Lord Ratner

We've royally fucked up policing if a citizen exercising their constitutional rights can be considered probable cause, or a reasonable threat. Like I said before, cops need to understand that they are expected to be at a higher risk. This isn't Australia; the presence of a gun is not enough to deem a situation threatening.

Is it possible you just expect too much? What did he do that you're so upset about. You believe in a bunch of Russian conspiracy theories that the entire DOJ was unable to prove, despite very much wanting to. Is it just January 6th?

Some episodes from the "last show" that I enjoyed: - The Abraham accords giving us the first glimpse of real peace in the Middle East in my lifetime - illegal immigration plummeting to levels that now seem like a fucking dream today - The Republican party finally moving away from the gay marriage fight - regulatory rollback - massive energy production - someone finally treating China as an adversary, not the benevolent trading partner - A Supreme Court that does not view the Constitution as a Fixer-Upper - A president willing to call NATO/EU out on their hypocritical bullshit So if that's going to get cranked up to 11, I'm not seeing a huge problem. Now, if you are referring to the social unrest and rioting that surrounded January 6th, I have a hard time understanding how that was any better or worse than the BLM rioting. Hell, I wish BLM rioting was what we were dealing with now. If I have to choose between Americans rioting over their fears over Democratic institutions, or rioting where thousands of Americans are literally supporting terrorists and the Democratic party is bending over backwards to appease them, I think I choose the Trump riots, even cranked up to 11.

And, despite the fact we've literally already seen what a Trump presidency looks like, *this time* it's going to be way worse and democracy is at risk because he's going to be a king! Yawn.

There are hundreds of crazy rounds that guy tests. One of my favorite channels to run in the background while I'm cleaning the kitchen.

I've got to disagree with you on this one. Look, my leadership was dog shit when I was court martialed, they basically trusted one misquoted OSI statement and assumed I was guilty for 6 months. But one thing they did well was keep silent publicly. And I wouldn't have expected any sort of public vocalization of support. They had no idea if I was innocent or guilty. You don't back a potential criminal; you quietly provide support to an innocent-until-proven-guilty person until the process is played out. But when you have a video that shows, at a bare minimum, a very uncertain situation that probably didn't go the way you would hope it would, then you should not be making any statements that imply your subordinate did the right thing. Because how can we trust in the process when one of the people who is a literal avatar for the process, the police chief, is not acting in accordance with the concept of blind Justice? I don't think a police chief should be fired because one of his guys fucked up, unless and until the process shows a leadership failure. But part of the police chief's job is public relations, and reflexively supporting an officer who, to my eyes, looks to have murdered an innocent man, is a failure of his position. The tragedy in all of this is that policing very much does need an overhaul in the US, which is an argument from the left. Unfortunately the left has only bad and completely misdiagnosed solutions, whereas the right, I believe as a result of the left's unfair crusade, is reflexively supporting the police to the detriment of potential reforms.

Yeah, I mean when someone's callsign is FAAC, you can't exactly expect them to keep it in a public position. 🤣😂

Because it demonstrates how you are ignoring the many historical examples of asymmetric victory to support a simple and somewhat childish argument of Russia is bigger and is pressing forward, so they must be winning. Did the North Vietnamese win against the US? Did the DRA win against the Soviets in Afghanistan? Did the Taliban win against the US? Did we win against the British? I will not argue the fecklessness of our political class. But we still have an incredible military with incredible weaponry ands intelligence to offer an ally. The very fact Russia hasn't won already, especially after a six month pause in support, is proof that this is not a simple matter of Russia capturing 86 km² of terrain. It's one thing to not want to spend the money. That's simply a fiscal priority. But the "side" arguing against this doesn't seem comfortable with their fiscal position, so they have to twist the conversation into the "impossibility" of success. That's now a military argument that you don't seem able to make effectively. There is a huge difference between "should we" and "can we."

Highly, highly unlikely for the territory. "Win" has to be defined in your question. If regaining all territory is victory, then no.

I didn't think you do this intentionally, but you just hear what you want to hear. Everything you just said was a mischaracterization of his post, or just truly unimaginative thinking. If a hundred soldiers advance on my position 10km away, and I kill 10 per kilometer of advance, who wins? Similarly the French were quite effective in advancing into Russian territory, but that didn't work out great for Napoleon. Or Hitler. Did the Americans win Vietnam? We were quite effective at advancing, and we had an overwhelming munitions advantage. That may or may not be what's happening here, but that you can't recognize the concept is... Questionable.

