Lord Ratner

How does buying land work? I plan on doing a completely custom build, which means I'll need to have the land before the plans can be drawn up. Land in Dallas isn't cheap, so I'll most likely need a loan for the land. Is it usual to get one loan for the land and one for the build? Will getting a loan for the land hurt my ability to get a loan for the build? Thanks, Seth

Keep positive, keep sober, and keep notes. And remember, there's an all-you-can-eat international buffet of strange and wonderful "adventures" out there awaiting you, and the company pays for the hotel room. Patience.

If she wants the house, she can get a mortgage for it on her own. Agree with the others, do not allow any part of your new finances to touch. Don't worry about the kids, they're like cats. Two hours in a new house and they think they own the place.

To be fair, I didn't want to leave for the money. Life is just much better. Since the AF can't really match that aspect, money is all they have left.

I'll add something a bit different here. The above advice is solid, especially not drinking. Remember that everyone you deal with other than your wife and kids has seen this a million times. When a judge/lawyer/mediator asks what you want, it's just a test. You're getting half. If that's what you ask for, they know which party is acting in good faith. "I want my children to have a great relationship with both of their parents going forward, and to split the assets we accumulated while married right down the middle." Don't date for now. You have kids, I didn't. But they won't understand I'm guessing, and it sounds like the soon-to-be-ex will tell them if she finds out. You're going to get so much ass it'll make your head spin, so be patient. Write down everything that was wrong in your relationship. You determine the detail, but it should include what she would do that you didn't like, why you didn't like it, and how it made you feel. For bonus points, also write down the things that she didn't like about you. Trust me on this. When you meet that flight attendant that turns your stomach into butterflies, if it ain't written down, you won't remember it. Make sure the woman you decide to make into your kids' second mom isn't a recycled script. Do not trust this to your memory alone. The smaller brain is always an optimist. Think about how many people you know. Then think about how many of them are good friends. Then think about how many of those are best friends. The friend you can go on a month long backpacking trip with and not get annoyed with or tired of once. Pretty rare, huh? Now add sexual compatibility to that. If you find your forever-mate after 3 months and a few tinder dates, you'd better be buying lottery tickets too...

Caveat, if your life is put together and you're generally happy, this book is not really targeted for you, unless you're just interested in the underlying psychological theory.

I'm totally against it. He missed his shot when the Republicans controlled the Congress. This is just sloppy. But tactically it may be smart. He can at least force Democrats to constantly rail against any anti-immigration measures, keeping them as the party of lawlessness and foreign interest. That will play very well come election time, and it got him elected in the first place.

I actually think I escaped the baseops peanut gallery during my ordeal... So there's hope!

Eh. He seems like a great dude, but he's also enabling a narrative that offense alone justifies the punishment. If he really got career-ending paperwork, that means an LOR. The same punishment given for sleeping with a maintainer, abusing the GTC, DUI (in the old days)... All because we are now supposed to pretend that we all subscribe to this new definition of political correctness, we all feel so bad for the things we said in jest amongst friends, we all care more about hurt feelings than being in a job dedicated to murdering foreigners who want to murder us. He works with a surprising number of O-6s and O-7s who have DUIs. So it shouldn't be that shocking he recovered from making a harmless video with a penis puppet. The real question is would any of his subordinates recover in today's Air Force? Probably not. But we got from then to now thanks to two decades of military leaders pretending that humor, drinking, youthful stupidity, sex, and bravado are mutually exclusive to training idealistic young adults to dedicate their lives to a profession rooted in death.

It'll be the best thing that ever happened to him, he just doesn't know it yet

Nah, high profile women don't get away with frat in my experience. They may not get court martialed, but they don't keep command.

I'll bet $100 I can guess what happened. I wonder who the lucky crew chief was.

You do it for the retirement. I'm my opinion, there's a big chance that 20 years from now we have some sort of Medicare-for-all or other nationalized medicine disaster. In that case, I expect the military medical retirement to be largely irrelevant, leaving only the check of the month club. It's still money, but it only takes a few months in the airlines to learn that there's always another dollar to make, and some people will kill themselves chasing it. For me, the airline compensation is enough. But I also would need 10 more years to retire. And if you are doing it because you enjoy the military, obviously that's a different story, and a perfectly valid reason.

Specifics please. Numbers, goals, etc.

Remember, the house of cards is almost entirely predicated on every officer self-enforcing 100% productivity in the hopes of getting promoted. There is no external mechanism for getting you to work more than the minimum. Here's a little pick-me-up for the next time you don't want to do some pointless project gathering data for a commander who will just take the CYA option anyways: Put all the numbers into Excel, but don't use borders, colors, or formulas. Add/subtract/multiply/divide things by hand and type them into the cells if necessary. Don't resize columns or rows to make the numbers fit, just leave the scientific notation. When you get the email back asking for conditional formatting, notes, categories, borders, etc, simply point out that you have no idea how to use Excel, since the Air Force offers no course on it at PME. There is no way to "teach" it reliably. Every formula they tell you to Google is one bad keystroke away from taking longer to fix than just do themselves. Mediocrity is a liability for a commander or DO that intends to make general. You have been freed from more than just your dreams of being a LtCol.

