Lord Ratner

Yeah, but that's largely because I think the next few years are going to be economically terrible, and that colors voters like nothing else. Biden owns it like every president owns the economy, deserved or not. Biden has also made the border situation a complete disaster, and that's the original issue that got Trump elected. Pile on some not-unfounded rhetoric about the racist and anti-science topics of CRT and transgenderism being put into enough schools to make a dent, and Biden is going to have a tough time on the debate stage. Plus his clear cognitive decline. Biden is not then man he was is 2019 even If I'm wrong and the economy is fine, different story. I think Kamala loses to any reasonable candidate. The DNC will do everything they can to get rid of her, as they should.

Stacy Abrams? It would be fascinating to see the Democrats embrace an election denier so soon after Donald Trump. Buttigeg has no spine, he's a self hating white guy, which gets you kiddos from the commentariat, but not the voters. Klobuchar is solid, for a dem. Biden is not responsible for the current economic situation, but he wanted to dump 3.5 plus trillion dollars onto an already raging inflation fire, so regardless of his culpability, he's embracing it. I think Biden vs Trump 2.0 goes to Trump at this point, but way too early to be sure. It's going to be way too easy for him to point at the impending financial catastrophe and say "see? Look at what you got for picking Joe." Trump is also very good at leveraging the Democratic psychosis regarding transgender politics, border security, and other only-political-elites-think-this-way topics against the Democrats. Since Biden has been very visible and on the record for the past 4 years as president, he won't be able to do with the rest of the Democrats do and pretend like they just happened to have different positions on these issues. He has to own the party position. I think against any other democrat, Trump loses. I sincerely hope that we don't run that experiment. The biggest threat for the Democratic party is that they have committed to a bunch of extreme positions that the liberal voters were generally able to ignore because they were removed from everyday life. But Virginia showed that once those issues start creeping into real life, support for the party falls off. I'm honestly surprised we haven't seen more Democrats jumping ship towards the center after the Virgina kids and NJ near-miss, in fact some seem to be doubling down, but I'm fairly certain that by August or September every Democrat up for election is going to look a whole lot like Joe Manchin.

RINO? Because they didn't support the unbelievably stupid election protest? I'm not as confident with Haley since she's been out of the spotlight for a while, but why do you consider Crenshaw not-conservative? Unless you mean RINO literally, which I consider a good thing. Last I checked, the Republican party has been a disgrace for decades, at least starting with Bush. They've been almost as pro illegal immigration as the Democrats have, minus publicly voicing that opinion. They've been weak dicks on foreign policy, when they had a chance to do something about Obamacare they shit the bed. And it would be absolutely hilarious if it wasn't so tragic how they completely abandoned fiscal responsibility almost immediately after the tea party revolution. It's not just the Democratic party that has to go through an reckoning. Republicans have confused supporting capitalism with enabling billionaire-led multinational corporations that are completely in bed with the Democratic party, simply because they are "business." But their business has been outsourcing jobs to other countries, and almost single-handedly funding all of the radical movements that are decimating our social fabric today. They have presided as the champions of capitalism over the most disgusting distortion of free market ideals in my lifetime, culminating in a pandemic, where for no reason whatsoever, the jobs and activities of the underclass were deemed non-essential, while nearly every single upper class pursuit was enabled and funded. They printed 6 trillion dollars and almost exclusively distributed it to the richest Americans, triggering an inflation wave which is going to devastate the minimal savings of the bottom half while the rich ride the speculative asset bubble to the Moon. Don't worry though, just like in 2008 they'll find a way to sell all of their nonsense holdings before the crash. The Fed will ensure they have enough time to do so by propping up the market until only us silly retail investors are left in play. So who exactly are the Republicans again? And don't give me some obscure Representatives on their first or second term, if the leadership structure of the party aren't "true Republicans" then there's no such thing at all. Exactly how have the top brass of the party acted as true conservatives while Crenshaw has not?

