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Lord Ratner

Supreme User
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Posts posted by Lord Ratner

  1. On 11/13/2023 at 7:16 AM, FourFans said:

    Copy.  I'll be buying a pistol that will turn into a rifle for tyranny at close to medium ranges.  Right now my pipedream is the Sig MCX Rattle Canebrake, which would require a proper stock, which is now apparently a pistol brace.  The suppressor is a whole other story...but I'm patient.

    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.

    • Like 1
  2. 7 hours ago, uhhello said:

    The same one since it's existence began.

    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.

    • Upvote 1
  3. 1 hour ago, HeloDude said:

    I’ve been thinking about this more lately:  So with the increased rhetoric from the left on how Trump is a Nazi, he’ll be a dictator if he wins, our democracy will be over, he’ll take all of our rights away, etc…if one is truly to believe that they actually think this way, then why should one also not believe that the left will do almost anything, including using illegal means, to keep Trump out of the WH?  I mean, our founding fathers started a war over much less fear, so why would one be surprised if the leftists use illegal means to effect the results?  Will leftists in government work with big tech to hurt Trump’s chances (just one example)?—they already did this in 2020 by the way.

    Additionally, the left is freaking out about any other independent/3rd party candidate on the ballot potentially taking away votes from Biden.  They’re saying the candidates are putting democracy at risk (the irony)…eventually we have to ask ourselves what is the limit they will go to keep Trump from potentially wining, because I don’t think it’s entirely all just political rhetoric.

    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.

    • Upvote 2
  4. 3 hours ago, M2 said:

    Whoops!!

    Army investigating Nazi imagery on Special Forces patch posted online

    image.thumb.jpeg.35d897dd4561cb44284c56ea196aa5f8.jpeg

    In case anyone isn't aware, Army SF has used similar designs (but with the traditional SF skull and arrows, not the SS Totenkopf) in the past... 

    Army Special Forces ODA 533 Patch | Special Forces Patches | Army Patches |  Popular Patch
    image.jpeg.9f589230f412111cbb40c0bd57d48668.jpeg

     

    And I guess no one has ever noticed that KISS has used the German Schutzstaffel's doppelte Siegrune or double “lightning bolts” (stylized as ᛋᛋ using Armanen runes) for decades...

    Amazon.com: Kiss Dressed To Kill Poster Album Cover Kiss Poster Kiss Band  Merchandise Kiss Collectibles Kiss Memorabilia Heavy Metal Music Merch  1970s Retro Vintage Makeup Matted Framed Art Wall Decor 20x26: Posters

    The irony being Gene Simmons (real name Chaim Witz) and Paul Stanley (real name Stanley Eisen) are of Jewish descent!  (Both denied any intentional likeness to Nazi symbolism in the logo)...

    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.

  5. 5 hours ago, BashiChuni said:

    if only the ohare ground (singular, which is INSANE) controller would talk faster and with a more stressful tone things might move more efficiently

    Fast

    Frantic

    FUCK YOU DONT STOP MOVING!

    the new 3c comm

    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?

  6. 3 minutes ago, tac airlifter said:

    Do any blue states have a castle doctrine?  I’m ignorant of the law here and I only own one house I occupy.  

    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.

    • Haha 1
  7. 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.

     

    • Upvote 1
  8. 4 hours ago, Biff_T said:

    https://ktla.com/news/local-news/mcdonalds-franchisee-you-cant-raise-prices-enough-to-cover-minimum-wage-hike/

    Let's not think about the consequences of raising the minimum wage for fast food workers in CA, let's just do it. 

    This CA bill is what you can expect from CA Democrats. This is not going to help the fast food workers when they don't have jobs anymore.  Just send them all to "Skid Row".  

    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.

    • Like 1
  9. 19 minutes ago, Lawman said:


    Yes if there is anything Lawyers use in their arguments it’s public statements in media you can google and not legal briefs or scholarly articles.

    Again, the fact you are trying to use this singular example to defend the idea of warning shot, which still lacks any form of definition in the courts majority opinion, and the original discussion that took us down this rabbit hole was a guy firing a firearm in the air to stop people on his property engaged in no form of assault, they were cutting down trees.

