Lord Ratner

I don't think the conversation is as useless as you suppose, though I agree in the in the short term it won't change. But there are periods of great conflict that usually are accompanied by great changes. These could be social like the civil Rights movement, since we are in fact in a country where many people thought it inconceivable that black people would be treated equally. Or it could be economic, such as coming out of the Great depression where the government took on power that most people thought impossible. Or it could be political. When it happens, time will not be taken for the debate it deserves. It rarely is. The most prominent idea on the table will be adopted. Having ranked choice voting take hold at the local and state level makes it a visible and viable alternative should we encounter the type of Great conflict that will motivate change to the political system. And the next generation of politicians are almost certainly spending their younger years on forums and social media conversations just like this one. Change is not a process. It's an explosion. I think we can pretty easily tell that the fuse is lit, but no one knows how long it is.

Correct. Aside from demonstrating that you do not understand RCV, or even a present system where a runoff would not help the candidate "clearly beating everyone" when the new votes come in, what you are saying is that you are okay with the system where people don't vote for who they actually want because everybody is simultaneously trying to game the election to get the "least bad option." Your way gets us what we have now. A lot of us are over that. Also, did the 615 vote guy win in Alaska? The detractors of RCV always seem to have hypothetical problems with it, yet those problems never manifest. That's a problem entirely independent from trying to apply traditional voting logic on RCV ballot logic.

You are still, once again, missing the point. And making a pretty massive assumption at the same time. Also, what do you mean "not put him in their ranked choices?" Rcv allows you to put all of the candidates in the order you prefer them. If you leave a candidate out, it implies that there is no scenario by which you support them. So why on Earth would any of those hypothetical voters vote for DeSantis if they left him out of their first ballot? They are allowed to "revote." That's exactly what their ballot does. If their preferred candidate gets knocked off, then their second choice, which in your scenario would absolutely not be Trump, gets the votes. That would go to DeSantis, giving him a majority and the win. There are only shredded ballots under the current system, which gave us Trump despite disantis's plurality. It's still possible under rcv that Trump would have won, because a lot of DeSantis voters very likely would have gone to Trump as their second choice. Just like a lot of Vivek voters would have gone to Trump as their second choice. That's not a fault of RCV, it's a reality of politics. Both DeSantis and vivek had supporters who liked them as a "polished" version of trump. And yet neither viveks voters or DeSantis's voters were likely to vote for the other, and instead supported Trump. Rcv would have just made that process transparent, as we would be able to see the second third fourth choices of the voters. If they didn't put DeSantis anywhere in their ranked vote, then they obviously didn't want him under any situation. That is, again, the entire point. It requires very unrealistic and fabricated situations to make rcv do the things you think it can do. (I'm using voice typing, so please excuse all the typos and grammatical errors)

Once again it's a misanalysis of how RCV is supposed to work. You can't apply the rules of a traditional election to an RCV election. People voted differently (for their first choice) specifically *because* they were voting ranked choice. However your scenario is perfectly illustrative, because if they didn't have RCV they would have just voted Trump in the first place to not "waste their vote," just like many of us are in this election. So we get Trump either way, but in your example because the minor candidates simply didn't have enough popularity (as minor candidates I'll add) to beat the candidate with the most support. This also ignores the fact that many of the examples as to why RCV doesn't work are incredibly contrived. That professor's article creates a series of ballot examples, but only provides three of the possible six voting combinations in a three candidate election. You also can't say that someone doesn't have "the most support" just because they didn't get the most first place rankings in an RCV election. Again, the entire purpose of an RCV election is to allow minor candidates, who are in fact the primary choice of a voter, to get the first position. But that doesn't equal the most support in RCV. In your example above, it is highly likely that Donald Trump would be the second place choice of a vast majority of conservative voters who simply prefer one of the minor candidates more. If Donald Trump doesn't get a single first place vote, but the entirety of the second place vote, he absolutely has more support than 4 other candidates splitting the first-place votes. The second example of gaming the system also assumes complete control over the vote. Which no one will have. It also assumes that problem is somehow not inherent to any voting system. But we have that now. Your last paragraph has no basis. She didn't receive any votes, and a candidate who receives no votes in rcv is not elected. There is no comparison between what the Democrats have done with Kamala and *any* voting system, because no voting system was used to select her. Yeah, a weighted system as suggested in the professor's article would be better. But it is completely impractical to expect a population to be able to understand that and do the necessary math. Rcv is a simple system that solves 95% of a complicated problem. The metric for whether or not it is successful is not if it is perfect, only if it is better than what we have. And that's easy.

