Lord Ratner

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Am I required to comment on your every thought? I'm not nearly as interested in staffing or FOIA. The government spends more money, has more employees, and does more things than it ever has. Funny how people act like it's always operating right at the minimum. But we did less before, we can (and should) do less again.

Good. Mail in voting is absurd, outside of it's original intent, and should not be conflated with early-voting, which is a good thing. Military and out-of-state only.

Depends on how you are interpreting it. I can see a lot of people hyperventilating by claiming that this is some sort of attempt to bypass the judiciary, but there's no good evidence of that. This seems to be a memo declaring that within the executive branch, interpretations will be made at the highest level. Everything about that is a good thing.

Sales tax for all taxation as the baseline. This allows for removing sales tax on targeted items as tax relief for those who make less and therefore spend a higher percentage of their income on essentials. It also means workers never have to do taxes ever again. Tax fraud is harder because taxes are collected *from* the taxed by a business who does not want to go to jail for tax fraud. This would have to be done by constitutional amendment. Make the amendment such that the tax is only adjustable to 0%. No intermediate tax levels to favor this industry or that. Limit exemptions to a fixed level, let's say a max of $5,000 (just an example). If the item or service costs more than that, the rest is taxed. The exceptions are solely for helping low-income Americans, but everyone gets the same exemptions. Income tax was always a stupid and complicated solution.

https://thefga.org/research/universal-work-requirements/ It used to be the case. It is not the case now.

You believe that reducing taxes is "giving" money to the taxed and "taking" from the untaxed? Hot take, but very honest. Okay, then what do we do? Right now the system you believe in is running 2 trillion dollar per year deficits. This is during one of the most financially successful times in American history. We are running deficits (deficit/GDP) that have not been seen since WWII. If we keep interest rates where they are, the deficit will rise another trillion dollars as our interest payments spin out of control. If we lower interest rates we risk reigniting inflation. So what do we do with this broadly popular concept of spending more money than we have on everyone just because they like it? How much of my money do I deserve to keep, and do you believe the bottom 50% of the country with no net federal income tax liability should be contributing anything towards this massive shortfall that funds their "general welfare?"

Turning with an engine out for non-terrain considerations. Aircraft with less than 500' vertical separation on final. Modified landing data for the shorter runway. That shit doesn't fly at other airfields. That's the deviance. Only a few select "special" places is it allowed. That's the normalization. The helo flying high is just "deviance."

This has always been the answer. Don't worry, I don't think it will be much longer before we have it.

@nsplayer I'm against cutting taxes until we clean up spending. I'm also against raising them. But they do need to be standardized and lowered soon after getting debt levels down. We need a constitutional amendment that absolutely nothing can be funded for longer than ten years, and all funding must be a specific dollar amount. No future adjustments for inflation, no COLA, no fixed percentages, no per capita budget, nothing. Every single program and expense gets a fixed dollar amount in the budget, and can't exceed 10 years of funding. Right now it takes an act of God to get a program defunded. It should take an act of God to get the program funded. Yes this includes SSI and Medicare/Medicaid. You will always have rot and bloat and ancient politicians rape the future to fund their bullshit, but it should be just as easy for the next generation of politicians to turn off the spigot.

I'm no fan of the f-35, but I think this downplays how much the government itself is responsible for what a shit show that program is. It wasn't Lockheed who demanded a VSTOL version in the same basic chassis. And it wasn't Boeing who signed off on the ridiculous digital boom pod on the kc-46. The problem is a bunch of generals and bureaucrats who have never existed in the business world putting insane wish lists together and just assuming that it all happens somehow. And that ignores changing the requirements halfway through the program, or never mentioning that one of the primary requirements is that the plane looks cool, so you start doing all sorts of mental gymnastics to pick the airplane that you just want to win. And we need to start locking people in prison for the rest of their lives if they abuse these programs for personal gain. No more getting a job at the contractor whose product you selected, and that includes your family. Basically, let's continue the "fix the government" crusade first, then we can worry about which airplanes we buy.

