RedSpawn

https://www.yahoo.com/news/saudi-arabia-uae-donate-100-180023756.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/04/26/ivanka-trumps-new-fund-raises-all-sorts-of-ethical-questions/?utm_term=.628afe7a1d01 I think the White House needs additional lawyers to sort through these ethical dilemmas BEFORE they put their foot in their mouth as they did here. Ugh! This is not just a "substance" versus "form" issue. It has the appearance that Ivanka used her position in government to help raise funds for a noble charity that will be funded through the World Bank. And just because we have moved from a fund that Ivanka would have direct control over to a World Bank fund that she wouldn't, doesn't really change the underlying concern that she could have used her position as a federal employee (senior White House adviser) to obtain these funds in the first place. Would she have won this contribution from Saudi Arabia and UAE if she weren't the daughter of the President of the United States? This is oh, so messy! :unsure:

The Army is downplaying the number to $62.4 billion because they know it is a hot mess. If the financial statements the DoD prepared were indeed reliable, the internal auditors would not render a disclaimer of opinion for the entire US government financial statements and then specifically reference significant MATERIAL weaknesses in the DoD as the primary concern. The internal auditors would instead issue a qualified auditor's opinion saying, EXCEPT FOR.... But they aren't doing that, they are not buying the DoD's financial statements as being transparent or reliable or representative of the financial condition of the Department of Defense. With respect to the $6.5 trillion in unsupported accounting adjustments, true enough, it doesn't have to be ALL cash, it could be (1) inventory (2) accounts receivable (3) materials and supplies (4) property, plant, and equipment or (5) intragovernmental transfers to other U.S. departments or agencies. But if the military doesn't have enough detailed records to know which of these 5 it could be and by how much, then the financial statements are "double speak" and do not conform to generally accepted government accounting standards. The DoD can't take a physical inventory of its property, plant, and equipment because it doesn't really have a detailed, reliable listing of its property, plant, and equipment...this is still SERIOUSLY SCARY STUFF for an organization as large as the DoD. The funny thing is the DoD simply doesn't know how big the problem is because it is not politically expedient to get to the bottom of this. What organization really wants to resolve its own gross negligence? If the DoD knew precisely how big the problem was, the PLUG FACTOR would have been resolved well after 2002 and the internal auditors would have reviewed the supporting documentation and signed off on the financials with something better than a disclaimer of opinion. However, here we are 15 years later and the DoD is still giving us the same old tired lines about "legacy" computer systems and yet we have some of the best computer minds in the State of Washington who could be contracted to resolve this problem in less than 2 years. IF that was just the problem. . . . I will say again, if any corporation had to make unsupported accounting adjustments to the tune of $2.3 trillion to $6.5 trillion and did this over a 15 year time span, Wall Street would destroy the corporation's stock and the U.S. government would shut down the accounting firm who gave a "clean" audit report (as the case with Enron and Arthur Andersen LLP accounting firm).

Very well explained, but it gets worse and worse. http://www.npr.org/2017/05/19/529203801/comey-agrees-to-testify-before-the-senate-intelligence-committee Comey served as the seventh Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from September 2013 until May 2017. Comey was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York from January 2002 to December 2003, and subsequently the United States Deputy Attorney General from December 2003 to August 2005. He is a consummate lawyer. Comey knew he was out the door when Trump came in, so his keeping contemporaneous notes on (non-approved FBI forms) of his conversations with Trump were an "insurance policy" when and if he files a "wrongful termination" lawsuit against the United States government. He is a LAWYER. Of course, he knows what he is doing about keeping a trail of evidence for a future court case where he will be the plaintiff. His testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee is just more kabuki theater to keep some of the key senators away from handling the people's business (debating and passing bills) in the Senate.

Trump is handling the people's business in Saudi Arabia by getting jobs over here for the Air Defense Industry. He is a businessman and a Marketing guru and we need that $100 billion contract so we have inside knowledge of the military capabilities the Saudis are buying from us. ;) It's a win-win situation.

HOLD UP! WAIT A MINUTE! STOP THE PRESSES! I need a link followed with a page # of a credible source where you distilled this problem down from $6.5 trillion in unsupported accounting adjustments to just a mere $62.4 billion error. If that were the case, the auditors would not issue a disclaimer of opinion on the entire consolidated US government financial statements. $62.4 billion is not as material as $6.5 trillion in unsupported accounting adjustments. Thanks.

