Lord Ratner

Waiting on paperwork for the Form1's, but I'm converting my Rattler and the ZF-5T I just got to SBRs so I don't have to deal with the brace nonsense. I haven't shot it yet, but I think the FRT in the MP5K clone is going to be a riot...

Yeah, this is exactly the point. Except your contention that they aren't a bunch of irrational head choppers is mostly unsupported. They have repeatedly and continually acted in a way that is only rational if you truly believe the United States was never going to respond. As demonstrated over the past few weeks, they are powerless against us. And yet for decades they have targeted and slaughtered Americans whenever they could. In fact if you listen to the entire podcast Coleman covers a multitude of attacks that are clearly insane for the Iranians to have attempted. And yet they did. So yes, the evidence suggests that they are in fact irrational head choppers. And those irrational head choppers can never have a nuclear deterrent. So long as they are irrational head choppers, we must retain the ability to stomp them whenever their antics exceed our patience. Enriching uranium to 60% obviously indicates the desire for nuclear weapons. We need not wait any longer than that to act against those goals. We certainly don't need to wait until they are at some arbitrary point much closer to a nuclear capability. There is not another country on planet Earth that regularly conducts government proceedings after proclaiming "Death to America" loudly and publicly. Why people keep pretending that Iran is just like our other adversaries is a mystery to me.

The intelligence community doesn't have a great track record of knowing when a country is close to getting nuclear weapons: At 1:21:00 Coleman covers the many failures, but the whole debate is good. Literally no country has ever refined uranium to 60% and not been working on getting nuclear weapons.

No, I don't think that would work. But I think you're close. This idea of yours needs to happen where the major airline hubs are. That's where you could find cfis with military experience and a general willingness to fly for money. I can think of a lot of guys at American Airlines who would love to moonlight teaching the next generation, as long as it didn't take away from their lives in the same way that all the other Air Force /guard/reserve duties do. Pay for a retired or separated Air Force pilot working at the airlines to get their CFII, and then give them a decent "per day" pay for showing up and flying two or three student rides. Do it like the Air Force academy liaison program and allow them to accrue time towards retirement, but no official Air Force pay. You get the idea. That would end up being wildly cheaper than active duty pilots at an active duty base teaching, but you could get that military-esque training. Just a thought

Some of us believe that expensive gas and unstable markets are worth it to move the pieces on the board for the inevitable war with China. Apparently some of the Trump admin, including Trump himself, agrees. I'll judge the effort once it's done, or at least a few months in, but if it works, then yeah, easily worth it. Seriously though, noble deaths? Who's the child now? We all signed up to die for causes that were too big for us to understand as 18 years olds. Now you should know better.

One of the reasons these conversations are so unproductive is because people like you, clearly motivated by bitterness and spite, approach the solution from a position of vengeance. Intent matters, and if everything you say is dripping with contempt, then the possible policy solutions being suggested will be poisoned and fail. The best thing you could do, if you truly care about the issue, is to simply keep quiet. Just look at the last few years of your conversations here. What have you accomplished? Even when everyone is in agreement, you somehow find a way to turn it back into a fight. I was impressed when you admitted you were wrong during covid, but it doesn't appear to have had any meaningful effect on your overall disposition. If all you're shooting for is to feel superior, then by all means, carry on. At least then your actions are aligned with your intent. But if you're trying to change minds, you're just not the right tool for the job.

Yep, summerslide covers the estate tax concept. It's also worth reading his series that starts with "My life is a lie. He's not some sort of lifelong progressive who is just now finding the spotlight. His research has changed his perspective (and mine) rather profoundly, and I think it's identified a blind spot in a lot of wealthy and or conservative people's philosophy.

This one is sort of political, sort of economic, but does anybody follow Mike Green? His substack is "Yes I give a fig" and I'm pretty sure he's one of the most intelligent people I read. He's been in the news a bit because he's decided to deviate from his usual market and passive investing commentary and take a look at what's happening to the middle class. He recently put out a piece showing that the real poverty line, if you use similar assumptions to what was used in the '60s when it was created, is a hell of a lot closer to $100,000 a year than it is to to $35,000. There's a lot of nuance in there, but it's a fascinating theory. He most recently looked at why why there is such a divide between The haves and the have-nots, and he put it together in a three-piece article that I am pretty sure is in front of the paywall on substack. The short version is, bringing back a very aggressive estate tax maybe the only practical solution to the increasingly divided economy. Anyone who's interested in this type of thing, I strongly advise taking a look.

Yeah, but what is your point?

Yes that's exactly the point. If you're France, any increase in the price of a barrel of oil is bad. They produce practically nothing, so they exist as a pure consumer. The United States is not even remotely similar. While the price of oil going up obviously increases the price of anything using that supply chain, we also have a gargantuan oil industry, and increases in oil prices are excellent for a huge parts of our economy. We've also increased our capacity to export natural gas, which becomes more valuable internationally when the price of oil goes up. I also have to point out that your understanding of the oil industry is fairly juvenile if you think that there's just one oil price. Just because the price on the news is $100 per barrel does not mean that's what everybody is paying, or buying, or refining. It's not the dumbest thing I've heard, but it's pretty dumb.

That's life. We don't do nothing never we can't do everything. This isn't a Iraq, a country that was by and large doing nothing to the United States in the early 2000s. This is Iran, the country that has been actively and perniciously attacking us for decades. If your analogy holds, and the children of the Ayatollah attempt revenge, how is that materially different? In this case, the worst case scenario is the status quo. It's just not the same as the forever wars we were used to.

Agreed, but the same logic applies. Forecasts of doom and chaos are worthless when the doom and chaos never comes. Your entire point is hypothetical. Maybe you'll be right. But so far the anti-interventionists have been wrong on basically every single Trump engagement, especially WRT Iran. And they can't spell out exactly how this goes sideways. What, we get another Islamo-fascist regime, but with no credibility or military might left by which to threaten the world? Oil goes up because the production of a country viral to our biggest enemy (China) was squashed and the American energy complex gets more money and power? That doesn't mean you should keep quiet. It just means there's not yet any reason to believe the sky-is-falling crowd. If we send in the infantry, I'll happily be the first to agree with you. As of yet there's no evidence we're planning that, and you can't hide troop movements like that. Too many people are still shell shocked from the failures of Afghanistan/Iraq that they are conflating all military intervention with nation-building. Now, if we send in the men with beards to capture and control Kharg Island, all the better. The message is pretty clear to anyone who is listening. Fuck with the US, and we will take your stuff and kill you. I for one am a big fan of that message. If my neighbor woke up every morning and threw rocks at my wife and kids while they left for school, promising to rape and murder them when they got home, I'd light his house on fire and execute him as he fled the flames.

Good time to be a gun store owner in Virginia