Lord Ratner

I agree that it's having short-term negative consequences for Republicans, but strategic considerations are generally long-term, not short-term. Strategically, this issue has been removed from the national conversation, *if* the Republicans can get it through their big fat stupid heads to keep it a states rights issue. You say that the dems aren't going to let it go, but then you also say that it's a fringe issue. It's either one of the other. It doesn't matter what the activists scream about, what matters is what actually impacts the average person. The average person now has a much greater ability to live somewhere that agrees with their abortion views, if they consider those views so important as to move to another state. This experiment has been run already in Europe, where the various countries have various laws, and it's just not a part of their normal political discourse. If the Democrats want to make this a national issue, that's all well and good, but they will suffer the same short-term consequences the Republicans are suffering now. Change is seldom good for those doing the changing. The alternative was to have this issue hanging over the heads of Republicans for all time, forced to accept a world of completely unrestricted abortions for all time. That's not a moral proposition that many conservatives can accept, but at least now they can redirect their moral concerns to the local level, as it has been meant to be. I can't speak to the forecast of the Republicans who pushed this, but if they expected no fallout, or even crazier, the adulation of the masses from killing Roe, then they were idiots. But I think many knew that there would be short-term consequences, and those consequences are more than acceptable for completely solving the legal problem, and partially solving the ethical problem. But I think this will be the last presidential election cycle where abortion is a headline issue. The abortion advocates will absolutely hate that reality, as will the pro-life absolutists, but the rest of us will be better off.

Counterpoint, this is exactly how the Roe issue is permanently removed from the conversation. Every state is now deciding what they want, which is going to appease a lot of people who now have choices if this issue is truly that important to them. The only way Republicans can truly fuck this up is if they try to nationalize the issue again with a federal ban. They will lose their asses in that case, but I don't think that's the strategy for most. A terrible legal decision has been undone, and one of the most contentious issues in modern American politics is being dealt with in the manner of the founders originally intended, locally. I know a lot of Republicans had the ultimate goal of fully banning abortion, but from a purely conservative and legal standpoint, this issue is resolving itself remarkably fast after 50 years of turmoil.

Finished my Texas LTC application waiting for the license and I've been completely blown away by the Sig P365X. I put a Holosun on it and ended up swapping it for the Holosun with the ACSS reticle (it's a single dot with a dashed 232 MOA circle that helps massively with initial target acquisition. I can see why it totally took over the market; it's a really, really nice pistol.

The post modernists made it absolutely clear, it's just that no one wanted to believe them.

I just spent the last few months digging into something I had no knowledge of, that at some point after I became an adult the education system decided that phonics was a bad idea. I'm not sure there's an example I've ever seen with a more precipitous and obvious decrease in results than when schools went from phonics based reading to contextual based reading. Same thing for math apparently. It's to the point where my wife and I are considering starting an Acton school just so we can have more control over exactly what is going on. While I'm sure there are a few good public schools out there, I'm as skeptical as brabus when you realize that the entire education establishment has been taken for a ride. It also doesn't cover the reality that our curriculum hasn't changed much in 100 years, yet the world has. Kids are still graduating with no idea what taxes or interest rates are, and that's ridiculous.

Can you give me a link to where you found that? I poked around his YouTube page and didn't see it, and I'd like to dig in to what he's doing. I played around with midjourney last night and it is remarkable how much better it is than when we were playing around with stability AI on this forum several months ago.

This is ultimately why I believe AI, at least in its current form, is massively overhyped. AI can't create anything yet. It's just a very capable search engine, that can combine the results into one output. There are a ton of uses for this, but the jobs destroyed by AI are creating AI jobs required to create things like, for example, prompts. So if you ask GPT to create a super prompt, it will fail, until there are enough human-created super prompts in its repository of data to output one.

Right up until they started defending themselves, roughly.

I wonder if he's shown his work. The prompting to get the right output is an art in itself.

Was that AI generated?

Doesn't actually take much effort in Washington.

