#25

Las Vegas has casinos?

That place is basically a second home for me due to work, but it's not the casinos that draw people. It's the sports, and the sphere, and the F1, and EDC, and any other number of significant events going on every single week in that city.

I work up in north Vegas, Nellis AFB, and if I'm staying off base and have to go south of Sahara, it's at least 45 minutes each way to get to the office. Staying at the Grand Chateau (on Harmon), it's taken me 15 minutes to get to the I-15 on-ramp. I could walk it in five minutes.

I once had the opportunity to meet Leon Smith. He was one of the ops guys who made the drops possible. The pilots who flew the missions got the credit, but in reality, they were little more than monkeys. It was the engineers who made it happen.

Decades later, while in Japan, he was asked whether he regretted his involvement in the Manhattan project. His answer was no. Had the nukes not been dropped, many more non-Japanese service members would have died, and Japanese society would have been close to exterminated.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but Japan is the powerhouse it is today because of the nukes. Just like Germany would have never becomes what it is today without the German Reich being completely defeated.

"Warplanes almost never use transponders."

Warplanes always use transponders when conducting routine flights. Normally only the flight lead will squawk an IFF code, the wingmen will remain in standby. What the B-52 does not have, or didn't have the last time I flew one, was an RVSM-compliant transponder system.

And there is a radar there somewhere. It's controlled by RAPCON, which manages the approach and departure frequencies. I spent hundreds of hours as the Supervisor of flying in the MAFB tower, and we had a radar feed.

This article references states. Some states are very diverse, depending on where you go. New York? I only go to the closest hotel to JFK. Wouldn't live in NYC for anything. But upstate looks like it has some nice places. In CA you can surf in the morning and still make it to the slopes to get in a few turns in the afternoon.

What I don't understand is how Mississippi didn't make this list. Nashville is one of the fastest growing cities in the US. I don't think anyone is moving to Mississippi.

And how in the AF did North Dakota hit @7? That's a rough place to live. I did it for eight years.

"I doubt Israel would not allow a free, independent Palestine State."

I'm not clear. Do you think Israel would or would not allow an independent Palestinian state.

To maybe shape your answer, I would draw your attention to post-WWII Germany and Japan. I think there were many at the time who felt that Germany and Japan would never be able to overcome their historical belligerence and would therefor need to be occupied and controlled by US and allied forces indefinitely. And the allies created the structures for that indefinite occupation. Here we are, 80 years later, and Germany is the 4th largest economy on earth and a global leader. So is Japan. And most notably, there are no occupational governments necessary to pacify these countries.

It did help that the commies did drive past enemies to connect in an incredibly short time period, but if Palestine was to be de-nazified, why couldn't it be as successful as Israel has been?

"Israel to this day does not recognize Palestine."

That's not true. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) formally recognized Israel's right to exist as a sovereign state while Israel formally recognized the PLO as a legitimate entity representing the Palestinian people, per the Oslo accords.

Has something changed since 1993?

"How Israel rejected the existence of a Palestinian state, five times in the past, and still today."

Dude, Israel did not exist in 1937.

"It's beyond comprehension to me how people can't hear Theodor Hertz calling for European Jews to colonize Palestine and then deny that's exactly what happened and continues to this day."

Theo could have called on jews-not sure why you make the distinction between European Jews and any other Jews-to colonize Mars if he wanted. It was British territory. It wasn't up for colonization. If anything, the Brits were the colonizers, having inherited the role from the Turks. And technically, the Arabs in the region are just the descendants of the Arab colonizers who invaded during the Islamic conquest.

#90

In 1947, there was no Palestinian land. Unless you're referring to Mandatory Palestine, which was actually British land.

Technically in 1947, it was all British land.

"Oh, there's a Palestinian state?"

Yer right. The Brits offered the Palestinians their own state, but the Palestinians rejected it.

"Israel has not been allowing a free, independent Palestinian State since 1948."

