Lord Ratner

What do you consider a current international threat to the USA? Something that, if not addressed, will result in a weaker America.

Both can be true (and are).

100% a sign of dementia. It's sad, but also a bit horrifying. I guess it didn't end horribly when Regan was in office, so I doubt it will this time either.

I love when people try to redefine Catholicism in a way that suits their political beliefs. The Catholic Church is structured in a very clear manner, and the accepted views of the church are equally clear. You either believe them or you don't, but you don't get to pretend that you're part of the club if you're not willing to abide by the Constitution and bylaws. It's one thing to claim to be Christian when you don't have mainstream Christian beliefs. But Catholicism is a very specific type of Christianity

We had a crew in the tanker fail to pressurize. The maintainers in the back all passed out, pissed themselves, etc. One even busted his head. The boom had to drag one up front to get him on oxygen. When they finally pressurized the AC decided to fly another 6 hours, at altitude, to the Died. When people fuck up, they tend to convince themselves that completing the mission will somehow minimize the reality of the fuck up, even if it actually makes it worse.

Isn't that how all opinions work here? I guess I'm new to the internet. I don't think we have a single woman here who has opined on abortion. Definitely no Ukrainians or Russians. Not a single climate scientist or immunologist to be seen. If I was unclear that I am not a Delta pilot, my bad. If your point is that only a Delta pilot could have a beyond "noted" opinion, then I am excited to hear how the Delta pilots managed to exist in a different macroeconomic environment than the rest of us at American, United, Southwest, etc. I will reiterate. Your pilot group (are you Delta?) are fools if they pass on this TA in this macro environment. Especially in light of what the mediator said before Bastian & co. walked into the room. And since I work with a pilot group full of fools, I can have an opinion on that too 🤣😂

Does JFK have the auto red lights for takeoff and crossings? Break break The Delta TA is a game changer, and they would be absolute fools to vote it down. DAL management has clearly decided that predictability for this summer is more valuable than money right now. Voting it down will intentionally remove the primary leverage point that got the huge gains in the first place. There is also rumor that the mediator made it clear in no uncertain terms that failure to recognize (and pass) the "generous" offer would not be viewed favorably when deciding how to meditate any prolonged negotiations.

We knew that COVID targeted fat old people from what, January 2020? We knew it didn't affect kids either by the time we went into lockdown in March. We knew it spreads almost entirely indoors by April, because I remember the Florida beach controversy. Nearly everything we "learned" about COVID after the summer of 2020 involved an "expert" prediction that proved inaccurate.

You and I have agreed and disagreed on a lot, and I commended your ability to change your mind. But this part gets to the crux of the issue, and why I think your assessment is so wrong. The ability to make decisions in an environment of incomplete information is quite literally definitive of intelligence and leadership. There's a whole lot of people right now throwing their hands up in the air and saying " well we just didn't know," but that's bullshit. Part of the job is not knowing, and being able to accurately assess and communicate that lack of knowledge, and recognize that without perfect information, your ability to compel others should be equally limited. This is foundational stuff to the way our government was designed and is supposed to work. The "experts" lied. Flat out. I'm including using intentionally misleading language. There are plenty of examples in this thread. But worse than lying about things they knew (to cover their asses), they lied about what they didn't know. They did so because they knew we-the-people wouldn't have done what they commanded if it was based on a hunch. But it was, and unfortunately (as any real scientist would admit) when you act on a hunch, you'll be wrong more often than not. So the point isn't "we would have done things differently if we had better information." The point is "will we do things differently the next time we have a crisis with little available information?" Based on the experts skittering like cockroaches into the shadows to avoid responsibility, and a whole bunch of well-meaning Americans seeking to look the other way because their "team" was the one that got it so incredibly wrong, I'm not sure we've learned much at all. Maybe when the 2018-2019 babies hit their teenage years, and we see the devastation wrought by depriving them of the irreplaceable socialization training needed between the ages of 2-4, we will have that conversation. But saying "hey, you didn't know anything either, we were all in the dark" doesn't cut it. How you act in the dark is what matters... (giggity). Again, not directed specifically at you, but I think you're missing the point. It's not that they were wrong, it's what they forced us to do while they were (knowingly) wrong.

Cliffs notes?

That's one. Go find enough for all of us... I'll wait 🤣😭

There might not be enough Scotch in Scotland to bring the British women up to Nordic standards...

It's almost like people can't be put into two categories with pre-ordained beliefs spelled out. Yet somehow most Americans act like that's exactly the reality. Turns out that when people think there are only two opposing teams competing, they cheer/donate/vote/campaign/rage far more than if they believe there are many teams with varying overlaps.

What happened last time? This literally already happened. We were alive when it did.

If Russia isn't a threat, why do we have a military? Just China? Or are we worried about South Africa? Brazil? World's most expensive military just to counter Al Queda? Russia must be considered a threat if you accept at face value that we have a military due to foreign threats and not just for defense contractors. And if the size of our military (and thus the cost) is determined by the scale of our adversaries, wouldn't we be better if with weaker enemies, allowing for a smaller military?

