Lord Ratner

Wait, do people really think Satan shoes are... Anything? How is that important?

I agree completely. Massive, massive deflationary forces from unfathomable progress on automation and exploiting foreign labor have made the inflation from runaway government spending invisible. But the geniuses at the Fed haven't put that together. Problem is, there aren't many places left in the world to get nearly-free labor. If we can't keep dropping the prices on TVs and t-shirts, the stagnation in wage growth for the past couple decades and the aforementioned spending spree is going to kick us in the teeth. And the Fed has nowhere to go with rates at zero. Get ready...

Ah yes, economics. Incredibly complex and counterintuitive answers to simple questions, requiring even more complicated explanations when the aforementioned answers prove incorrect. I really liked when the fed, which is fully staffed with economists, admitted that they simply can't explain the rates of inflation over the past years, so maybe they just need different goals... https://econofact.org/why-did-the-fed-change-its-framework-and-why-does-it-matter Sometimes I think economists were invented to take the heat off of meteorologists.

They want to manipulate the outcome in pursuit of "equity," but doing so with differential scoring criteria is to highlight the very differences they claim don't exist. The demonization of test scores in academia is evidence of this. Affirmative action in University admissions has been around forever, and that's just a form of differential scoring. Not good enough. So now we get rid of grades, leaving group identity rather than performance as the metric for measuring worth. Ugly stuff. As soon as you realize that the whole philosophy is corrupt, and the leaders of the movement know it, understanding the policy gets a lot easier. There's a reason the thought-leaders on the left have all but completely stopped engaging in debates with their counterparts on the right. They're lying, and you don't promote a lie by giving your opposition a platform to call you out on it.

Ok, but they *are* lesser or ineffective in certain combat roles. Those roles are quite specifically the ones requiring brute strength or extreme stamina. No test is needed, beyond common sense, but if you have doubts, I believe the Marine Infantry Officer Course was opened to women a few years ago with a predictable outcome. Fighter pilots? Cool. Navy SEALS? Nope. The story with the Army test is that they specifically attempted to create a test that would be gender neutral, yet still women are being overwhelmingly outperformed by men. And why was such a test constructed, with a goal of removing gender-based scoring metrics? I suspect because "gender-based" is a political hot potato when one half of our government is making a serious-yet-absurd argument that gender does not actually exist. Except most women aren't interested in fighting reality either, and they don't want lower PT scores on their evaluations because some SJW professor of reptilian rape culture considers it patriarchal to have different scoring criteria. We are allowing a very small number of very stupid people to create a tremendous amount of work and wasted effort in the well-intentioned desire to be inclusive. But there is such a thing as "too far."

I'm not sure if you're being held at gunpoint or something, but what's your point? Any physical fitness test that applies the same standards to males and females will yield a similar result. It is a silly and counterproductive rebellion against reality to expect otherwise. Women are weaker than men. If we came up with tests for cellulite prevalence, congenital heart failure, osteoporosis, or visceral fat, we would have similarly disparate outcomes. Women and men are not the same. We have done a rather marvelous job separating out the military specialities that do not rely on the specifically-male attributes of the species, and getting women in there. Infantry-and-the-like will remain a male specialty until they are replaced by robots. I'm sure you'll be back suggesting we are bitter androgynists for favoring the robots when we criticize President Beiber for unveiling the latest DOD combat banana hammocks at his first press conference in the middle of the droid wars on Venus.

How it matters, and the point I think Tucker Carlson was trying to make (poorly), is that our president made it a point to talk about pregnancy flight suits, which have zero-to-nearly-zero effect on our military readiness, while failing to talk about the litany of real military threats that face us. This is the go-to move of the political left these days. When you are failing to accomplish anything of substance, or in this case, failing to address a real and escalating immigration crisis at the border, do some low-impact SJW bullshit and know that your side will trip over their equity erections to attack the conservatives tripping over their social-collapse erections, and both sides (of voters) once again completely miss the chance to unite against our shared enemy, the politician class. Both the GOP and Dems had zero appetite for dealing with the most glaring threat facing us: China. Trump, in all his clownishness, saw it clear as day. Now he's gone and the politicians can get back to what they really care about: enriching their families. China has been great for that. Taiwan will be a great pawn in this. The US will "recognize" them in a variety of venues (a can of worms Trump opened), while doing nothing of substance to support them. China will feign outrage so our "leaders" can look like they're being tough on China, but as long as we don't actually do anything, China will be pleased, and the money can flow. You and I won't see any of it, of course, unless you happen to be invested in the same stocks.

If ever there was a time to brush up on the fifth amendment....

It's one part depressing and one part amazing how many people will say just about anything with supreme confidence, then completely fall apart when you simply ask "why?"

He's a fucking moron. The fact that they haven't come out and told vaccinated people that they can do whatever the hell that they want, now that all the data has been collected on the vaccine, is nearly criminal. Our entire system of government is predicated on protecting power from any individual or small group, and this pandemic has been a resounding reinforcement of those dangers. I don't suspect there will be much honest analysis from the left on the pandemic, but thank god Florida, Texas, and a few other states had the nuts to do things their own way, so we can at least look back with definitive proof that the totalitarian answer to a pandemic was not successful.

