Lord Ratner

And yet we know you'd be here pissing into your Cheerios if Jared kushner or Don Jr had been charged with a crime in such a way to ensure that they never face any consequences for it. I'm not trying to say that you are unique from the people here who defend Donald Trump ceaselessly, I'm saying you're exactly the same.

My views on this have evolved a lot. Here's where I am now: Wealth inequality is irrelevant. That part I've always believed, but what matters, and what I didn't see before, is how the wealth disparity is produced. I think the people who make things are able to be as rich as possible without much consequence. Think Bill Gates, Bezos, Musk, Carnegie, Walton. Something about our connection to their products and services makes their immense wealth understandable. Plus, the creation of technology or a service that makes humans more productive (even as a second or third order effect) ultimately adds far more to the collective wealth of our society than the millions and billions that accrue to the founders/inventors. But the unleashing of modern banking since the 70's has been altogether different. You should not be able to make billions off financial engineering. At best, loans enable the above innovations, but the banking system has found a way to make as much or more than the industries they enable. Problem is, so much of modern financial markets are simply transfers of wealth between parties. It's gambling. Guess who's better at that game? It ain't you. Nothing demonstrated this better than the nauseatingly-ironically-named Robin Hood. Nothing more than a transfer of wealth from the retail investor (poor) to the banks and private equity managers (rich). And when the retail investor found a hole in the armor with GameStop, they shut it down. Disgusting. The third element is the unstoppable printing of money by the Fed. These made up dollars are vacuumed up by the top .1% of Americans at a stunning rate. So when the inflation hits from boosting the money supply, the already-rich are sitting on a greater share of the money, drastically reducing the impact of inflation on their purchasing power, while the commoners like us get crushed. This wealth is created by political access, favoritism, and shady banking practices. It is this type of wealth inequality that will destroy our society if we don't stop it, yet the pandemic wildly accelerated the problem. But it gets worse. The Republicans are still reflexively defensive of business from the communist movement of the left in the 50's and 60's. They haven't figured out that modern crony capitalism has two sides of business, the makers and the bankers. Until the find a way to escape the bankers, they will be useless. Tucker Carlson is the strongest voice against this new phenomenon, though he flails around the center of the problem at times. The Democrats are equally useless, because they are hell bent on attacking the makers while the bankers fund their campaigns and promote their ESG nonsense. In the war against crony capitalism, the Democrats have decided to attack the capitalists with the help of the cronies. Talk about missing the mark.

The bourbon defense is always allowed around here 😂. Cheers!

Yeah I know. But she was one. That's kinda the point, the party is running out all the moderates. I see a split coming oif they can't figure out what to do with the progressive movement. They'll probably lose Manchin next. But fair shot.

RFK Jr for one. Tulsi Gabbard. Joe Manchin. Mark Kelly. Yeah, he cares about it so much he convinced Republicans to not vote in Georgia, costing them the Senate. He decided not to fund any candidates running in 2022, almost unheard of for an ex president, because he wanted to save everything for his campaign. So much for the red wave. He's decided that siding with Disney over Desantis was in our best interests, definitely not his political interests. He cares about one thing only: himself. He's publicly shit on people who made fools of themselves defending him such as Lindsey Graham, Bill Barr, and Kayleigh McEnany. And all that is just the new stuff since his first run. Ew, no, I covered that. Who the fuck are you talking about? Did you read the post at all?

I know you might very well be too fucking stupid to communicate with, and I say that only because I've had to read what you post here, but I don't need the media to tell me that Trump is a fucking asshole, doesn't give two shits about this country, and has violated every moral clause that most of us consider important. And he does so without having any shred of remorse or regard for other people. There is no one he hasn't betrayed. I still voted for him, because I'm capable of having more than one thought in my head at a time. But he has lost his fucking marbles and demonstrated with absolute inescapable clarity that he will never put anything above his own vanity. The country deserves more than that. Unfortunately, Joe Biden is not better than that. But there are democrats who are, and if by some miracle the Democratic party can find it in themselves to nominate someone who actually loves this country more than they love themselves or enriching themselves, I will vote for that person before I vote for Donald Trump.

