Lurker > WastelandCowboy

There has been a lot of talk over the last eight-plus years about U.S. Presidents and how often they play golf while living in the White House. Since Donald J. Trump became the 45th President of the United States, Trump's penchant for spending weekends at his golf courses has both Democrats and Republicans arguing which Commander-in-Chief has played more golf and if that's even a big deal or not.

As it turns out, Donald Trump has played more golf in his first 100 days in office than Barack Obama. However, Obama played an estimated 333 rounds of golf while President for eight years.

Obviously Trump hasn't been in office long enough to rack up a historically high number of rounds of golf as President, but where does Obama rank among his fellow U.S. Presidents in terms of which one has played the most golf?

The U.S. President who played the most golf is actually Woodrow Wilson, who played an estimated, 1,200 rounds of golf while in office from 1913-21. That beats second-place President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had a tree named for him at Augusta National Golf Club where he was a member and went 29 times as Commander-in-Chief, who played more than 800 rounds of golf in office from 1953-61.

Obama comes in a healthy fourth place with his 333 rounds. Bill Clinton played an estimated 400 rounds of golf in the White House.

Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, stopped played golf once the second Iraq war started, totaling a total of 24 rounds of golf.

Most of the U.S. Presidents dating back to William Howard Taft have played golf in some capacity, for some reason. Calvin Coolidge played because golf was becoming popular. Lyndon Johnson played golf because he realized it was a great way to court political conversation and favors.

"Trump reported $37.2 million in income in the past year from Mar-a-Lago, the private Florida resort where Trump hosted the president of China and ordered missile strikes against Syria. The club has doubled its membership fee in the past year."

"On days when first lady Melania Trump and the couple's son, Barron, are the only ones in the city, security going forward will cost between $127,000 and $145,000 per day, less than when the president is in residence, O'Neill said."

Trump’s Interests vs. America’s, Republican Fundraisers Edition Official GOP groups have paid the president’s company nearly $300,000 since the election to host events at his properties.

Americans receiving Social Security benefits in 2018 can expect to see the program's largest payment increase in years, according to the trustees report released Thursday.

In January, recipients will receive a $28 monthly increase in benefits, which, although amounts to just 2.2%, is much larger than the 0.3% increase in benefits recipients collected this year. In 2016 the program offered no payout increase. The average monthly payment for the program’s 61 million beneficiaries is $1,253.

Despite the good news, Social Security and Medicare are still dealing with looming cash shortfalls. OASDI maintains funding levels will run dry by the mid-2030’s, with Medicare Part A projected to be depleted in 2029—one year later than projected in last year’s analysis.

If Congress allows either fund to be depleted, millions of Americans living on fixed incomes would face steep cuts in benefits.

Neither Social Security nor Medicare faces an immediate crisis. But the trustees warn that the longer Congress waits to address the program's problems, the harder it will be to sustain Social Security and Medicare without significant cuts in benefits, big tax increases or both.

"Lawmakers should address these financial challenges as soon as possible," the trustees wrote in their report. "Taking action sooner rather than later will permit consideration of a broader range of solutions and provide more time to phase in changes so that the public has adequate time to prepare."

Republicans in Washington have long clamored to address the long-term financial problems of Social Security and Medicare, the largest benefit programs run by the federal government. But don't expect them to do much about it.

Over the years, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has insisted on overhauling those programs, proposing a voucher-like system for Medicare and calling for partially privatizing Social Security.

Now that Republicans control Congress and the White House, Ryan says he doesn't want to tackle Social Security. Instead, Republicans and the White House are focused on repealing and replacing former President Barack Obama's health care law.

President Donald Trump has promised not to cut Social Security or Medicare, though his budget proposal for next year would reduce Social Security's disability benefits by nearly $70 billion over the next decade. The savings would come from encouraging, and in some cases requiring, people receiving the benefits to re-enter the workforce.

But even if Trump finds the savings, it wouldn't come close to solving the program's long-term financial problems.

Social Security is independently funded by payroll taxes, so it is not subject to annual spending bills approved by Congress. AARP hopes it stays that way.

"Social Security should remain separate from the budget. Medicare can improve if we reduce the overall cost of health care, rather than impose an age tax, and if we lower prescription costs, instead of giving tax breaks to drug and insurance companies," said AARP CEO Jo Ann Jenkins.

Over the past decade, Social Security and Medicare made up about 40 percent of federal spending, excluding interest on the debt — and that share is projected to grow in the future, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Fifty years ago, the two programs accounted for 16 percent of federal spending.

