Lord Ratner

If it takes you two days to install a washer (instead of an hour) then you probably are an airline pilot 😂🤣. I'll take the two day trip *and* install the washer better than the minimum-wage delivery guy Lowe's sends.

Trust me, it's not his credibility that's in question.

You're flailing.

I wonder if he uses the same venmo that the rest of us use, where the first thing it asks you when you set up your account is to have access to your contacts to sync them. Sure would be some lazy journalism if they didn't check to make sure that's why his phone contacts all appeared in his venmo like the rest of us. Sure would be lazy of the commentariat to run with it without thinking...

This is one of the reasons why I balk at the idea of firing anybody who breaks the classification rules at the highest levels. Yeah, they would take a hammer to an E-3 or an O-4 who did this. But maybe the solution to that isn't to take a hammer to Hillary Clinton or Pete hegseth, maybe the solution is to stop hammering the junior violators in the idiotic hope that it will set the example for everyone else. The example always comes from the top. If we were in a no-shit war with serious consequences, I guarantee you people (not just Democrats) would be after Hegseth's head. We had a great example of this during the unrelated incident of covid. You can't make something more of a threat than it is. The way people respond to it will be a better gauge of how serious the matter is. People knew covid wasn't slaughtering millions of people in the street, and so they acted like a really bad cold was going around. The old and the fat were much more concerned about wearing a mask than the young and the healthy, because those groups experienced a different hazard level. And that's exactly what was happening. As long as the houthis or the Iranians didn't find out about these plans right before they happened, it really wasn't a very big deal to keep it a secret. And even if they had, it would have just fucked up a military operation with a near zero threat of loss to American Life. If this was operation overlord or the Manhattan project, you would see a level of seriousness that we are not going to see under the current conditions.

Does it work as well as signal? That's a real question, I have no idea and never used any of that stuff when I was in. If it does, then smack them on the dick and start enforcing this shit. Unfortunately we're at the point where it is culturally ingrained to use unmonitored communication networks and treat classified like a nothing burger. That's going to be very difficult to root out, especially when each team is only interested in punishing the other side.

You've obviously never been to a shopping mall in Minneapolis.

I guess we'll have to endure the trickle of "new" members who never had anything to say about military aviation on the military aviation forum suddenly finding their voice now that their political world is crumbling around them. That and the fake accounts doing a weak job of mimicking the General Chang troll-job from long ago. I say just ban them. Anyways, obviously the .gov needs to pull it's head out of the sand and develop a SIPR app for high ranking members. It's pretty easy for a captain or low level staffer to go home and simply wait until they are back at work to play around with classified information, but once you hit a certain level there is no "off-duty time." Rather than pretend like everything is going to be discussed in a secure environment, just make a signal app clone for the government and you won't have to worry about some journalist being added to the chat. Keep it at Secret and below, ideally, but either way stop pretending like politicians are going to follow rules set up for a world before wireless.

I answered your questions and addressed your points. Every single one. Any lack of substance is your inability to make a point to respond to 🤷🏻‍♂️. Anyways, this is boring now. Next crisis please.

Off topic? You don't really read much here do you? Is this just somewhere you feel less helpless, because you can say the things you wish you could shout at your coworkers? It's gonna be ok. Promise.

Bud, this isn't that complicated. And you can't just throw quid pro quo around like it's some sort of all-covering Boogeyman. If I pay you to build me a fence, that's a quid pro quo. If instead of giving you money I decide to offer you flying lessons, that's still a quid pro quo. You don't have to like it, but the government is well within its rights to include a certain amount of charity work in exchange for a contract. As long as the law firm has the option to say no, which all the articles you're citing have plenty of examples of law firms that are refusing, then it's not extortion. Where was all the righteous indignation from these law firms when the government was requiring vendors to have a certain number of women or minorities as founders or executives? Suspiciously silent. I have every confidence that a law firm as prestigious as Weiss can survive without federal cheese. And if they can't, like so many other vendors that are about to be DOGE'd, they will adapt or die. This firm chose, voluntarily, to accept the president's offer. His quid pro quo, if you will. 😂 Of course it's not good for the country, but it's just fun watching the progressives roll around on the ground like they're on fire now that their own tactics of the last couple decades are being used against them. They got so comfortable with this one-sided game that they forgot how to lose, and the meltdown has been spectacular.

"No thank you sir, we are not willing to work pro bono as part of a contract with the federal government." That's the Wonder of living in a free country, you can say no. All the other progressive law firms are furious that they didn't do exactly that to save their DEI agendas. Again, Twitter is not a good news source.

Extortion? That's a cute new analysis of the government's responsibility to give money to a company. They weren't threatening jail. They were threatening to cancel contracts. The dude was elected to annihilate dei, secure the border, and/government waste. And to end the conflicting Ukraine. Doesn't matter whether or not you or I agree with those goals, that's what the American people elected him for. But by all means, keep it up. Like I said this is just going to keep Trump's approval ratings higher for longer. Absolutely no Americans would have cared about this specific issue if the Democrats weren't pulling their air out trying to oppose every single thing he does. But think of the law firms!!

Fake news. Literally. There is: Hilarious. I'm sorry, does the federal government have an obligation to pay for the services of a law firm... just because? They were not "targeted" by the executive order, the executive decided to end a services agreement with them based on their actions. Then they changed their actions in order to satisfy their customer, the government, and now they have their customer back. It might be less stressful for you if you tried getting your news from somewhere other than Twitter.

Agreed, up to the point where we start talking about "even one mistake is too many." It's just not a realistic standard. Anybody who is on a tenuously secure legal status in this country should be making sure their legal documentation is in order. Again, I'd love for it to be a smoother, cleaner, more reliable process. But that's sort of wishful thinking is why nothing's been done. Perfect is the enemy of good enough.