Israel didn't really have a say in the matter. It was Palestinians that rejected a free, independent, Palestinian State.

#22

I watched the video. I'm curious what sort of 'turntables' she was using. They look like some sort of hybird setup. I still have a couple of old Technics SL 1200s from about 30 years ago, but I don't think DJs use those anymore. I actually went out to dinner a few weeks back and ended the night as the old guy drunk at the rave. I think EDM is old people music nowadays.

I plan on about five more years in the office before retiring permanently at 55. Albania is our spot. The thing that is worth mentioning is, at the moment, the value of Asian currencies are declining relative to the dollar. Which means greater spending power if you get paid in USD. In Europe, the dollar has declined in value by around 10% since March. Even countries that haven't adopted the EURO are either backed by the EURO (like Albania) or tied to it in some way.

Philippines seems to have decent beaches, at least in the pictures, but they don't have the mountains, which are a must for me.

And Wyoming can be a brutal place to live. It gets very cold and very windy. But if you want wild, it's as wild as you're going to find anywhere outside of Alaska. Runner up would be the Olympic peninsula, which also seems unnaturally wild, given its location.

Profound. economic. consequences.

Sure.

Because there aren't any MIT grads that can figure out how to replace immigrant labor with a machine.

Or, there is no government mechanism to allow non-citizens to come in and do work that no one else is willing to do.

It seems to me there is a technical answer, and a policy answer. Either is probably OK.

"They learned a lot during the Babylonian Captivity."

Yes. I'm sure that's etched into their collective memory.

Oh, and what is Palestine again?

"Meanwhile, the Jewish State only exists because of the Zionist Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine."

The Jewish state exists because the previous owners (Great Britain) deeded it to them. Pretty much following the suit of those (the Ottomans) who preceded the Brits.

And I'm not sure if you know it or not, but the Brits gave the Palestinians a state as well. The Palestinians simply made the mistake of thinking they could take the whole thing for themselves. The Zionists had developed much of what had been empty desert into lucrative enterprises. It makes sense they would want to drive out the Jews and take it all for themselves. It's actually not much different than the decision calculus of any other group that thought it would be in their best interest to kill the Jews and take their stuff. Israel is pretty much the first time that didn't work out for those wanting to do the taking.

"This helps the "Zionist are Victims, not Conquerors" myth which only right-wingers believe."

They're definitely not conquerors. If they were, the war would be over. They seemed to be less effective at conquering Gaza than the US was at conquering Afghanistan. Although to be fair, they have a few more years left before we can make an honest comparison.

They will be victims if they don't win though. I don't think 'from the river to the sea' is just a trope. It's the final solution to the Jewish question.

"He just can't help himself. Here, let's define that term for him yet again."

Would you prefer I use thier given name? The "Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei?"

Maybe you prefer the anglicized "National Socialist German Workers' Party."

"Couldn't have turned out better for Netanyahu had he planned it himself."

Are you -------- me?

Hamas has rallied hundreds of thousands of supporters across the world to stand up and demand the destruction of the Jewish state.

If only the ISIS propaganda arm had been as effective. They might have been able to control Gaza right now. They share many of the same goals.

"So then what's Hamas the government of?"

The former Egyptian territory of Gaza. Hamas does not represent any sort of Palestinian state. Mostly because there is no such thing, but the closest thing to a provisional government is the Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank.

I wonder if the Yasser Abu Shabab organization is also using human shields or Geneva Conventions-protected entities to support their operations?

And Global Entry gets you nothing when going through security. It only allows you to expedite going through passport control when entering the US. For a lucky few, we can also use it at automated EU passport control stations, but that's not very common.

"---- genocide by Jews."

Yeah. It should be the Jews being genocided.

And not the histrionic 'genocide' being promoted by the pro-Pals, but real, good old-fashioned 'wipe them from the face of the earth kind' of genocide. 'From the river to the sea' kind of genocide.

The good genocide.

TSA Pre-Check. I haven't taken off my shoes in more than a decade.