Lord Ratner
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Posts posted by Lord Ratner
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18 hours ago, di1630 said:
I think we're going to see a whole lot of small businesses in this exact problem going forward. They did not adequately assess the inflationary pressures on their supply chains over the last 3 years, got used to incredible order volume from the 2021 2022 discretionary spending glut, and now are going to get hammered by a complete collapse in order volume as Americans realize they don't have money for frivolous purchases like airplane kits, RVs, boats, and vacation homes.
No one ever thinks the party is going to end, then the music stops, the lights come on, and the bar hag you were hitting on turns out to be a lot less attractive than you thought she was a minute ago.
I hope they come out of it on the other side, I was planning to build one of those planes one day.
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17 hours ago, HeloDude said:
Does anybody not think that this GO would have personally signed off on the punishment/negative admin actions of IPs for having consensual sex with students? As for whether or not this GO was having consensual sex with a direct subordinate, I don’t know…but he had to know it was wrong (on many levels) and it definitely enters the zone of negative command influence…just like with IPs and students, if the student said they felt pressured, then that’s what they go with. So if the allegations are supported with facts/he is convicted and he serves some jail time, I won’t have a problem with it.
I was court-martialed for drunken Frat by a wing commander who gave speeches about being a recovering alcoholic, and a squadron commander who married an enlisted chick in his unit.
The irony was a bit rich
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4 hours ago, KODAK said:
Patty is the real deal - it’s a shame folks want to remember someone for a single poor choice measured against the entirety of their lives. And I say this as a dude who has never drank a drop of alcohol in my life..
That's good to hear.
But that single poor choice should still have harsh consequences.
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The WFH people are one recession away from being back in the office. Obviously some will get to do it forever, sure, but there were WFH jobs before COVID.
The productivity of the average person in a WFH position is not great. No one should be surprised by this.
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I don't know about you guys, but I've looked at ejection handles and cutoff switches hundreds of times thinking about what it would be like to just pull them.
But I never had the plums to go for it 😂🤣 You gotta be in a bad place to do something like that.
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4 hours ago, HeloDude said:
Nice first post…what else do you have to offer the forum? We’ll moderate until it’s more substantive.
Also, what is this post from 20 years ago?
The boomers are now on welfare.
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1 hour ago, nsplayr said:
Right, it’s not about employers who choose to rescind job offers based on reprehensible speech, that’s fine.
It’s about a random billionaire going out of his way to sleuth down the names of anyone 18-25 who has ever belonged to some of these student groups, and then specifically calling his buddies at different companies, giving them the list of names, and saying they should be blackballed.
Like, get a hobby buddy.
Inevitably you’re hurting people who had nothing to do with some of these dumb statements, and even absolute best case you’re punching down so many levels it’s laughable.
He should spend his time working to counter the Iranian finance operations that actually paid for the rockets and bullets that killed innocent Israelis if he’s so inclined to wanna help. Or just donate a B to Israeli charities…I can think of a million better ways to spend your time and money than harassing idiot college kids.
And that's why I'm okay with it. People like you will find a way to tie yourself in knots making it about everything else instead of their own responsibility for their actions, and nothing will happen. Thank you for proving my point.
Bill Ackman didn't just wake up one day and decide to ruin some college kids' lives. Those *grown ass adults* proactively chose to do something following a tragedy. If no letter was written, no billionaire could sleuth.
Does anyone here actually think the reason we stop being stupid as we age is because the numerical representation of how long we've been alive goes up? Absurd. It's because we exist in the world and start to see the consequences of actions. Cause and effect. It's experience. If you aren't old enough in college to be responsible for your actions, why do we think that you should be responsible for your actions when you are older than 22, or 25 as you wrote?
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22 hours ago, nsplayr said:
I think Ackman took things too far. Yea your words have consequences and etc., but man, having a random billionaire ruining your career while you're still on campus is some bullshiite man.
Not that I disagree with him that what a some of the students are saying is completely reprehensible, it is.
But I would also remind Bill that when he was an undergrad on the hallowed Haavad Yaad he was a) likely a huge fucking moron like the vast majority of of us were, b) certainly said many things others would find unacceptably offensive (haven't we all!), and c) didn't have some Reagan-era billionaire going Dick Tracy on his ass trying to ruin his future before he even got off the ground.
I guess forensic speech policing wasn't as easy in 1988 as it is in 2023, but Ackman needs to find other hobbies IMHO.