All that talk about hyperbole then you throw this bullshit out. 😂🤣 No you wouldn't. Just admit that. It's a valid position, even if I disagree.

Truly? You said that you, a progressive who voted for a progressive candidate who pitched Donald Trump as the literal end to American democracy, would somehow be more mad if you were a Republican who voted for the Republican president who immediately started doing what he campaigned on doing. And you didn't see how that comment is bananas-dumb? Donald Trump is wiping out the bureaucrats that used administrivia and procedure to thwart and outlast his first administration. He's bringing in experts on efficiency and modernization to slash departments that shouldn't exist in the first place. He's purging an ideology that destroyed our academic institutions and violated the very core principals the country was founded on. I know why you're mad about all of these things, but if you're so delusional to think any of this would make a conservative mad, you clearly do live in a mental bubble with no grasp at all on how other people in this country think. That wouldn't be particularly remarkable except for you've been in a primarily conservative organization for what, two decades? The only thing I'm mad about right now is that we had to wait for a reality TV star with a gold toilet and plastic wife to do what conservative presidents should have been doing for the last 30 years.

This is the dumbest thing you've ever said, and that's quite a threshold.

If that's how it shakes out, I agree. But I think Trump is inclined towards something different, and he hinted at it a couple times when he said they'd have to give something back, maybe a lot, maybe a little. But he understands totalitarianism and saving face, so he's not going to lay out a what the final resolution looks like. My guess is that Putin will announce some amount of territory being returned to the Ukrainians, and then that idiot bashi will be here trying to convince everybody that it was Putin's idea to do so 😂🤣

That's pretty much exactly my take as well. Two things can be true at once, Edward Snowden revealed something that needed to be revealed, and he's a traitor to America based on how he chose to reveal it. I think Tulsi knows that he's a traitor, but does not want to admit that because she views the first consideration as more important (and part of her broader view of a deeply conspiratorial government working against the citizenry with explicit malice). The problem with that is it indicates she is willing to justify even the most extreme and unacceptable acts if she thinks the underlying result is beneficial. That is a catastrophically dangerous perspective for any government official to hold. It's basically "the greater good" in conservative clothes. The fluoride thing is real, though there are few places in America with concentrations high enough to have the worst effects noted in the studies. My wife and I installed a reverse osmosis system for our drinking and cooking water when we first saw the studies about 5 years ago, so it's pretty amusing to see it now in the mainstream. I think there was a valid concern and justification for fluoridating the water back when it was originally done, but new information requires new policy, and the developing brain of a child is simply too fragile to play around with. Especially when some mild oral hygiene completely negates the addition of fluoride to the water.

Dude the 737 is trash 😂🤣. We don't have an aural warning for MC, something that always seemed crazy to me. Nothing is inhibited at any phase of flight other than a couple rare maintenance lights on the MAX. I think a big differentiator in the discussion is exactly related: the newer planes are just easier to fly broken than the 737, and much heavier making a high speed abort a bigger threat. Especially now that everything is carbon brakes. We have the same FOM abort criteria, and obviously it all comes down to "unsafe to fly." We don't have much of a definition for that. If you are declaring an emergency and landing at an unplanned airport, is it because the plane is safe to fly? Are we going to have "safety vehicles and equipment meeting us on the runway" because we are happy with the safety of the aircraft? Personally I agree that the right answer is to spend the time thinking about every EP or annunciation to decide what qualifies for a high speed abort. I'm also honest enough to admit that almost no one is doing that, and until my unreliable airspeed, neither was I. I've asked about two dozen captains what they plan to do with unmatched airspeed at 80 knots. 1/3 have said "continue," 2/3 have said "abort." But only two were able to give their answer in less than 5 seconds. This is something we call out on every single flight. Apparently the training at AA used to be rigorous, similar to the Air Force. But it sure isn't now, and I've seen some captains positively flummoxed by some pretty simple malfunctions. That's not a critique of their ability, but of their preparation. There are second and third order effects to policies such as "we don't do high speed aborts," or in another version of this conversation, "the autopilot is better at flying than you." Good chat. I'd also like to hear what others are seeing. It's kind of funny, when you think about it, because now that all of these airplanes are monitoring how much runway is remaining and how far down they are, even the 737, you would think you could automate the process of "high speed abort" by doing some computer-speed math looking at the weight, runway condition, and runway remaining to give some sort of variable go/no-go speed and adjust the holy-shit-stomp-on-the-brakes pressure of the auto brakes. Aborting at 120 knots on a 13,000 foot runway is only scary because the plane absolutely mashes the brakes. But in Burbank, no thank you sir, we're taking off.