The programs are expanding in part because the U.S. is growing older.

“According to officials familiar with the internal discussions, the [military] chiefs believe the extra six months would give the four military services time to gauge if currently serving transgender troops are facing problems and what necessary changes military bases might have to make.

“They said Navy officials were ready to begin enlistment in July but asked for a one-year delay, largely to accommodate a request from the Marine Corps for more time. The Navy secretary also oversees the Marine Corps. The Army and Air Force wanted a two-year delay to further study the issue, they said.

“Already, there are as many as 250 service members who are in the process of transitioning to their preferred genders or who have been approved to formally change gender within the Pentagon's personnel system, according to several defense officials.“

July 12, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — The U.S. Army is telling women soldiers that they need to accept gender-confused, biological men in their showers, bathrooms, and barracks as part of a controversial policy to build “dignity and respect” for “transgender Soldiers.”

The guidance is part of the Pentagon’s new “transgender inclusion” agenda launched by Obama and gaining ground in the Armed Services. Social conservatives are mounting a counteroffensive to ditch the “trans” program altogether.

President Trump and the Pentagon have sent mixed signals on LGBT issues, with the DoD honoring gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender “pride” month in June even as Trump himself broke with Obama by not issue a homosexual “pride proclamation.”

In “Vignette 4” of an Army’s PowerPoint guidance, titled, “Policy on the Military Service of Transgender Soldiers Training Module, Tier 3: Units and Soldiers,” issued last September, it states the following regarding a hypothetical “transgender Soldier” who is “transitioning” to a new “gender”:

“Following her transition from male to female (which did not include sex reassignment surgery) and gender marker change in DEERS [the Army’s personnel system – Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System], a transgender Soldier begins using female barracks, bathroom, and shower facilities. Because she did not undergo a surgical change, the Soldier still has male genitalia.”
The pro-transgender lesson then offers the following two points among six “Considerations and Responsibilities” required of Army personnel in such cases:

1-Understand that you may encounter individuals in barracks, bathrooms, or shower facilities with physical characteristics of the opposite sex despite having the same gender marker in DEERS.

2-All Soldiers should be respectful of the privacy and modesty concerns of others. However, transgender Soldiers are not required or expected to modify or adjust their behavior based on the fact that they do not “match” other Soldiers.
The Army's "transgender"-affirming documents are startling in the degree to which they: 1) cater to a tiny percentage of “gender-non-conforming” Americans (in 2011, the pro-LGBT Williams Institute estimated that just 0.3 percent of the population, or 700,000 adults, was “transgender”); and 2) risk alienating the privacy and conscience rights of a much larger pool of Army soldiers in the name of providing "dignity and respect" to the severely gender-confused.

The new guidance is fueling calls by conservatives for the Armed Forces to ditch President Obama’s “transgender-inclusive” policy in the military, announced late in his term by then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter. The pro-“transgender” policy, which was never voted on or fully debated in Congress, had been slated to go into full effect July 1, allowing open recruitment of gender-bending people.

Late last month, the Associated Press reported that Defense Secretary James Mattis agreed to postpone full implementation of the Obama “transgender” policy for six month. Mattis reportedly rejected a request by the Army and Navy (which oversees the Marines) to delay it two years.

"After consulting with the service chiefs and secretaries, I have determined that it is necessary to defer the start of accessions for six months," Mattis said in a June 30 memo sent to service chiefs and secretaries. "We will use this additional time to evaluate more carefully the impact of such accessions on readiness and lethality."

Die eventually.

What did people think was going to happen? That this outcry would lead to a change of heart? When has anything in the Trump administration been reversed due to outrage?

WastelandCowboy posted...

DeltaBladeX posted...

Tauros

Skitty

Grimer

Advocacy group Fight for the Future said the protest resulted in more than five million e-mails and 124,000 phone calls to Congress and more than two million comments to the FCC. Participating websites directed visitors to forms that they could use to submit pre-written comments. There are now more than 7.6 million public comments on Pai's "Restoring Internet Freedom" proceeding.

The deadline for filing initial comments is July 17, and reply comments are due August 16. The FCC will make a final decision sometime after that, but Pai said he hasn't decided on timing yet.

Many of the anti-net neutrality comments were submitted by spam bots impersonating people whose names and addresses were taken from data breaches. There's also been evidence of a smaller amount of pro-net neutrality bot activity. The FCC has not been removing fraudulent comments from the record.