This is a very provocative and interesting article. I am still in awe of how it responds to some of the very things I have been asserting in the Water Cooler on or about May 20th. Is Ross Douthat clairvoyant? Wow!

I am not a Trump fan, and I know all of the bullets I presented make it seem that way, but I know a red herring and diversionary tactic when I see one. Also, I am very cognizant of the amount of corruption, graft, and malfeasance that goes on in Washington D.C. outside of the Presidency, a lot of which never even makes the news cycle. The D.C. establishment is full of well connected, alpha-male, codgers who are very adept at pulling the levers of our American government political machine and media outlets to produce outcomes they desire. They also know how to use propaganda and sway public opinion which is why a good number of them are career politicians. What we are watching is a power grab at the Presidency and a test of the Presidency. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/colin-powell-u-n-speech-was-a-great-intelligence-failure/ Let us not forget who is providing us the Trump/Putin scandal==>Our intelligence services, right? Is this the same intelligence service that provided us very bad intelligence that President Bush and his administration used as a basis for the Iraq War? Please read this very interesting story from PBS Frontline interviewing Colin Powell about the "weapons of mass destruction" intelligence failure that led to the Iraq War. I think we can all agree that Colin Powell has a very strong political pedigree. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/colin-powell-u-n-speech-was-a-great-intelligence-failure/ My point being it's the intelligence community that can "own" America and pull strings because they can provide information to the President and to Congress that is false (whether intentional or unintentional) and this becomes the basis for a very costly and bloody war that we are still fighting (in a different permutation). Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction despite what information the intelligence community was supplying. True, the President has to do his own due diligence and review this intelligence for bias and inaccuracies and discuss this matter with his Cabinet, but still it is a very powerful "presentation" the CIA and other intelligent services provide. Please do not downplay the intelligence communities ability to provide a false narrative to produce outcomes (wars) they want. Wikipedia sets the cost of the Iraq War at $1.1 trillion, but I am willing to negotiate the cost downwards, but either way you cut it, this is a very expensive intelligence failure. Any information the intelligence community supplies about scandals should be viewed with a grain of salt because they are human just like anybody else.

Fair enough. Here are my thoughts and yes it includes some supposition but I'm okay with that. The Washington D.C. establishment: Guffawed when Trump announced his Presidency for the United States of America. Predicted he would not last the entire 2016 Presidential campaign season and would drop out early in the campaign cycle after abysmal poll results. Asserted that he did not understand retail politics at either the national or local level, had no charismatic public speaking skills, and no rudimentary understanding of foreign policy or how the U.S. government works. Predicted that he would not defeat the other 12 or so Republican Presidential candidates who seemingly had better political pedigrees than him. Insisted that he would not become the Republican nominee for President of the United States since he lacked the political infrastructure ($$$) to make that a political reality. Said that Trump would not be elected without catering his platform to a significant portion of the Latino and African-American electorate. Insisted that Trump had overestimated how his name brand recognition, celebrity status, and yes, even Twitter account, would influence the voting populace. Predicted that Trump would get slaughtered by Hillary Clinton in the Presidential Debates and would ultimately lose the election to her. Trump, the maverick, has proven all of his naysayers wrong on so many levels. He has effectively changed the national political game and rewritten the rules of what it takes to get into the White House. And let's face it everyone. The Washington D.C. establishment is acting childlike and throwing a temper tantrum about a new power dynamic they are not used to. Politicians are supposed to be going to Trump Tower and asking him for donations for THEIR campaigns, not calling him President Trump and listening to him deliver a State of the Union address! ;) The D.C. establishment is throwing everything but the kitchen sink at Trump to test his Presidency and return the power base back to what they are accustomed to. And yes, they will even create a false narrative about this Russia/Trump collusion with leaks to the media to do it. I think the industry calls this propaganda--information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/us/politics/kevin-mccarthy-donald-trump-vladimir-putin.html?_r=0 I am sure that Speaker Paul Ryan and Representative Kevin McCarthy, the two highest ranking House Republican members would love for Trump to be forcibly removed from office, especially since Paul Ryan would then become Vice President of the United States by default without having to endure an entire political campaign season. Didn't Paul Ryan run for Vice President of the United States along with Mitt Romney in 2012 and ultimately lost to Obama on November 6, 2012? And didn't Paul Ryan begrudgingly and reluctantly accept the Speaker of the House position after John Boehner resigned at the end of October 2015? It seems to me that it would be politically expedient for Speaker Ryan and his House "friends" to want Trump's downfall because they get an instant political promotion without much effort. And this special counsel, Robert Meuller, is just horrible political kabuki theatre! UGH!