I'd take those odds. The dude is probably Biff anyway, he looks soft. But seriously, under our current system you either get to bang the bartender's wheelchair-bound grandma, or a dude. It would be a refreshing change to have "the 10" running for office.

Did you read that article completely? It has nothing to do with ranked choice voting. They go to a top four, and two of the top candidates decided to drop out. So two of the lower candidates moved up. The article gives no indication that there were additional candidates that got votes between the dude with 621 and the top vote getters. The real headline of this article should be "nobody wants to serve in elected office in Alaska" The only thing that article shows is that Alaskans continue to be, as they always have been, batshit crazy.

I don't think using the traditional primary election system as evidence of ranked-choice's faults makes much sense at all. The whole argument is that the traditional primary and election system is broken. Point in case, we have two absolutely ridiculous candidates, specifically because no one is willing to risk "throwing away their vote." Ranked choice voting allows you to vote for who you actually want. The example above is evidence of why rank choice voting works, not why it doesn't work. The only way A wins is to break every 3+ candidate election into a series of 2-way matchups. No one does that anywhere. There might be convincing arguments for the status quo, but that link isn't it.

But that's a dumb hypothetical. There is no two candidate election between A and C, or A and B. Why worry about what would have happened in the hypothetical election, that isn't in fact happening. In that example a got the fewest "top" votes, So they either would have lost in a three-way election, or been eliminated from the runoff. That's exactly how the system is supposed to work. And this dude is a professor?

Do you read anything here? Stop arguing with your fantasy of a conservative voter and argue with the ones in front of you.

That's not *entirely* true. Bringing <4nm chip production on-shore is a pretty humongous move. Remember than for the past 20 years "the West" has felt no need to control any portion of this capacity, even though the EUV machines used to make the chips are developed in Europe. Cheap labor has won every single geopolitical argument since the Berlin Wall fell. That might not be the strategy people who are interested in a free Taiwan want to see, but removing the primary leverage point of the Chinese is a big move. If we get close enough to a functional chip-fab in the US, then on day one of the Chinese assault on Taiwan we can pull a Ukraine (keep arming the Taiwanese to resist and erode the Chinese military), maintain chip production at home to keep the (Western) economy from imploding, and put a big pile of dynamite on the TSMC fabricators in case the Chinese succeed.