"We want to weigh all comments and make sure that we take a full view of the record, and again make the appropriate judgment based on those facts and the law as it applies," Pai said yesterday.

When net neutrality rules were implemented in 2015, Pai claimed that the agency was "using legal authority the FCC doesn't have." But the entire net neutrality order was upheld last year by a federal appeals court, which rejected legal challenges from broadband lobby groups.

Pai's intentions are clear. When he announced his plan to overturn the 2015 net neutrality order, he said, "Make no mistake about it: this is a fight that we intend to wage and it is a fight that we are going to win."

Courts have generally allowed the FCC to classify broadband however it wishes, a fact that might help Pai in his battle. Still, net neutrality advocates say that comments could be important when Pai's FCC has to defend its decision in court.

For more information on FCC comments, read our story, "How to write a meaningful FCC comment supporting net neutrality." Comments are being taken at this link.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/07/saving-net-neutrality-tips-for-writing-persuasive-comments-to-the-fcc/

https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/search/proceedings?q=name:((17-108))

One day after a large protest of his plan to gut net neutrality rules, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai was asked if the number of pro-net neutrality comments submitted to the FCC might cause a change in course.

In response, Pai maintained his stance that the number of comments is not as important as the content of those comments.

"As I said previously, the raw number is not as important as the substantive comments that are in the record," Pai said at a press conference following yesterday's monthly FCC meeting.

Pai was answering a question posed by reporter Lynn Stanton of TRDaily. Stanton asked, "shouldn't the number of consumers who feel they are detrimentally affected be a factor in a cost-benefit analysis of what you do?" Pai did not give a definitive yes-or-no answer to the question of whether the number of pro-net neutrality comments would make any difference in his decision.

Pai previously addressed specific comments on one occasion, when he praised the "exceptionally important contribution to the debate" made by a group of 19 nonprofit municipal-broadband providers who oppose the current net neutrality rules. But Pai made no comment later on when 30 small ISPs urged him to preserve the rules.

The FCC is taking comments on Pai's plan to overturn the classification of broadband providers as common carriers and to repeal or replace the net neutrality rules that forbid blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization. On Wednesday, advocacy groups held an "Internet-wide Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality," which attracted support from website operators both large and small.

Tauros

WastelandCowboy posted...

I have no idea what you're getting at.

you guys could be friends.

not much deeper than that.

you're lonely,he's lonely. get together and be friends

why don't you and judgmenl become friends? you guys would get along imo

WastelandCowboy posted...

Backstreet's back, alright?

We're in an age where cancer is highly treatable, I have high hopes he will live for at least another decade easily

Critics say the answer is to increase funding

Isn't it always.

In Arizona, part of the Grand Canyon is also under review.

What, are they gonna fill part of it up? lol.

Majestic old-growth trees stand within one of the national monuments that President Donald Trump wants to dramatically shrink in size or do away with.

The Giant Sequoia National Monument, which falls within California's Tulare, Kern and Fresno counties, is one of several sites in the crosshairs. The giant sequoia trees are some of the largest and oldest living things on Earth, towering giants with limbs stretching skyward 300 feet in the air.

But a battle brewing far below the treetops could determine the future of the Giant Sequoia National Monument, CBS San Francisco reports.

Some are on board with the president's plan, saying it could help reduce fire risk in the area.

"Locking them up in a monument and doing nothing, which is essentially what the Forest Service has done for the past 20-plus years, is not in their best interest," Tulare County Supervisor Steve Worthley said.

The Trump administration is considering a plan to shrink the monument by more than two-thirds, from its current 328,000 acres to roughly 90,000, a plan that's found some unlikely allies.

"I don't think anybody had an intent to destroy or diminish this treasure that we have in our backyards," Tulare County Board of Supervisors Chairman Pete Vander Poel said.

Vander Poel voted against the letter sent on behalf of the Board of Supervisors in support of reducing the size of the monument, a proposal so polarizing that only the three supervisors in favor of it would sign their names to it.

Supporters of shrinking the monument say a lack of management coupled with massive tree die-off after years of drought have left it weakened and vulnerable to wildfire.

They say a smaller monument would be better managed and more protected.

But critics say the plan is not really about preserving or restoring a forest, as much as it is about resurrecting the timber industry.

"Taking any kind of designation from the few pieces of protected land, of intact habitat that we have, is a mistake," environmentalist Mehmet McMillan said.