First, Haley is more qualified than DeSantis. Not sure why he'd lead the ticket. Both would be excellent though. Like it or not, people vote with their eyes. The only reason Biden won, with the flaws you identified, is because Trump was a fucking moron. That's it. Biden loses this time around because of the economy. But he's not going to run, which means a clean slate for the voters. Put DeSantis, who's not a household name if you're not a solid liberal or conservative (with mostly predetermined votes) up against someone with pizzazz and melanin, he's toast. Unless of course you're anticipating a conservative wave at the ballot box, which I don't particularly see happening. Especially if Biden drops out. He's very smart, but he's also a bit of a robot. He's learned the lessons of Donald trump, namely that you don't take shit from the media, but he's still just doesn't have that wow factor. Nikki Haley has also learned the media lessons of Donald trump, but she's an attractive, minority, female, daughter of immigrants success story. If you can't see how she's a more powerful candidate, I'd say you're giving too much credit to the American voters for being issues, policy, philosophy based in their voting. Especially the "independent" vote which is largely people incapable of making up their minds. Maybe with 8 years of being a household name he'll have incumbency in his favor. But that's not the story of powerful way to get elected. I'd much rather see Nikki Haley run with Dan Crenshaw as her running mate. Crenshaw is not remotely qualified to be the president yet, but he certainly smart enough, is podcast is a testament to his conservative intellectualism, and he's got the best fucking hook I could imagine for a White Guy. Navy SEAL war hero disabled veteran who wears an eye patch. Can you imagine trying to debate that guy?

Biden will announce that he's not going to run for reelection. That way the Democrats can run a legitimate primary, because they recognize if Kamala is the presumptive candidate, they're done. I expect the entire democratic machine to come out and work against her, just like the Republican machine will work against Trump if he decides to try again. Neither side is interested in running a deeply unpopular candidate right now. My fear is that the Republicans will run Ron DeSantis, who I like a great deal, but he has no hook. Just a boring white guy, and that's not gonna be enough. If he runs as Nikki Haley's vice president, that could do the trick. At least then he'll have name recognition after her second term. I think the Democrats are just as unsure as we are about who they're going to run. The war between the progressive wing and the liberal Wing has only gotten worse since 2020.

All of our scheduling stuff is done on calendar days Work for dropping next months schedule: 9th: put in preferences for next month. Takes a hour the first time, then every month about 10 minutes to copy the template and make some small tweaks. 18th: next month schedule is loaded, spend 10 minutes (max) putting trips into the pilot "trading board" 22nd: Load next months trips into trading software. Runs every day at 0800 and 2000 starting in the 23rd of the prior month. Usually will have to reload the trades before each run from the 23rd until all the trips are gone, usually by the 28th. 5-10 minutes each iteration. 24th: "free for all" training system opens for the next month at 1000. Spend about 10 mins at 0900 loading trades into an optional service that automatically executes trading commands. This gets my undivided attention from 1000-1030. Then I'll look at it a few times a day until my trips are gone, usually by the 28th. Work for picking up flying. I do this on the day-of and day-before any day that I am willing/wanting to fly: Before 1000, look at the open trips for tomorrow, add to ballot if desired. Rarely desired. 5 minutes When I get an alert that a new trip has dropped into "open time," look at my phone to assess the trip. 15 seconds if I don't want it, 1-2 minutes if I do. This happens between 10-100 times a day. I do this because I am very picky about the flights I will accept. If you are willing to be less choosey you can load criteria into the website once a day and just let it ride. So I look at my phone a lot every day, but I was doing that anyways. Honestly, the hard part isn't the time, though ironically that's what most pilots recoil at. Pilots want predictability and stability. Get the schedule and don't think about it. That's certainly an option. The hard part is risk tolerance. What if there's no trips to fly? What if you can't drop to zero? What if the senior pilots take the trips? What if I don't get paid? No pain, no gain. The bigger the hub, the better the options. The closer you live to the airport, the better. Flying weekends means better trips if you're junior since the senior pilots want weekday stuff. The more flexible you are the better. If I was willing to fly more and be away from home more I could have made $350k I think. Instead I was home a lot, flew very few hours and made $270k. But be honest with yourself about your risk tolerance. Statistically speaking you will not do what I do. And if you don't, it's still an amazing job with great pay and lots of time off.

