Lord Ratner
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Posts posted by Lord Ratner
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1 hour ago, ClearedHot said:
Looks like some leadership folks at Minot picked sides and implied negative career action should you attend a Charlie Kirk rally...supposedly it was corrected.
Critics bash Minot AFB after airmen told to avoid conservative rally
At a certain point you realize that most people don't actually have political views. They have political positions. The difference is that a view requires research, dialogue, analysis, and for many things political, there's not a lot of reason for someone to do that. Why learn about abortion if you're not getting an abortion? Should the average American really have an opinion on Palestine when they don't even know where it is on a map?
So whereas the military leadership class used to be conservative, it wasn't because they had conservative views, it was just because they wanted to be a part of the group of people who had conservative positions. Their superiors.
Now that we are in a rapidly changing political environment thanks to the spread of populism, the military leadership class is suddenly seeming much more liberal than the lower ranks, because the political establishment of Washington is fiercely anti-populist, including most of the legacy Republicans.
They were never conservative, and they're not truly liberals or progressives now. They're just yes-men. Groupies. Sycophants who will morph into whatever they believe will please their bosses most. And since Charlie Kirk runs on a platform of "government is the problem" and makes no exception for big-government Republicans, obviously the power players on Washington are going to despise him. And like good little soldiers hoping for a reward, the generals will follow suit, threatening the careers of anyone who dares question or criticize the political "leaders" the generals hope to please and one day join.
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On 11/25/2023 at 7:03 AM, HossHarris said:
Yeah. It’s long.
and it’s the equivalent of a high school essay titled “Everything napoleon did ever” but set to film.
visually … Joaquin looks like napoleon … but the voice just killed it. It’s like a super lazy hint of a New Jersey accent. And he narrates. Absolutely killed the film for me.
catch it in streaming later.
I predict a flop.
1 star….maybe
This is a great critique of Phoenix. Everytime a movie goes fishing for an Oscar, it backfires. And often it doesn't even get the award. There Will Be Blood is my favorite example of this.
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2 hours ago, Biff_T said:
What a ride
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6 hours ago, tac airlifter said:
Because I hear a lot about Russian forced conscription being symptomatic of imminent defeat, which seems like selective bias
You've never heard me say that.
A country is not just whatever portion of the population works for your particular political position. A country is represented by its government, and its government exists at the discretion, or at the very least inaction, of the population.
When the opposition to the Vietnam war became great enough that the congressional and presidential elections were decided on it, the US shifted course. That's just how governments work. The government *is* the country.
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4 hours ago, HeloDude said:
He was a top General in the Air Force and was one of the top guys in the intelligence world…let this sink in for a minute about what people in these positions think.
I'm still confused that anybody in the military would hold a general to some sort of higher expectation. If anything my experience demonstrates that they are less likely to impress.
These are the people that taught themselves to love the taste of shit just so they could one day be a general. The ultimate "yes men". They were not promoted in the field due to battle competence.
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4 hours ago, tac airlifter said:
I'm not sure forced conscription counts as "the will to fight."
It does. We have that too, after all. Obviously you have to discuss these issues on a national level, not an individual level, otherwise conversation is literally impossible.
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17 minutes ago, Lawman said:
They aren’t “stuck”
It’s the rain and mud season so the entire pace of ops on both sides has gone down significantly in a war that is primarily about Fires in the form of artillery guided by collection from various UAS.
They just successfully performed a Wet Gap crossing (something they couldn’t have done at the start of the war). That has pushed out the leading edge of their controlled areas the limits of a range to target the Kerch straight bridge if they wanted to risk it. But they need the unitary ATACM to do that. We haven’t given them that… yet.
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkIf they can't achieve an objective without us giving them something new or different, then they are stuck. I'm not saying we shouldn't, but if they can't change it on their own....
Also the demographics of their fighting forces is getting rough. Very rough. The spring/summer offensive did not go as advertised.
But if they still have the will to fight...
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3 hours ago, Biff_T said:
How many more times can that shit hole be blown up? JFC, we can't stop hanging out over there. Must be the "slappies".
Left hand turns of death - Spooky
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On 11/21/2023 at 4:26 PM, BashiChuni said:
where did all the ukraine cheerleaders go? oh onto the next outrage...
I don't know if I count as a cheerleader, but we got good value and the Ukrainians wanted to fight. Now that they are completely stuck, it's probably not worth it to continue. I'm assuming they will push to end the conflict soon, but that's their problem.