    Try finding somebody reputable in any self defense legal circles recommending warning shots… please I dare you.


    Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

    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.

  10. 1 hour ago, Lawman said:


    Ok just so we are all on the same page here, if you meet anyone recommending warning shots just know that person has no idea what they are talking about legally. They are illegal regardless of where you do them.

    Anybody teaching a self defense firearms handling course etc would absolutely tell you warning shots are a good way to get arrested regardless of who started what, they exist nowhere in the escalation of force continuum for personal self defense. If some jackdoodle says otherwise, get your money back and find another class.


    Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

    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

  11. 1 hour ago, ClearedHot said:

    New NDAA does NOT retire the older block of Raptors.  As Huggy stated, does not pass the sniff test and there are other ways to keep these jets viable.

    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.

    • Haha 1
  12. 1 hour ago, ClearedHot said:

    Even more shocking when you examine SCOTUS Justice Jackson's questions today in oral arguments when she said out loud the position of our liberal friends - "My biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the federal government in significant ways in the most important time periods..."  Why yes it has you Fing TWAT Waffle!  That was the freaking purpose of the 1st amendment. 

    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.

  13. 23 minutes ago, Swizzle said:

    And a few anime by AI never hurt anyone:

    image.thumb.png.14f77544ac40d591eb850b58b55c9551.png

    image.png.a380ce76aca45aa9531d1cad66337ac0.pngimage.png.91ccf6049df6761233e16819efa27bd0.pngimage.thumb.png.852d30ceede27fa1df98cc8af341ab4d.png 

    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.

    • Like 2
    • Haha 5
  14. 11 hours ago, Biff_T said:

    I went inside an IL-76 about 20 years ago.  They still had a radio operator, a navigator (who sat under the cockpit, FE and a tail gunner. Also,  they didn't seem to take the same critical approach to weight and balance and TOLD as we did in the USAF.  The Russians rotate when they feel like it.   Not suprised to see a few of these go down.  

    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.

     

    • Haha 1
  15. 2 hours ago, Stoker said:

    Ratner threw out a back-of-the-napkin model for increasing immigration, but when presented with the actual number of immigrants it would imply, decided that there would be additional restrictions. Sorry, there aren't six million brain surgeons looking to move here - frankly we've screwed up the US enough that people given the option would prefer Canada or Ireland. Six million construction workers might start to put a dent in the ludicrous housing shortage we've dug for ourselves, though, and that's an unskilled (rather, uncredentialed) job that we could certainly fill.

    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:

    6 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

    Adjust the 2% number to better fit desired growth patterns.

    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:

    6 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

    Look at what skill class and income strata is trailing, and target that.

    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.

    2 hours ago, Stoker said:

    At what point did something break in the US where we became unable to assimilate immigrants? Your arguments are the same arguments people used to exclude Chinese and Japanese from California a hundred years ago - and sure enough, there are masses of legacy Asian immigrants who don't integrate with society or contribute anything... err, wait, it's the opposite.

    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.

    2 hours ago, Stoker said:

    According to at least one right-wing think tank, a 25 year old high school dropout immigrant will produce a positive $216k in government receipts over their 30 year working life

    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.

     

    • Like 1
  16. 1 hour ago, Stoker said:

    Yes, I'd take that deal and strongly support punitive measures against anyone who circumvents the system.

    Just so we're clear, my proposal blocks out 90+ percent of the people illegally immigrating into the country right now. So the "landmines, shoot-on-sight, indefinite internment, light them on fire, whatever makes you happy and deters others" would be directed towards the unskilled immigrants coming from south of our border, who would realistically have no legal method of getting to the USA. Sorry, but there are more unskilled, uneducated people who wish to move here than we have room for (economically, not physically), and latin americans aren't the only poor people in the world. The millions of immigrants would have to be spread over a wide variety of countries and cultures, to ensure the disproportionate importation of one specific culture does not allow for creating critical-mass communities that are able to escape the forces of assimilation. The vast majority of those who wish to be here will simply never get to.