Sure. In the list, each item number is for the corresponding month in 2021. Some context: Example: 1. 90 Hours / 8 nights / +2 Covid First number is my hours of pay. The low end for a reserve pilot is 73. Normal for a line holder just flying their schedule is 78-90. For a normal line holder you would expect 16 days of work with 8-13 nights away from home to reach 90 hours, but it depends on trip composition. If you fly 15 turns (single day out-and-back) you can make 90+ hours with no nights away. That's usually for the senior pilots, or those who do what I do. Second number is actual nights I was away from home Third number is the modifier based on extenuating circumstances. For June and July we were given 48 hours post vaccination quarantine. Any trips that touched that 48 hours were dropped with pay. I positioned a 4-day trip to touch the beginning of the window and another 4-day to touch the end, per shot. So the third number represents a realistic number of nights away from home if I had flown to get those hours 95 Hours / 1 Night / +7 furlough return 78 Hours / 7 Nights / 87 Hours / 5 Nights / +3 10-day quarantine 96 Hours / 9 Nights / 178 Hours / 9 Nights / 133 Hours / 5 Nights / +3 vaccine drops 112 Hours / 1 Nights / +4 vaccine drops 103 Hours / 4 Nights / 91 Hours / 5 Nights / +1 vacation 89 Hours / 4 Nights / +2 vacation 136 Hours / 7 Nights / 101 Hours / 9 Nights /

Absolutely. This has been my message to military dudes and dudettes, and most particularly my message to their spouses. You may think you know why you want to live somewhere, but you might not be considering the totality of what that decision will entail. My wife has absolutely no family in DFW, except for of course me. And living in one of the mega hubs has allowed me to run this hustle, which means not only am I home more, I'm home on more of the days that I want to be home. All the while making much more money for much less work than I would as a commuter, or even at a smaller hub. That's not to say everyone has to do what I do; I remember how many friends getting out were moving to where their wife's family lived. Understandable. After 10 to 20 years of getting jerked around by the military so your husband/wife can do awesome things with awesome people in awesome airplanes while you sat at home, it's completely reasonable to want to make a major decision for once like where to live. But the airlines are a strange and stupid career, and they are most heavily influenced by where you live. So everybody choosing not to live at a primary hub for whatever airline they work for needs to very strongly consider the implications. I think we take for granted that the airlines allow you to live anywhere. Telecommuting for other jobs has similarly detrimental effects on your career outlook and earnings. If you look at all of the factors and determine that earning less and working more is a price you're willing to pay to live somewhere else, then by all means, I'm happy for you. But for my wife and I, as we get ready to have kids, we decided it would be better for me to be home more often than for our kids to have more time with the rest of the family. As for the money stuff, I think the rest of the world is waking up quite suddenly to the financial reality of the last 2 years of pandemic fuckery... It's going to be fascinating and terrifying to watch the Fed juggle inflation and the associated social unrest it causes, with their true and unstated primary purpose, propping up the stock market. The market is eating shit on the potential of going from unfathomably low interest rates (0-.25%) to mildly less unfathomably low interest rates (1-1.25%). Last time we had an inflation panic, it followed the government expanding the monetary supply by around 13%. It took interest rates of 20% and two recessions to beat that inflation back down. This time the government expanded the monetary supply by around 25%... Buckle up. How does that relate to the airlines? Pilots always lose in recessions. Spend accordingly.

Yeah, I know. But as far as starlets go, she's not even that hot.

They have the advantage of being the closest military to their borders. Their focus should be slowing the enemy down long enough for the adults to get in position and save what's left. Every country will have a different way of doing that, but it will always be a very fatal specialty. If they aren't willing to die for their country, we sure we hell shouldn't.

The niche they can fill is dying for their country.

Agreed. I was blown away by how good Spider-Man was, given the wacky plot. Matrix was dog shit. Watched No Time To Die. Meh. It took all the fun and ask the action out of James Bond in their attempt to humanize him. Yet unlike Casino Royale, the action was not at all realistic. And way too long. Daniel Craig is a really good actor, but the story was a dud. Red Notice was pretty good. Basically the criminal version of National Treasure. I really don't like Gal Gadot I'm anything. Her accent is terrible and her acting is wooden and forced. But Ryan Reynolds and The Rock are great.

It'll be a great thing to talk about in an interview. What did you learn, how did it make you a better pilot, etc.

