Lord Ratner

Innocent. Until. Proven. Guilty. If you have some evidence you would like us to consider, share it. Unless *you* know why the DOJ didn't prosecute Gaetz, why waste everyone's time with hypotheticals?

Here we go again. If innocent until proven guilty is a technicality for you, then your evidence-free initial response to COVID seems to be the standard by which we should judge you. I'm old enough to remember when the Democratic party called Brett Kavanaugh a gang rapist based on absolutely zero evidence, including the newly-rejected vice president. So pardon me if I choose to trust our founding-principals on the assessment of guilt rather than the oft-corrupted media complex when deciding if Gaetz is a child rapist. Until the sin of the Kavanaugh hearing is confessed and atoned for, I won't be trusting *any* accusations of guilt from Democrats unless I see the evidence myself. You know, the same way I literally saw the Hunter Biden laptop materials with my own eyes. Why is it you pop up here only to make the absolute dumbest arguments?

Yeah I listened to it. Maybe read what I wrote again? I didn't claim he was crushing it. But it is unfamiliar and refreshing to see someone so boldly go against their party on something like Israel. That doesn't redeem him into some sort of intellectual giant. But he is surrounded by other people equally stupid. One of them just lost the election for president, and her answer on the border was indistinguishable from his. So as far as being shocked that he's in the Senate, there's a lot of other idiots to get rid of before I worry about him.

Assert dominance. Make it bigger.

Hey you walnut, this isn't your strong suit but try thinking from a perspective other than your own. I understand why you don't support Trump over Harris. Obviously I think it's the wrong decision, but I have the cognitive capacity to view it from your perspective based on what you've said. Are you too stupid to do this, or are you just too hurt from the loss to do anything but snipe right now? I sincerely hope that the rest of your party, or better put, the people who think like you do absolutely nothing to analyze the constitutional failings of "their side." Because nothing at this point would make me happier than 4 years of trump followed by 8 years of JD Vance. You had a literal cartoon of a toxic progressive running for president against Donald Trump. That's why Trump won. If you sincerely think that a riot at the Capitol is the most dangerous threat to the Constitution in the past decade or so, then you just aren't paying attention. Some of us are familiar with and care about the entire Constitution, not just the parts that are convenient to our political narrative. I have two candidates who selectively favor parts of the Constitution/BoR. The Democrats far and beyond threaten more of, and more important parts. When the Republicans start threatening all of the norms of Congress, the executive branch, and the supreme Court, then I will wholeheartedly agree with you. But you are pretending like Donald Trump started all of this, when in fact he is just a response to the constitutional disregard of progressives for the past 20ish years.

He recovered from his stroke in a way that I just wasn't expecting. So I will admit I was at least partially wrong on that front. But he isn't fully recovered obviously, and the stroke didn't give him any superpowers that overcome the fact he was an inexperienced idealistic fool before becoming a senator. Still, I'm struggling with the fact he is one of the few people in Washington, and especially in today's Democratic party, who is inflexible on his moral beliefs. His support for Israel has been surprising and refreshing.

Yeah, I thought the same. I will admit it will be a relief to have him out of Congress. You don't normally hear much of from the attorney general, so perhaps keeping him out of the spotlight will allow him to shine at whatever the fuck it is he's good at. So far he's the only one I'm skeptical of.

There's no such thing as a chief that polices reflective belts without generals who tolerate such behavior. Anyways, witch hunt or not, you can't inflict this amount of rapid change without a tremendous amount of pain. Rip the bandaid off.

He's a senator, dude. Already has power. Big difference. Only big one I can think of that refused power repeatedly was Condoleza Rice after her time in the Bush administration.

The abortion issue was solved by pushing it to the states, as predicted. It's hard to get pissed about abortion when the law in your immediate environment reflects your desires. Now that 10 more states have decided, I doubt you'll hear anything at all in the 2028 election. Lucky for Vance. Do you think Joe would have done better? I can't decide. It feels like a long time ago but the absolute tidal wave of negative press and sentiment shift after that debate was devastating. I think he would have lost even harder, and appropriately so; he's practically a vegetable at this point.

Shack

Now I know you're delusional. These people don't pass on cabinet jobs. They didn't spend their whole lives rolling around in the mud to suddenly become principled now. Doesn't matter which party they're in.

