Lord Ratner

It's going to get a lot worse than the SPR. Just wait until the (neglected and pathetic) retirement accounts of the largest voting block start to implode under the weight of an impending recession. There is no limit to what politicians will spend to preserve their positions. And if you think that largest voting block, which leans conservative, is going to vote to cut their SS checks or their Medicare benefits, you are delusional. They will howl for the Fed to dump rates and fire up the printing press, because their government checks are inflation protected and their retirement accounts will capture the money printing.

Age of consent in Nevada is 16... Might be different in UCMJ, but if the local cops are prosecuting I think the civilian law applies.

Sometimes you say dumb things, but this is particularly dumb. Coming from someone who agreed with you on 95% of your COVID commentary, you sound like a hyperventilating Karen.

Not sure why you got down voted here.

Asking to see the radio operator license is little dick energy

Yeah the lack of self awareness or shame is pretty impressive

Good example. Corporate debt is not fixed. People often assume that corporate debt works similar to an auto loan or a car loan, but in reality it has a term, and usually a shorter term like 3 to 5 years. The corporation doesn't make payments on the principal, they only pay the interest, then at the end of the loan the entire loan is paid off. Where it gets problematic is companies like American pay off the debt by taking out a new loan, and basically just roll the debt forward without paying it down. So the real question isn't can you afford the amount of money you have loaned out, but can you afford the payment at the new interest rates? With a fixed rate mortgage. You know what your payments will be for the next 30 years, but that's not the case with corporate debt. You also need to remember that effectively no one thought inflation was possible. Other than a few pundits, Michael Burry types, and Perma bears, the entire corporate, political, and investment class assumed inflation was dead. Most importantly, the Fed has spent the last decade quite literally attempting to increase inflation and failed to the point they believed that unlimited quantitative easing and interest rate repression would have no negative impacts, and certainly not inflation. I think at this point it is obvious that they were wrong. So why does that matter? Because a company like American Airlines (and 25% of the Russell 2000) are "zombie" companies, meaning that they had no realistic path to paying down their debt. That was all well and good when their debt could simply be rolled forward into a new low interest loan. But interest rates are rising, and the corporate bond market, especially the junk bond market, is teetering on the edge of some pretty severe rate increases. Companies are going to fall like dominos when that happens. But the good news is that AA is too big to fail. Usually means chapter 11 bankruptcy, some concessions to the contracts, some furloughs, but otherwise a remarkably stable career compared to what regular folks went through during the great financial crisis.

Exactly. Invest in nuclear before everyone else realizes there was only ever one answer.

That's because it's not a homeless problem, it's a drug problem. There is a ton of money being spent on it, but it will do nothing because no one wants to admit that we need forcibly imprison the homeless and subject them to compulsory rehab, and reestablish the insane asylums for those who are too far gone to treat. We can work on that problem and support Ukraine at the same time.

Nonsense. What we are spending in Ukraine is budget dust compared to the domestic expenses that have put us well beyond the point of recovery. The money sent to Ukraine probably has the highest rate of achieving its intended purpose of all government spending in the last 30 years.

Hang on buddy, you're not acting as a good fiduciary. Timeshares can be an excellent purchase during a recession, since if you're patient, you'll probably find someone to pay you to take it 🤣😂

Yup. We've reached a pretty amazing point where the biggest threat to black people are the mostly-white people who claim to be their champions. I've had some amazing conversations over the past few years with black friends and co-workers. All of them can be boiled down to this paraphrased statement: Well, no, none of that has actually happened to me, but I'm sure it's happening to all the other black people.

🤣😂 Never trust a woman who is that interested in your job.

Pretty sure the trans-inclusion movement has already reached the government

Jesus fucking Christ, top gun Maverick may have been one of the best movies I've ever seen, and I did not like the first one. Whatever ancient movie writing formula they pulled out of the closet to make Maverick, I hope they don't lose it again. No message, no franchise, just a hero, a challenge, and a victory. Awesome.

