Lord Ratner

Buddy, trust me when I tell say you can never be sure what you'll be on trial for. I understand and feel the rage, but this is literally core to being American. Anyways, enough said. We lost one of our best, and we are all worse of for it. The donation link for the family is still active.

Danger41, like the rest of us, put on a uniform to defend ideals. One of which is the right to have the assistance of counsel for his defense. Let's not forget that. I hope the drunk piece of shit rots in prison, and he should be man enough to plead guilty for his crimes, but his attorney is doing the job I hope he would do for you or me if we were on trial.

Fuckin' A.

True, under a libertarian system we would refuse medical and educational services to the illegal immigrants, which would alleviate a good portion of the problem. I doubt that would appease the left 🤷🏻‍♂️

"We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it… The argument also assumes that social prejudice may be overcome by legislation, and that equal rights cannot be secured except by an enforced commingling of the two races… If the civil and political rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane." Precedent changes. We've had several very good examples of that recently. I can only speak for myself, but I am not advocating the Trump administration violate supreme Court ruling. I am advocating that they get the bad rulings fixed... And they will be fixed. The law always has a funny way of conforming to reality.

Buddy have you ever met a legal immigrant? My mother immigrated here in '61 and she still remembers her identification number. You think you just get a high five at the border and you're an American? There's documentation, paperwork, IDs. "Prove you are here legally. You can use any of the many forms you were provided during your immigration, or just give us your information and we can look you up" "Uhhh...." It is remarkable how dumb everybody is willing to play rather than just admit this is a no-brainer.

I'm not sure I agree with the interpretation that illegals are subject to due process *for deportation.* Wanna put them in prison? Yep, they get the chance to appear in court. But deportation is simply the cessation of illegal occupation. Like I said before, no American gets due process before the cops can stop you from actively committing a crime. I believe in following the supreme court, but I'm not sure I agree with the ruling. This issue (and several others) needs a full hearing by SCOTUS.

"AFSOC is committed to the welfare of our Airmen and maintaining good order and discipline which is necessary to preserve the trust placed in us to execute our critical global missions." This is the UCMJ Article that covers fraternization. Similar verbiage is in the service-specific regulations §934. Art. 134. General article Though not specifically mentioned in this chapter, all disorders and neglects to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces, all conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces, and crimes and offenses not capital, of which persons subject to this chapter may be guilty, shall be taken cognizance of by a general, special, or summary court-martial, according to the nature and degree of the offense, and shall be punished at the discretion of that court. As used in the preceding sentence, the term "crimes and offenses not capital" includes any conduct engaged in outside the United States, as defined in section 5 of title 18, that would constitute a crime or offense not capital if the conduct had been engaged in within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, as defined in section 7 of title 18.

Yeah I've never seen a commander slip in the reason for the dismissal like that.

See this is how I can tell you're an idiot. You're incapable of divorcing one argument from another. You don't like anyone supporting something you don't support, therefore they must disagree with you on every topic. You're not going to find a lot of people here who are fond of congressman using their positions to enrich themselves. But by all means, continue to show what a bad faith debater you are by continually making this more personal than it needs to be.

No gymnastics. It's not worth the time for someone who can't read plain English:

"I do not presume to understand current politics, but what I do know is the concerns of the U.S. administration discussed by Vice President Vance on Friday are not reflective of Pituffik Space Base," Meyers wrote in the email, which was communicated to Military.com Yeah that's not a surprising dismissal.

Did you ever teach in the t-6? I never flew in the t-37, so I don't have a good comparison with a side-by-side trainer, but I never found the t-6 difficult to teach in. There were so few buttons and knobs to manipulate in-flight compared with more advanced aircraft, that you really didn't need to see the student moving their hands and touching the buttons to know what they were doing. As an advantage, the ability to disappear as an instructor by simply not talking was quite valuable for letting the student get lost in training while still being observed. Every flight was a simulated solo if the instructor chose to remain hands-off.

You do understand there are other ways to influence and bias trade than just tariffs, right? I already gave one example, the subsidized airlines in the Middle East. No tariffs, but it's still disadvantaging our airlines. In other countries VAT is universally collected, so it seems fair, yet the taxes are used to subsidize specific industries. Yet another way is the artificial devaluing of a currency. If you don't think this matters, watch what the Fed does when they think a nation is not playing by the rules. As for trade deficits, they are not inherently bad, but remember that they are only possible because there is a global reserve currency, the dollar. But the reserve currency is made unfathomably complicated by the Eurodollar system, which is way, way beyond the scope of this conversation. It's just not as simple as "trade good, tariff bad." Sorry. I don't think formula they used to come up with the tariff numbers makes sense, but it's pretty obvious they weren't meant to. The order from Trump was probably "just come up with something and hit them with huge tariffs. They'll come to the table." And so far he was right. Oh boy. You think that's compound interest? Strange that happened during the lowest rate period in the last 50 years. This was asset inflation, pure and simple, made possible by expanding the money supply rapidly and funneling the money through the banks. You aren't thinking about this clearly. If the *percentage* of wealth held by the top 0.1% is expected to continually increase, exactly what happens as you follow the graph out over time? They just eventually reach 99.9%? What do you think happens to the social order? The nominal amounts can change but the percentage of wealth controlled by a given percentile should be relatively constant. Completely depends on how tariffs are used. Either Bessent or Lutnick mentioned a separate tariff strategy akin to pre-WWI America where tariffs rather than income taxes were the primary revenue source. Removing all income taxes below $150k income and using tariffs instead. This is a step closer to a sales-tax-based system instead of income, and I'm a huge supporter of that. But that all depends on Trump having a stable policy. Doubtful, but we won't know until the "reciprocal" tariff war phase of the plan is over. We'll see.

