I don't often have the opportunity to do something like this, but I have to give credit where credit is due...

Trump Signs Executive Order To Reclassify Marijuana As Less Dangerous Drug

Now it's still unclear if this is going to change the banking rules about how money is handled which is generated from the legal sale (on a state by state basis) of marijuana.

And we also need to note that during the Biden administration, Biden tried to do the same thing but failed to get sufficient support from his own party. With that in mind, Trump may find himself in that same situation since it may take an act of Congress to actually get this done.

Disclaimer: My support for this reclassification has nothing to do with any personal situation on my part as I've never smoked (except for some possible second-hand smoke) nor ingested any marijuana ever in my life, nor do I expect to start, because of something like this.

OCU

Smells of more socialism...

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Here's the link to the White House's retweet of Trump's original 'Truth Social' post:

Like no one ever thought that this sort of thing might happen...

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But it's been reported that Pam Bondi if going to try and take a third bite from that apple.

It's reported that they're looking for another prosecutor, perhaps from a different office, which they're going to assign the task of getting an indictment.

I really don't know what the intent is here other then just harassing James and causing her to spend money on her defense, since I can't see a judge allowing a case like this going forward, let alone finding a jury that would convict.

I think an indictment is the goal, not a conviction. It's all about shaming and intimidating.

OCU

Trump has for literally years now loudly bragged over and over and over and over about "acing" the same simple cognitive test. Do you know anyone else who does that? Anyone? Buehler?

#4 | Posted by Doc_Sarvis at 2025-12-05 02:10 PM

Well, I've taken the Montreal Cognitive Assessment multiple times, and while I won't brag that I've 'aced them', I did pass them, which is all that can be expected, if there's no problems.

Nine years ago I was given the Montreal Cognitive Assessment something like five times over a three-month period of time. This was when they replaced my aortic heart valve. I was given the test a week before the procedure, along with a physiological exam. Then the cognitive teat was repeated the day after my surgery and then the day I was discharged from the hospital. Both tests were again repeated at my 30-day and 90-day follow-up visits. But that was it, because they were making sure that the procedure, which necessitated halting the blood flow thru my heart for something like 45 seconds, which is how long it took to install the new heart valve (it was done using the so-called TAVR method), had not resulted in any mental or physiological impairments.

My situation was one of those where the Montreal Cognitive Assessment is used, to make sure that there was no brain damage after a surgical procedure, in my case, the replacement of my heart valve. The other time when the Montreal Cognitive Assessment is most often given is when a physician suspects that their patient might be suffering from some sort of mental issues, such as brain damage (from a stroke, a TIA or head trauma), or early-onset dementia or perhaps even Alzheimer's, a disease which runs in the Trump family. Trump lost his father, his sister, who had served as a federal judge, and his uncle, who had been a professor at MIT, all three to complications resulting from Alzheimer's. That's not a good track record and if I were on Trump's medical team, I would be conducting cognitive evaluations on a regular schedule.

OCU

And I'll bet that Trump still thinks that Monsanto is an American-owned company.

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I don't care what Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, there's something seriously wrong with Trump...

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We're not with family this year, as they're spread around the country (Northern California, Texas, Michigan, Washington and Oregon) however, we are going out for Thanksgiving dinner (my wife doesn't do big holiday meals anymore) with three of our friends, whose families are also not close by.

Besides, we saw most all of our family just over two weeks ago in Texas at our granddaughter's wedding. And while there was no turkey or cranberry sauce, we did have a barbecue of burgers and brats and corn-on-the-cob.

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This sounds just like when Nixon claimed that when the president does something, then it wasn't breaking the law.

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The question now is, were there other cases for which interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsey Halligan was the lead prosecutor that are now at risk of also being thrown out of court?

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JFK was assassinated in Dallas 60 years ago today.

#12 | Posted by Corky at 2025-11-22 02:21 PM

Actually 62-years ago today...

I guess I was right about my comment with respect to 'conspiracy theories' that I made at the end of my opening entry in this thread...

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I see another multi-million dollar wrongful termination lawsuit in the future...

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Under the Unified Code of Military Justice, the UCMJ, a member of the military can be court-martialed for obeying an unlawful order irrespective of their rank or that of the person giving them the order.

Mike Johnson can't have it both ways...

Earlier this year, Trump's own DOJ announced that when it came to the Epstein files, that there was no there there. That is that there was no evidence that would lead the DOJ to open investigations into any previously un-indicted individuals.

But this morning, prior to the vote on releasing the Epstein files, Johnson condemned the Democrats and the Biden administration for not taking up this issue when they had their chance.

If what Trump's DOJ said was true, then it was also true four year ago.

