Lord Ratner

This is all you need to know. That's it. Everything else is just noise. In every other Court in America you have to have standing to bring forward a case. Even if someone beats the shit out of you, you have to tell the authorities that you want to press charges, or nothing can be done. New York decided to press charges on behalf of a "victim" that did not feel victimized.

Well, in this era. They were doing it in the 40s-60s with the communism hunting, right?

I think if it was a year ago, abortion would have a lot more weight. But fortunately the process is going the way I had hoped, and each state is coming up with their own rules, which will never shut up the activists, but will absolutely shut up the voters, who do not make huge distinctions between state and federal law, as long as they agree with it. More voters will be satisfied with abortion law as a result of the Supreme Court's action. And whatever damage it did in the election in 2022 I think was overridden by the absolute dog shit slate of candidates that Trump got on the ballots. Of course, if Republicans try to make abortion a federal issue again, which some of them are, they'll get exactly what they deserve. (Sidebar, if anyone is interested we can start a new thread on my theory that in our lifetime contraceptives and abortion will be outright outlawed as more countries grapple with the painful results of population decline.) As to immigration, I honestly don't know. While I do believe there is an element of society, especially in academia, who are trying to covertly flip over the system in order to rebuild it in a postmodernist, pseudo Marxist fashion, I generally don't give those conspiracies the credit of wide scale participation at the political level. But the continued insistence of many Democrats to support this absolute dumpster fire at the border is truly mystifying. I know they see the same polls that show how unpopular open borders are, and I know they see the polls that show Donald Trump taking the lead in a matchup with Biden, so whatever reason they are refusing to adapt is not because of political expediency. That only leaves a true desire for an immigration disaster, one that would support the eventual "reset" of our Democratic capitalist society into a communist Utopia, or they simply cannot fathom the idea of supporting anything that the opposition supported before them. The fact that Republicans have been anti-illegal immigration simply excludes the possibility of Democrats ever changing their mind? Either way, immigration coupled with Joe biden's obvious and continued decline is going to cost them the election. Unfortunately that means Donald Trump is going to win, which while the 4 years of his presidency will probably be marked by great policy and less chaos, it is very likely he triggers the same response that leads to another idiotic Democrat winning the following election and undoing whatever good things he accomplishes. Or maybe not since he can't run again. Until the war kicks off at least. Then we restart the cycle.

Absolutely hilarious. Greg Abbott should be remembered for the single most effective political stunt in American history

You've either been extraordinarily lucky, where you weren't paying much attention to the people you were flying with. The 75-hour rule is not for everyone. It's for the weakest links in the chain. That's pretty much the case for all of those types of restrictions. I've only been in the airlines for 6 years and I've already seen people who could have probably used another 75, but definitely were not ready right out of the chute.

Dibs on the chick in the helmet with the huge knockers

A fond "fuck you" for this post. Now that I know what this gun is, I can't talk myself out of getting one. I'm not planning on the canebrake version, but it's simply irresistable.

Not really. But one that has existed over and over and over throughout history. We are in the unpleasant phase of the cycle. In another lifetime whatever societies emerge from this conflict will find themselves in another.

If they really believed it there would be martyrs. There aren't. It's just team sports. That means yes, they will cheat and lie and steal (just like in team sports), but until they are shedding blood all the talk of an existential risk to democracy is just political cheerleading.

Yeah it's almost like the Nazis didn't invent art. How many kids started drawing swastikas without ever seeing the symbol before? Hell, they are still all over Indonesia.

There are two ground controllers at O'Hare. .75 and .9 if I remember correctly. Either way, there's two, *and* a metering frequency. Are you thinking of JFK?

Yes, California does. Just like a medieval castle, outsiders are allowed to enter under the declaration of parlay, in order to petition the homeowner. Anyone under the protection of parlay must be offered food and protection for the duration of their visit, lest the honor of the homeowner be impugned at Royal Court.

I actually really liked that movie

Is the army really doing a better job? That's a real question. As far as I've seen the people in all services who make it to the top today are at best, morons, and at worst, hypocritical Yes-men. Although I admit I don't seem to see much about the Navy, so maybe they're doing better? It's very hard to tell if someone is good at something when you're not doing the thing. And we are not in a war, so it's pretty hard to pick out good wartime leaders. We are in a time of massive administrivia, and so unsurprisingly the military has no problem picking out the best paper pushers.