??? How did I exaggerate the problem? It is a $6.5 trillion problem now. It was a $2.3 trillion problem then in 2001. This is not just a "fix the computer" type of situation. The entire internal control structure at DoD contains so many material weaknesses that internal auditors are rendering disclaimers of opinions over our consolidated US government financial statements. The internal auditors specifically call out DoD as the "serious" offender. Government Accountability Office Report -- Inspector's General Report http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-15-341R This is a nice way of saying that the Department of Defense, which gets some of the largest federal budget appropriations, can not issue reliable financial statements (including balance sheets) which will help it to reliably report a significant portion of its assets, liabilities, and costs. If you can't reliably report what assets you truly own, then how can you take a legitimate detailed physical inventory of them? I don't even want to see how DoD manages the cash accounts it has at the Treasury, if it can't even handle its own inventory and property, plant, and equipment accounts. Again, list one company on the stock exchange that could perform this kind of accounting alchemy over 15 years and still be in business? Sure, the U.S. government and its subsidiaries are sovereign entities (which is different than corporate business entities), but both entities need decent internal controls to function properly. And to call it a problem of the size of $6.5 trillion in adjustments when our debt is about $19.8 trillion just shows you how "out of control" the problem is emanating from ONE department. The scale and scope of this problem is simply undeniable. I am not anti-military. I am, however, anti-mismanagement, anti-graft, anti-corruption, and want to see reasonable internal controls in our DofD. This will help the DoD provide meaningful reports that Congress, internal auditors, and the public at large can review to determine if the DoD is efficiently and effectively managing resources to conduct "the people's business". This is what our forefathers wanted. It is supposed to be part of the checks and balances system that makes our government the envy (and not the laughing stock) of other nations. Stay tuned.

With the respect to Trump media coverage, say it isn't so? Please click the link below. https://heatst.com/culture-wars/harvard-study-reveals-huge-extent-of-anti-trump-media-bias/ Interestingly, FOX news (coincidentally under new management and leadership without the late Roger Ailes) is the only one news channel sampled that even had anything close to an allegedly balanced coverage of the President. Fascinating.

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was trying to sound the alarm back in 2001 about this grandiose problem but it got lost in the 09/11 news cycle. George Bush was the president when I first heard about it in 2001 when the problem was $2.3 trillion. See link below: http://www.cbsnews.c...e-war-on-waste/ However, I don't see this as a Republican or Democratic issue. The "divide and conquer" mentality allows the DofD to avoid fixing the underlying problem when we try to color this as a political issue. This $6.5 trillion fiasco is a major internal control and financial reporting problem. It is also a serious mismanagement problem that is indicative of the type of leadership in the Department of Defense (DoD). In fact, it's the lack of leadership in the DoD and its seemingly impervious empire-like culture that is preventing this problem from being resolved FIFTEEN years after Donald Rumsfeld sounded the alarm. I want to be clear, the scale and scope of this problem is much larger than partisan politics. I am sure Zelandakh had a healthy level of professional skepticism when I first said $6.5 trillion and I don't blame him for asking for a more credible source to substantiate this figure (which I happily supplied).

I agree but I think this will be more than "a useful exercise". This will be an "overdue exorcism" on the Department of Defense--given the leadership's intransigence to resolving this situation. This problem has been around for at least 15 years, yet the DoD hasn't resolved the problem MATERIALLY (notice I didn't say completely but materially). The year-end accounting adjustments just appear to get larger and more insidious over time. The problem was just $2.3 trillion back-in-the-day (2002). See link below from CBS News that talks about the $2.3 trillion "GRAND PLUG" -- (in layman terms --"We don't know what this amount is and we can provide no support for the number-- we just add this amount here to balance our disheveled accounting records"). http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-war-on-waste/ Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was trying to sound the alarm back in 2001 about this grandiose problem but it got lost in the 09/11 news cycle. This is how I read the problem. And it's not of the sensational variety. This is from Reuters which I consider to be a reputable business news source. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-audit-army-idUSKCN10U1IG The DoD is fudging or cooking the books from an accounting standpoint and have an excessive number of unsupported accounting entries at year-end to even know if the entries they are posting to the accounting records make sense. And when the internal auditors won't opine that the consolidated financial statements fairly represent the financial condition of the U.S. government, we should be sounding alarms. When auditors are disclaiming opinions--not even giving a qualified opinion--but completely disclaiming, we should be even more upset. NOTE: Wall Street usually dumps the stocks of companies that have horrible internal control structures and routinely practice accounting shenanigans of this scale and scope -- especially for over 15 years!