Every once in a while you have a good post. But then I remember one of your best was when you realized how wrong you were during COVID, so I can't be shocked that you are wrong again. Lets begin, and remember, we are comparing the (R) candidate to the (D) candidate, not the (R) candidate to a hypothetical utopia the left has never successfully delivered. And? I'm an atheist, but it's pretty hard to miss the gaping hole left by the decline of Judeo-Christian participation in America. A bunch of well-balanced (i.e. genetic/familial lottery winners) liberals somehow assume that all Americans can live the way they do, but there are lost, troubled, stupid, or weak people out there and they need what religion provided. No replacement has been offered. And does anyone actually prefer the left's alternative? Sorry, but until I hear leftists loudly-and-proudly repudiate the horror show of modern Islam, I'm not going to listen to their whining about the cruelty of Christianity. Casually accusing a bunch of people here of hidden racism is a nice touch. Common trait of the leftist: I'm not just of a different opinion... I'm morally superior and enlightened. Nevermind that states' rights is a fundamental premise of the founding of the nation and a perpetual struggle between the liberals and conservatives for the past 150 years. Nope, its racists! He made it worse with the third (and if I recall, largest) round of stimulus, and the "Inflation Reduction Act." The economy was already well into the recovery at that point. There absolutely would have been inflation either way, and if Trump won in 2020 I am pretty confident he would have also done another round of stimulus, so I personally give him no credit here. But Biden did absolutely make it worse. And Harris is going to do the same if you can believe her current (ever changing) set of policies. Uh Huh... and who approved those permits (and pipelines)? Why do we even have to waste time on this one? Which side openly demonizes fossil fuel production, which side doesn't? Pretty simple, unless you're a liar. Correct, but if inflation is a COVID reaction, so too is the unemployment drop. Can't have it both ways. There's that reasonable human in there, screaming for freedom. Let him out more. Can you reference the Nazi stuff? That's usually (and currently) the attack line of the hardcore progressives. Just pop into reddit to see who thinks they are fighting the Fourth Reich. It ain't the conservatives. Riot, not insurrection. Don't breeze over the huge difference. If it was a riot (it was)... who riots more? Conservatives or liberals? Who supports rioters more? Remember, in an election we compare the candidates to each other, not to the non-existent ideal. Source? Which party supported giving money to the Iranians? Which party helped Iran in the hopes their oil production would bring down gas prices? And which party attacked Netanyahu while Iran used their money to support Hamas and Hezbollah? You're doing poorly. Oh and alienating Saudi Arabia sure did wonders in the fight against Iran, huh? Which president was that again? Neither side (when I say Republican or Democrat I mean the political actors, never the voters) is ever going to castigate their candidate. Lets not forget that Kamala Harris is a serial liar who accused a good man of being a gang rapist just because she didn't want another conservative on the supreme court. She is *every bit* the immoral, lying, narcissistic piece of shit that Trump is. And her current boss is no different. We are in the phase of civilization where the wheels come off. Part of that is an incompetent, immoral political class. We will have better leaders after the great struggle, but not until it gets ugly. I have no objection to calling Trump out for what he is. But the constant fantasy on the left that there is a difference in moral fiber is laughable. The only difference is the policy. Period.

And at this company, I would give either one equal weight. I know they were still doing diversity interviews, but I think part of the problem here is that none of these companies want to announce anything like a hiring freeze officially, since it would have implications for the share price. And the only thing anybody in management is interested in at these companies is the share price. Absolutely zero people give a shit about the functioning of the airlines operationally.

I didn't know if "furlough" to them includes the newly contractual "blank lines" that made furloughing a *lot* less expensive. Like I said, grain of salt, but our latest vacancy bid for March '25 (what we use to bid for upgrades and fleet changes) had a paltry number of upgrades. I think people forget how small the changes in passenger volume need to be to have large effects on pilot manning. And anyone who thinks Boeing is getting their shit together any time soon hasn't been paying attention.

AA now expecting to halt hiring for the next 18 months. 1300 pilot surplus, with plans to look into furloughs if that number hits 1,500. This is from the chief pilots behind closed doors, so take it with a grain of salt. But something has them spooked.

Sadly I'm not surprised. Anytime Trump does well of anything, he immediately goes back to being lazy and assuming that he'll never fuck up again. The debate with Biden and the assassination attempt made him cocky. He'll probably realize that he fucked up this debate, but Kamala would be a fool to agree to another one. Fortunately he didn't do anything overly insane, so this probably won't move the needle much either way. I think he still has a very good shot at winning the electoral college, but not enough to bet on it.

While I agree with the overall premise, these people volunteered to help us on the promise we would see the war through (like with Japan and Germany). We didn't.

Tucker has always been ahead of the curve on domestic issues, and almost always wrong on international ones. But you can't really expect someone to be right about everything, can you?

I think you're mistaking the definition of unintentional. This officer very intentionally killed the airman. When he drew his weapon and began firing, as you stated, he was firing to neutralize the threat. And for the police, you shoot to kill, not injure. Center mass or head. He intentionally drew his weapon and intentionally fired it until the target, intentionally selected, was neutralized, which includes the reasonable assumption of death. Unintentional homicide would be like what Alec Baldwin did. He had absolutely no intent to kill that woman, but his negligence in handling the firearm resulted in it. Read the paragraph on second-degree murder again (I somehow screwed it up in the quoted block). "... Leads one person to make an intentional decision to kill the other person. It was not premeditated, but it was intentional nonetheless."