Trump took the bait on the debates, so I wouldn't count on anything but a complete Biden-fest

That was painful to watch. Ironic that the video is comparing one mentally impaired president to another. All the shit that Reagan got, yet he was the image of perfect health compared to what Biden has become.

🍺

Wait, a human can have multiple views on a variety of topics and other humans can agree with a subset of those views without endorsing all of them? Do better

This is going to happen in every job, everywhere, forever. Especially with men their early and mid twenties, but by no means limited to it. We will always fight it, and most of us will behave, but biologically adult women (post-pubescence) are always going to get biologically adult men to act in accordance with a few million years of biological pressures.

Cops need to understand the the risk of death is not a hazard of the job to be mitigated at all costs. Sometimes death is the job. The military has understood this forever, it's the entire concept of "service." At some point the combination of bad training, low staffing, and low resources created a mindset that cops should be held to the same standard as the rest of the population. I think that's silly. If a cop sees someone with a gun, there's no acceptable excuse for killing that person unless they are actively using that weapon against the officers or bystanders. Just holding one isn't enough. Neither is waving it around, if the cops are the only ones at risk. And if somebody is in their own home, and there's no evidence that they are already committing a violent crime, cops shouldn't even have their hands on their guns. The entire paradigm needs to change.

If I had to guess a time, it'll be next year, but the more relevant metric will be whenever the next economic downturn happens. Traffic and consumer spending are at very high levels. If they normalize or retract, we will go from a pilot deficit to a pilot surplus very quickly. We've already basically returned the industry to the adequately staffed level, but as someone said, age 65 remaining in place will help mitigate. Again you have to view it from the context of the people running these companies. It's not Jeff bezos and Elon musk, it's a bunch of accountants who got to where they were by aping the people above them. Now they all just ape each other until something changes. So they all started hiring massively until suddenly they didn't need to. No forecasting went into it, the forecast was "whatever happens today is what we need to plan for for the next 10 years." When one company furloughs you'll see all the others follow suit because "cost savings" will become the Wall Street mantra during a contraction. AA furloughed. It wasn't a long furlough since the government stepped back in, but it happened in September of 2020.

Third lesson, install a camera. They are dirt cheap.

Yup. That was insane. You are allowed to have a gun in your house. I hope that cop spends a long time in prison. He baited that kid to a horrific death.

He's a hack, always has been a hack, got fired for being a hack, and will continue to be a hack. It's funny how short the lifespan is becoming for these pundits.

I generally don't recommend anyone do auto updates. If the service is working fine, updating it might not get you anything, and a lot of updates have "breaking changes" which required direct intervention to keep things running. If your system is capable of snapshotting, then getting in the habit of doing that before any updates or changes can make life a lot easier. Anyone who's looking to go down the rabbit hole of advanced home servers, strongly recommend proxmox.

Jail. It drives me crazy that we put cops in jail for shitty situations like the George Floyd case, but cases like this slip by, especially if there isn't a race angle to sensationalize.

Oh I don't think the companies are going anywhere, but furloughs are about saving money. It'll be simple math for the airlines: if the passenger traffic falls, they will cut pilots to maintain the same productivity levels. There won't be another "employee bailout" because the government is still dealing with the incredible waste and fraud from the PPP loans. I hope I'm wrong.

I think the pilots hired today are going to be furloughed. I don't think it's going to be a 12-year furlough like the last ones during the bankruptcies and mergers, but still. That said, it is 100% better to be furloughed than not hired at all. Any airline. If you are furloughed you can do anything you want, non-flying and the airline will eventually bring you back and retrain you. Staying current is irrelevant. Then once you are recurrent you can go get hired wherever you want to apply to, and you are a much more desirable candidate. Not being hired at all means you have to stay current *and* compete with the backlog of aspiring airline pilots when the interviews start again. Remember these people are fools. They were convinced air travel would *never* recover from COVID-19, then they started talking about "winning" the pandemic recovery. Then they furloughed (at AA). Then they announced the biggest hiring wave in airline history. Now they are all cutting hiring projections, if not outright halting it. These clowns just blow with the wind, and so do our careers.

Right, and the rest of it is spent on marketing to the members to get them to spend more on classes and gear and swag and seminars. It's not what I'm looking for. Commercials are fine, I get that you need more customers, but I don't need a magazine subscription from my insurance company. Spend it on defending clients.