    1 hour ago, Stoker said:

    If you provide a reasonably attainable path for the tired, the poor, the huddled masses to come to the US and work legally, we can be draconian against those who choose not to take it.

    That's what I thought. You are advocating for unlimited immigration with this statement. See above.

    1 hour ago, Stoker said:

    We have never imposed a language requirement for new arrivals, and somehow managed to assimilate just fine (or are those scary Italians who came over in the 1910s still speaking the language of the old country?). It's a good job skill, though, and it would make a lot of economic and political sense to require new arrivals to take English classes for a designated period of time.

    Once again, comparing the social, political, and economic conditions of 1910 to 2024 is silly. Its a different world, and more importantly, a different USA with different needs. We weren't $34T in debt back then, and bringing in a bunch of low-income immigrants will not help that. And we don't need a bunch of raw labor. Your 20% additional income tax would bring them up to... 20%, since those making less than $40k pay no net federal taxes: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/18/who-pays-and-doesnt-pay-federal-income-taxes-in-the-us/

    Even the additional 20%, which you know will never happen, would not do anything to fix our budget.

    So aside from not being able to effectively join the American community if you can't speak to Americans, you will never see meaningful numbers of immigrants make enough money to make their admission to the country worthwhile if they can't speak English.

    • Upvote 1
  17. 22 minutes ago, Stoker said:

    But I also want to have avenues for would-be Americans to come here legally.

    And here is your strawman. Who here doesn't want this? It's never been the issue. The issue is "how many." You will n.e.v.e.r. see a democrat (or for that matter, any conventional republican) come within 1,000 miles of that question, yet it is the single most important question in any discussion about immigration. How many, and who?

     

    I will submit that the answer should be something like:

    How many --> (2% - (Natural population growth rate)). So if Americans are having enough kids to give us 2% or more annual population growth, then no immigration. Otherwise, fill in the shortfall. Population growth needs to be high enough to keep the economy growing, but stable enough to avoid huge swings in generational size. You can't have absolute control over that, but immigration can be used as a buffering force. Adjust the 2% number to better fit desired growth patterns.

    Who --> Look at what skill class and income strata is trailing, and target that. We have a huge surplus of low-skilled Americans (and illegals already here). So the 50,000 lottery and family allowance is more than enough right now, as I said:

    16 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

    We will get all the low-skilled immigrants we need from the families of the high-skilled workers we grant citizenship to, and the 20-30 million we have already let in.

    23 minutes ago, Stoker said:

    It's unjust for someone to think that open immigration was a swell idea for the first couple hundred years of our nation, ending sometime exactly when their last ancestor made it over.

    Nonsense. This is another strawman. It was a swell idea when the American economy was overwhelmingly labor based, in addition to the realities of welfare and medical benefits that are free to anyone who exists within out borders.

    But we are now a services economy, and the need for young, uneducated, unskilled men is much, much lower than it was in the past. The easy answer to that is to only import immigrants with high-skill backgrounds, but as I asked before, what does that do to the countries we, the global police, want to advance into the modern world? They need doctors and engineers more than we do. 

    23 minutes ago, Stoker said:

    would you in turn agree that our legal immigration needs to be massively revamped to actually provide avenues to come here in an orderly fashion?

    Same as before, this is a throwaway question. How many, and who?

    23 minutes ago, Stoker said:

    It's a strange world we live in where we desperately need people to work crappy jobs, provide a welfare state for people with crappy jobs, and then don't let people come here to take the crappy jobs because they might utilize the welfare state.

    We absolutely do not. "Crappy job" is a function of (Pay) / (Suck factor). Importing a metric shit ton of low skilled labor artificially depresses the wages of high-suck-factor jobs. The problem is that we have plenty of Americans who are only really capable of performing those jobs. If they are undercut by illegal immigrants, they simply don't work, and since we are a welfare-supportive country, that's another ward of the state we all get to pay for.

