Lord Ratner

Walk away? Why type of high school romance analysis is this? No, they are not going to willingly "lay it down" against China. They are going to send what they have, where we tell them to send it because they know without us they are nothing more than Chinese vacation destinations. And I bet the Japanese have no interest in finding out how much the Chinese remember about their treatment during WWII. And where does this NATO loyalty come from? As soon as the threat from Russia fell with the Berlin Wall, Western Europe allowed their militaries to crumble into dust, finally free to spend that money on social programs and solar panels. NATO is a joke, and it exists for one reason. We saved them from Russia (and freed the rest of them), and they know we are the only thing preventing it from happening again. So in exchange for our blanket of strength, they had to pull their weight (a whopping 2%). Of course future American liberal politicians found orgasmic elation from the fantasy that we had finally defeated human nature once and for all and "ended history," so they were only too happy to look the other way while the European military capability evaporated. Now Russia is reminding everyone just how scary a few hundred thousand soldiers on your border can be, even if they lack any semblance of training or modern equipment, and suddenly the Euros have a newfound appreciation for NATO. Cute. You have to be delusional (and I know you aren't) if you think any of these countries are going to raise a single pistol against China unless they think it's the only way to maintain their sovereignty and get the Americans into the fight. The Germans sacrificed their entire energy industry for cheap Russian gas, just wait until we find out how dependent these countries are on the Chinese when the time comes to "lay it down." Our loyalty has always been transactional. Welcome to democracy. Thomas Jefferson learned it the hard way less than 10 years after he helped create this country. Many others have learned it since. Exactly. NATO only has value if the members are capable of military projection. And if you've ever negotiated anything, you should know that your have no leverage if you aren't willing to walk away.

This is the entire foundation of geopolitics today. The [long-standing system] is broken so let's get rid of it. You can't say that about [long-standing system]! Sure it needs some adjustments to work again but it's vital to global stability. Ok fine, if we're going to keep it then let's make those adjustments to fix it. No. It will take years to make these changes. Fine, then we're cancelling [lopsided trade arrangement that favors an ally at the expense of America]. Wait no, we're fixing it right now! See?! Why are you punishing us by trading with our country the way we've traded with you for decades?!

They broke the first rule of the F-22. Your plane needs to look cool.

Makes sense... Because I totally didn't intercept physical mail when my report card was in it as a kid. My email however, is a literal fortress with a unique complex password and a physical hardware key that has its own separate pin for access...

But not you, right? You're the smart one who figured it all out. You don't get information from "the media." If only you were in charge, things would be much better...

That's a lot of irrelevant blather. The voters picked him. He has been convicted of zero crimes. If you're tired of the voters picking lunatics, maybe stop subverting their will. We didn't get Gaetz and Trump in a vacuum. They are responses to a constant attempt to keep their votes from mattering. The Boston Tea Party was about taxation without representation. Now we have representation without representation. If the sitting president wants to nominate him and the Senate chooses to confirm him, that's that. Stopping that process by lying about crimes is the exact antithesis of our system. Y'all are pretty cavalier with false criminal accusations considering how many examples we have of governments using them to stomp out the opposition. No thanks. One lunatic in Congress or on the cabinet is way better than what happens if the voters feel like more extreme measures are required for their voice to be heard. No one ever thinks they are part of the problem. You either believe in the system or you don't. 🤷🏻‍♂️

He is absolutely a moron and I absolutely hope he's out of politics. But I also believe in the rule of law, and the rights of voters to choose their representation. So until he is proven to be guilty in accordance with his rights of due process under our constitution, I will "defend" him. The last thing we need is two parties with blatant disrespect for our foundational legal theories. Gaetz sucks so hard that he even looks like a shitty person. The most punchable face in Washington. But that's irrelevant. How many times are Democrats going to falsely accuse Republicans of something before conservatives stop playing along with this one-sided bullshit game?

Well, first off, I didn't really care. I think he was a bad choice and I think he was a bad congressman. But... What's this "majority of" nonsense? You've been accused of drinking alcohol, fucking women, gambling, saying mean things, attending sex parties, and raping a minor. Sure... You didn't rape a minor, but you still did the majority of those things... Right? Sorry bud, the majority of those things aren't illegal. And if he has never been accused of the crime of sex with a minor, no one would have ever cared. It's the ultimate bait-and-switch.

Yup. I'd love to see if they were using the same batshit-crazy witness that the DOJ dismissed. They almost certainly are, and that guy is literally in jail. But it's not all bullshit. He was clearly living the sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll lifestyle, which while legal, is probably not how he portrayed himself to his constituents. And even though he wasn't the perpetrator, sex parties are notorious for hiring prostitutes to balance out the male-to-female ratio. He's gross, but not that gross, and probably not a child rapist.

Similar, except we use a different bank entirely for overseas/safety accounts. Transfer money from fidelity --> overseas account when needed, and we never carry the cards for the Fidelity CMA. That way if I'm held at gunpoint there's nothing on me that indicates the existence of another account to withdraw from. Just the USAA accounts with <$1k in them. That said, I don't actually have a fear of the fidelity accounts getting accessed as a function of my CMA being breached, but we already had the USAA accounts, so using them in this manner was simple.

Could you explain the debit card fraud concern a bit more?

And we never wanted to. 🤣

Two years of memes and I have no idea what the fuck you people are saying.

Fidelity CMA with money market for the cash

You guys are arguing over whether or not she's a real Democrat or Republican as though we aren't in the middle of another generational transformation of the parties. There is no party ideology right now. Obama was the death of the Kennedy-to-Clinton Democratic party and Trump was the death of the Nixon-to-W.Bush Republican party. We have no idea what the next versions of the parties will look like, so how can we know who is a "real" member?

I found it easier to just pretend you had no idea the rule existed, or that you forgot. Playing dumb was a surprisingly powerful tool in an organization where the entire officer system was predicated on the officers voluntarily pushing themselves to the limit on the hopes of securing promotions. And in Bagram, my missing reflective belt was always wherever I was going. I kept one at the squadron and one in my room for the rare time an SNCO wanted to call my bluff and follow me to the destination. Drove them bonkers.

So many questions. Were they able to get visual on the missile? Did they just eject when they heard the warning, in an time that they had no expectation taking fire? Did the missile ship broadcast to bail out over guard? 😂🤣

That's the crux right there. It would be great to have a disruptor with operational experience. But we don't. I'm not a big Tulsi fan, but what we need right now are people willing to slaughter sacred cows, and the best people for that task are the ones who have been scorned by the priests of the old religion.

Agreed. Unfortunately Luigi-the-spoiled-assassin probably set back the attempt to get them deregulated by several years

Ok.

They are terrified of what's coming. Good.

They aren't. It looks that way when you catch two different intersecting orbits that illuminate and extinguish at the intersection point. I've seen it and it's completely trippy, but the giveaway is usually that it's repeating, which makes sense because the satellites are evenly spaced in their orbits. It doesn't take a lot of mental horsepower to debunk the "conspiracy." Alien spaceships have no need for headlights. And secret government programs that have functional anti-gravity propulsion systems aren't going to leave the nav lights on while they do donuts over population centers for fun.

Yep. No different than all the pilots talking about UFOs right now because they don't understand how starlink satellites reflect the sun back at us.