As I've said all along, it was Trump and the MAGA crowd who made Jeffery Epstein an issue during the 2024 campaign and if you look into it, you can see how this all went back to the birth of MAGA during the 2016 campaign when they attacked Hillary and the Democrats over all sorts of stories about pedophilia, remember 'Pizzagate'. I think that during Trump's first term, despite Epstein's indictments and eventual 'suicide', the pedophilia issue sort of died down. However, when Trump was lanuching his 2024 campaign, in order to stir up the MAGA base and it's still deep seated, smoldering conspriacy theories over pedophilia, he made this pormise to release the Epstein files, along with the files on JFK, Martin Luther King Jr, UFO's, etc. Anyway, I think Trump just assumed that while these issues would make for good sound bites to toss around during his stump speeches, that once he was back in office, it would all go the way it had gone during his first time around, that is that the whole pedophilia issue would be forgotten as he implemented what was his really on his mind, that is 'Project 2025'.

And as far as I can find, it appears that the only mention of pedophilia in 'Project 2025' was with respect to using it to undermine LGBTQ Rights.

OCU

I still think it's going to be a long time before any of us on the outside are actually going be seeing the Epstein files. I think we'll hear a lot hype and rhetoric and people telling us that what we're seeing is everything, but I suspect that in the end, we're not going to see all that much more than what has already been released, leaked or reported on. Now I'm sure there will be a significant number of people who will look at it and say that it was good enough, and that may last for awhile, but I think eventually there will be a realization that there's still more that's been kept from the rest of us, hidden by that 'smoke' I mentioned earlier. Anyway, time will tell...

OCU

I think this latest move by Trump, saying that the House should vote on releasing the Epstein files may be a bit of a smoke screen. First off, he knows that it would still need to pass in the Senate, which is not a done deal. And even if it does, he could still balk at signing it for some last minute reason. And then we have the fact that he's ordered the DOJ to open an investigation into all of the Democrats whose names appear in the files. So even if does pass the House and Senate, and he does sign it, the DOJ could claim that since there's now an investigation underway, that they're not able to release the bulk of the material since that could compromise their investigation, which they could then drag out for months, if not years.

OCU

Now lets see if he gets five-years in prison as have other people in Texas. Of course, Smith isn't a black female...

Mrs. Baird's?

#14 | Posted by Corky at 2025-11-16 02:38 PM

Yes, it was a Mrs. Baird's Bread plant in Fort Worth. I was there in September 1971. It was my first field assignment since graduating from engineering school. We were installing a couple of baked goods lines in a new building. Now one of these was a large, high production (200 loaves/minute) beard line. Our company supplied the flour handling system, the mixers, dough dividers, dough rounders, the intermediate proofer, the final proofer, oven and most of the conveyors. The other line was a cake line where we provided just the oven and most of the conveyors.

And speaking of rain, while we were in the final stages of getting these two production lines up and running, it started to rain, and we discovered that the building's roof leaked like a sieve. While the contractor was fixing the roof, we spent nearly a week trying to protect all of our wiring and drying out cable ways before we could actually test/start the machinery.

As I said, this was my first field assignment and I was there something like three weeks. The highlight of the trip was that on one of the weekends, Oklahoma was in town to play Texas, and while there was no way that I could've gotten into the game, I did spend the evening before the game in downtown Dallas, which was an experience in itself.

OCU

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent bleated that beef prices are high because immigrants are smuggling diseased cattle from South America across the border:

#3 | Posted by C0RI0LANUS at 2025-11-16 08:30 PM

I don't know about you, but I can't recall seeing any pictures of people swimming across the Rio Grande with a cow in tow or dragging a cow over a border fence or standing in line seeking asylum with a cow next to them.

OCU

Trump just got three more candidates for pardons...

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Hit texas for the eclipse. never seen it rain so hard in my life.

#11 | Posted by Alexandrite at 2025-11-16 12:43 PM

Yes, our oldest son lives about 25-miles West of Houston. On one of our visits there, the night before we were to head home, it rained seven inches. Now the parking lot of the hotel was flooded, but not so that you couldn't drive out, and on our way home, many of the rivers which were virtually dry when we drove in, were full to their banks, but hadn't flowed over the highway so we weren't really inconvenienced.

And about 50-years ago, when I was on my first field assignment as an engineer, I was helping to start-up a bread line at a large commercial bakery in Fort Worth. Anyway, my boss called and they said that they needed someone to run over to Alexandria, Louisiana to mark-up a set of architectural blueprints for an older building that was going to be converted into production bakery. Anyway, on my way back, I had just crossed over into Texas from Shreveport, when it started to rain. It was the heaviest rainfall that I think that I have ever experienced. I had to pull off the side of the road and just wait it out, and I have to say, not a single car or truck passed me while I waited out the 30-minutes or so that it took for that storm to pass till where it had slowed enough that you could safely drive. If I never see rain like that again, I won't miss it. And I was in a Typhoon once that hit Tokyo where they shut the trains down. but that was mostly wind.

OCU

This was probably not a particularly good time to bring this issue up...

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Yes, before this is over, we'll get perhaps three or four inches of rain. Last year we only had five and half for the full year (July to July) here in SoCal. And we had nearly an inch a few weeks ago, so it appears that we're heading into a wet winter. Now what's really important is that it snows up in the Sierras as that's the water we drink next year. Granted, this current rain will help to green up our lawns (at least for those of us who live down on the well drained flat lands), saving us from having to water the grass for the next couple of weeks or so.

OCU