@#14 ... This is the third time you've stated you won't be back. ...

OK, this time, lyrics before the tune's link...

More from the article...

... Hegseth, a former elite soldier turned rightwing Fox television personality, is Trump's choice to lead the Pentagon which controls the gigantic American military -- by far the largest armed force in the world.

In one of his five published books he wrote that in the event of a Democratic election victory in the US there would be a "national divorce" in which "The military and police ... will be forced to make a choice" and "Yes, there will be some form of civil war."

Hegseth's 2020 book exhorts conservatives to undertake "an AMERICAN CRUSADE", to "mock, humiliate, intimidate, and crush our leftist opponents", to "attack first" in response to a left he identifies with "sedition", and he writes that the book "lays out the strategy we must employ in order to defeat America's internal enemies".

Hegseth's rhetoric about perceived "internal" or "domestic enemies", along with media reports highlighting his tattoo of the crusader motto "Deus Vult", may ring alarm bells for those concerned by Donald Trump's repeated threats to unleash the US military, which Hegseth would directly control, on those he has described as "the enemy within". ...

@#10

And, if I may be allowed to post this once again...

@#6 ... I am taking a sabbatical as in no longer actively posting here on a regular basis ...

Thanks for the clarification.

@#6 ... They have no business being here? ...

Ask that to those who employ them.

More from the article...

... It's fair to say our meetings with Assad, and the messages we later relayed to the world about what was taking place inside his country, couldn't have been more different.

Gabbard flew secretly to Syria in mid-January of that year" the first member of Congress to do so since 2011, when Syrian forces gunned down peaceful protestors and imprisoned thousands of others during the height of the Arab Spring. The ensuing conflict between anti-Assad forces and the Syrian military was unspeakably brutal " and became even more so in 2015 when Russia's Vladimir Putin dispatched special forces and aircraft to bombard pockets of "rebel" resistance in towns like Aleppo.

But Gabbard was unmoved by the indiscriminate Russian bombing or Assad's repeated use of chemical weapons against his own people. Her trip" privately funded by a Cleveland-based Arab American group sympathetic to Assad" turned into a propaganda coup for the Syrian regime. Gabbard had two meetings with Assad , revealing nothing (then or since) about what they actually said to each other.

These sessions with the dictator were, to say the least, controversial. "To say I'm disgusted would be an understatement," said Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger on the House floor. "By meeting with the mass murderer of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, Tulsi Gabbard has legitimized his dictatorship and, in turn, legitimized his genocide against the Syrian people."

Gabbard, for her part, defended herself, writing in a blog post (and in a later CNN interview ) that she would be ready to meet with anyone "if there's a chance it can help bring about an end to this war." She later said Assad is "not the enemy of the United States."

But the real value to Assad from this trip is not what she said about him, but what she told the world about the Syrian conflict itself. She adopted wholesale the Syrian (and Russian) governments' line that the main forces resisting Assad were not the Free Syrian Army and other rebel groups pledged to creating a democratic free Syria but Al Qaeda and ISIS terrorists " supported no less by the United States government. (Never mind that the U.S. military was engaged at the time in targeting and destroying the ISIS caliphate next door in Iraq.)

"There is no difference between moderate' rebels and al-Qaeda (al-Nusra) or ISIS"they are all the same," Gabbard wrote in her blog post. ...

[Links in the article]

More from the OpEd...

... Union Executive Director Andrew Matthews said the union gives donors "the badge out of our generosity."

Law enforcement badges should not be gifts. They signal the presence and authority of a police officers. Providing them to police donors is a prescription for trouble. They represent power and they can misrepresent power in the wrong hands.

The brass badge says "trustee" above "Connecticut" over the state seal. under the seal are the words "state police union." All the lettering is in blue capital letters.

The identification card includes the name Connecticut State Police Union, the state seal, a member number, the member's name, the year the card is issued, and a photograph of the badge. ...

@#4 ... As what should happen. ...

Why?

Why should Federal money be used for political purposes?