This is just another example of the shit that we saw all the time in the Air Force before this trans insanity happened. How many times have you heard about some pilot that was a total bro when he was a captain or major or even a squadron commander and then they become a general and at best standby idly while ridiculous nonsense is imposed upon their subordinates, and at worst, participate? The types of people who are willing to do what is necessary to get to these jobs are not the type of people who often have deep-seated beliefs. And so when the beliefs of those they must rely on for further promotion are insane, they adopt them. Then you see someone on a podium who 20 years ago wouldn't have imagined they'd be spouting the ridiculous nonsense they are, but because it's the present rallying and cry of the cultural elite, all of a sudden they are true believers. It seems unbelievable that so many apparently intelligent people are spouting this nonsense, but that's because you're (not you specifically, M2) operating on the assumption that they put any thought into it at all. They haven't. These people don't have values other than their own progression. Once you accept that, everything they say makes perfect sense. They spent an entire career doing what other people told them to do to get where they are, so it shouldn't be surprising that they will also say what other people tell them to say.

We call that the Texas conundrum.

RFK Jr is more than a little nuts, but I think part of the problem is that when you are involved in a conspiracy and see just how truly insane it can be, it becomes too easy to see conspiracies behind every shadow. That said, he points out the absolute insanity of modern democrats aligning themselves with big pharma companies, And if you had told any Democrat that 5 or 10 years ago they would have laughed in your face. So maybe he's not that crazy. That said, he seems completely uncorrupted by progressive identity politics. The real question though is who are "his people?" For everybody clamoring about how Joe Biden ran as a moderate and became a hyper progressive, that's because Joe Biden never had people. So when it came time to staff his administration, it was all a bunch of Obama and Clinton staffers, and the Obama ones in particular have been hyper progressive for a long time. Trump showed that it's difficult to overcome the upper and middle management ranks, and Joe Biden barely has the cognitive capacity to read a cue card, much less manage the subversive interests of hyperpolitical underlings. I like that RFK is an old school liberal, but I would be shocked to find out that he has any sort of meaningful network, and that's vital when it comes time to staff the administration, at least if you have any intent on controlling it and bending it to your agenda. But I would vote for him over Trump in a microsecond. If it's Trump Biden I'll probably just toss the vote to the libertarian.

Why? You know the answer. Because it feels good. Second and third order effects be damned.

Nashville is not remotely like SF, Portland, Seattle, NYC, or Chicago, in politics, population, or the crime and homelessness (drug use) wave. It's a nice town. Liberal cities in conservative states have had a much harder time enacting the policies that have led to the conditions in the big cities. That's lucky for them. Austin is another good example. Every time the local government gets stupid, the state legislature steps in and takes away their toys. That doesn't comport well with the idea of localized government, but unfortunately we've seen that these issues manifest long after the offending ideologues have skittered away, and the damage takes years, or maybe generations, to fix. Dallas is another funny one. Usually the surrounding suburban areas funnel money into the city to fund all the absurd spending cities pride themselves on, but here they structured it so the money stays in the suburbs to be spent on schools and whatever else the residents want. The local newspaper is always crying about how little money Dallas gets for things like subways and buses and other downtown ornaments. The rest of us are quite happy to keep the city purse depleted.

Grew up right across the bridge. Spent my childhood all over SF, and right after college. Not one single person I know who actually lives in the area has your view. It is definitional of tourism politics. It's right up there with all the Americans who tout the enlightened glory of Europe, because they read about it in a book and took a vacation to Paris once. Since I know precisely what San Francisco looks like right now, your depiction is enough for me to know that your observations of any other American city is going to be equally ignorant. You are simply incapable of seeing what you don't want to believe. At least you're in good company.

Getting dinner in San Francisco is not exactly the same thing as living in San Francisco. Whether it's homelessness, the Exodus of retail (Nordstroms was the most recent), or the phenomenal incidents of vehicle break-ins, "awesome" does not describe San Francisco. Your cartoonish denial of reality is usually a bit less obvious, but not here. However, it does quite nicely demonstrate the arrogance of your political philosophy. I had fun there once, so why are so many people complaining?

