Lord Ratner

We call that the Texas conundrum.

RFK Jr is more than a little nuts, but I think part of the problem is that when you are involved in a conspiracy and see just how truly insane it can be, it becomes too easy to see conspiracies behind every shadow. That said, he points out the absolute insanity of modern democrats aligning themselves with big pharma companies, And if you had told any Democrat that 5 or 10 years ago they would have laughed in your face. So maybe he's not that crazy. That said, he seems completely uncorrupted by progressive identity politics. The real question though is who are "his people?" For everybody clamoring about how Joe Biden ran as a moderate and became a hyper progressive, that's because Joe Biden never had people. So when it came time to staff his administration, it was all a bunch of Obama and Clinton staffers, and the Obama ones in particular have been hyper progressive for a long time. Trump showed that it's difficult to overcome the upper and middle management ranks, and Joe Biden barely has the cognitive capacity to read a cue card, much less manage the subversive interests of hyperpolitical underlings. I like that RFK is an old school liberal, but I would be shocked to find out that he has any sort of meaningful network, and that's vital when it comes time to staff the administration, at least if you have any intent on controlling it and bending it to your agenda. But I would vote for him over Trump in a microsecond. If it's Trump Biden I'll probably just toss the vote to the libertarian.

Why? You know the answer. Because it feels good. Second and third order effects be damned.

Nashville is not remotely like SF, Portland, Seattle, NYC, or Chicago, in politics, population, or the crime and homelessness (drug use) wave. It's a nice town. Liberal cities in conservative states have had a much harder time enacting the policies that have led to the conditions in the big cities. That's lucky for them. Austin is another good example. Every time the local government gets stupid, the state legislature steps in and takes away their toys. That doesn't comport well with the idea of localized government, but unfortunately we've seen that these issues manifest long after the offending ideologues have skittered away, and the damage takes years, or maybe generations, to fix. Dallas is another funny one. Usually the surrounding suburban areas funnel money into the city to fund all the absurd spending cities pride themselves on, but here they structured it so the money stays in the suburbs to be spent on schools and whatever else the residents want. The local newspaper is always crying about how little money Dallas gets for things like subways and buses and other downtown ornaments. The rest of us are quite happy to keep the city purse depleted.

Grew up right across the bridge. Spent my childhood all over SF, and right after college. Not one single person I know who actually lives in the area has your view. It is definitional of tourism politics. It's right up there with all the Americans who tout the enlightened glory of Europe, because they read about it in a book and took a vacation to Paris once. Since I know precisely what San Francisco looks like right now, your depiction is enough for me to know that your observations of any other American city is going to be equally ignorant. You are simply incapable of seeing what you don't want to believe. At least you're in good company.

Getting dinner in San Francisco is not exactly the same thing as living in San Francisco. Whether it's homelessness, the Exodus of retail (Nordstroms was the most recent), or the phenomenal incidents of vehicle break-ins, "awesome" does not describe San Francisco. Your cartoonish denial of reality is usually a bit less obvious, but not here. However, it does quite nicely demonstrate the arrogance of your political philosophy. I had fun there once, so why are so many people complaining?

The "just die" part was a bit raw, but you were right about the overall character of the generation. Entitled, irresponsible, and completely unprepared for a retirement that their delusional government spending has ensured my generation will never have. The boomers have the honorable distinction of being the first ever generation of American parents to leave their children worse off than they were. Bravo.

Worst advice in the thread 😂🤣. I would say about 1/3 are terrible with finances, 1/3 are fine, but missing many opportunities, and 1/3 are good with money. There is no connection between career success and financial responsibility. The number of junior and senior pilots having actual panic attacks in Apr-Oct 2020 over the potential for reduced earnings was a real eye opener. Most pilots cannot get a non-airline job that would replace their airline income. Plan accordingly, and be intimately familiar with your LTD policy.

It would have been x $1,500 for me last year, plus the 401k ($265k + $30k 401k) with an hourly rate of $169 But that's higher than normal.

No you idiot. Mountain Dew is literally *in* his name 🤣😂

There's a whole industry of civil-rights groups and individuals who, after winning the war against racism, have realized they aren't able to/interested in finding a new job. So now they must create work for themselves. It's pretty transparent, but there's a lot of inertia in that world, so they are still able to squeeze out a (big) paycheck with increasingly absurd accusations.

