intent on getting rid of all subsides for solar and wind (if he could, he would ban solar and wind energy production outright), yet the irony is that during all of the recent Democratic administrations, not once did any of them seriously try to get rid of oil and gas subsidies, which have remained on the books for decades, costing the taxpayers billions each year.

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It's good to have fiends in high places...

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Speaking of the behavior of Trump and Musk, particularly Trump, I can't help but recall during both of Trump's campaigns against Hillary in 2016 and Kamala in 2024, many people were making the argument that a women in the Oval Office would be a mistake because they wouldn't be able to control their emotions.

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Speaking of DNA and Ancestry.com, while my wife had a purpose in mind, finding out who her father really was, I thought I knew everything on my side of the ledger. Boy was I wrong.

Anyone getting their DNA done needs to be aware that you may learn more about your 'family' than you bargained for. About six month after we had our DNA run by Ancestry, and my wife had pretty much confirmed what she had been told about the missing side of her family, I get a note from a FIRST cousin that I had never heard of before. We communicated for a couple of weeks where he explained that, like my wife, he had been lied to about who his parents were and it wasn't until he was in his late 50's before he finally learned that he was adopted, but no one would tell him anything, not even his 'mother'. When Ancestry.com finally came around he decided to take matters into his own hand. While his 'father' had died years before his 'mother' was still alive but in a nursing home and so he took a sample from both her and himself and sent it in, which proved that they were not related (his 'mother' passed away before he could confront her with the test results).

That's' when his DNA crossed mine and we got these notices about being first cousins. I sent a note out to all my first cousins on my father's side (that's what the DNA showed, a fraternal match) and all but one claimed to have no knowledge of anything. However, the one cousin called me and said that I was to never speak of this again to anyone. When I mentioned this to her younger half-sister she suddenly realized that this might explain a few things. Now their mother and their respective fathers were already gone, so there was no one to ask (only one aunt, by marriage was still alive, and I wanted to avoid asking her about it as she was quite old). Anyway, the younger sister of the cousin who warned me to drop the subject, decided to do something on her own and had her DNA checked and sure enough, it confirmed that this mystery man was her half-brother. Well, looking at their respective ages and that of her older half-sister, my cousins, the one I had known all my life and the new one, figured out that the only explanation that made any sense was that he was born out of wedlock between my aunt's first and second marriage. I all fit because he was born in a hospital in Chicago (my aunt lived in Michigan) which was known for caring for unwed mothers. Also, my new cousin's mother' had been a nurse at that hospital. Once all the chess pieces were on the board, it became pretty obvious what had happened.

At this point I dropped out of the conversation and just let my cousin handle it as she was really interested in meeting him. Her new sibling was retired, living in Florida and she lived in Virginia, so she drove down there to meet him face to face and they became close. Unfortunately, he had some serious medical conditions and died before we all got a chance to meet. But my cousin said he looked like the rest of us and that he was very nice, just that he had been living a lie all his life and it had played on his mind once it became clear what had probably happened. Note that to this day, the older half-sister, who we're still close to, has never accepted what me and her sister learned, or at least she refuses to talk about it and I've never brought it up as I respect her too much and would not want to ruin our relationship.

But this does act as a tale that if one does have their DNA run, be prepared for what you might learn. It may not always conform with what you thought was the history of your family.

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What a truly American story! I have enjoyed your comments.

Thanks for sharing that with us!

She's since used Ancestry.com to verify that at least his name was real and that she was his daughter

Oops!

#9 | Posted by donnerboy at 2025-06-05 12:25 PM

Well, two of our sons have taken it a step further.

Our oldest son married a gal who's mother was Korean/Japanese and who's father was German-American. They have four daughters, the oldest of which is married to a guy from Central America who can trace HIS ancestry on his mother's side back to Eastern Europe, including a branch of Ashkenazi Jews, and they have two children, a girl and a boy.

Our middle son, he has a daughter who's mother is from Mexico.

Our youngest son had a daughter, but we lost her at eight-weeks from a rare but incurable genetic disorder (she would've been 14 years old this month). It destroyed his marriage and while he's remarried, they've agreed not to risk another throw of the genetic dice.

So you can see, our two oldest sons have thickened up our family's gene pool a bit.

OCU