Lot of money to be made there, just remember, it is absolutely not a store of value/safety trade. It's been moving basically in sync with the magnificent seven. Completely speculative right now.

The guy I follow was short through the collapse, then went long during the sucker rally. I wasn't thrilled by the end of Tuesday, but I trust him and it paid off on Today.

Someone doesn't want to be on the naughty list

But they aren't. This system did not work as promised. We engaged in free trade with the world and the world took advantage of our generosity. And certain Americans took advantage of the regulatory and labor arbitrage to an incredible degree: This is only possible because of the many ways globalization allowed what we now call "the elite" the leverage cheap labor, disparate taxation regimes, subsidized industry, and currency manipulation to maximize profits and then keep them sheltered in foreign lands. Income inequality is irrelevant, but there's no scenario where the distribution of *wealth* should ever look like the chart above. It is the direct result of Fed Reserve money printing, which is only possible because of our status as the reserve currency. Why does that matter? Because without the reserve dollar, trade deficits are almost impossible. It's so wildly simplistic to say "They are entirely unrelated." Trade is good. For sure, no doubt. But "free trade" is a myth that cost Americans dearly. *If* Trump can stay focused, which I doubt, and if the Republicans can let go of their Atlas Shrugged fantasy long enough to strong arm the rest of the world into "fair trade," which I also doubt, we could have an economic renaissance. Personally, I think Americans like cheap TVs and debt too much to fix it, but I'm hoping to be proven wrong.

Pretty weak analogy. It's nothing about the leaky sink makes the people living in the house want to burn it down. Maybe if the leaky sink in the penthouse was creating black mold in the lower class apartments below, but at this point that's just me trying to fix your analogy. We know what the problem is. People, politicians, countries, companies. They all act in their best interests. Within our own country we can manage those interests and punish bad actors. Open it up to the whole world and you lose control of the system. The Qatari and Chinese takeover of academic institutions in America is part of the globalism experiment.

I think the real-time dissolution of the global order we're watching is pretty strong evidence on my side. Economics has always had a theory-vs-practice problem. A system isn't successful if it leads to the participants burning the system to the ground. The globalists are now resorting to a modification of the age-old defense of communism: Well that's not real globalism. You can't argue that bad-actor nations and self-enriching politicians are impediments to the realization of "true" free market globalism. Those are inescapable elements that any system must be able to control. If the result of your system is the quadrupling of the wealth of the top 0.1% while the bottom 90% get cheap TVs... The system is probably not sustainable. And here we are, not sustaining.

No one thought the Ukrainians would fight like they did, and no one thought the population of Europe would rally in support. We got too used to the Muslim nations and forgot that nationality exists in the rest of the world

Perhaps because it was a bad deal. Globalization ≠ Free Trade. That was the big lie.

Because the political discussions here don't matter. They are mostly people who enjoy the pursuit of knowledge and the mental exercise of defending and dissecting ideas. Civility is maintained through the shared experience of military service and the occasional necessary banning. It's not worth engaging with someone in that context who isn't going to converse honestly. The goal is to be right, not to win. What you do when your point is defeated is very different between those opposing goals.

It's just a test to see if you are willing to lie to support your party. A Republican version of this test might be: "Do you believe Donald Trump knew he was keeping Classified documents that he wasn't supposed to have." Avoiding the question isn't exactly failing the test, but it is a warning sign.

Yes, but this is why free trade is better than "impeded" trade. I don't think many people are arguing that we are better off if everyone applies tariffs to all trade. But what has been missed is what happens in an imbalanced trade regime. No, I don't mean one country buying more than the other. I mean when one country imposes trade barriers on another that is otherwise not reciprocating the barriers, the imbalance can create long-term outflows that have delayed effects far more detrimental than the tariff itself. I recall Yaron Brook making a libertarian argument that almost single-handedly broke my identity as a libertarian. He said if there are two shoe stores in a shopping center, and one is doing business the normal way, but the other has a rich uncle that is subsidizing the shop, allowing them to sell shoes at a much lower price, why should you care? You just get the better price which is better for you. That's it. "The market" will sort out the shoe stores, either by bankrupting the rich uncle or killing the "fair" shoe store, and the survivor will set prices at market rate. Two problems. First, this is anticompetitive behavior that even the US gets touchy with, for good reason. You can see this with Microsoft today. When a new cool product comes out, Microsoft makes a shitty version and includes it in their inescapable Office bundle knowing companies will not spend more for the better product if they are already getting a weaker version "for free." They wait until the new company collapses, then they raise the price of the bundle to account for the addition of the shitty version. In the short term, yeah, the customer got a deal. But in the long term "the market" suffocated a new product in the womb because a behemoth had the capital to crush them, *not* compete with a better product. This is bad. But more importantly, we aren't a shoe shop. We are a nation, and I *do* care if my nation (or specific industries within) are driven into insolvency by unfair competition. We do not have the option of losing. There is a lot (most) of international trade that is a great deal for us. But in many cases countries are using the Rich Uncle of government to undercut the US. Obviously China, and once they have a stranglehold on an industry, surprise surprise, up go the prices. We absolutely should punish nations that subsidize their industry. Not with the goal of ending them, but in a manner that ensures they cannot undercut our businesses through the practice. "Reciprocal," if you will.