Stoker

It's not a Nazi salute - it's just a gesture intentionally close enough to a Nazi salute to let the people who like Nazi salutes know that you're really on their side.

If you're fighting fires with water and trucks, your policy and planning is already a disaster. We didn't dramatically lower the loss from household fires by putting a fire truck on every block, we did it by building code changes, insurance pressure, and consumer product safety to reduce flammability of household materials. You won't stop California fires by dumping an extra billion into firefighting, but you might do it by mandating (by code and insurance) metal roofs/siding, making it take less than a decade to get approval for controlled burns, and a dozen other long term policy changes that have been suggested and mostly ignored by Californians for decades. Luckily, if you don't do anything to mitigate your home's fire risk in California, the state will still insure you and pay for it via a tax on everyone whose risk is low enough to get private insurance. That surely won't lead to problems down the road.

We pay people more, and ban them from owning/trading anything but TSP "letter" funds or their functional equivalents. Seems like a fair solution. Term limits don't really work the way people think they will. Everyone expects it will turn Congress into Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but really it just prevents anyone from getting particularly "good" at being a legislator. Which just transfers even more power to lobbyists and staffers, because people in office literally don't know how to write a bill.

To paraphrase Dr. Evil, $200k just isn't that much much money anymore. If you're a professional with an advanced degree and you take a job in the DC area knowing it's only ever going to pay, say, $100k, you're an idiot who will be crushed by the high cost of living. By and large, the people making over $200k are highly educated professionals who could easily earn more in the private sector but prefer the stability/quality of life the Feds offer. Those latter benefits appear likely to be going away with the new administration, however. We'll see an exodus into the private sector and retirement over the next four years, but it won't be the useless GS-11s, it'll be the irreplaceable hard workers who make the government work. The useless folks will stick around and be happy that nothing is getting done.

We as a society have made a serious mistake in being okay with our highest government positions (judges/justices, congresspeople, state reps, etc.) poorly paid. Fauci has a lot of flaws, but the requirements to fill Fauci's position are pretty much "world-renowned physician-administrator willing to live in the DC metro area." $416k seems like a bargain for that when senior physicians at pretty much any major hospital are making that.

They're not really that good, it's just that for a lot of people, it's more important to feel smart and correct than for their country to succeed.

Really, Azerbaijan Airlines backed Russia into this corner. They have no one but themselves to blame. If they weren't flying airplanes to Grozny, the Russians wouldn't have felt the need to defend themselves. /s

Poland was part of the German Reich only twenty years ago! The Allies have really put us in a threatened position by surrounding us with an alliance, the Little Entente! Many of the people there really vibe with us ethnically and not the Poles! Poland is really just a corrupt autocratic state anyways. Besides, there's no way Britain/France can help Poland, so it's a waste trying.

It seems primarily like her problem with serving is the Israel-Hamas conflcit... If your opposition to war is based on objections to a particular war, congratulations! You aren't a conscientious objector. Just another idiot who eats up Russian information warfare. Here's an idea - if you ever notice that the cause/belief/conspiracy you've recently decided to follow is something that would get an FSB officer promoted for spreading, reconsider your cause/belief/conspiracy. I'm also not impressed by anyone who sees what our enemies choose to do to those who cross them, and decides, "Yes, I will give those bad people a monopoly of violence against myself and my loved ones."

You know your argument is sound when your best expression of it is that anyone who disagrees with you is stupid.

Can you explain why Britain was right to fight on in a seemingly hopeless war, alone, against a superior power, but the Ukrainians are wrong to do so?

Should Britain have cut a deal with Germany in 1940?

Sure, in a court of law. Not a job application or the court of public opinion. Would you let Gaetz date your daughter?

He may not need confirmation if Trump is able to use a recess appointment (or as Gaetz calls it, a first date).

They started the war with the goal of taking Kiev in three days, and are now celebrating taking Random Tiny Village #47 like they just captured Berlin. And all it cost them was their future.