Excellent example, thank you. I'll add it to my brief. I think both things end up being true. You should know and have thought about what you're going to abort for. But you're kidding yourself if you think you're going to come up with every scenario, especially considering how low the standard of training is for the airlines compared to the military. To really test the theory, what other things that you would declare an emergency for would you not high speed abort for? I'm always happy to revise a theory, and incorporating tire failure is a great addition. But unless there are a bunch of others, it's probably a pretty good guideline for when you have less time to think than the human brain requires. It's only been a couple weeks since I've had to start digging into this, so I'm perfectly happy to hear better ideas. You might be taking some malfunctions airborne, but that's not an emergency. Are you going to declare an emergency for a failed generator? The 737 doesn't inhibit a damn thing because it's ancient and Boeing is lazy. What types of inhibited enunciations on the other airplanes generally lead to emergency declarations? That's a real question, I've only flown the 73. There are a bunch of malfunctions where time is the enemy. Anything with fire or leaking bleed air has the potential to take out systems the longer it persists. Fuel, hydraulic, and oil leaks generally only get worse the longer they go on. Catastrophic electrical malfunctions will not stop you from being able to fly the plane necessarily, but at night or in the weather they can be a hell of a lot worse than jamming on the brakes. An interesting read, but not particularly useful. An airplane that won't let you rotate kind of takes the decision out of your hands. It's also not a good example of a "high-speed abort" for the purposes of this conversation because it was well above V1, which I don't think anybody is advocating for in any but the most dire circumstances. There's a pretty huge difference between aborting above and below V1.

People also need to remember that the regionals are not mainline. Yeah, it's all the same FAA rules and all the same Captain's authority, in theory, but these guys are all in the rat race to get to mainline, and nobody wants to do anything that might remotely affect their chances. Being the guy who won't take a night circling approach at DCA when everybody in the regionals has been doing it for years is not the type of attention I would imagine many of them want to draw to themselves. Personally I see 0% of the blame going to the regional crew. It's just not rational to think that Tower at one of the most controlled air spaces in America would let a helicopter get that fucking close. I certainly am never clearing for helicopters directly below me on short short final, and I fly a ton of visual approaches. The helicopter crew definitely fucked up, but the real blame here goes once again to one of our "institutions" that hasn't been holding up its end of the bargain for a long time. Even if we fix the FAA tomorrow, we're going to see the unfortunate results of a couple decades of laziness and complacency keep popping up.

Isn't it hilarious that the same senior leaders that will complain about how our generation doesn't want to stay in and only thinks about the airlines, somehow completely misses the fact that when they were company grade officers they were basically living a frat boy's wet dream, with no real deployments, mission, or sacrifice? I had one Colonel tell a story about drunkenly arriving his car into a light pole at the OClub, only to have SF drive him home and pick him up in the morning to retrieve his vehicle. That same colonel then defended the 0-0-1-3 policy and giving article 15s to officers who were drunk in public. He had nothing to say when I asked if he had a bottle of scotch in his desk as a wing Commander. These guys are nothing but cowardly hypocrites. They enjoyed a system that was so awesome and carefree that it gave them the camaraderie and memories to stick around when the job inevitably gets lamer and lamer as you gain more and more responsibilities. But they can't see that without that first decade of awesome memories, there's no nostalgia to keep you tied to the organization. It is bordering on criminally stupid that the leadership of an organization desperate to retain talent can't see that allowing colored t-shirts and large mustaches is a no-brainer.

