Lord Ratner

Considering they didn't even take on the assault weapons ban case, I highly doubt the SCOTUS will be dealing any blows to the NFA soon.

Jesus that's a good looking gun. Is there a barrel extension on that?

How else do you define a "symbolic" attack? That's *exactly* what this was, which is exactly what professor numb nuts was calling for. An off ramp.

Fortunately the president doesn't share your views on international relations. Symbolic acts are just a reality of asymmetric warfare. Pearl clutching when someone discusses it openly only makes the dialog dumber AMD less valuable.

Look the guy is obviously a Islamist hack, but it doesn't sound like he wants dead Americans. He literally said "symbolic strike," as in we all know the political and diplomatic realities necessitate some sort of response, so I hope it's symbolic as opposed to meaningful, which would force the US to escalate. Overblown.

Lol. No. Maybe North Korea thinks about it. Maybe. Nobody else with nukes is giving them to Iran

Exactly. I expect a big part of the strategy has been "allowing" the political class in Iran to survive specifically so they can choose their own lives over retaliation. But they can't not make threats. That's not how international politics work. They are going to saber rattle, the real question is will they follow through. We'll know soon.

Buddy, the idea that peace is attained and maintained through abstention from kinetic acts is the most childish view of the world one could possibly have. Peace has never, and will never come from peaceful actions. It always and forever will be the product of extreme violence. And even then, it relies on the good guys (a rare phenomenon in human history) to want peace as the product of their ruthless and thorough dissemination of death. If Trump follows these bombings with the Marines storming the beaches of Iran, I will agree with your shallow suggestion. Until then, just give it a rest with this utopian bullshit, please. Whining like a baby about Trump putting targets on your buddies' backs is especially hilarious when the people he just fucked up had actual targets on the backs of your friends. Or have we become so weak and pathetic that we forget who our actual enemies are, the ones who have been killing us for years?

She wasn't great. An Air Force 7 at best. But I'm sure the pics are in an OSI file somewhere if you want to try and FOIA them 😂🤣

Look at that. America can still look strong. FA;FO

Yup. I've trimmed back a bunch of my uranium and nuclear stuff as it's gone crazy. I'll buy back into it after it corrects. It'll be a long-term holding but you can't ignore a crazy spike like this. I don't think I'm going to cut purecycle at all, just because it's got such a long-term growth story ahead of it. Plus it seems silly to bail out now that druckenmiller is involved. Shorting some of the more meme-y stocks, but I don't pick any myself; I have a newsletter I follow. I'm thinking we have a 5 to 10% correction here between now and the end of July, then the rocket ship takes off again into the fall. Sometime in late 2025 or early 2026, shit hits the fan. Unemployment is going to be the last shoe to drop, but if you look at current unemployment and add in new gig workers, the numbers already look pretty bad. The housing market is already shaky, but it needs some forced-selling to light the fuse. Of course the only question, as it has been for the last 15 years, is what the FED will do.

T38 Commander known for being a bro who can push it up. Ends up sleeping with a student who's lady parts have had more instructors inside than the average RSU. That somehow escalates to tag-teaming said student with one of the blue-suit sim instructors, where photos are taken just in case they'd forget the gay-adjacent threesome that put three separate careers in jeopardy. Then the sim IP mistakenly emails said photos to the base's most popular barber, who had more connections than Harvey Weinstein's Hollywood fixer. She deleted them, but when OSI "interviewed" the sim IP about a rumor that his genitals were flying CT formation with a certain commander in unauthorized airspace, he went off on a rant about that "dumb bitch" barber who is always spreading lies. OSI decided they might want to talk to the barber-they-previously-knew-absolutely-nothing-about, who told them she didn't really look at the pictures in the email and it doesn't matter because she deleted them a long time ago. But OSI decided to cast a resurrection spell on her inbox with their magical subpoena crystals, and sure enough the investigators suddenly had everything they needed. If you know any of the characters in this tale, please keep it to yourself. They all went through enough, especially the spouse and children of the eventually-jailed Commander.

Only a fighter pilot could make going to jail for banging a student worse by adding a second dick to the party. Even Biff knows better than that!

Probably still not as dramatic as the T-38 commander who got caught tag teaming a student with a SIM instructor.