    If you can't find enough people willing to pick strawberries or build fences, you either need to pay more for the work or develop technology that eliminates the need for human labor. Digging ditches, for example; now a single excavator can do the work of hundreds of men with shovels. Using desperate Mexicans to do the work just distorts the usual economic pressures. When we have near-zero able-bodied Americans without jobs (voluntarily or involuntarily), then we can start importing unskilled labor en masse, because there will be a real, not an artificial need.

     

    All of this is economic based. This also ignores the reality that we should not allow anyone who can't speak English to immigrate in (unless they are a familial import). We can not build an integrated society if the new citizens are incapable of communicating with the "legacy Americans." It is bad socially, and it is bad functionally, when you have to waste resources on translation services at nearly every level of government.

    I don't want to pile on you specifically, because I find most people on both sides are making completely hollow arguments. But you have demonstrated quite well why the issue goes nowhere. You injected a ton of righteous morality into your responses, yet you have proposed nothing actionable. Your preferred solution is not clear from your posts, but it sounds like you want to simply formalize the in-processing of the people who are currently coming in illegally. That does zero to address the actual problem.

    • Like 1
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    • Upvote 2
  18. 1 hour ago, Stoker said:

    Can you elaborate on what social programs you think we offer that people are calculating is worth the risk of being raped and murdered by organized crime on the way up?

    Let's start with Emergency Medicaid. Also school meal programs. Pregnant women and young kids get WIC access. Free room and board in certain cities. You think a mother living in Haiti is more worried about rapists and murderers in Mexico than the rapists and murders she has to endure if she stays in Haiti?

     

    States seems to be struggling: https://wpde.com/news/nation-world/denver-hospital-system-may-collapse-due-to-migrant-crisis-we-are-turning-down-patients-southern-border-trump-biden-colorado-denver-health-post-donna-lynne-immigrants-illegal-migrants-asylum-seekers-resources

     

    What country do you live in that you think this is anything like the 1950s? And if the burden of illegal immigration is so low, why are the Blue Cities in the north melting down over 5-digit inflows of aliens being sent to them by Florida and Texas?

     

    1 hour ago, Stoker said:

    The solution is not to build a taller wall, because the demand still exists.

    What demand? There was demand for dirt cheap consumer goods from China, and that 30 year experiment decimated the American middle class and industrial base. The short term price suppression of cheap foreign labor is not worth the long term disruption to the economic balance of the society.

     

    And through all of this everyone ignores the effect on the originating country. What hope do these countries have of pulling out of the 3rd-world death spiral if their hardest workers and strongest men all flee to the US? Is cheaper lettuce and construction labor really worth the long term impact of having an entire continent of heavily populated, unstable countries perpetually feeding low/no skill workers to our southern border?

     

    Do you believe that the United States can handle the addition of... 100,000,000 low-skill immigrants? Because there are far more who wish to be here. Exactly how does that play out?

    • Like 4
    • Thanks 2
  19. 3 hours ago, HeloDude said:

    As for your ancestors, did they come before the 1930s?  If so, what kind of social programs at the state and federal level were available to immigrants then and earlier compared to today?  You can’t have open immigration and a welfare state…even some of the most progressive western countries understand how this won’t work well

    Shack. If we're ready to go back to letting people die of starvation and sickness if they have no money, consider me an open-borders supporter.

     

    Until then, zero low skilled immigration. We will get all the low-skilled immigrants we need from the families of the high-skilled workers we grant citizenship to, and the 20-30 million we have already let in.

    • Upvote 4
  20. 4 hours ago, HeloDude said:

    Biden actually called Riley’s alleged murderer an “illegal” at his SOTU address and the left is losing their mind.

    Yeah, between that and his defense of Israel I suspect there are a lot of (even more) unhappy progressives.

  21. 6 hours ago, gearhog said:

    The entire State of the Union:

     

    I actually mentioned that to my wife. I know it's normal that each era has a tone and inflection that all public speakers adopt, which is why all the radio people from the twenties and thirties sounded so hilarious, but I really hate this current era of shouting with frequent, inappropriately placed pauses.

     

    It makes it sound like the people speaking are idiots who don't believe what they're saying, which is pretty fitting. The

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