Yes, but then the follow up is, if losing a job offer is too much, what's the right punishment?
So far all I hear is a whole bunch of nothing. No real consequences. So I'll take the Ackman approach. I would accept a year-long suspension as a fair punishment, but there's a 0% chance the universities take a stand on anything their DEI department doesn't explicitly forbid.
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3 hours ago, guineapigfury said:
When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the Republic. - Benjamin Franklin
Pretty sure he never said that.
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9 hours ago, nsplayr said:
FWIW let's do a maximum age as well!
💯
I would say whenever you start drawing Social Security benefits, you're done voting. Once you become a ward of the state you have an incentive structure that no longer considers the long term success of the nation. All the conservative firebrands like my father who can quote the last 3 days of Fox News, but don't you DARE talk about reining in SS or Medicare spending, he earned that money!
I've personally decided I will not vote for anyone over 65. That puts the president at 73-75 after two terms, which is right at the upper limit of where you can be reasonably sure the person is still sharp. Bonus points for getting under 55. This is a new red line for me after seeing Biden and Trump doing their amateur acting troop version of Grumpy Old Men, Mitch McConnell taking some involuntary naps at the podium, and Diane Feinstein literally dying from old age while still voting on Senate business. No more.
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10 hours ago, raimius said:
...but what happens when no one tells them they are being stupid? (They become lawyers and politicians...)
Exactly. Conservatives thought for decades that they didn't need to engage with this nonsense because it wouldn't survive a week in the real world. The business environment would crush whatever college nonsense the students had picked up.
But it didn't work that way, the students forced their nonsense onto the corporate world, and now every major corporation in America has a DEI department. The pendulum is starting to swing in the other direction, but only after a complete takeover of the political and corporate world by this neo-marxist nonsense.
I'm still a little conflicted on Bill Ackman jumping into the funny farm and going after the job offers of college students, but it might be the right amount of punishment for some of the absurdist shit that college kids believe they are free to say with impunity. If anything, that's the biggest lesson they need to learn, that opening your mouth almost always has consequences.
I used to complain a lot that high school doesn't set anyone up for the real world, but now that college has just become high school part 2, we're sending 22-year-olds out into the world with absolutely no idea what they should be doing, as opposed to just 18-year-olds. The entire education system needs a reboot.
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7 hours ago, dream big said:
I’ll never for the life of me understand the intersectionality between the LGBTQ movement and radical Islam. More proof that leftists are brainwashed and incapable of critical thought.
Power dynamics. The entire liberal philosophy has been pushed aside in favor of a simple hatred for hierarchies and those at the top.
Since the top of most hierarchies (most, not *all*) in America are white Christian males, then the reflex is to side with whoever isn't one of those.
It works great until you get into conflicts between two groups that are both lower on the totem pole. Sometimes it's easy to tell who has more power in the match up, and therefore who is the villain:
Man vs woman - man bad
White man vs White woman - White Man bad
White woman vs Black Man - white woman bad
Black woman vs Black gay woman - black woman bad
Black Man vs gay Man - uh... Hmmm.
Muslim man vs lesbian woman - well... It's...
Trans woman vs lesbian woman - oh boy.
But once you realize the foundation of the philosophy is simply "power bad," you start to understand it, and you can predict the position they will take with perfect accuracy. It's a philosophy built from jealousy and guilt, but remember that the jealousy is always stronger than the guilt. That's why wealthy liberals will decry school voucher programs, but still send their kids to private school.
Well I'm not going to let my kids fall behind while we fix the problem......
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7 hours ago, ecugringo said:
Arent Ukrainian Males in forced conscription? So yeah they kinda are forced to fight.
The war goes back to 2014 with the Maiden uprising. Losing the pro Russia govt is what pushed Putin. The question is how involved was the US in those uprisings? State Dept was there. Not saying this is just cause for Putin but an expansion eastward of Western influence put him in a defensive position.
A question to ask is if/when western support dries up in Ukraine and Russia eventually wins...will that loss of life be worth it for Ukraine? Did we just help delay the inevitable and cause more death and destruction for a goal of making Putin's military weaker.
I dont think Putin is stupid. I think a lot of things going on now are all related.
I said multiple times, forced by the US. I do not care if Ukraine forces their men to fight. We have a draft as well.
He wasn't in a "defensive position" because no one was going to attack Russia. Are we in a "defensive position" when Mexico elects an anti-US president? No. We aren't.