OK. I am going to focus on the Department of Defense issue on this thread. This $6.5 trillion problem is not just a "computer systems" issue and it is not just a "compliance" issue. This is a major financial internal control and financial reporting issue that can NOT be swept under the rug. The Department of Defense can not ask for budgetary increases if they have no earthly idea where $6.5 trillion in transactions went. When a governmental entity (or subsidiary) can not account for TRILLIONS of dollars of accounting journal entries at year-end, they can't determine or report to management: where they money they received went, or if the services they procured were actually rendered, or if the assets they acquired were actually received and put into service because. . . . they have NO UNDERLYING RECORDS to substantiate the transactions that allegedly occurred. Just provocatively dangerous.... Further, the U.S. Government Accountability Office can not render a "clean" audit report opinion for the entire US government, in part, because the material weaknesses in internal controls of the Department of Defense (DoD) are so large that they have a material impact on the financial results of the CONSOLIDATED U.S. Government. Don't believe me? Try this link from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) of the U.S. Government with reference to the 2013 and 2014 Consolidated Financial Statements. https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-15-341R This is huge (in Trump like cadence)! The U.S. Government Accountability Office (from the inside) is saying the Department of Defense's financial management problems (it's just more than systems) are so large that they even refuse to opine on the entire federal government's consolidated financial statements. The link above from the General Accountability Office says the exact same thing I just said. Look at page 5 of the following DoD Inspector General Report which provided a more detail listing of DoD areas affected: http://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/documents/micp_docs/Reference_Documents/DODIG-2015-144.pdf Basically, they are saying it is a cluster. You can't rely on the financial statements or results from the DoD from the rooter to the tooter! They then say the same thing in Corporatese below: This is a financial reporting issue because just imagine the amount of graft and corruption you can hide when you are performing year-end "general" entries to the tune of $6.5 trillion. Those adjustments (differences) will not be tracked down and wrote off as allegedly unavoidable and meh, all computer related, when in fact, they aren't. The Trump and Russia conspiracy can wait===> There is no telling how many hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars of savings are locked underneath the Pentagon. Keep in mind, it cost us at least $700 billion to bail out Wall Street in 2008. How much will it cost us to bail out the Department of Defense? If we can spend 3 months on the news cycle panicking over the Wall Street/housing bubble bailout ...surely we can spend more time on a $6.5 trillion problem that doesn't seem to be getting smaller.

Yes the war on terror is still ongoing and let us not forget the Mother of All Bombs we just dropped on Afghanistan. That war against ISIL (Taliban, et. al) is not a "different type" of "War on Terror". And so what Obama declares that war on terror is over? All he did is remove some troops from key areas. We are still conducting a "war on terror" despite the troop "pull back"; we are just using cutting edge technology to take a clinical approach to war. We have replaced a lot of human troops with controller-operated drones that are conducting reconnaissance, surveillance, and killing terrorists (and civilians) as part of the war theatre. http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/h-r-mcmaster-stuck-the-war-terror-time-warp-20714 With respect to the $6.5 trillion black hole. I have decided to go the United States Department of Defense (DoD) Inspector General website which is our military (.mil) website for the DoD. Please note that it discusses $6.5 trillion in year end adjustments which means that at the end of the fiscal year they can't reconcile $6.5 trillion in assets (entries) to the general fund balance. That is trillions with a "T". Please use the link below: http://www.dodig.mil/pubs/report_summary.cfm?id=7034 I also trust that you will find the Inspector General of the United States Department of Defense to be a reliable and credible source. :D I trust that our own Department of Defense is not "cooking up" conspiracy theories about not knowing where $6.5 trillion in assets have gone and why we can't substantiate them and must record "general journal entries" this large to "balance" the books. Again, roughly 1/3 of our national public debt. The enemy is much closer to home. . .as Rumsfeld said in his press conference speech in 2001.

http://bridgewinners.com/article/view/aggressive-modern-style-or-not/ This is a good read and I don't think it is off-topic. Enjoy.

