Lord Ratner

It's a garbage bill. Plain and simple. It does not fix the problems at the border, and exists solely to take away the Republican talking point going into the election. I 100% support torpedoing that bill. I'm completely in favor of supporting Ukraine, but they exist to me as just one issue facing this country, not *the* issue. For better or worse, Ukraine is not an issue that unites the Republican party. However it seems like the issue is of minimal importance to the Democrats as well. There are at least well-reasoned arguments on both sides surrounding the Ukraine debate. There are absolutely no well-reasoned arguments supporting the absolute dumpster fire situation at our Southern border. Democrats would condition aid for Ukraine on perpetuating an overtly anti-American border policy, and as such they can be trusted with *nothing* that isn't codified in legislation. How many times are Republicans going to fall for Democratic border "solutions?" No more. The Democrats dug themselves into this hole, and they can easily dig themselves out by simply fixing the border problem. Instead, for whatever unfathomable reason, they wish to perpetuate the millions of illegal aliens coming to this country, while still hoping to neutralize the issue going into the presidential election. Let's say that they are successful, and as a result are able to retain control of the White House for another 4 years. I believe that would be terrible for the country, and far worse than whatever is going to happen to Ukraine, especially considering that even the positive possible outcomes in the Ukraine conflict are nullified by incompetent American leadership in the following years.

I've said before that there's no reason why we can't support Ukraine *and* deal with the border crisis at the same time. We are capable as a country of multitasking. However if this bill does not include the border provisions, then we are by definition choosing Ukraine over our own border, and that I do not support at all. I hope the Republicans in the house tank this bill.

If they truly change the inspection system to be random and unannounced, that will greatly improve the lives of airmen. A lot of nonsense will have to be cut out for fear of ruining the records of Wing commanders everywhere. I wouldn't count on it

I'd bet dollars to donuts that this guy thinks cutting services will somehow cause his constituents to apply national level pressure to Texas to stop the flow. Of course it won't work that way, but I think a lot of people are gradually coming around to the realization that we have been electing sociopathic clowns to all positions of power for quite a while now. Legitimately, these are people who are exceptionally good actors, matched only by their exceptionally weak intellects.

I knew it was coming, but it's still a thrill 🤣😂

I just don't see a path to victory for her. Obviously all the Democrats vote for her, though I don't think she will stir up much enthusiasm amongst the moderate or Union Democrats. Obviously the Republicans won't vote for her, but she'll probably do a decent job boosting Republican turnout a bit. But the but the independent voters? Does she really pull them? Trump doesn't, though he'll do better with the spiraling immigration situation. But Hillary Clinton at least worked as a politician before running for president, Michelle Obama will purely be a president's wife running to be president. I don't know. But I think the bigger issue is that if she runs, there's no chance of getting RFK Jr out of the race, and I think he will harvest millions of votes from Democrats who don't just want to vote for the wife of a politician. You may have noticed that there is almost a complete media blackout of RFK Jr. They do not want anyone to realize he's still running.

I have always thought that Tucker Carlson has an excellent record on domestic issues and a nearly perfect streak of getting international issues dead wrong.

Yeah but did they wait too long? They know Kamala Harris is a guaranteed loss. Do they have time at this point to run a primary? I don't really know how it works this late in the game. If Biden is out then it seems like zero chance they are able to rein in Robert Kennedy, and I think if he's running as an independent the Democrats are in a Ross Perot scenario, also guaranteed to lose.

I'm sure his head will explode when he finds out that a lot of us don't think anyone over the age of 65 should be allowed to serve in Congress or the executive branch either.

Lol, exactly. Forgetting to turn off the anti-ice for 5 minutes and you get a total engine failure? That's the definition of a "real shocker."

Until I flew with Huggy I had no idea that we even had pilot training in 1865. His class patch was printed on papyrus...

This was 2010 and 2012. Same. I fly with a lot of captains who spent 10-20 years making those crap wages. Seems like they all thought they'd be at the regionals for a year or two, so they didn't care what the pay was, but then everything went to hell and suddenly it mattered. Personally I think the regionals are going to get swallowed into the legacy airlines if we don't get a slowdown soon. The huge benefit to the corporations of lower pay is dead, and if you get your regional pilots on to the mainline seniority list sooner, it makes it much less likely they will jump ship. The aircraft are also getting bigger and bigger, and in many cases are operating with fewer installed seats due to contractual limitations with the mainline pilot contracts. Suck the regionals into mainline and those limitations go away. But whatever makes the least sense is what will happen.

Bottom line, the airlines made being a pilot absolute dog shit for anybody who had to go through the regionals before making it to a legacy carrier. They took advantage of deregulation, mergers, and bankruptcies to rape and pillage the pilot pipeline for years. They did such a good job taking advantage of the regional pilots that everybody told their friends and family to pursue other careers. I remember when I was a FAIP having the regional pilots show up and talk about how they had to join the guard because they couldn't live off of $15,000 a year anymore. Absolutely insane that someone flying dozens/hundreds of people around the country everyday would be making that type of wage. So now we get the crocodile tears from the airlines about how there aren't enough pilots in the pipeline, and how unfortunate it is they have to pay the regionals so much money now to keep them from jumping ship. Fuck these guys. They took on billions of dollars of debt so they could buy back shares and bump their share-based compensation a few pennies each quarter, and they have the audacity to cry to us about manning and compensation. The 1500 hour requirement was put into place because of aviation mishaps and a reassessment of what is required to operate in the modern airspace. Absolutely nothing in that regard has changed, so neither should the experience requirements. If we keep rewarding these shitty executives by letting them run to the government to solve their self-induced problems, we're just going to get the same behavior over and over again.