Two would be crazy. Every member of the House of Representatives would be a slave to their staff in a way much worse than the president currently is to the bureaucracy. I say 3 terms for senators and 6 for representatives, and that applies to all districts. No switching counties or states for another 6/3 terms. You need a few years to become an expert in any job. But the incidence of corruption is much higher in the 20+ year offices. Also, it greatly reduces the number of geriatric congressmen, since so many are age-in-place barnacles. A particularly savvy politician could then only serve 46 years of elected office if they successfully win every election as a representative, senator, vice president, and president. Numerically that will be impossible for more than 4 people per generation. If you can pull that off, bravo. The rest will be limited to <20 years

That's honestly how it should be everywhere.

You need a Republican governor to replace them with another Republican. And if they were getting elected based on name recognition only, the seat can flip in the next election. See Joe Manchin.

Trump lost by how many million last time, and won by how many this time? That swing accounts for a significant portion. Also the left went from defeating the literal devil in their minds, to supporting someone who had the charisma of a wet paper bag. That accounts for some more. Further the overall turnout driven by the pandemic probably resulted in a lot of people who only voted because they were bored not voting this time around. I'm not saying it's not significant, but it's also not inexplicable.

Remember, the only part of an AR-15 that matters is the stripped lower receiver. You can regularly get those for $20. That's a cheap form of future gun-control insurance.

I agree, but those were not sloppy operations, and in both cases they *felt* plausible. Why? Because we all know NATO or the UK or the US aren't going to go to war over the assassination of Russians by Russians. But if Russia downed two planes full of Westerners, especially given the current state of the relationship between Russia and the West, there would be a war. It was just luck back in 2014 that the plane accidentally missile'd out of the sky wasn't a Delta flight full of red blooded Americans. There are better and safer ways to test the aviation security infrastructure than with actual incendiary devices so poorly designed that they both went off by accident. I have no idea what happened, obviously, But this is not the first time Western forces have attempted to frame Russia for something in an attempt to drum up more support. The pipeline example was much more transparent, but this one has the same smell to it. And with Donald Trump favored to win the election, I can see some "misguided" pro-Ukrainian spies thinking this would be the best way to protect the way. And before Bashi gets an erection so hard he passes out, I'm still strongly in favor of providing Ukraine with the resources to prolong this fight.

But it's so much more than that. First (R) president to win the popular vote in two decades. An indisputable electoral college victory. Huge gains within minority groups. Retaking the Senate and most likely holding the House. It's the closest thing to a mandate a presidential candidate can win in the modern era. This will greatly reduce "the resistance," especially from within the conservative sphere as many will be forced to reevaluate their future and strategy. It's still a tragedy that we're in a point in history where Donald Trump is the leader of the free world, but it's as good as the tragedy could have gone. We're still on a collision course with fiscal and monetary doom, but perhaps we can at least put out some fires.

This is one of those stories that you have to stop and consider. It just doesn't add up on its surface. Remember when everybody said Russia blew up their own pipelines? This story sounds like that. If you're going to declare war on the United States this is a very strange and uncontrolled way to do it. "Downing commercial passenger or cargo planes would be a big step up and some Western intelligence agencies have questioned whether such a plot could be the result of Russian spies carrying out a plan without the full authorization of the Kremlin, according to people familiar with the matter." This is very different than saying "Russia did it."

It's been a long time since I was a UPT IP, but I always had a simple hypothetical for the tanker guys I flew with that were debating the assignment. You can adapt this to whatever your current airframe is. If it was a Wednesday, middle of the day, and I came to your desk and told you that I had a pattern only sortie about to step, and you had no beans left, no requirements, nothing in your desk job that required you to skip the flight; basically, if you did it you would be doing it for nothing other than to hop in the plane and fly a little. It hasn't been a while since you've flown, and you haven't been flying your ass off. Just... Do you *want* to fly? If the answer to that is "hell yeah," then you're probably going to enjoy UPT. If you're the guy who would rather use the time to catch up on some low priority tasks, or maybe hit the commissary so you don't have to after work, or whatever other simple life and career tasks we all have, then it's probably not for you. Bottom line, if you just fucking love flying airplanes, it's hard to get a job as good as upt. If flying planes is just how you pay the bills, then moving your family to the least exciting cities in America is probably not going to be particularly fulfilling.

Gotcha. I'll probably buy one of the kid sized rifles, since I'd like to start them at around 6, and I can just cycle them through it until they are big enough for the grown up guns. Got a few years before I need to worry about that. That Marlin 1894 though... That might be a more immediate concern

Did you just get the standard size, or their kid-sized rifle? How hold was your son when you got it for him?

Well well well... I might have just found the gun my kids will learn to shoot on... Very interesting, and a pretty good price too. How much different is .22 Magnum compared to LR? I only have experience with the latter.

Twice as much as an 8 DPI 9 line?