This is actually the perfect encapsulation of why the social justice warrior/woke nonsense is so fucking dangerous. Incidentally, this is also the point that well meaning liberals completely miss when they respond with "yeah that's obviously crazy. Why do you care so much?" When you say crazy things for long enough, crazy people will start to believe them. In this case the person was only crazy enough to petition a court. But we've already seen several instances of crazy people who are willing to grab a gun. When you stray from the truth, eventually everything will fall apart. Yes, that includes Donald Trump denying his obvious and overwhelming loss in the election. January 6th was not an insurrection anymore than the BLM riots were a civil war. But the more we keep lying about racism, trans genocide, patriarchal sexism, and the alleged death of democracy, the more crazy people we are going to inspire to do horrible things. And as we've all heard from the military, when one guy shits his pants, we all wear diapers.

Does it have to centralized at the federal level? Have the same jurisdictions? Authorities? Sure you can boil everything down to "law enforcement" and then say you're just changing names, but by that logic the US is just another government with a different name. The structure matters in protecting against abuse.

You know... some of us, who have actually dealt with mental ill people, do not feel like the right way to handle their illness is to indulge in their delusion and allow, enable, and even assist in their self-mutilation. That it has now extended to children, to some of us, means that we have left the realm of well-meaning stupidity and entered the world of evil. But it's easier to imagine that a whole bunch of people who believe that we are, in fact, morally responsible for each other, are just hateful of men who want to wear dresses and girls who don't want tits anymore, cuz 'Murica! The left's transformation from "let's compel the society to help those at the bottom," into the post-modern "anything that is part of the traditional power hierarchy is wrong" has been tragically disappointing. Transexuals have never been at the bottom of the social pyramid in America, and they are not an oppressed class. To suggest such is fantasy nonsense, and an open insult to the many groups that have actually existed in that position.

Lol. No. Lowering testosterone does not reverse the effects of male puberty on the musculoskeletal system. This is Human Biology 101.

He didn't say that. He pointed out that old people's go-to move is to dismiss the opinions of younger people due to "experience," and that's often a bullshit move. In the military crowd I'm now an old person. In the airline crowd I'm apparently still an infant, and I see the same thing over there. It's nonsense. Young people lack experience, and old people have calcified brains that reject new information. Both have valid insights. In this case, the dude held the sleeper hold way too long. Should he go to jail for that? I don't think so. I think he was justified in intervening, but interventions have limits.

Is there any state without cops? How did it work before? Literally any answer will work, it's not the the FBI was the "right answer." It was just *an* answer.

It's always banging the help. When it's not, you hear the details.

This was awesome 🤣😂

And here you confirmed it. I guess I should have seen this from earlier posts.

If you don't do the volunteer work I do, you're a lazy pussy is a pretty hot take. Sometimes you seem like a rational, intelligent person with some contrarian views, then you post some unhinged emotional nonsense like this and make me wonder if you're just another nut with too much time in front of a keyboard.

Same thing with race, free speech, and all the other issues they are curiously trying to convince us are *worse* than they were 50 years ago.

I think the first and second stages are meant to stay in orbit once launched, or return to earth. Refuel from an orbiting tank and continue on. Only the actual starship lands on the moon or Mars, and that has considerably less destructive force. On the moon that's easy, not much thrust required to get off the moon. I don't recall the gravity on Mars. I heard spaceX has already made 1,000 changes to the next test rocket, before getting the data from this launch. I remember how quickly the space industry went from laughing at the failed dragon landing attempts to shitting their pants. ULA is already dead, they just have a warm corpse. And no one is even close to catching up. Starship should be able to launch 10-20x the number of starlink satellites per launch, so Elon will have a total monopoly on LEO Internet service. Who will be able to put up a competing constellation if SpaceX just refuses to launch anyone else's satellites? No one. This was the first launch of the biggest rocket ever made, and it made it through Max-Q with 5 failed engines. Let's just hope Elon can avoid becoming the next Howard Hughes.

What a cool time to be an American.