I quoted my last summary for comparison purposes. I was hired in March 2018. Here's how 2021 went. I'm a line holder. The alternative would be reserve, which at AA means 18 days per month (in blocks of 3-7) where you are either on a 2-hourish callout (76 hours pay/month) or 12-hour callout (73 hours/month). I get a schedule every month from the bidding software. I then use the trading tools to drop my entire schedule, with some rare trips being "sold" to others (I pay them to take my trip). I then wait for what we call makeup flying, trips leaving today or tomorrow that he company needs to fill dues to sickness, weather events, fatigue calls, delays, etc. I fly these trips because they usually have a high pay-to-flight-hours ratio, due to contract intricacies that aren't germane to the conversation. My entire goal is to maximize my efficiency. As an example, at AA these trips pay the same DFW-OKC-DFW vs DFW-ORD-DFW - Both pay 5:15 hours DFW-OKC, overnight, OKC-DFW vs DFW-OKC-DFW-JFK, overnight, JFK-DFW - Both pay 10:30 hours Anyways, in 2021 I flew 295 hours in the cockpit. I spent another 150 or so riding in the cabin as a passenger (fully paid at the major airlines). Lets call it 450 hours of actual uniformed work. I was paid 1310 hours (this includes vacation and training pay, which are done as work-hours) plus per diem, which worked out to $241k Gross earnings, plus $30.4k of company contributions to my 401k. So $270k in my fourth year. Recently the junior captain bid went to someone below me on the seniority list, but I will stay where I am and accrue seniority-in-seat which will allow me to further enhance my pay-to-hours-flown ration by picking up even shorter trips that pay the same as longer trip, as in the examples above. Please note though, I am an extreme case. You have to really work the contract and scheduling tools to do what I do, but anyone can if they can tolerate the uncertainty. I spend more days home than most, so when I say uncertainty I mean you don't know what you're doing until the day before at the earliest. As a side note, $270k seems like a ridiculous amount of money to me, but I fly with people who make quite a bit more than me, yet still live paycheck to paycheck. Please get yourself financially savvy before you start making eye-watering money. My neighbor, a wide-body captain married to a specialty doctor (total of ~$750k/year), spent years wasting everything. They tell me that Dave Ramsey saved them, and I'm a fan of his work, though I've never needed it.

If working at AA means living in base, and working at the other airlines means commuting, then go AA. That goes for all airlines. If you wanna live in Houston, go United. Dallas, AA/SWA. Atlanta, go Delta. For NYC area I would consider Jet Blue. Lots of potential there and good pay now. Anyways, where you want to live is the first metric. Now, as for AA, it's a dumpster fire. But the airlines all rotate who sucks the most. AA and the other majors are "too big to fail" so you aren't going to end up on the street. You might get furloughed if the world goes to shit again, but that won't be different at the other airlines. We might merge, and when we do some of the younger pilots at the smaller airline will hit the jackpot. Happened with American West and US Air. If we collapse entirely (too big for that), then you can end up like the TWA pilots who got screwed on seniority integration. And furloughed. But here they are, all working now, and you can find many, many, many similar stories at DAL, UAL, and SWA. The industry, like many others, is run by Wall Street shysters looking to use a fancy new accounting trick to bump the EPS a couple cents per quarter. So you really can't guess what will happen. But AA is the trailing airline right now, and I'm still doing pretty well. I'll make my next post covering 2021 earnings and work.

Scoffing is never the right answer, but if you stayed a free agent, you could have been in the November class at AA, with over 2000 pilots to be trained behind you in one year. Anybody who thinks the airlines will be all boom times is clearly a fool. But anybody who thinks that it will be all bust is also silly. You have to catch the boom times to make up for the bust times, otherwise it's definitely not the right career fit.