Yes. And there are far more members under 63-64 who are against this than those in favor. Many remember the stagnation caused by the previous increase. And it removes leverage.

I will support age 60-whatever when there is meaningful testing that filters out pilots. Too fat? Bye. Can't handle *complex* surprise EPs in the sim? Bye. Can't pass a real medical exam from a random AME? Bye. Comparative cognitive testing from your previous attempts shows a decline? Bye. And not just for 65+, all pilots. But right now this is about guys who aren't ready for retirement, many of whom are convinced their particular struggles make them uniquely deserving, wanting more. My ability to retire early is affected by how soon others retire. So if the 65+ crowd can make a financial-based argument, so can I. But mostly I'm just tired of the Baby Boomers upending every system for their financial advantage then acting shocked that other generations don't appreciate being left the tattered ruins of a once functional societal pact.

It's not going anywhere. The population is more interested in what they can get from the government, and they will elect politicians based on it. Neither Trump or Biden claim any intention of fixing the deficit caused by these giveaways. Any threat to global stability is a threat to the governments' ability to continue the domestic handouts, so they will keep their head in the sand. Ironically, the obsession with short-term stability is going to guarantee the deterioration of conditions long-term.

He's one of my favorite comedians

Depending on exactly what the problem was, I've had this happen before. Tried to spin up the engines and it only got to ~13% before stalling out. We couldn't figure it out, and then the plane next to us reports the same problem. And then the plane next to them, and so on. Turns out the planes were angled such that the freezing rain froze the valve that controls air intake to the Apu. But only the planes that were lined up in the same direction. The solution was to shut down the APU and let the heat from the APU radiate outward and unfreeze the valve, but that required external power and by that point DFW was a circus. Eventually they called freezing rain in the METAR and just closed the airport for the night.

I know you're just trying to make a point, but you're wrong here. In that scenario you could just pay off the loan early. Zero risk. Like I said, it's been so long since the Fed wasn't fucking around with artificially low interest rates that we have forgotten how a market acts in time of limited liquidity.

No, I haven't. I'll keep them in mind if I decide to try carrying a Glock, but I've been really happy with the Sig P365X so far. Though I might just try them on my G17 for the range. Thanks for the tip

I never understood the obsession with 1911s. They are gorgeous, and I have one, but every time someone tells me they carry one I have to question their thought process. Ancient tech, low capacity, and a super light trigger pull. Just doesn't make sense to me for most realistic use scenarios. They are thin, so I guess that counts for something, but it's not like it's a small gun. Glocks are fucking hideous, and I don't love the grips, but it's a phenomenal weapon for actual use. Edit: Obviously I'm assuming your friend is using a Kimber 1911.. That's all I ever see from them.

That's not true at all. If he can't afford to make the payments back of he loses it, for whatever reason, then his original idea is financially sound. Take the loan, put it into a high-yield savings account, and then pay the loan off using the savings account.

That's great, but useless to an individual. Would you risk your financial stability on a one-time bet with a 33% chance you lose? For personal funds, sure, for leveraged investing that's a different story. I would do it exactly how the investment firms do it. https://www.fidelity.com/trading/margin-loans/margin-rates So around 9-12% with the option to liquidate your collateral if your losses put my funds at risk. If the loan is restricted to only market index funds, then maybe that drops to Fed Funds Rate + 3 (so about 8.5%), but again, only if I have the option to liquidate your collateral if the investments decline towards a loss.

Finally. You guys really haven't been paying attention to financial history for the last 20 years of you can't differentiate between investments with loaned money and investments with personal cash. Hell, we literally had the worst/second worst banking failure in American history happen less than a year ago, and all because the risk managers at the 4 banks invested borrowed money into what they were positive were highly safe assets. Until they weren't after a 40 year bond bull rally. Leverage is always a completely different game. If you don't understand that, you have no business telling anybody what they should do with their money. And anybody under the age of about 40-45 has never invested in a normalized interest rate environment. Absolutely everything has changed now that we are no longer in the era of ZIRP/NIRP. Just look at what is happening to commercial real estate, another "sure thing." The cadet should absolutely dump his personal money into whatever investment vehicles he wants to, but investing with leverage is a dangerous game. It should not be done by anyone who assesses the viability of financial instruments simply by looking at the chart brabus posted.

It's not his money, it's the bank's money. If we need to go back to the basics of investing then step one is knowing who's money you're playing with. There is a cataclysmic difference between dollar cost averaging, which is a good strategy for index investing, and dumping most of your (the bank's) money into something that historically has very large moves in the negative direction on its way up. Anyone who dumped money into the market back in 2000 or 2007 took years just to get back to even. Those who dollar cost averaged did much, much better. The same uniformed amateur financial advisors who recommended everybody buy a house at their PCS location "because housing never goes down" put a lot of people into some serious debt when '08 '09 came around. That's all well and good when it's your money to lose, but when it's the bank's money it's a very different game. It may seem obvious to you that this statement has a gigantic caveat, but it might not to the cadet asking for financial advice. Better advice: " A simple index fund historically outperforms 2.99%. however that is a running average and varies dramatically based on the starting and ending points of the investment. Dollar cost averaging will help you avoid these wild fluctuations and take advantage of the long-term trend upward, so don't dump your money into an investment all at once, ever." If that's what you meant, great. But it certainly wasn't obvious from your post.