The only aspect to a Tesla that appeals to me is the self driving. For a long time Waymo/Google was the only player, but Tesla has played catch-up in amazing fashion. Now it looks like they will beat Waymo to the market with a fully self-driving vehicle, and without the use of LIDAR. Rather incredible. Whatever the first sub-$50k self driving car is, I will buy. I'd prefer it not be a sports car, but honestly even if it's a wheel barrow I'd ride it if I could be sleeping on the way to work.

Yet NATO is an invaluable tool for diplomacy in 2021? Right. Honestly it's a miracle China hasn't already taken our place as sole superpower.

Probably because he's stupid. You don't have to wait for him to stutter to come to that conclusion. The guy has been a joke for 40 years. Now we're supposed to pretend he's not? He's pants-on-head stupid, and pretending otherwise is just as absurd as the Trumpists denying that Trump was a habitual liar.

Shack. Boycotting ≠ Cancelling

It seems like a lot of the perceived racial offenses of the 2020's are minorities confusing assholes with racists, and assuming white people aren't subjected to the same treatment by the aforementioned assholes.

It was free (actually you get paid) and you could be a *very* unpopular cadet with leadership and still get a pilot slot. And for people like me with problems self-motivating for academics, you don't have the freedom to skip class or slack off. That's about it. Otherwise, USAFA --> Active Duty : ROTC --> Guard/Reserve.

So... It takes *a lot* longer to fill up, and you have to modify your route to accommodate EV charging? Doesn't meet the threshold for "full of shit"

There's a problem in what you just said, and it's *exactly* what the professional DC people want you to do. (But I agree with your point, obviously) There is no longer any connection between the political class and the voter, including on the right. We are now in the phase where we-the-people need to figure that out. "The left" cannot encompass the activists, journalists, professors, politicians, and voters. It's too broad, and intentionally so. Their power comes from making us hate our neighbors. If we can't talk to each other, we won't realize we have far, far, far more in common with our opposing-side neighbor/coworker/friends/etc than we do with the people we're voting for. The left love their polls, yet no polls on transgender sentiment. American voters overwhelmingly agree that men shouldn't play women's sports, and kids shouldn't take puberty blockers without parental consent. The Democrats (professionals, not voters) are trying to are trying to convince their constituency that conservatives hate transgender people and wish them misery and harm. That way the liberal voters don't have to vote for conversion surgery for five-year-olds, they can just vote "against bigotry." This is the same strategy employed in the BLM fight today.

Yikes

You haven't figured out that good dude ≠ good leader? The system is designed to select for exactly this type of action. Every single step of the process. There's only one option: quit. Your country doesn't need you right now. And when it does, these careerist clowns will be the first to go.

By a logical standard? No. By the standard we have established through other disasters in other states? Yes. The most important reason Texas (and all other states) shouldn't get disaster aid is that it diminishes the concept of and support for States rights. Rights fine with responsibilities, yet we are in an era of anti-responsibility.

The only reason Cuomo is in the news at all is because competing progressives (DeBlasio, mainly) smell blood and want his job.

Huh? Is my sarcasm detector inop or did you suddenly become an idiot?

That's all well and good, except the most regulated parts the the country still have grid failures. This is where conservatives start talking themselves into knots. Do I want my power costs to go up so I can avoid a blackout every one or two decades? No thanks. I'll spend a few hundred bucks on a generator. Obviously ERCOT fucked up. But the measure of a fuck up is not how far it is from the perfect hypothetical. It's how far it is from other functioning systems. By that measure, not much to see here. We don't need government regulation to weather proof a nuclear reactor sensor that government wouldn't have caught beforehand anyways. That sensor will never freeze again, no red tape required. The beautiful thing about government is they can blame failures (that government also failed to recognize) on a lack of government. Then they claim the addition of government, not the usual process of identifying a new problem and solving it, was what prevented a reoccurrence.

Mostly false parallels here. It is absolutely wrong that he's being criticized. He is a federal official that has *nothing* to do with the power crisis in Texas, and other than getting an emergency declared, which he did, he's useless. When exactly would you like our politicians to spend time with their families? When they're needed most, or when they are not? Ted Cruz is not the leader of Texas. If Abbott had run away to Mexico we'd have a very different conversation. Dodging a deployment? That's your parallel? Do better. No one had to be there in Ted's absence, hell the reduced power usage from his family leaving marginally *helps* the crisis. Generals telling people to quit? What on Earth does that have to do with anything? Acting like "giving the appearance of working" is somehow a virtue is *exactly* the problem I'm identifying. If you want a military analogy that actually applies, how about the generals that expect their staff to stay at the office till 8pm even when they could get some of that work done at home, with their families? How do we feel about that? Saying that "symbolism matters" implies that *all* symbolism matters. It does not. A graduation ceremony recognizes a particular accomplishment of individuals to the people who care. If I forced you to go to my cousin's graduation, would the symbolism matter to you then? We can and should expect our leaders to be where they are needed, when they are needed. We should stop pretending like our government officials are supposed to be superhuman public servants. For the people, *by* the people. Regular citizens engaging in the practice of self governance. We need to stop holding them to a higher standard than we hold ourselves to. This is just a case of people not liking the person first, and finding reasons second. It was nonsense when conservatives did it to Obama for golfing, it's nonsense now.