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8 hours ago, ClearedHot said:
When all is said and done we are spending a TRILLION dollars on Fat Amy, perhaps I am a dinosaur but I think we can part with a few $ to find away to provide CAS for future generations.
That's where I see much of the disagreement. You aren't replacing or backfilling a capability if the replacement isn't purchased in sufficient numbers to adequately accomplish the task. Getting rid of 500 Gen 4 fighters to buy 100 Gen 5 fighters (made up numbers) is not modernizing, evolving, or replacing. It's dumping one ability (supported by numbers) for another (supported by tech).
This also seems to be why these divestiture plans always collapse. The Air Force comes up with some sort of bullshit math where we get rid of an old fleet worth a certain dollar amount, and apply those dollars to the new weapon system at a much lower quantity, because obviously new stuff is more expensive. But then in some congressional hearing where a congressman is fighting to keep a base or a weapon system in their district, the general is forced to admit that the new weapon system, in the quantity planned, will not adequately replace the capabilities of the old weapon system at much higher quantities. Then surprise surprise, we don't get rid of the old weapon system, which means we have even less money going forward for the new one.
It's a vicious cycle of stupidity and disingenuous arguments, and it's so short-sighted that the obvious result in the long run is an overall weaker military.
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6 hours ago, uhhello said:
Are you not using 'Adblock'?
On my phone? No. What do you recommend?
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Is the site making much money off of the ads? Because they've gotten pretty shitty again. Constantly covering up the top banner of the page or sometimes showing up without a clear way to close them.
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13 hours ago, ClearedHot said:
SpaceX continues to embarrass the traditional defense government sponsored primes.
Fixed it for you.
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1 hour ago, raimius said:
Ukraine has also been taking unsustainable casualties and has been "on the verge of collapse" for at least a year, depending on which news source you read.
They might be close to failing, or maybe not. I don't trust the avg news reporter to get that correct.
That's a fair point. Considering how many sensationalist articles about the death of democracy in America I've read over the past 8ish years, and how completely unhinged all reporting about Donald Trump was and has been, it does make it hard to trust the same media to assess the political situation in a very different country and a very different part of the world.
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9 hours ago, Orbit said:
Yup. Dude had a big brain
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8 hours ago, brabus said:
What a classic email. Although to be fair, I’m not sure a cadet in the back of a strike would actually make any difference in their performance!
(I’m just giving you shit strike bros, if it wasn’t apparent already)
Thanks to Toro and his hilarious email, George got the ride he wanted, ensured by the General who replied-all to the email.
And the poor kid was just doing what a colonel had told him to do to get a ride. 😂
That was a funny week to be in the Trolls.
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11 hours ago, Biff_T said:
Be like Walter
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39 minutes ago, artvandelay43201 said:
Why can’t I get out of the Air Force after 2 years after pilot training?!
I respect the hustle of taking advantage of a rule to try to get what you want. But to go crying to a newspaper because they aren't playing along...
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9 hours ago, Danger41 said:
I honestly don't understand why AFSOC is trying so hard to fit into that fight where the other SOCOM components are getting more back to their roots while growing from there to find ways to affect a peer competitor.
Because in the absence of a real, and active threat, the military is a vanity project for the general-caste. You are led by those who have been fantasizing about being generals since they were in elementary school.
Yeah, I know, there are some good ones. But obviously not many, or we wouldn't have the military we have right now.
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9 hours ago, Biff_T said:
I just watched one of my sons graduate USN bootcamp. He shot expert!
He's off to Coronado for SWCC training.
The navy did a good job with the graduation. All of the people in attendance were super stoked that their loved ones were now sailors.
All walks of life were present.
Very cool seeing all different types of Americans being happy together and serving this great nation.
He's lucky to have such supportive fathers!
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13 hours ago, Negatory said:
Oh, a brain dead take on political issues on base ops. Who would have guessed.
You (specifically) can’t help but make false equivalencies and invalid broad generalizations, which you demonstrate literally every single day you post here.
The truth is that Americans support way more nuance in this discussion than your backwards reductionist views. The majority of Americans do not support abortion past 24 weeks. Only 19% of Americans believe abortion should be legal with no strings attached. Oh that’s against the narrative you’re stating?
Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/05/06/americas-abortion-quandary/
A lot of people think that it should be allowed in extreme cases beyond an arbitrary time stamp (guaranteed non viability, extremely high risk of death, fetus is almost guaranteed dead). This is not the same as when you try to insinuate democrats support anyone - for any reason as flippant as they just don’t feel like it - should be able to get a third trimester abortion. THATS AN EXTREME VIEW DEMOCRATS DONT EVEN SUPPORT. But it’s in talk radio. You’ve been propagandized. You have to know this, right? But I guess you couldn’t win this argument without bending reality or convincing yourself of some slightly flawed logic.Finally, you guys are wrong about the potential of this to be perceived as just a states rights issue. This is a big deal. To the MAJORITY OF AMERICANS, this was a fundamental attack on Women’s and men’s rights to plan their families. That’s how the majority of Americans (and a supermajority of Democrats) feel, and the longer you try to pretend it’s just a legal battle or was justified via some federalist debate, the longer you lose. Just telling you the truth. Here’s a graph showing how republicans are actively losing the support of independents across the country. 57 to 41, that’s not even close.
Now that we’ve had a good time debunking the logical basis of your arguments, let’s go to the emotional way you’re losing this debate (and with it, the American people’s support):
Go ahead and explain why does it affect your poor Christian family if another family that you have never interacted with gets an abortion 2 cities over? Get out of people’s lives. Also, are you suddenly okay with it if it’s just across state borders? Choose a side. If you’re gonna play the pathos argument and then go straight to a legal logos you just sound disingenuous. Which you are. But you sound like it, too.
Oh, and is it really a states right thing? Or is it an overreaching control over everyone thing? Why is Texas trying to inhibit the ability for federal citizens to go to states that align with their views to enjoy the freedoms of those states?
Shit like that is what Republicans laugh about. It’s what the rest of Americans are terrified of. That’s a disadvantage for y’all, sorry.
I know what Americans think. Are you implying that the Democratic Party supports abortion bans at a certain point? Or is the official position of the Democratic party that there should be no restrictions on abortion?
Regardless, abortion is so far down the list of priorities, and always has been, it's hilarious that people still think Americans are going to pick the president on this issue. They aren't.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.aspx
Just because people have an opinion doesn't mean they care. And they really don't care when it doesn't even affect them. You think a liberal in a state with abortion access is going to pick who they vote for based on what other people in other states do or don't have? Nonsense.
Everyone is looking for some excuse for why Republicans are doing so poorly, some issue or singular mistake. The party is in a transition and is splitting into two parties, neocons and populists. They don't agree on much and as such take no real stance as a party and pick shitty candidates that represent nothing. Politics in it's truest form. The Democrats would be in the same boat if progressivism wasn't so spectacularly distasteful that it can't get more than 9-10% of the population to support it.
But the people still going on about abortion aren't even following the logic through. Once every state has voted and decided what their abortion policy will be, exactly who is going to carry the torch? If abortion is so popular, then nearly every state will pass a law protecting it. Then... What? The country is going to pick the president based on abortion access in 4 or 5 deep red states? Right.
And if some states ban it and some states protect it, then it wasn't the slam dunk issue liberals said it was. Hell, that's why they wanted Roe so badly. They knew a voter-driven law would result in more restrictions.
So much reluctance to let the people decide for themselves. I'm sure a lot of Republicans are disappointed with what happened in Ohio, but some of us are quite pleased with it, not because I like abortion or believe it should be legal, but because I believe it was always for the voters to decide. And they have.
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1 hour ago, uhhello said:
Preach
It's crazy who the RNC picks to moderate the debates. It goes to show you that establishment Republicans are more concerned with being accepted in the political sphere by their peers than they are with being conservative and pushing conservative policy. And even after Trump they haven't learned.
Being conservative in temperament and disposition is mutually exclusive from being someone who seeks the media spotlight, so it seems.
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2 hours ago, kaputt said:
I get what you’re saying, but think you’re still looking at it mostly from a legal standpoint. That’s why I specifically said strategic.
And I disagree with the fact that moving it to the states will make the issue go away. One, the left is not going to let it go away unless and until it is protected or codified again at the federal level. You may not agree with that, but that’s the only way the dem’s think they win on this. Not to mention, any conservative politician wishing to make a national level campaign will have to answer for their stance on abortion or have their stance used against them, especially if they come from a state with an abortion ban.