But for South to call PASS is oh so hard in today's modern bridge environment. That is a sign of weakness when South allows the opponents to jam up his team's contract without punishing them for interference. :) Of course, PASS it is the correct call, but I had to throw that in there.

Agreed. You pay the cost to be the boss. That double is out of order. 4♥X means partner has to bid his best suit and South's hand can't really support a 4 card♠ suit. There is no way to know that South's hand is better suited for the minors with the bidding structure we see here. 4♠ is the logical cheapest bid to describe North's hand.

You should. I am laughing at the whole notion of a Trump/Russia connection (conspiracy). Now that sir is a red herring distracting the American public from the war machine we got at home that has out of control spending (to the tune of $6.5 trillion) and a penchant for war and stirring up various hornets' nests. Keep in mind that our total federal debt is $18.96 TRILLION. And we have one department called the Department of Defense that can't account for $6.5 trillion it has received in budgetary appropriations. Hell, that is 32% of our total debt and we are worried about a potential Trump/Russia connection? Don't forget we are still under the "War on Terror". That war started 09/11/2001. This war has been going on for 15 years, 8 months and 1 week to this very day. Let me repeat the War on Terror has been a very exorbitant, FIFTEEN YEAR WAR and is still ongoing. And keep in mind we conveniently have a faceless, ever-changing enemy that moves from the Taliban in Afghanistan, to ISIS in Iraq and Syria and Yemen and even stretches over to West Pakistan. Having a faceless chameleon-like enemy is good for a long lasting war and good for the Department of Defense budget and emergency war spending bills that get buried in other appropriation bills and approved without much fanfare or public outrage. The public at large is war-weary but that hasn't stopped the war propaganda from popping up in the news cycle almost every week (to other week). And here we are looking to Trump and Russia as a scapegoat to our current misery? Now that is funny. The enemy is much closer to home than Trump or Russia. It's the big elephant in the room that very few people want to talk about===>Department of Defense.

Just so we are clear. $6.5 trillion is about twice the ENTIRE ANNUAL federal budget and you are busy chasing down a laughable Russia/Trump collusion conspiracy? That is a red herring to keep your mind off of the sinister possibility. The Department of Defense (the Pentagon) is in the business of holding its friends close and its enemies even closer. This means that the Pentagon has to build alliances with Russia even though it doesn't like it. You tell me who is the conspiracy theorist! Russia/Trump conspiracy. Now, that, is laughable. http://www.latimes.com/politics/washington/la-na-essential-washington-updates-trump-says-investigation-will-show-no-1495064828-htmlstory.html "President Trump said a thorough investigation will confirm what he says is already known: that there was no collusion between his presidential campaign and 'any foreign entity.'" Words matter in politics and in the legal system. Notice how "any foreign entity" is in quotes. This is probably true. Trump has not colluded with any foreign entity. The better question is, "Has there been any collusion between the Trump Presidential campaign and any United States federal government entity and its subsidiaries including but not limited to The Department of Defense (the Pentagon), The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Justice, the CIA, NSA, or entities which can be construed as the Military Industrial Complex?" Trump knows he has hasn't colluded with "any foreign entity". Has he colluded with any "domestic federal governmental entity"? Trump hasn't been asked nor has he answered that question. We are still chasing down the laughable Trump/Russia connection which will lead to the same outcome as Hillary's e-mail server scandal---> no prosecution and no indictment. Hmmmmmm.