This is the relevant point. There were only a few select justifications for mandates (masks, school closures, vaccination, boosting). 1. Stop the spread. That's dead. None of the mandated actions *meaningfully* stop the spread. Alpha didn't look like it was responding, Delta killed that idea for sure, and omicron is just making a mockery of it. The vaccine turned out to be the fever-dream of libertarians. Instead of working like the measles vax, which absolutely stops the spread of measles, this vaccine only protects the individual who takes it. Fascinating. Sure, we didn't know that a year ago, but we know it for sure now yet some at the highest levels of government are still clinging to mandates. And if you think these people are up there begging to save the lives of their political opposition, you have a much more optimistic view of politics than I do. This is a case study in our ability to cling to a decision as humans despite changes around us. 2. Don't overwhelm the hospitals. This one was fascinating, because the average person had no idea how overwhelmed most hospitals are on any normal day. Do you really think nurses started using cocaine to get through the day because of the coronavirus? They are businesses, and like any other well-run business, operating near capacity is usually the most profitable path. But this was also confused with "don't burden the hospitals." There's a big difference between overwhelming and burdening. As the last few posts point out, we allow all manner of personal decision making that burdens hospitals. It's just another cost of freedom that is grossly outweighed by the cost of authoritarianism. You think the hospitals are filled now... Go check out the authoritative states. 3. Save the children. This one has been disgusting from the start. Perhaps the best thing about this pandemic is that it doesn't affect children. There's not a single factual analysis that implies children are at risk from this disease. Yet the teachers unions in the most radicalized cities in America have used it as a cudgel, and politicians have jumped on board. Granted, I don't expect the average American to understand the immensity of facial expressions on childhood development, but I do expect experts in the field of childhood development to be honest about it, and they haven't been. The most profound effect of the pandemic is not going to be a few more old people dying a few years earlier (and yes, compared to the rates of death that have been posted here numerous times, this pandemic did not change the game for old people. They died of a lot of things, now there's one more on the list. As those most susceptible to the coronavirus pass, the rates will return to where they were. It sucks. But it wasn't the only factor and we treated it that way). Rather the biggest effect will be the millions of children, overwhelmingly those from low-income and single-parent households, who missed out on two years of desperately needed, in person education. Most of the people here have their shit together, and therefore their kids have their shit together. They have no idea the abject misery that children live in, in places like inner city chicago, new york, memphis, St louis, baltimore, Los angeles, or any number of liberal-run catastrophes across the country. They had jobs that let them stay at home and watch their kids, many of whom already had a firm basis in academics and could handle the transition to Zoom for a couple years. That's not the case for the kids whose parents didn't make it through a year of high school themselves, and spend their days either judiciously working at shitty jobs to pay for food for their kids, or wasting their lives away in a self-indulgent drug fantasy world, where the effect on their children is the same. Unmonitored, uneducated, and mostly just alone. For a lot of those kids, the teacher was the only person who interacted with them in a meaningful way on a daily basis.

Who cares? That's their risk to take.

Only because he got caught throwing a party. Rules for thee but not for me

That's been the vulnerability of the progressive/socialist/Marxist movement for decades. The philosophy of "do what we say and we'll reach utopia together" always crashes into the inescapable conflict of the people they (the elite) are trying to save (the proletariat) not wanting to follow the orders meant to save them. Then comes the blood shed.

I don't like agreeing with you, but I do.

Just give the Ukrainians whatever they need to destroy the Russian pipeline that crosses their land, and commit to seizing the Nord Stream pipeline should the sovereignty of Ukraine be violated. Problem solved. The problem isn't *how* to deal with Russia, the problem is will power. The American Left has been dedicated to the intentional diminishment of American influence for over a decade now, because they view power as synonymous with tyranny. The rise in tensions with China and Russia are in direct conflict with their foundational philosophy that American power asymmetry is the *cause* of international turmoil. So they'll double down and (fail to) resolve the conflict by further reducing our power footprint. The left has been so busy rewriting history that they have completely forgotten it. In their minds, these aggressions are the product of American exceptionalism. Using our power to constrain Russia would, in their mind, just cause further aggression.

If you look at the countries that already went through Omicron, we are most likely peaking already. Delta followed the same parallel course. Does not look like hospitals will be overrun. Especially when you consider the massive reduction in hospital stay length from omicron.

Suddenly you have new arguments. Maybe just quote the actual argument next time, because “not 100% effective" and "only 40% effective" are not the same. Not even close. Perfectly reasonable? Based on what? It's been two years, dude. The layered strategy failed, even as there goalposts kept moving. And amazingly, what we know about COVID isn't dramatically different from May of 2020. You want to have the conversation, then have it. I posted a ton of unanswered questions regarding the duration and triggers for mandates, but instead of engaging you continue to reply with the supposed-absurd claims of others. So it seems like the only conversation you want to have is the same one everyone is obsessed with: your side is crazier than my side.