The giant sequoia groves and the land surrounding them is currently protected from logging, but that could change.

There is little dispute that the estimated 8 million dead and dying trees, just in the monument alone, have increased the threat of wildfire but it's not clear if private companies would have any interest in bark beetle-infested wood, even if logging were to resume.

Critics say the answer is to increase funding, not to decrease the size of the monument.

"By taking any kind of protection away in any way is basically a slap in the face," McMillan said.

On Tuesday, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle sent a letter urging the feds to protect monuments like these.

San Francisco-based Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law organization, says that in addition to Giant Sequoia, six other California sites could be in question: the Carrizo Plain Monument, Berryessa Snow Mountain, Sand to Snow, San Gabriel Mountains, Santa Rosa & San Jacinto Mountains, and Mojave Trails.

In Arizona, part of the Grand Canyon is also under review.

The order draws special attention to the latest designation, the 1.3 million-acre Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. Republican Governor Gary Herbert and the Utah legislature have asked the Trump administration to rescind the designation of Bears Ears as a national monument.

"If we find out there’s water on the Moon, and we want to do more extensive operations on the Moon to go explore that, we have the ability with Deep Space Gateway to support an extensive Moon surface program," he said. "If we want to stay focused more toward Mars we can keep that."

It has been a long time since NASA, especially its chief human spaceflight official, talked openly about an "extensive Moon surface program." However after six months of a new presidential administration, the agency realizes that its destination may well change. Therefore its leadership is keeping the decision about destinations open, be it the surface of the Moon or Mars.

The reality is that NASA may not be able to go either place unless something changes. The agency doesn't have the funding to build a large lunar outpost if it must rely on the Space Launch System—which will only fly about once a year, at a cost of more than $1 billion. Mars landings, clearly, would cost even more with the big, expendable rocket approach requiring five or more launches per mission.

Another, less costly option is having the freedom to rely much more heavily on partly or completely reusable launch and in-space transports systems being built by SpaceX, Blue Origin, and United Launch Alliance. Politically, so far any reliance on commercial companies for deep space exploration has been a non-starter in Congress. But that could change, as Vice President Mike Pence has been making some noise about increasing commercial partnerships at NASA. "The truth is that American business is on the cutting edge of space technology,"

For the last five years or so, NASA has sold the public on a Journey to Mars, a grand voyage by which the agency will land humans on the red planet during the 2030s. With just budgetary increases for inflation, the agency said, it had the resources for humanity's next great step, to land crews safely on Mars, and to bring them home. The agency's new rocket, the Space Launch System, and spacecraft, Orion, were sold by NASA administrator Charles Bolden as the vehicles that would get the job done.

There were plenty of naysayers. For example, a National Research Council report cautioned that the agency had too much work, and too little funds, to accomplish these goals in the 2030s with the SLS rocket—and that sustaining a "Mars program" into the 2040s would be a tremendous challenge. NASA's remarkable response to this critical report was that it validated the Journey to Mars.

Now, finally, the agency appears to have bended toward reality. During a propulsion meeting of the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics on Wednesday, NASA's chief of human spaceflight acknowledged that the agency doesn't really have the funding it needs to reach Mars (see video).

"I can't put a date on humans on Mars, and the reason really is the other piece is, at the budget levels we described, this roughly 2 percent increase, we don’t have the surface systems available for Mars," said NASA's William H. Gerstenmaier, responding to a question about when NASA will send humans to the surface of Mars. "And that entry, descent and landing is a huge challenge for us for Mars."

This seems like a fairly common sense statement, but it's something that NASA officials have largely glossed over—at least in public—during the agency's promotion of a Journey to Mars. The reality is that the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft have cost a lot to build, and therefore NASA hasn't been able to begin designing vehicles to land on Mars or ascend from the surface.

Agency officials have also been loath to mention the possibility of NASA astronauts landing on the Moon, because George W. Bush had an initiative to return to the Moon that President Obama canceled. However, Gerstenmaier opened the door to this possibility Wednesday.

I mean the guy is constantly posting videos talking about the same shit over and over again bashing him.

and his 21 K subs just feed off his negativity and go to said guys channel and post negative shit about him all night long thumbing down his video and not being only rude to him but outright calling him names.