Yeah, that could have something to do with it. Maybe medium probability? It's also possible that they realize things are spinning out of control on a global level. Again this is something I've said before that I consider to be inevitable, but if the usual power brokers are starting to fear a chain reaction, they're going to try to get ahead of it so they can claim to have been on the right side of the debate when things get really messy. I think the Democrats have been looking for an excuse to turn on Biden for a couple years now, but every time they seem to make a move they either lose their will or something works out well for Biden. Maybe the impending failure of Ukraine combined with their multi-cultural coalition falling apart over Israel has emboldened them to make a move. But I don't think they have a replacement.

What I'm more interested in is "why." They stalled out months ago, so why are the supporters in the media suddenly against the effort? I'm always fascinated by how the Democrat Machine shifts it's position and why. The Republicans aren't nearly as coordinated or consistent.

"The one?" You're going to have to be a little more specific. I was good, but I know plenty others in the FAIP Mafia who would not let me have that title without a fight 🤣😂. Yup.. Coming from an AD perspective there is absolutely no discernible difference between the unions.

I was wrong, but actually I'm still right. Nicely done.

Well, I know you won't be doing anything to make ALPA work anymore than you're doing anything to make APA work, so this conversation won't go far. For the outsiders watching in confusion, the majority of pilots have no idea how their contract or benefits work, until they need something from them. The only thing worse is their knowledge of the other Airlines' contracts and benefits, so you get very extreme cases of the grass-is-always-greener effect. But they get very angry that the people who do the actual work don't provide them a world of limitless pleasure and comfort. 🤷🏻‍♂️ And for the record, I signed a card for ALPA, but the outrage over a normal medical insurance challenge is absurd.

The question is more a matter of which existential threat is worse. The two-state solution is so entrenched in the modern narrative that people forget it was not the only option people were pushing for. The one-state solution was something the Israelis have had to fight for decades. The population imbalance meant that a one-state solution would immediately result in the subjugation (at best) or destruction (at worst) of the Jews as they would be immediately out-voted in their own democracy by a majority of Muslim Arabs who call for their extermination. So between a one state solution and the current mess, the current mess is still far more desirable, because under a one state solution there would be no Jewish state. Or, for that matter, Jews in the region. Fast forward to the two-state solution dominating the narrative, and the Jews have to deal with the sovereignty of a Palestinian state meaning that they can no longer just go in and root out terrorists. This is another reason the shifting borders have been so contentious. An independent state has very different implications for Israel depending on where those borders are and how they allow for defense against attack, which is guaranteed. And so what does statehood mean for Israel? Now they are being attacked by a sovereign nation. That just makes a military incursion worse, and at the end, they are now occupying a country instead of whatever the hell Palestine is today. Its a shit sandwich all around, but the Israel-did-this-to-themselves ignores that the Palestinians have been trying to wipe Israel off the map since the beginning, and have shown no evidence of changing that view. And before the creation of Israel by the Brits, Jews under the Turks were second class citizens. So, as with all things, "it depends." But Israel has certainly done bad things, I won't deny that. But worse? I don't think so.

Same. Best way to hone a position is to have it challenged. Because that's how lots of humans are? That's just how we act, we want other people to value what we value, do what we do, and fail how we fail. That's why drug addicts are always trying to make those around them addicts too. I however am not trying to do that, I think. I truly do commend your honesty. I hope that it's obvious we are debating the merits of the argument, not your honesty or what you should *say* rather than *do.* And that mostly we are talking about what we as a country should do, not as individuals. No, but that's not the only option. There are many ways to support. As far as doing enough, we have also tied their hands for many years, as much of the West has. Each administration approaches Israel differently, but we have certainly pressured them to take sub-optimal approaches to Palestine in the past. This is not happening. First, they didn't "tolerate" their existence, they whole-heartedly supported Hamas and voted for them. Second, the "innocents" are not dying for their support, they are dying because Hamas intentionally hides in hospitals, schools, and "refugee camps," even though there are no refugees in Gaza. The difference between killing civilians because they supported the bad guys and killing them because they are literally shielding them is huge, and a moral difference that separates Israel from Palestine. Poorly phrased, lemme try again. But when your adversaries, who demonstrate in the most blatant way possible that they do not value civilian life, use your morals as a shield when they build their military facilities literally in schools and hospitals, it is not immoral to destroy those schools, and the unfortunate children inside. It is tragic, yes, but not evil. It is, however, evil to use civilians as shields. Well literally, no. But for the purposes of exposing hypocrisy, yes. I assume you understand that, and the gif made me actually LOL. Reasonable as an argument, sure, but I don't think it's accurate. The foreign policy blunders of the US are often viewed in isolation of the often more-severe blunders (or outright aggressions) of the other countries. I believe the world of the past 80 years has been more stable that it otherwise would have been without our intervention. That doesn't mean we didn't make things worse at times. And of course you can, but we are here to debate those lines. Obviously. Because hypotheticals are vital to creating moral frameworks and testing moral hypotheses. They allow us to set the upper and lower bounds on a concept, then work towards the truth in the middle. And because the arguments made about what Israel or the US have done wrong to encourage/cause/instigate the current conflict are equally hypothetical, because they assume a different outcome if the inputs had been changed. That's an assumption. Good post.