Keep your eyes firmly placed on the Department of Defense which as of last year can not tell you where $6,500,000,000,000 ($6.5 TRILLION) in cash was spent on! If you find that money, you might be surprised how redundant the "special counselor" Robert Mueller will be. Before we go to any war, this Department needs to account for that amount of money. http://nation.foxnews.com/2016/08/18/trillions-go-missing-military-pentagon-cant-account-65t-taxpayer-cash

I do have a burning question. Please review the following dusty link from the U.S. government from 2001. See Rumsfeld and the Pentagon Bureaucracy. If a Republican Defense Secretary suggests that the Pentagon bureaucracy reminds him of the old Soviet Union the day before 09/11/2001--the worst day in US History. . . What's to stop all of the hacking of the election system (even the Democratic National Committee) from being perpetrated by the same organization that has immensely consolidated power in the federal government, can not account for about 25% of its annual spending, and has a management-leadership structure similar to the old Soviet Union, according to Rumsfeld? Click the link below Trillions (with a T) missing from Department of Defense This is from FOX news in 2016 which is right-leaning! SF Gate 2003 Article Missing Military Money ==> from left-leaning newspaper from 2003 (same problem just earlier and cheaper). The Department of Defense has an accounting system from the 90's and it is missing trillions of $$$ -- The department doesn't exactly know what assets that trillions of dollars purchased. That is with a "T" everyone! Keep in mind, we are not talking millions. We are not talking billions. We are talking trillions. A trillion is like winning a million dollar lottery, one million separate times! If you gave a cashier a cash register containing $6,500,000,000,000 in cash and at the end of the business day it was gone and he/she couldn't tell you where it went, would you keep him/her on payroll? Hmmmmmm. When our federal government computer systems are hacked or the Democratic National Committee computer network is hacked, Congress goes to the FBI and the Department of Defense for answers. Now, if the Department of Defense, which has TRILLIONS of dollars missing from its budget, says Russia or China or North Korea did it, who are we to argue? But. . . .if the Department of Defense is implicated in the very hacking we are investigating because it wants a President that will bankroll its budget no questions asked unlike Hillary who won't grant budget increases to the Department of Defense, who do you think the Department of Defense wants elected? If the Department of Defense did hack into the election system and into the Democratic National Committee computer network to help elect its favored candidate, one of the very first people that that needs to go after the blamestorming session is. . . . the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation as he is under the Department of Justice. The Department of Defense doesn't need the FBI or the Department of Justice sniffing around its interference or control of national security affairs until it installs the entire new Trump appointees into the proper positions. You can say what you want to say, but the enemy isn't ISIS or Syria or Russia or even a laughable, saber-rattling North Korea, the enemy is much closer to home in Washington D.C. and no I am not kidding! Follow the money trail....

Do not forget, if you are a glutton for pain, you can also join as substitutes for tournaments and that will also help increase your tournament completion ratio to its rightful status. Serving as a substitute from the time of placement to the end of tournament will count as if you have played an entire tournament. Sometimes that can be a short as two or three boards, and poof, your job is done! Warning: BBO makes no express or implied warranties about the caliber or sanity of the partner you will have as a substitute. Play at your own risk! :D

Here is part of the problem. A weak 2 bid used to be narrowly defined so your partner will have a quick "snapshot" of your hand much like a crisp, clean strong 1NT bid describing a balanced hand with 15-17 HCP. However, that picture becomes fuzzy once again when you try to attach a void suit and a 5 card minor suit as a possibility to what was once narrowly defined. K&R rates this hand as perfectly average at 9.90 points (given distribution) and I will buy that. That makes this hand perfectly average with nothing interesting to report yet, but I have this feeling that once partner comes alive, your hand's value with shoot through the roof. There are times you need to jam up your opponents and there are other times that you need to let nature take its course. Let nature takes it course. Let your partner in on the fun and do not preemptively rob him of the chance to describe his hand by force fitting a weak 2 bid for this 6-6-1-0 hand. This hand is so distributional that it has that 6-5+ freakish thing going on so you can start doing some nice things after you pass 1st round. Let your partner do his job 1st. If partner decides to pass, have a little fun with this hand afterwards -- you definitely have the distribution to give the opponents a run for their money.

That quote says a lot about the give and take involved the partnership. Your partner is or should be your greatest asset, so sometimes you may have to choose a method that keeps your partner happy and doesn't put him in "unwinnable situations" even if it might jam up the opponents more often. Your partner should consent to being put in those types of difficult situations. That's why it pays to give your partner "diplomatic immunity" as an incentive to persuade him to entertain the "ALMOST anything goes preemptive bidding" style. Once a partner knows there will not be a heated "blamestorming" session to follow a disastrous debacle (if it occurs), he won't worry as much about second guessing the preemptive bids he/she sees in the auction.

Thank you for the correction. I am correcting his name by editing previous posts.