It is Ukraine's job to decide what is worth fighting. It is our job to decide what is worth supporting. Mixing the two makes a false argument.
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The Ukrainians are not being forced to fight. They are doing so (at a national level) of their own free will. Obviously they would not be able to do it without our support, but that doesn't change the fact that the United States is not forcing Ukraine into fighting for longer.
So when people start talking about the morality of throwing Ukrainian bodies into the meat grinder, I find it curious that they do not consider the Ukrainian point of view on whether it is a worthwhile loss of life to resist Russia. Personally, I trust the Ukrainian perspective on whether you Ukrainian lives are worth resisting Russia. Certainly more so than I trust the opinion of Americans who, while many of us have served our country and suffered for it, none of us have been even remotely close to living under an authoritarian boot. The Ukrainian memory goes back a while.
I said from the start that I believe the concept of sovereignty is vital in both the moral sense and in preserving some sort of global stability. So I'm inclined to support any country that is in a war of sovereignty, which Ukraine very much is. Arguing about Russian borders from before the Cold war seems silly and irrelevant to me, as the USSR waged a decades long war to build their empire and lost. Losing the western territories was part of that loss. There is no allowance to the concept of sovereignty for historical borders.
I also do not believe as many populist republicans seem to believe that there is a world where we can isolate and avoid conflict. I see the coming storm as inevitable, and given the opportunity to annihilate the fighting forces of one of the most likely major adversaries in the coming conflict, I say we take it. Again, I would not support expending American lives to do so, and I certainly wouldn't support forcing the Ukrainians to expend their lives, but so long as they are willing, I believe the cost is worth it. When you compare that cost to the other things we are deficit spending on, it might be the greatest deal in the history of Fiat currency. What better way to spend made up money?
Would I support the same action against China? You betcha. If China wants to try to invade another country, and that country can bleed their military out using our intelligence and weaponry, and the people of that country are willing to fight, it's a no-brainer. Taking two geopolitical adversaries off the board before our economic death spiral starts to seriously impact our ability to project global power would be an incredible advantage going into the fourth turning.
I think part of the key difference is that the populist conservative movement (best exemplified by Tucker Carlson) seems to believe that there is an option for some sort of perpetual status quo going forward, if only we don't rock the boat too hard. I disagree emphatically with that belief. History moves in waves, and just like real waves, trying to stop them is pointless, and potentially fatal. Move with them, even try to ride them, and you might end up on top. Might.
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2 minutes ago, jrizzell said:
Its mind boggling after three years of having COVID in our life’s, that there are still people clinging to the vaccine as being beneficial. It was rushed to market by Big Pharma to make them BILLIONS. It wasn’t about saving anyone
Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile appThat's not true. Very at-risk groups, such as those over 70-80, had a very, very high chance of surviving the vaccine, and a not-great chance of surviving covid. Especially if fat. For them it was a no-brainer.
What's mind boggling to me is how effective the current corporatist-governmental establishment has "team-ified" so effectively that Americans are now seemingly incapable of seeing anything that doesn't completely inspire their political opposition.
The vaccine, especially for the alpha and Delta variants, absolutely reduced serious illness and death from covid-19. It was also rushed into production, had real and meaningful side effects for certain demographics, was misrepresented by the people and organizations that stood to profit from it most, and treated a disease that was almost certainly developed in a Chinese lab, and accidentally released.
Making the vaccine mandatory was immoral because it was new, unproven, and effective in a way that did not benefit from compulsory distribution. Not because it didn't do anything at all.
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41 minutes ago, Mark1 said:
The only question then is does the overall reduction in risk through vaccination outweigh that of exposing 'everyone' to the collateral immune response risk when a small portion of them may otherwise avoid ever being exposed to viral infection. And the answer is yes...by orders of magnitude. Thankfully the people employed to come to these conclusions are typically not exceptionally vulnerable to tribal group-think conspiracy movements, and they base their conclusions on reality.
The vaccine for COVID-19 does not stop transmission. This is not disputed at any level. It reduces it somewhat, but only if you are susceptible to infection in the first place, which teenagers and young adults are not.
The concept of herd immunity never involved low-risk demographics increasing their exposure to negative outcomes to protect high-risk demographics. That's an insane proposition.
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7 hours ago, Biff_T said:
There's something else to do in Thailand lol.
Also, can make my couch do that?