BCBS is not the only plan administrator, and they were not contractually selected. They were chosen by AA, just like AA chose to use their network. We could have negotiated for that, but no one really considered that a priority. If AA wanted to pay them to do so, they could have BCBS and UNH create a fully customized network just for the AA plan. We wouldn't be able to do anything about that either, because we didn't negotiate for it. Sure, it's a change, but it's an allowed change. There's nothing to fight (other than what is already being fixed). There is only something new to negotiate, assuming the pilots care, which I doubt they will now that the out-of-network component is fixed. It was always a part of our plan, if desired, to max out the out-of-network caps so that you could go to any doctor at any location at any price and have it fully covered by AA. That's a pretty significant benefit that few Americans have.

I'm all for ALPA, but your insurer, which is AA, gets to decide what is in-network and out-of-network. And Supplement K (Now section 5) does not mandate what is in-network, it only mandates an out-of-pocket max for out-of-network care. The ALPA cheerleaders are going to be thoroughly disappointed with ALPA based on the myriad industry norms they seem to think only affect APA.

Are there wars with a better cost/kill? WWII was about $4 trillion. Vietnam was about $1 trillion. And if you factor in the value associated with each lost American life, the math is even more favorable. I've been pretty consistent throughout this war. If the Ukrainians no longer wish to fight and die, then they should end the war. They have every ability to do so. They were given the best opportunity they'd ever have to win, and it looks like they failed at their stated objective. But the entire world has a much different view of what the "superpowers" (China particularly) can accomplish in an invasion of a Western-supported nation. Does that mean the idiots in charge have or ever had a plan? Almost certainly not. I'm not making a commentary on the decision making of the people in charge, merely the reality of what has happened and where we are after it. And as you and I have talked about before, I disagree with your financial reasoning. The money is not going to be saved, there is not going to be fiscal discipline. We are going to spend ourselves into hyperinflation, as evidenced by the fact that the "hardcore" conservative elected as speaker of the house is in favor of another continuing resolution. We are not going to get politicians on either side who will control spending, because the voters electing them do not want spending controlled. You and I are in the minority. That's why I don't care about the deficit contributions implicit in support for Ukraine. I see our financial collapse (not societal collapse) as a set point in the future, and the only question is what the deficit spending is going to go towards. I would rather it go towards weakening our adversaries than extending social security or Medicare for another couple years at the end of this fantastically irresponsible debt bender.

