Trump Buys Hole in Water

Let’s make a deal, Trump Style.

The 86-meter Nabila was delivered in 1980 by Benetti to Saudi businessman and arms dealer, Adnan Khashoggi as the 8th largest yacht in the world. In 1983, the megayacht appeared in the James Bond movie, Never Say Never Again.

When Khashoggi however ran into financial problems himself, the Sultan of Brunei took possession of the boat to cover one of Khashoggi's loans. The Sultan quickly flipped it to Donald Trump for a reported $29 million in 1987. In 1988, Trump said he got a $1 million discount for renaming the boat and not calling it Nabila, the name of Khashoggi's daughter.

After acquiring the Nabila, Trump renamed the yacht to Trump Princess and had it refitted by Holland-based, Amels for near $10 million according to the LA Times. The H on the helipad was also replaced by a T to stand for Trump.

In 1991, Trump Princess was sold to Prince Al-Waleed for $19 million who renamed the yacht to Kingdom 5KR.

I’d call that a $20,000,000 dollar LOSS! In less than 4 years, good grief.

Does Google Bullshit People?

Tonight I was unable to log in.  Whe I went to log in, to my blogspot.com blog, which they control, they insisted that I had changed my password on August 10th.  My records showed no such change.  But I can also see that I made two posts to my blogspot.com blog, on August 15.  Google owns the blog.  I would not have been able to make the posts, if I or someone else had changed my password.

So Google apparently insists that everyone change their passwords about every six months.  This is not the first time this has happened. They shouldn't have to lie about this.

They also claimed I had given permission to "insecure apps,"  But they will not name the apps.  I think they are lying.  Every password I change, I make a record of it by sending myself  via email, and I send it encoded, not in plain text,  I have been doing this for years.

First Awareness of Racism at Age 10

When did I first become aware of racism? First hint, in Germany, attending German schools, Xmas coming up. I was there as the son of a Fulbright Exchange professor, 1955. The teacher asked me if I was willing to play the black king in the Xmas play. I couldn't see any reason not to to, so I said yes. The rest of the class burst out in laughter and sighs of relief. Soon I would hear derisive cries of, "Du bist die Schwarzinger Koenig." "You are the black king." From then on I began to put two and two together.

Trump Derangement Syndrome

"Trump derangement syndrome" is a term much better suited to his followers, who are totally deluded into thinking he will make things better for them economically and socially. He has no intentions of doing so, he is a follower of the P T Barnum School of Economics.

The "Druthers" Box

Given the realities of the two party system, there needs to be an additional box on the ballot, called the "Given my druthers" and then a choice of 3rd parties. That way you can vote for the lesser of two evils, but let them know that if they win, they do not have a total mandate, to do whatever they want.

On the Space Force

 On the Space Force

The supposed purpose of the Space Force is to protect communication, military, and GPS satellites belonging to the USA. 

So, we have many tiny objects, whirling around the earth, in orbits of 100 miles, all the way out to 22,700 miles, and maybe beyond. The last inventory I saw of stuff in space was well over 6,000 different objects. Much of this is now just junk, batteries and purposes expired. Once they are set in place, they tend to go on and on, on very predictable paths. They cannot carry enough fuel to make any fancy evasive maneuvers.

Trump seems to feel that it would be possible to send up a fleet of “space fighters” to match orbits and then be able to shoot down any hostiles that might approach. If these were manned fighters, they would need a base to refuel at and switch out pilots. If they were unmanned, they would still need occasional refueling. I doubt 38 billion would even begin to cover this.

So what are the threats to these satellites? Similar space fighters launched by hostile nations? Laser equipped Death Stars? Ground launched ICBM sized missile, with nuke or non nuke warheads? Ground based megalasers? Bombs delivered by Non-rocket spacelaunch, including railguns, aircraft assisted launches, etc? I think we can safely rule out the notion that there are space alien punks out there looking for fights.

It seems to me that, with the exception of GPS and photo recon, our main concerns are communications. Is there some other way to increase the security of our communications needs? I maintain there is. Well buried massive fiber optic lines would be relatively invulnerable.

Using the horizontal drilling techniques developed for gas and oil, the main trunk lines of the nation would be safe from nukes and the like. The economic and social benefits of such an investment in infrastructure would be immeasurable. Construction would create job growth, and medicine and education would be enhanced in amazing ways. The 38 billion Trump wants for Space Force would be much better spent on MACA, Make America Communicate Again. 

As for the satellites that might get knocked out, that are not covered by fiber cable on the ground, I would propose backup satellites, ready to launch, from either new missiles, or use some existing nuke missiles in silos.

For obvious economic reasons, Directv, Dish Network, and Hughsnet will fight these ideas tooth and nail in Congress.

For a good backgrounder on satellites, see: 
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/space_geodesy/ATLAS/gps.html