Abortion was always a fringe issue out there that got talked about from time to time to get a rise out of people, but it never got the level of electoral attention it’s getting now on a national scale. In the recent elections since the overturn of Roe v Wade it has been a forefront in the decision making of many voters and has not worked in favor of conservative candidates.
That’s why I think it was a colossal strategic mistake to shake the hornets nest of Roe v Wade.
I agree that it's having short-term negative consequences for Republicans, but strategic considerations are generally long-term, not short-term. Strategically, this issue has been removed from the national conversation, *if* the Republicans can get it through their big fat stupid heads to keep it a states rights issue.
You say that the dems aren't going to let it go, but then you also say that it's a fringe issue. It's either one of the other. It doesn't matter what the activists scream about, what matters is what actually impacts the average person. The average person now has a much greater ability to live somewhere that agrees with their abortion views, if they consider those views so important as to move to another state.
This experiment has been run already in Europe, where the various countries have various laws, and it's just not a part of their normal political discourse.
If the Democrats want to make this a national issue, that's all well and good, but they will suffer the same short-term consequences the Republicans are suffering now. Change is seldom good for those doing the changing.
The alternative was to have this issue hanging over the heads of Republicans for all time, forced to accept a world of completely unrestricted abortions for all time. That's not a moral proposition that many conservatives can accept, but at least now they can redirect their moral concerns to the local level, as it has been meant to be.
I can't speak to the forecast of the Republicans who pushed this, but if they expected no fallout, or even crazier, the adulation of the masses from killing Roe, then they were idiots. But I think many knew that there would be short-term consequences, and those consequences are more than acceptable for completely solving the legal problem, and partially solving the ethical problem.
But I think this will be the last presidential election cycle where abortion is a headline issue. The abortion advocates will absolutely hate that reality, as will the pro-life absolutists, but the rest of us will be better off.
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1 hour ago, kaputt said:
Election 2023: 3 key takeaways on abortion, Trump and Biden | Fox News
A small sample size of elections for sure, but some strong messaging from voters nonetheless. I've said this on here before, but the overturning of Roe v Wade was one of the single dumbest strategic moves by the Republican party in a very long time. Forget about the legal or technical aspects for a second and look at the big picture. One, abortion bans are in general not popular across most of the country. Two, the right essentially went at the heart of the left's version of the second amendment. This galvanized support and basically proved to many voters the Dem's drum beat of "they want to take away abortion!" was correct after all. Looking at the last two years, the overturning of that single measure has led to numerous election losses and looks like it will continue to do so.
Also, the moderate democrat Kentucky governor winning (again) in a deep red state highlights to me the desire in this country for moderation in politics. The far left and far right garbage that dominates the headlines is not what most people want. Personally, I think on the presidential level the republicans have the best candidates that actually could lean center on many issues and also provide genuine leadership. But of course, somehow, someway, Trump is going to be the nominee; nearly ensuring 4 more years of the current garbage we have.
The only positive light I would take from this for conservatives is that this week's elections were far more local in nature, and the economy, the border, national security, etc... were not exactly what was being run on. Those three things look very bad on the current administration. But again, they're probably going to run against Trump so the issues will go out the window for half the country anyway.
Counterpoint, this is exactly how the Roe issue is permanently removed from the conversation. Every state is now deciding what they want, which is going to appease a lot of people who now have choices if this issue is truly that important to them.
The only way Republicans can truly fuck this up is if they try to nationalize the issue again with a federal ban. They will lose their asses in that case, but I don't think that's the strategy for most. A terrible legal decision has been undone, and one of the most contentious issues in modern American politics is being dealt with in the manner of the founders originally intended, locally.
I know a lot of Republicans had the ultimate goal of fully banning abortion, but from a purely conservative and legal standpoint, this issue is resolving itself remarkably fast after 50 years of turmoil.
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Belgium Armed Forces and the Belgian Club
in General Discussion
Posted
"According to Dedonder, 'it's the military's societal role to provide young, inexperienced, and less qualified individuals with an opportunity to enter the job market'. An argument could be made that this is precisely not the role of the military. On the contrary, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that Dedonder's attempt to integrate the role of an educational institution into the Belgian Army's mission, given the context of manpower shortages and capability disparities compared to other NATO nations, is fundamentally misguided."
The country is run by people who believe that the mere existence of militaries is the root cause of conflict, and a direct impediment to their cosmopolitan goal of a single world government. It seems like intentional sabotage because it is.