And people wonder why Israel gets so combative with the rest of the world... Yeah, Israel had the "moral advantage" as long as they were willing to sit by and allow their people to be massacred with no real response. That's a super neat place to be isn't it? And exactly what should they do? Lick their wounds, and wait for the next attack? Does anyone believe there won't be another attack? They were given a bad hand, a death cult islamo-fascist terrorist government next door, and the rest of the world so fat, dumb, and happy that they could sit thousands of miles away and criticize another country for doing exactly what they would do themselves if their wife was raped while their kid was burnt alive. Any country has to deal with the response from their allies, adversaries, and neighbors. But the narrative surrounding this seems to be encroaching on some sort of immorality as to what Israel is doing, and that is such a steaming heap of relativist bullshit that it's honestly stunning me that people who I thought were intelligent now seem to be making this argument, and I don't just mean on this forum. What we fucked up in the global war on terror had nothing to do with the people that we killed in response to 9/11. Like Israel, we went through great pains to ensure that the collateral damage was minimized to some sort of logical extent. But when your adversaries, who demonstrate in the most blatant way possible that they do not value civilian life, use your morals as a shield when they build their military facilities literally in schools and hospitals, there is no moral question about destroying those schools, and the unfortunate children inside. The only way you can get to that is by disregarding the concept of morality entirely, which is basically postmodernism, which is absolute and utter bullshit. Morally bankrupt yes, but not even logically sound. The reason CNN isn't supporting Israel is because the media never supported Israel. Ever. There were always political realities that made the political left more hospitable to Israel than the activist and academic left, but the fact that the liberal media is supporting Ukraine and not supporting Israel should have been obvious to anybody who actually understands what drives the left in this era. This particular attack was simply so horrific that only the most fervent anti-semites and progressive shills could bring themselves to spew their anti-Israel nonsense after the attack. Now that the shock is wearing off, the left will return to their usual positions. Everybody likes to blame the British and the Israelis for this mess, because in the 1940s the state of Israel was established in a very sloppy way. What they conveniently leave out is the immediate war launched on the Israelis by the Arabs in the late 40s, and the failure of the many Arab states surrounding Israel to do anything to help the Palestinians, leading up to what we have now. That all sucks, and there are people responsible for that situation, but they're all dead. What matters now is what the living israelis have to deal with, and how the living Arabs surrounding them choose to participate. I would love to see what would happen if a bunch of Mexicans crashed through the border and massacred 1500 Americans, including some of the most gruesome deaths of women and children we've seen in a generation. This new populist conservative isolationism is not inherently illogical in and of itself, but it is going to great lengths to reframe or outright ignore obvious moral conundrums in an effort to bolster their isolationist position. All the while failing to recognize that our increasingly isolationist position in the world has not led to the flourishing of peace and tranquility. There is no escaping the conflict ahead. It has been brewing for 30 plus years, and the only question at this point is who will come out on top. That doesn't mean we should send troops into Ukraine or Israel, but supporting the good guys, yes, even when the good guys have skeletons in their closet too, is a societal trait that we can very much lose. If someone can't see the moral difference between Israel and Palestine, or if they downplay that difference because it does not support their geopolitical philosophy, they should not be in any position of national power. Remember that the politician/person who can't make a correct moral determination on one issue is almost certain to make the incorrect moral determination on an issue that matters deeply to you down the road. There is a simple hypothetical that, when answered, will tell you everything you need to know about someone opining on this topic. If Israel were to lay down their weapons, dismantle all defenses, and open their border, how many Israelis would be slaughtered by Palestinians in the days that followed? Conversely, if the Palestinians did the same, how many would be killed by Israelis?

You think this guy had his pick of all of the women in the world? 😂🤣 Besides, everyone should know the sweetest wine is the one you can't have... At a certain point everybody should have the revelation that their own internal resolve is probably not as bullet proof as they'd like to believe. It's a humbling and altogether disconcerting feeling. I remember when Mike pence was in the news for saying he wouldn't have dinner alone with a woman who wasn't his wife. He was lambasted for being a prude, or a sexist, or a fool in general, but I saw a man who had probably ops tested the limits of his faithfulness in the past, and came up with a way to mitigate the risk.

I think we're going to see a whole lot of small businesses in this exact problem going forward. They did not adequately assess the inflationary pressures on their supply chains over the last 3 years, got used to incredible order volume from the 2021 2022 discretionary spending glut, and now are going to get hammered by a complete collapse in order volume as Americans realize they don't have money for frivolous purchases like airplane kits, RVs, boats, and vacation homes. No one ever thinks the party is going to end, then the music stops, the lights come on, and the bar hag you were hitting on turns out to be a lot less attractive than you thought she was a minute ago. I hope they come out of it on the other side, I was planning to build one of those planes one day.