The acorn incident demonstrated everything we need to know about how corrupted our concept of policing has become. That's not a commentary on the actual officers. These incidents are happening too much to blame on rogue cops. They do feel like they're at war, and depending on where they are, they might be. Every time America has sent soldiers into war zones, a good portion of them come back broken. It's very hard to exist in a world where you are a target and then transition into a civilized existence. The fact that officers don't travel around with partners anymore is probably one of the biggest single factors I can identify. The simple reality is that you are much more vulnerable, and you feel much more vulnerable, when you are alone. However the incident recently where the two cops shot a woman in her own home, clearly mentally compromised, because she threw a pot of hot water at them, shows that the issue isn't just cops being solo. Another part of it is the expectation that any risk to their lives is an unacceptable risk. We don't accept that mindset in the military and we shouldn't accept it in the police. Risk is part of the job, and yes, it's better if a cop dies than an innocent person being killed by the cops. Both on an a professional level and from the perspective of maintaining citizen faith in the system. https://apnews.com/article/illinois-sheriffs-deputy-charged-cf164189d678f921deff05fa3789d3a2 You can watch the body cam footage of this shooting. I'm not arguing that people should have free reign to throw boiling water at cops, but they were in her house for an issue that did not involve her as a threat, and as soon as she started acting crazy they could have and should have backed out of her house and deescalated. Instead the cop stood his ground and barked orders at a crazy person. That doesn't mean this cop should go to jail for the rest of his life. But it does mean that something is deeply flawed with the modern view of policing and training of officers.

The best explanation I heard was that the AF obsession with getting more Joint Staff General Officers meant two things: 1) You had to identify them very early because of all the different boxes you "needed" to check to qualify. 2) The boxes that needed checking were almost entirely administration and paperwork jobs, so once you were "selected for greatness" as a captain, you were basically done leading people in a real sense for the rest of your career. And as we know, pilots don't lead until much later in their career compared to the ground-pounders, so... Not a lot of experience or talented leaders at the top in the AF.

I often marveled at the Air Force's remarkable ability to make incompetent decisions despite the fact that every general I met was, for the most part, a good dude and seemingly competent. Then I saw who amongst my peer group was going to be the next generation of senior leaders. Turns out they were also, for the most part, good dudes. But when it's your peers it's easier to know *what* they were competent at, and it started to make sense. It's not the skill set you'd pick to lead a war fighting machine.

Desktop or mobile? I wasn't aware there were good Ad Block options for the phone.

The ads kind of suck again. It's almost like a shitty porn site where every click has a pop-up, drop-down, or banner that covers the navigation bar.

It's obviously an escalation, but it seems unlikely the Russians can fight on more than the current number of fronts. Maybe? I doubt the Ukrainians have much spare capacity either. If this is purely a military play... Good luck. But if this is an attempt to create some incentive for ending the conflict, it could be a brilliant move. Apparently the US decided to take the handcuffs off.

That's because you (not really you, but your troll persona) are quite apparently dumb enough to think that anyone here means "we won't be able to print enough currency to cover these bills" when they say "we can't afford it." Absolutely nobody is referring to the Federal Reserve's ability to create dollars. No one. Not one single person here. Because humans don't speak semantically in raw literal declaratives. What they are saying is that the process of printing money (issuing new debt, creating it out of thin air, adding it to the ledger, however you insist on portraying it) to cover these expenses will, as it always has, destabilize the currency in a way that will at a minimum negatively impact the purchasing power of the population, or at the extremes, destabilize the entire society such that the status quo falls apart. "We can't afford this" is no more a statement of monetary capacity than it is when a military/airline parent says "I can't afford to miss another soccer game or dance recital." Normal people don't have to explain such simple context to the participants of a conversation, but apparently we would have to dumb it down for you keep up. Fortunately, your participation is neither necessary or beneficial to the conversation, so I doubt we will spend too much time trying. I'm taking a shit right now, so I have a little free time to indulge.