And, as an aside, I thought I read that your current alias was taking a sabbatical?

What's up?

@#1 ... "tipping point" ...

It is becoming obvious...

Pres-elect Trump does not seem to care about the security of the Country.

To the contrary, he seems to want to sow chaos into the military.

Why?

Possibly to make America a weak counter to his apparent master, Pres Putin.

Of course, that raises the question, just what does Pres Putin have on Pres-elect Trump that the former seems to have such a level of control over the latter?

As a corollary...

What do foreign interests have over the trump nominees to the point tht the Trump campaign does not want background checks to unearth?

And Pres-elect Trump seems to be concerned about trans folk in the military?

imo, he has much larger personnel issues to be concerned about.

@#2 ... Unfortunately, most voting Americans disagree with your assessment. ...

Why?

I've not seen evidence of that.

What's yer got to substantiate your gainsaying to "Republicans have tilted the economy to transfer the wealth of the Country towards the already wealthy, to the detriment of those who have to work to put food on the table."

More from the article...

... According to research into the molecular changes associated with aging, humans experience two drastic lurches forward, one at the average age of 44 and the other at the average age of 60.

"We're not just changing gradually over time; there are some really dramatic changes," geneticist Michael Snyder of Stanford University said in August when the study was published.

"It turns out the mid-40s is a time of dramatic change, as is the early 60s. And that's true no matter what class of molecules you look at." ...

... As their population rebounds from centuries of heavy trapping, the Arctic landscape is becoming more amenable to them, with shorter winters resulting in more shrubby vegetation. ...

So... an example of the "tipping point" that scientists have warned about.

The tipping point where the warming starts feeding upon itself and increases its rate of change.

Thanks for this article.

@#1

Just wait until the deep-red mid-western farm states start chiming in.

@#42 ... I understand what they are.

The increases were 10-15% or more for certain types of items. ...

That seems to run contrary to your alias' #5

... They're just saber rattling. ...

So...

is the Walmart CFO just saber-rattling, as your alias noted in #5, or ...

are we now to believe your alias' opinion that it's greed-flation?

But more important, why the apparent change of story by your alias?

I mean...

... I was working in accounting/payables in a commerical industrial environment purchasing raw materials directly impacted by tariffs. ...

Yeah, that raises questions.

@#3 ... The lawbreaking hasn't began in earnest yet. ...

Can you say, "Presidential immunity?"

I knew you could.

@#2 ... No problem, as now the dem can promote the idea of replacing them with social workers.... ...

Was that the issue that caused them to resign?

@#34 ... So now the dems care about/like WalMart? ...

Why not listen to what the Walmart Finance Chief has told to Fox News?

@#1 ... Who you gonna believe, those running a wildly successful international company for six decades or a pancake makeup-wearing, hair-dyeing, senile mook who went broke trying to run a gambling den? ...

And....

Dragging this thread back on topic after both the BillJohnson and shrimptacodan aliases have both seemed to have attempted to deflect it off topic. ...

So...

@#32 ... Was Harris ready for the world stage dealing with China and Russia and Iran, etc? ...

Instead of dealing with they imagined politically-stained hypotheticals of a Harris Presidency, I'll ask...

Is Pres-elect Trump ready for those tasks?

His first term, and his recent comments, seem to indicate that he may be a surrender-President to the dictators of the world.

Yup.

Who, or what, entities are contributing to the Trump transition team to get the results they desire?

Pres-elect Trump seems to be quite susceptible to bending towards sources of money.

So, yeah, this is a great question to ask...

Who or what are buying influence from the Trump transition team?

And, as a follow-up...

Why does this deviation with history seem to have been given a pass from the GOP? I mean the GOP had proffered itself as wanting to restore the past.

What, specifically, prompted the resignations?

Were the police criticized for bad behavior, and they didn't like that?

Details mare lacking.

@#3 ... How's he going to do anything when he's eating McDonald's in photo ops with Trump? ...

Asked from a different angle... what policies does nom-RFK Jr propose?