Lord Ratner

The electoral college is going nowhere. They'll find something else to complain about, I assure you.

Oh, and JD Vance changes everything. Considering how many whacked out leftist internet trolls are trying to actually assassinate Donald Trump now, there's a halfway decent chance Vance becomes the president sometime in the next 4 years. That possibility is more than enough for me to vote for Trump, while still hoping that it doesn't happen of course.

You children just pick a few dissected quotes from a few posters here and act like everyone is saying the same thing. Go back and find any posts from me where I am denying the things you say we are all denying. You won't find them. Has it occurred to you at any point that the reason you keep falling back on the same stupid arguments is because you don't have anything approaching a policy prescription for America? We all get it, you're aghast at what a terrible person Trump is. The difference is some of us consider him not particularly worse than the people who have been occupying Washington for decades. And it's hilarious that you would list generals, who I consider to be the most pathetic group in America right now, as some sort of evidence. This generation of generals have distinguished themselves in nothing other than their ability to eat the most shit and disregard their own virtue to assure promotion in an organization that hasn't accomplished anything for decades. I don't like Trump. I didn't like him in 2016. Does it matter, what I have before me are two choices and two very different visions for America. I would love a different candidate representing the more conservative vision for America, but I didn't get one. Doesn't change the fact that if I have to choose between what Donald Trump did when he was in office and what Harris did while she was in office, that question is so simple that it boggles my mind you are even here defending the opposition. But you aren't defending the opposition, are you? You're doing the same thing Harris is doing: everything in her power to focus on Trump's admittedly awful personality instead of her obviously awful track record. I'm not voting for anybody for president this year because I've decided philosophically that I'm against presidents over the age of 65 beginning their first term. I'm in Texas, so I can do that and hope that there will be some statistical change that can be recognized and hopefully get us better candidates in the future. But if I was in a swing state, I would be voting for Trump. If you are unable to understand how someone can vote for someone they don't consider to be moral, then I have to wonder what type of drugs you are taking that make you think your candidates are moral. That's the more interesting conversation here.

Marco voices interviewed a guy named Anas recently who goes over why Israel is probably not going to hit Iran's oil. It's an interesting conversation. Lots of support needed from other countries to make a meaningful dent in Iran's oil capacity. I suspect they will target people. Israel has been on a roll cutting heads off snakes.

Can shrapnel set off tannerite? Also Kinzinger has his glasses on top of his head while shooting within shrapnel range...

Only rookies 'bate with their dominant hand.

Just refuse the offer. They'll have an appraiser come out, I've only done it once but the appraiser in some cases just looked at me and asked how much money I wanted for the specific object/fix. When they do an assessment of what a repair costs, they do it on the assumption that you are using similar materials and a professional to do the repair. Anybody who's been conscious for the last 4 years knows that labor is extremely expensive these days, so if you get a couple example quotes you'll have the appraiser in your pocket. Almost every single thing was deemed more expensive to repair than to replace.

Okay gotcha, the video I saw cut off shortly after he threw the stick. I didn't realize they had released more footage. I do love the idea of using a thrown broomstick as justification to continue firing on the apartment. Fuck that guy.

Did he have the hole in his head in that video? Did the drone finish him off? I'm confused. Well done though. Rough time to be an enemy of Israel. Can you even imagine the paranoia within Iranian leadership right now?

Both of those were actual ideas (you forgot swallowing a uv light) that have been investigated as solutions to problems. Did Trump read more than the title or the headline? No. But acting like he just made it up from thin air is simply incorrect. I don't get your point here? What's the difference between that and Walz not being able to answer honestly about immigration or the Afghanistan pullout? You're looking for differences where there are none. Plus, even if Trump is a moron (and I don't think he's particularly smart, just very, very media savvy), JD Vance is smarter than Trump, Harris, and Walz combined. And Pence was also rather smart, though not politically effective. But the Biden Harris team takes the cake.

I think what's been made crystal clear over the last 4 years is that we have the dumbest presidential team in the history of America. Everybody knew Joe Biden was the idiot of the Senate, so there's no surprises there, but at least my impression was that Kamala was viewed as duplicitous and deeply political, but not stupid. There's no way around it at this point, she is actually unintelligent, at least by the standards one expects to be operating in national level politics. There hasn't been a new question asked of her in at least a month, just the same ones repeated over and over, and yet somehow she and her team haven't put together a functional response? I'm not saying it has to be honest, but this woman acts like every single question is the first time she's ever heard it. It's really quite stunning from a political malpractice standpoint. Same thing for Walz during the debate. How the hell did he not have an answer ready to go about his lying about tiananmen square? Or immigration? These are national level campaigns operating on nine-figure budgets. No one thought to put an answer together for that? I don't want to make it sound like Trump is much better, he fucked up that debate pretty spectacularly, but he does a better job than Kamala and Tim. JD Vance however has done a much better job, and in fact the only thing I've seen him stumble on is January 6th, but it is painfully obvious he's not allowed to answer that question in any rational way because Donald Trump refuses any rational explanation.