I mean, if we're going to play shocked, pearl-clutching humanitarian, this conversation will be even less fruitful. We judge the worth of a cause every day from the homeless panhandlers you drive by to the countries we send missiles to. Don't be intentionally obtuse. The Nigerians aren't offering us the opportunity to decimate the military capacity and reputation of a geopolitical adversary. Part A: That's MMT, which I certainly don't make arguments for. The spending increases matter, but they matter as part of an overall economic problem. They do not matter in regards to Ukraine, because the funding for Ukraine does not represent specific type of spending that, if halted, would solve our budgetary problems. A weak analogy: If you have hypertension because you only eat bacon and chocolate burritos three times a day, you have a heart condition that could kill you when you exert yourself. But when the neighbor's smoking-hot ex-wife is putting the last of her things into the U-Haul, and she offers you VIP tickets to the suck parade for helping her get the tailgate closed, one might argue that your heart-condition is going to be materially worsened by by accepting her offer of oral nirvana. But it wasn't MILF blowjobs that put your heart at risk, and this opportunity is about to drive away forever. So you do the math and take the risk, because at the end of the day it's your addiction to deep-fried butter that put your heart in danger. Part B: There is no "healthy for the country" solution; we are well past that. The disease is now a cancer, and the treatments are all going to be a whole lot more painful than life would have been if we had just put sunscreen (balanced budgets) on in the first place. But there are treatments, and they will still work in the future, though they will be more painful the longer we wait. A lot is going to depend on the attempted bifurcation of the world currency system by China and Russia. They might be able to accelerate the collapse of fiat to the point we see some solutions in the next decade as opposed to the second half of the century. With the worldwide decline in birthrates and the suicidal refusal to produce cheap energy, the grow-our-way-out-of-it solution that the entirety of the planet has been relying on seems completely unrealistic. So that leaves the really shitty solutions.

Because those causes aren't as worthy, or favored, or popular, or whatever you want to inject as the adjective. Just because nobody cares about the debt enough to do anything about it, doesn't mean we don't still prioritize and select for spending opportunities. The consequences for the global debt bonanza are going to be devastating. On that we agree entirely. The same reason I don't support slashing the defense budget to zero, due to our massive debt, is why I support spending the money on Ukraine. At some point in the next 50 years the debt issue is going to be resolved. And while it is going to get worse each year we wait, it will still be resolvable. The Ukrainian situation/opportunity does not have the luxury of time.

Incredible. So Kinzinger is a liar in addition to an attention whore. Woof.

There is absolutely something to be said for this line of reasoning. And we would be fools to ignore the past 30ish years of military failure, while this overwhelming military success stairs us in the face. We spend a lot of money having the world's most advanced fighting force as a deterrent, but the world is not going to forget what happened to Russia soon, so perhaps the threat of American funding and support could be a deterrent, for at least the few decades that people remember what happened in Ukraine. However, we would have to fight the urge to maintain a larger force with lesser training. Our expertise is a very marketable form of aid. I don't know if it's possible. Politically, but if we could cut the force by 50%, but make sure that the remaining 50% were absolutely at the top of their game and capable of being instructors should a draft one day be necessary, well, it's certainly an interesting possibility.

This is actually incorrect. And it's relatively easy to learn, just read the federalist paper on it. Number 29 I believe. It goes into quite explicit detail regarding the necessity of federal regulation of the state militias, for the purposes of quick spin up and unified strategy in a time of war. You are right to imply that there were many people against any sort of federal control of a military/militia, but it was not only not everybody, but in fact a minority, as the amendment was ultimately voted in. The state selection of officers was meant to be the protection against federal tyranny. There is some discussion regarding the wide scale possession of firearms, but it is actually geared towards the impracticality of training the entire population due to the economic impact. Mostly, there's not a whole lot of evidence that the private ownership of firearms was considered one way or another, which gets to the crux of the matter. They probably didn't even seem worth discussing because everybody owned guns. That was just the way of the times. However, an argument can be made that the gradual consolidation of military power to the federal level, a power that is nearly absolute in modern times, necessitates a broader and more permissive concept of personal firearm ownership, as the protection against federal tyranny has been mostly degraded with time.

You would understand conservatives better, and why they seem to support indefensible people, if you would consider more that it is about fairness than the actual positions. Conservatives have now watched liberals jump all over the first instance of conservative rioting in modern American history, after openly cheering the wide scale destruction of several American cities, to include many federal institutions, during rioting that falsely portrayed America as racist. This is after liberals spent years defending Hillary Clinton, but suddenly could not abide the idea of a president enriching their family. Cute. Or maybe the hilarity of going after Donald Trump for having classified documents in his basement (remember that scandal that went nowhere?), again after down playing Hillary's bathroom email server. I remember when Jeb Bush's daughter was in the news for drug abuse, but don't you dare talk about Hunter Biden and his drug fueled, underage prostitute, illegal firearms, international money laundering schemes. He's not the president! Conservatives are somehow silently condoning the rare-but-highly-covered school shootings by supporting the constitutional right to bear arms, yet if you bring up that thousands of black teens and young men are killed every year in gang violence, mostly in liberal strongholds, somehow that's... racist? Black lives matter indeed. Or perhaps it was Alexandria Ocasio Cortez at the border in her white dress decrying the evil Republicans for... Barack Obama's chain link Mexican children cages. But when the border crisis explodes under their watch, you're just being xenophobic. And when Trump era immigration policies are reinstated, no no, it's different this time, this is a Democratic triumph. See, we defend the border! https://youtu.be/meiU6TxysCg People, like most other animals, will do irrational things when they feel they are being treated unfairly. It is the bedrock of our system, the entire basis for our founding, and inconveniently, detestable to most politicians and activists. At some point in my lifetime, Democrats (politicians, activists, and academics, not liberal voters) decided they would be explicit in their willingness to abandon fairness in pursuit of their societal goals. What we are seeing is the predictable response.

Sorry, I was unclear. I didn't mean that he was quick to cry. I meant that he was a careerist twat who would do anything to stay in the spotlight. That's his public persona as far as I can tell, and that's what his squadron mate confirmed.

I flew with a guy who is in his guard unit. Apparently his public persona is fairly well matched to his private persona.

If "hairdresser at Walmart" didn't signal an immediate greenlight for extramarital butthole pleasures, the dueling foot tattoos are a reliable source of secondary confirmation.

Huh? I've been gone since '17. Is this literal?