What conflict? Space X is the only game in town. You guys are acting like some sort of new crony threat is occurring. If Elon diverts every space contract to SpaceX it'll just save us even more money. The choice was never between a good option and a bad option. The American people are tired of waiting for perfection. They are settling for "effective."

Why wait? The only people complaining about it are the people who don't like him. The same people who complained about everything he did the first time and are complaining about everything he does this time. Some of us are capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. I really hope my government is capable of that as well. This memo came out within the last couple days, which means it was set into motion one or two weeks ago. Probably before the crash when every department was told to reverse and scrub anything that had a whiff of DEI. I do not expect all government work to come to a screeching halt because of a plane crash. It sucks, it's a tragedy, and we should absolutely fix the problem. But extending your logic out means that all government work must stop if it is not considered to be the highest priority action at that moment. And as I just pointed out, that means nothing gets done. You think it looks bad because you want it to look bad. That's all.

I love how everyone on the left is now pretending like it wasn't a very big deal when these quick changes were made a year or two ago, but now it must be consuming their entire schedule to undo them. "What happened? They changed the acronym? "Yup" "Change it back." "Ok." You are absolutely intelligent enough to know that waiting for "all the big problems" to be solved before attacking the low-hanging fruit means nothing gets done. That's been the strategy in DC for decades, and now that someone isn't following "the rules," it's a full on panic.

So after watching that video, I'm only reinforced in my view that the airlines have become way too high-speed-abort-phobic. I actually had this problem in a 737 Max a couple weeks ago. At the 80 knot check my airspeed indicator read 65. I was shocked when the captain decided that we were going to continue, but our procedures, unlike a go around, stipulate that a the captain that has sole abort authority. We got lucky, the problem was gone while straight and level and the airspeed split never exceeded 20 knots. This Captain was in no way competent enough to handle a raw navaid approach with either the stick shaker or the overspeed clacker going off. Anyways, I started asking every captain I fly with what they intend to do in the event of unreliable airspeed at 80 knots, and shockingly about a third of them say that we will continue to take off. I'm sorry, but if you are more afraid of a aborting at 80 to 90 knots, stop flying airplanes. I think the real problem is that our airline has hammered a fear of high-speed aborts in every Sim for years now, without inserting the nuance. How long is the runway? What exactly is the malfunction? We have a caveat for aborting above 80 knots: "fear the aircraft will not fly." But in 7 years I've never heard a single discussion about what triggers that fear. Personally, having to fly an aircraft with no flight director or autopilot using pitch and power settings that we practice once every few years and *never* look at during normal approaches, is much scarier to me than stopping the plane on a runway when we have an automated braking system for aborts and we know there is enough runway before V1. This particular malfunction is just another example of an instance where I would rather perform a high-speed aboard below V1 then go airborne not knowing if I'm going to be able to see the instruments or speak to the other pilot in 30 seconds. Another Captain I flew with, Junior to me, had the best threshold I've heard yet for whether or not he will abort above 80 knots. "Am I going to declare an emergency for the malfunction? Then I'm aborting" Be safe out there

The idea is logical. Has been for years. The technology is what's ascendant. The writing has been on the wall since the DARPA Grand Challenge over 20 years ago. The United States should be running head first into autonomous war machines with the explicit goal of putting human pilots out of the job. In the meantime, until that technology is matured, we should be training the world's most competent and lethal military pilots. It seems like on one side we have pilot-leaders who will throw a wrench in anything that threatens their identity as a pilot, and on the other hand we have technologist-visionaries who are willing to diminish the capabilities of human pilots in an attempt to justify their robot weapons before they are up to snuff. Both are pretty gross, and both will get people killed unnecessarily.