Nothing different about it. The American people, regardless of party, no longer trust "experts." They still trust *their* experts, but that's human nature. It's just a broader loss of faith in the institutions, which is warranted because the leaders of those institutions decided a while ago that the purpose of the institution was to further an ideological goal, instead of just doing-the-thing (collect taxes, prosecute crime, administrate education programs, preserve public land, research and defend against disease, etc). That's why Republicans have been (until Trump) weak on immigration despite the contradiction with rule-of-law, because they wanted to further a flawed view of unfettered capitalism. And Democrats have supported the greatest absurdities of affirmative action despite the contradiction with equality and colorblindness, because they wanted to further a flawed view of utopian equity. Trump and Bernie are the voters' anguished response to the liars leading the government, espousing values they do not uphold in their own lives or in the way they steer their organizations. Bernie just failed to stay true to his values (thank God), so he lost to the Democratic machine. Trump did not. Both are insane, but these are insane times🤷🏻‍♂️

I want to get the Gen2 Ranch in 300BLK with a PTR Vent 1. Gets close to "movie quiet" while still using a real caliber (unlike .22LR, which I love, but it's for kids 😂🤣). Speaking of 22, I got a Sig P322 and I gotta say, the 20rd mags really mitigate the most annoying elements of shooting a 22 pistol. With a can on it (Warlock) the thing is stupid quiet. And very light. Probably my go-to snake gun just based on the decibels. And somehow I end up more of a Sig fanboy. Needs a replacement trigger though, the plastic is flimsy. Now just waiting on the can for my Rattler. We'll see if the NFA gods will honor me with a fast approval...

I think talks about mandatory service miss the point. I don't think the Israelis have a heightened sense of purpose because of their mandatory service, they have a heightened sense of purpose because there is an immediate and obvious threat nearby. And even then, a lot of young Israelis were succumbing to the same aimless malaise we are in the West... Until October 7th. We're fat, dumb, and (un)happy. From everything I've read, the 1920-30s were the same. Then economic crisis, then total war. WWII was so catastrophic that it provided the West with meaning and identity for the next 70 years. I think WWIII will have the same effect.

The Democrats are absolutely terrified that the polls still skew in favor of Democrats, as they have for the last couple election cycles. If that's the case, Trump has it in a landslide (by modern standards, not like Reagan).

Here's the video of anyone wants to watch. Also, if you have kids that watch YouTube, this is a channel to add to their whitelist.

Smarter Every Day on YouTube did a presentation (I believe to NASA) on this. It's a complete lack of seriousness within the space bureaucracy. There's no way this goes to plan, and a very good chance the decisions made will end up getting the program cancelled when budget woes rear their ugly head. Better hope Elon can carry the entire mission on his shoulders.

He's old and probably losing his marbles. I too am ok with a President Vance.

Yeah, I remember. I just didn't see how that was a differentiation between the KC-10 and 135. In pretty much every other way, however, the -10 was a better platform 🤣😂. Also, what you quoted was a response to this: Kinda true, if you are being hyper literal.

4 A/R pumps...

Uh, is two pumps better than four?

If the limited goal of killing some terries took 20 years, that's a failure in my book. And the fact that the Taliban won (and they did) makes it pretty hard to see Afghanistan as a win. I think it might be our Vietnam... And before we decided to kill Saddam, they were a key check on Iranian power in the region. So... why are we there in the first place? Bad intel. That's a loss... Like Saddam, Gaddafi kept Libya under relative control. Now? How has "let them figure it out" worked for us so far? It was figured out, then "we came, we saw, he died." Is that better? I know what we could do. We could have won in Afghanistan too. The question is what actually happened/happens. Yes, Isis, the Islamist psychodrama that was only possible because we destabilized the region by removing or attempting to remove the strongmen in charge of their countries. There is no ISIS if we didn't kill Saddam. That's the best example of "we created that problem." We did excellent work at the tactical level in all of your examples. But all of your examples are exactly what I'm referring to. The pre-US-involvement status quo was better than how we left it. We did a lot of good work for ultimately worthless (or in some cases counter-productive) endeavors. I do appreciate the dialog.

Did the operation you participated it result in an improved regional/global situation. A better world. For example: WWII - 80 years of global prosperity and relative peace Korean War (South Korea is undoubtedly better off) Civil War - End of slavery Revolutionary War - 'Merica, Fuck yeah! Second Barbary War - Regional stability and economic growth Mexican American War - Good for America at least Panama (minor, but Panama was better off after than before) Gulf War I - Regional/economic stability I don't think it's our fault that our service was mostly background noise, I was just commenting on what type of leadership you get during these periods of irrelevance.

They never have the nuts to demand it in person. The only time I address someone (or myself) with the airline title is when calling a pilot I've never spoken to, since it immediately establishes the call as work-related.

I always get a kick out of saying "dude" to someone, which I use ubiquitously like you do, and realizing from the response that some captain has his panties in a wad from being called dude instead of "Captain." There's a subset of these tools that refer to each other online by "first officer" and "captain" in every interaction. Obviously you don't see a lot of the ex-military guys doing it, because they all realize that their airline title doesn't represent a fraction of what their military title (as a bunch of drunk twenty-something year olds) represented. But it's still strange to watch.