I was living in England when all the liberals in America were talking about a $15 minimum wage for fast food workers. I remember saying then that they were just going to cost a bunch of people their jobs, because at the time Europe had the self-ordering kiosks that had not yet made their way to America. Now you see those in damn near every store.

Can't be worse than Prometheus or Covenant.

You're kind of missing the boat here. By allowing for a claim of self-defense, based specifically on warning shots, the Ohio court has taken the first step towards changing the precedent. A whole lot of people recommend a whole lot of things, and many of those things are based on what will and won't be easier to defend in court. That doesn't make anything that goes against that recommendation illegal. There's a very big difference between arguing what is legally allowable (or what is becoming legally allowable, in the case of Ohio) and what is the best response. The ladder is also an opinion.

Helo dude posted the article, but this might be changing based on the Ohio case. Honestly it makes sense, once you have legal justification for self-defense, it really shouldn't matter what you are doing, if it is done as a means of protecting yourself. We are in a new era for the second amendment, thanks to the current Supreme Court. A whole lot of "you should nevers" are going to be reconsidered based on the new focus on the right to arms and self-defense

It's so funny the vocabulary the Air Force has instilled on us. Viable 🤣😂. As though somehow an F-22 of any configuration that can get airborne would not be viable when we're still flying C models around... We are still flying C-models around, right? Or did Big Air Force bring back don't ask don't tell? I've been gone a while.

Yeah, it's rare they make their disdain for the Constitution so overt. But this has been going on since the Wilson administration, so nothing new.

Hopefully they warned the social media companies before the Supreme Court makes a decision.

Bro, I got enough going on in my life that I don't need to also be contemplating my desire to fuck a bunch of cartoon Japanese/American hybrids wearing Bavarian attire. Anyways... Dibs on the redhead.

I'm not sure I can describe this as well typing it out, but when I was in Afghanistan we got a tour of one of the Soviet knockoff c-130s, and I asked about takeoff data. The guy laughed and pretended like he was holding the yolk of the aircraft, pulling it back momentarily before returning to the neutral position and saying "not yet." He did it multiple times, then on the last time held the imaginary yoke back to his lap: "Not yet..... Not yet... Not yet... Not yet... Rotate!" I kid you not, there were pine needles jammed into the wingtips, and an empty bottle of vodka next to a bare mattress in the navigators pod in the front. Different type of flying.

This is 110% exactly what I refer to when I say the globalization experiment failed. It just took 30-40 years to realize it. Cheap TVs were not worth the non-monetary price.

No, you just failed to comprehend what you are reading. Where did I say 6 million was too many? I'll give you a hint: nowhere. I did the math before posting it, obviously. I threw 2% growth out there as a target because it represents a high-water mark for American growth in the modern era. I also said: Now if the only way to get 6 million (immigrants + natural growth) is to import all low-skilled labor, then no, we wouldn't do that. Your nonsense about 6 million brain surgeons shows how you are not being a good-faith participant in the conversation. The world is not comprised of only poor Mexicans and brain surgeons. As I said: The balance of our population is equally important to it's growth. If growth was the only factor that mattered, South America and Africa wouldn't be a dumpster fire. I'd rather not adopt that model, thanks. Most likely the late 90's, when communication technology allowed immigrants to focus their efforts on reaching very specific locations where there were high densities of immigrants from their homelands. You also have a huge shift away from geographic growth, where decades ago the construction of the interstate highways moved millions of people to new parts of the country, and the immigrants were often the first to move. Now they are concentrating in major population centers or states where they have high density, such as the Somalis in Minnesota. So yeah, once again, things change. Adapt or die. And once again, when the Asians you reference came a hundred years ago there was a tremendous need for physical labor, such as building the railroads. Pretty much all construction was done with manual labor back then. Didn't need an education, and you didn't need to speak English. Yes, as compared to the high-school dropout native who will have a negative net impact. Could it be that employing immigrants for highschool-dropout-jobs is reducing the demand for highschool-dropout-natives? Obviously it is, by the tens of millions. That study shows how expensive the uneducated native population is becoming, because they aren't working. Interestingly, it also shows that the financial benefit expires after the first generation of immigrant. Their kids become a negative proposition. We can have a conversation about eliminating most Welfare programs for everyone, which I support, but it's a different topic. We can't just get rid of our unskilled native-born citizens. Redirecting their potential employment to cheaper, illegal (or legal) immigrants only makes the problem worse.