Saw that. Since we don't have to rebuild the wall every year, monthly changes in border crossing won't be an issue. But this has nothing to do with efficacy or numbers. You're not stupid, you know a wall would work, just like you know a whole slew of solutions would work. You don't want illegal immigration curbed, plain and simple. It's not like it makes you unique. Best as I can tell from actual conversations with liberal friends (not internet), it's a largely unfocused sense of empathy and Western guilt that fuels the response we see today. "I don't know what I'm for, I just know I'm not for that [the wall, deportations, eVerify, national guard on the border, etc]." Ultimately I blame conservatives. They've allowed an alternate history to propagate that paints the triumphs of the post-enlightenment West as solely the result of exploiting other cultures and societies. Howard Zimm has the most egregious example of this in his book. Until conservatives can unify and explain how capitalism, cultural assimilation, individualism, free speech, the second amendment, low minimum wages, blah blah blah, actually benefit the very people that liberals seek to protect, there will be no progress.

Source? Nevermind, it's 42%. So less than half. Looks like the wall is a solid part of solving the problem. https://www.politifact.com/california/statements/2018/aug/24/kevin-mccarthy/mostly-true-visa-overstays-account-half-all-people/

I agree with you. I just want to offer a better argument for living in base than "commuting sucks." My point isn't that commuting is always wrong (I commute), but rather that it's not just as simple as adding a flight or two to the schedule. It's just about having far more options. For example, if you want to sleep in your own bed every night, that's an option with enough seniority. You can fly turns, you can become a check pilot and do sim checks, you can do union work, or you can even work in management. Opportunities for premium flying, sitting reserve in your living room, not caring about the weather, all things that commuting impacts. I fly with guys who coach their kids' sports, and they couldn't do that reliably at AA if they couldn't bid all turns, and that's not feasible as a commuter. Some people will still choose commuting, that's fine, I just want people and their families to have the full picture of what commuting costs. It's not much different than assignment choices in UPT. There's so much you don't know when making the decision, so imagine how confusing it is for the spouses. I've helped some realize they'd rather move to a domicile, and others feel more confident in their decision to commute.

We agree there. I actually think the only way to fix it is the long game. Make things worse, compromise heavily to get what you want so it can take root and become "normal," then hope you can undo the bad during the next wave. Oh, and you have to hope the conservatives don't completely waste two years of near-total control. Again. I'm not optimistic.

I'd much rather spend 20% on sales tax than 40%+ on income taxes. And I much prefer a system where everyone contributes. Hard to care about a tax that doesn't affect you, and nearly half of Americans (voters) aren't affected by income tax.

I know two people personally who have left SWA. Both because the amount you work in a single day, and one because he wanted the possibility to fly widebody one day. That's not a slam on SWA. It's just something you have to decide. A perfect day for me in narrow body world is two 2-hour flights. That said, a 2-1-2 three-day with a 20 hour layover in Miami Beach is a hell of a way to earn a living. But to restate something very important, for most people the number one priority is your ability to not commute. I've talked with a dozen guys with wives who really really really want to live in a certain city because of whatever. I've had decent success changing their minds when I explain the myriad ways living in base makes this job better for the family. If anyone looking to make the jump is unclear on why living in base is more than just avoiding the extra flight to work, send me a message and I'll give you my number. Or any other questions.

Housing is cheaper, as are most goods. I think it would be hard to argue that the poorest in Texas are worse of than the poorest in California, but I'd love to see data that shows otherwise.

It wouldn't hurt spending if the net tax change was neutral (reduce/eliminate income taxes). There's no universe where the Democrats support this. Our tax system is arguably the most progressive in the world. A national sales tax would mean the bottom 50% of Americans go from paying 3% of federal taxes to around 25%. However if you want to see it working on a smaller scale, just head to Texas. Tolls and property taxes may be annoying, but everyone participates, not just the wealthy.

I'm dense? This from the guy who's pretending like he's listened to the work of the guy he's criticizing? Here's a great talk about the differences between Marxists and post modernists. Be careful though, he's a huckster... Come back when you have a PhD, since that's the apparent prerequisite for having an opinion according to your self-eliminating metric for credibility.

Ok, so make an actual claim. He loves the term "cultural Marxism," but he happens to be exceptionally educated about the subject. Are you arguing that there aren't Marxists in academia? What fear is he hyping up, specifically?