The "just die" part was a bit raw, but you were right about the overall character of the generation. Entitled, irresponsible, and completely unprepared for a retirement that their delusional government spending has ensured my generation will never have. The boomers have the honorable distinction of being the first ever generation of American parents to leave their children worse off than they were. Bravo.

Worst advice in the thread 😂🤣. I would say about 1/3 are terrible with finances, 1/3 are fine, but missing many opportunities, and 1/3 are good with money. There is no connection between career success and financial responsibility. The number of junior and senior pilots having actual panic attacks in Apr-Oct 2020 over the potential for reduced earnings was a real eye opener. Most pilots cannot get a non-airline job that would replace their airline income. Plan accordingly, and be intimately familiar with your LTD policy.

It would have been x $1,500 for me last year, plus the 401k ($265k + $30k 401k) with an hourly rate of $169 But that's higher than normal.

No you idiot. Mountain Dew is literally *in* his name 🤣😂

There's a whole industry of civil-rights groups and individuals who, after winning the war against racism, have realized they aren't able to/interested in finding a new job. So now they must create work for themselves. It's pretty transparent, but there's a lot of inertia in that world, so they are still able to squeeze out a (big) paycheck with increasingly absurd accusations.

This is actually the perfect encapsulation of why the social justice warrior/woke nonsense is so fucking dangerous. Incidentally, this is also the point that well meaning liberals completely miss when they respond with "yeah that's obviously crazy. Why do you care so much?" When you say crazy things for long enough, crazy people will start to believe them. In this case the person was only crazy enough to petition a court. But we've already seen several instances of crazy people who are willing to grab a gun. When you stray from the truth, eventually everything will fall apart. Yes, that includes Donald Trump denying his obvious and overwhelming loss in the election. January 6th was not an insurrection anymore than the BLM riots were a civil war. But the more we keep lying about racism, trans genocide, patriarchal sexism, and the alleged death of democracy, the more crazy people we are going to inspire to do horrible things. And as we've all heard from the military, when one guy shits his pants, we all wear diapers.

Does it have to centralized at the federal level? Have the same jurisdictions? Authorities? Sure you can boil everything down to "law enforcement" and then say you're just changing names, but by that logic the US is just another government with a different name. The structure matters in protecting against abuse.

You know... some of us, who have actually dealt with mental ill people, do not feel like the right way to handle their illness is to indulge in their delusion and allow, enable, and even assist in their self-mutilation. That it has now extended to children, to some of us, means that we have left the realm of well-meaning stupidity and entered the world of evil. But it's easier to imagine that a whole bunch of people who believe that we are, in fact, morally responsible for each other, are just hateful of men who want to wear dresses and girls who don't want tits anymore, cuz 'Murica! The left's transformation from "let's compel the society to help those at the bottom," into the post-modern "anything that is part of the traditional power hierarchy is wrong" has been tragically disappointing. Transexuals have never been at the bottom of the social pyramid in America, and they are not an oppressed class. To suggest such is fantasy nonsense, and an open insult to the many groups that have actually existed in that position.

Lol. No. Lowering testosterone does not reverse the effects of male puberty on the musculoskeletal system. This is Human Biology 101.

He didn't say that. He pointed out that old people's go-to move is to dismiss the opinions of younger people due to "experience," and that's often a bullshit move. In the military crowd I'm now an old person. In the airline crowd I'm apparently still an infant, and I see the same thing over there. It's nonsense. Young people lack experience, and old people have calcified brains that reject new information. Both have valid insights. In this case, the dude held the sleeper hold way too long. Should he go to jail for that? I don't think so. I think he was justified in intervening, but interventions have limits.

Is there any state without cops? How did it work before? Literally any answer will work, it's not the the FBI was the "right answer." It was just *an* answer.

It's always banging the help. When it's not, you hear the details.