The guy never directly called him out He actually gave the man props for calling him out the only thing this youtuber did wrong was tell said guy to eat a **** and then this guy has just constantly posted negative shit about him

and also he did make a third video but never bashed him and then his subs came and took over said guys channel now he's deleted all three videos yet this guy continues to bash him for no reason he's deleted his videos and said guys subs have not invaded that guys channel they've actually started talking shit about him

it's unreal how awful some people can be given a camera and a 21 k sub army

it's drove the guy to block his social media websites block his comments and thumbs up bar

i will admit the guy has charisma and makes hating him cool

but when will it end?

the negative bashing by him has gone on for over a week and it doesn't look like it's gonna stop and why would it he's getting massive views for posting about him negativly and fueling his subs to bash him even more.

I just want him to stop bashing him they also bash him in his comments section of those videos

what can be done to stop this?

it's not trolling anymore that said youtuber has stopped talking about him and anything he posts gets an army of hate and dislikes

It's like watching someone get murdered over and over again it's sad and I wish there was something i could do to get this clown banned and shut his mouth about the same guy

He is also working on other things (such as re-negotiating deals), but those were 3 of his biggest campaign promises. However, no matter what he works on, he's going to face unprecedented obstruction. Even his SCOTUS pick got filibustered.

It's like asking somebody to confirm that air still exists. You can walk outside your house for that. However, keep in mind that it was a LARGE part of his re-election campaign, including his silly "truck" metaphor he kept using.

you mean the investigation literally going on right now? And while NOBODY running an investigation has accused Trump of any complicity -- not James Comey, etc -- that hasn't stopped the media from claiming it. The media literally does not care about facts.

Actually, it was completely within their control unless you're arguing that their votes only count when it's for the winning candidate, which is would be Erik levels of nonsense. Likewise, a hardy hearty LOL @ the claim that Trump had the election in the bag before any votes were cast, given that his win wasn't that huge and almost every source predicted a Hillary win.

For the fifth time in U.S. history, and the second time this century, a presidential candidate has won the White House while losing the popular vote.

In this week’s Electoral College balloting, Donald Trump won 304 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton’s 227, with five Democratic and two Republican “faithless electors” voting for other people. That result was despite the fact that Clinton received nearly 2.9 million more popular votes than Trump in November’s election, according to Pew Research Center’s tabulation of state election results. Our tally shows Clinton won 65.8 million votes (48.25%) to almost 63 million (46.15%) for Trump, with minor-party and independent candidates taking the rest.

WastelandCowboy posted...

helly posted...

WastelandCowboy posted...

I have no idea what you're on about.

the part where you meet him and have to fight a wave of ghouls

all the ghouls will be dead, but Danse will still be in fight mode, unable to leave it, and you won't be able to talk to him to proceed.

the only way to fix it is to use console commands to skip that step.

Oh, in Lexington?

I guess that makes sense. Game sort of expects the PC to shoot one.

uh

Cambridge

and i did shoot them

12. Trump Vodka
Trump Vodka — "Success Distilled," to quote its press materials — appeared in 2006. Trump said at the time, "I fully expect the most called for cocktail in America to be the T&T or the Trump and Tonic." The liquor flopped, maybe in part because of Trump's reputation as a teetotaler didn't inspire a lot of confidence in his taste in hard alcohol. The trademark was abandoned in 2008, and the liquor was out of circulation by 2011.

13. Lost future earnings from calling Mexicans rapists
Trump kissed millions of dollars in future earnings goodbye last summer when he called Mexicans rapists and criminals in his campaign announcement speech. "Yeah, I'm losing some contracts, who cares, people – politically they're weak and they want to be politically correct," he said at the time.

For instance, he was dumped by NBC, the home of Trump's beloved Apprentice franchise. According to his FEC fillings, Trump brought in some $213 million over 14 seasons of the franchise, or about $15.2 million per cycle. He had left the door open to return to Celebrity Apprentice, but NBC eventually announced it was finding a new host.

Then there were Trump's cologne brands, Success by Trump and Empire by Trump, which were sold exclusively by Macy's until both the retailer and the cologne maker dropped the mogul. (Unfortunately for Trump, he didn't have that excuse in 2007, when Donald Trump: The Fragrance — his first foray into the market — was discontinued.)

Likewise, Macy's discontinued Trump's line of menswear, which it had carried for 11 years. According to his financial disclosure, it brought in between $1 million and $5 million — not the kind of money a man who once cashed a 16-cent check would spit at.

And Serta announced it would stop selling its Trump-branded mattress, which, according to Trump's FEC filings, brought in another $1 million and $5 million in royalties every year.