Two thoughts, equally important: What the Air Force is doing to you and, by extension, to the country, is a travesty, and the generals responsible should be fired publicly and shamed as examples of pathetic and impotent hubris for the remaining days of our nation's existence. Also Suck it up. You don't get to pick the path, only the destination, and sometimes not even that. If this mockery is how you become an Air Force pilot, so be it.

I wish I was that rich 😂😅

The odds of both engines failing within a couple seconds of each other is astronomically small, especially with fuel contamination. I suspect either Software caused the loss of thrust, or the crew did. And as much as I hate saying it, outside of the West, crew failure is the most likely culprit.

Has the population of LA grown? Number of establishments and residences? Miles of roadways? I don't know the answers to those questions, but if they have increased, then an inflation-adjusted stable budget is effectively a cut.

Yup. But since not everything in the universe is correlated to everything else in the universe, I'll need you to expand a little bit more. There are also examples of countries that severely punish drug use, and as such have wildly lower usage rates. Again, that's not me endorsing the punishment, but to deny the reality that it *can* be controlled is silly. And there's a whole separate conversation about whether or not something becomes pointless just because it cannot be pursued to perfection. Just because you *can* get meth doesn't mean we should legalize it. Fewer meth heads is a societal good. But we can start another thread on the inanity of libertarian purism if we want to continue that discussion.

That's an oversimplification. If guns are 100% illegal in all circumstances, then anyone with a gun is by definition a criminal and can be engaged accordingly. That makes things vastly simpler from a defensive/law enforcement perspective. It would absolutely, positively reduce the number of mass murders, gang killings, and other firearms associated fatalities. Those numbers are very obviously shown in countries that have outright bans on firearms. I'm completely against that position, but trying to boil it down to "the bad guys will have it anyways" is excessively simplistic. This applies even more so to drones. It is simply easier to do something illegal with a tool that is legal than it is to do with an illegal tool. If we go so far as to say that civilian drone ownership is illegal, then the ROE for drones gets very simple very fast. See it, shoot it. I'm against making guns illegal because I believe in the core premise of the second amendment. The risk of government-induced tyranny is far worse than the loss of life associated with the legalization of firearms. I do not believe that premise extends to drones. I'm also not advocating for making drones illegal (haven't given it enough thought), but it's a hyper-libertarian argument to say that "bad guys will have it anyways" and almost every hyper-libertarian argument collapses upon contact with reality.

I guess I don't understand the political motivation for deploying the national guard in Los Angeles. The Democrats have almost entirely been responsible for Republicans winning the last few cycles, because their governance inevitably blows up in the faces of their constituencies. California and specifically San Francisco are good examples. Illegal immigration and the trans stuff is another good example. So why save the day when the governor and mayor are protesting your involvement? I feel like a better strategy would be to continue doing what the people elected Trump to do, which is beef up immigration enforcement, and if there's a riot in Los Angeles every time and an illegal is detained, so be it. Wait for the riot to end, then go back in and detain another illegal. It should only take two or three of these riots before Los Angeles is brought to its knees, and then they can request the national guard from the president and allow Trump to swoop in and save the day. I have no love for these "protestors," but California clearly does, so why not let them reap what they sow? If the fear is damage to Federal facilities, use it as justification to move as many federal facilities out of California as possible. Part of the reason the swamp exists is because all of the federal infrastructure is in the most liberal parts of the country. This would be a great excuse for bringing in some more balance.

This is a stupid argument. It's like arguing that amusement parks are a waste or zoos are cruel. Humans are not machines. They need entertainment and fanfare and first person contact with something for it to matter in their lives. Parades bring the military to the people we desperately need to support us. This type of thinking is why so many utopians and central planners keep failing over and over in their attempts to "improve" society. It may seem better to spend money on a hospital instead of a parade, just like a base theater is a "waste" of money when the runways needs new lighting. But entertainment is not optional; it's human nature.

Yes, but it is also blowing up much more spectacular than I thought. The circus continues 🤷🏻‍♂️

No one was ever making that argument. The airlines allow me to be a better husband and a better father. I can provide more and be around for more than the military ever allowed. It's not even close. I will never have to say goodbye to my kids for 6-12 months, or watch the birth of the next one on Skype. I absolutely enjoyed the shit out of my military career, even with the rather disruptive ending, but it's not even remotely questionable that my family is better off with an airline pilot rather than a military pilot at the helm. It's a young man's game.