God bless the algorithm
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On 10/14/2023 at 5:50 PM, gearhog said:
I like dogs. But this one time, my friend's daughter was riding her horse and the neighborhood nuisance pitbull mix or whatever tried to attack her (and him) through the woven wire fence. He went to his garage. He never saw the fat-headed dog or his vice grips again. Just remembered that and it made me feel good.
I get that he killed the dog, but with vice grips? How?
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2 hours ago, ClearedHot said:
So NOW you are a Constitutionalist?
He's never been a textualist, but I don't recall him ever arguing against the Constitution.
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On 10/12/2023 at 7:28 AM, RASH said:
Just long enough to start getting tired of The Auger Inn every Friday night…
Sent from my iPad using Baseops Network mobile appCorrection: just long enough to get tired of the old reservists and generals telling you how awesome the auger inn used to be before 9/11.
"I know I'm literally the commander that is now writing my subordinates LORs and article 15s for irresponsible drinking, but when I was a captain at the auger inn we used to all get wildly drunk, grope strippers at the bar, then drive inebriated while security forces covered for us. Side note, why are all you young guys leaving for the airlines?"
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1 hour ago, gearhog said:
Within the last few, my daughter sent me videos of angry Pro-Palestine demonstrations at her college campus. I'm over-looking a protest from my hotel room. My company just sent a blast email to be on the alert for threats to our operation.
Apparently, tomorrow is a "Day of Rage" or "Global Jihad".
I think there's no way that happens. Even if it was possible, the minute you go after masses of these groups for deportation, the whole place burns to the ground. But imagine being able to rally the people of a host nation enough to collect these minorities and haul them away. What does that look like? Train cars?
It'll happen during a war time situation. Could be similar to the Japanese internment. Who knows?
The demographics of Europe, China, Russia, and Japan are devastating. Unless someone comes up with a miracle solution, it's going to lead to strife in about 20 years.
If somehow the Muslim populations find a way to integrate, then it won't be an issue. But if anything the situation has gotten worse in the countries with meaningful percentages of high density Muslim neighborhoods.
The problem is that we (as a society) are now realizing that immigrant populations of drastically different cultures do not integrate if they reach a critical mass and are able to create homogenous communities within the host nation. And it doesn't matter how much free electricity or water you give them, it doesn't seem to deradicalize the population.
Hamas has everything to lose from what they did, and it'll likelihood the organization will be annihilated. They knew that, and they did it anyways. Americans and the rest of the west have this strange obsession with analyzing jihadist commentary as some sort of code, instead of just taking them at their word.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh: "We love death like our enemies love life! We love Martyrdom, the way in which [Hamas] leaders died."
You cannot live in harmony with people who do not value life itself. Eventually you realize, as Israel is now (re)learning, the only thing you can do is give them a death that does not involve your own citizens dying by their hand. Kill them, before they kill themselves slaughtering infidels.
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3 hours ago, NKAWTG said:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67088547
Feel like this could backfire. By not allowing riots to kill Jewish people, they might get more riots to kill all kinds of people. Are they really going to deport 10% of the population of France if they push the issue?
You can't have a functional society where a large segment doesn't believe in the core philosophies. In this case, that all innocent people have a right to live in peace.
So yes, eventually they will have to deport them. It won't be this time, but eventually minority groups in all countries (including the Middle East) will have to decide if they are going to assimilate to the host culture, leave, or die.
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Maybe the right answers to move everybody from Gaza to the west bank.
At least then your problem is centralized in one location. That needs to be some sort of definitive action that stands as a long-term consequence to this attack. Whether that means 100,000 people need to die, or the Palestinians need to be in a materially worse position now than they were before the attack, just going in and surgically killing "terrorists" is not going to do it.
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17 hours ago, Danger41 said:
Speaking of media darling, he recently interviewed on 60 minutes about a lot of this stuff. Interesting interview.
Such as?
Commanders are dropping like flies this year
in General Discussion
Posted · Edited by Lord Ratner
You think this guy had his pick of all of the women in the world? 😂🤣
Besides, everyone should know the sweetest wine is the one you can't have...
At a certain point everybody should have the revelation that their own internal resolve is probably not as bullet proof as they'd like to believe. It's a humbling and altogether disconcerting feeling. I remember when Mike pence was in the news for saying he wouldn't have dinner alone with a woman who wasn't his wife. He was lambasted for being a prude, or a sexist, or a fool in general, but I saw a man who had probably ops tested the limits of his faithfulness in the past, and came up with a way to mitigate the risk.