Trading has been brutal, though still rewarding for those willing to be aggressive in their trades. In terms of total compensation (pay + 401k + per diem) I've made just over $100k this summer (June/July/August). That's 508 hours of pay, however 94 hours came from just two trips (4 day and 2 day) in July from the much publicized 300% meltdown. Dallas based 737 first officer.

Even if we assume the first part of your sentence is accurate, when have declarations of war been made by Democratic election? We are a representative republic.

I have those already.

I diversify 🤣😂

I don't think that at all. I think you're a very intelligent, self-driven idealist. And I've noticed that there's a huge and growing divide between the professional class and the plebes. The ability to isolate amongst similarly-situated and like minded families, both online and in communities, is abnormally high in the modern era. Look no further than people like yourself who regularly talk about how great everything is in the modern world while completely failing to see a huge part of the country who have lives that are materially worse than their parents' lives were. You might call it Trump country, but based on your commentary you have little experience with the people in that demographic. The gap between the haves and the have nots is growing at an alarming rate. Unfortunately, the only people who are focused on this issue, probably you, but definitely the hyper progressive activists/politicians in the Democratic party, have a twofold problem. - They hate half of the people in the have-not group. The Trumpers, if you will. - Their prescriptions to help the half they like are violative of human nature and are doomed to failure. You can't see past the teams. That's not on you, the political class figured out how to polarize the electorate almost identically to how sports teams polarize their fans. It's generally harmless in football, but politically it's tearing the country apart. The real game isn't democrat vs Republican, it's the new aristocracy vs everyone else. Just look at the percentage of wealth of the 1% and look at how it changed during the pandemic. The least vulnerable people increased their share of the pie by a huge amount, and they did it with monetary and political trick-fuckery. No, the problem at hand is the continued erosion of faith, shared equally by Democrats and Republicans, in the institutions and elections of our country. In 2016 most Democrats thought the election was rigged. Same for Republicans in 2020. Some boxes of secrets in Trump's basement or emails in Hillary's bathroom are irrelevant. The differing treatment of these offenses by the law enforcement institutions is everything. That is what you fail to grasp.

I don't think I could ask for a better proxy for the generalized problem with liberal/democratic thinking. For that I am grateful. In fact, they are inherently good. But they are also very susceptible to the corrupting influence of power, which our political class have retained in greater quantities since the founding. It has wildly distorted the system as it was designed, wherein the founders recognized this corrupting power and used elections and checks and balances to fight it. But obviously they weren't able to foresee the technological and demographic changes that have made politics a much different beast 200 years later. This is not borne out in the polling data. In fact, Americans on both sides are increasingly likely to believe the people who disagree with their politics are in fact bad people. https://www.npr.org/2022/08/13/1117232857/americans-have-increasingly-negative-views-of-those-in-the-other-political-party https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/10/10/partisan-antipathy-more-intense-more-personal/ And now we are back to the generalized failings of liberal thinking. You believe you are qualified to determine what bad reasoning or logical fallacies are. That you would not afford the same freedom to the proletariat, who you are completely out of touch with. And of course, I'm not making the argument that their decision making will result in better outcomes than yours. In fact, I would bet on you if we could create an isolated system. But we can't, and what we know for sure is that while bad decision making will result in bad outcomes when compared to good decision making, taking away that decision making authority will result in far more catastrophic outcomes. That, at its core, is the foundational error in progressive thought. Individual entities working in massive systems without centralized control always outperform hierarchical control structures. We see this both in the success of individualist-based governments versus socialist governments, and free market economies versus communist economies. We also see this in all manner of policy issues, the greatest of which may be abortion, but gun control, transgender children and their medical care, the gay wedding cake debacle, and the Democratic push to regulate what news stories are suitable for public consumption. Everything the liberals have done to advance these issues in their favor have exploded spectacularly in their face. That is not because of skilled Republican political maneuvering, it's because when you piss on the leg of human nature, human nature turns around and punches you right in the face.

Is the hill "troll shit?" https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3616579-zuckerberg-tells-rogan-that-facebook-suppressed-hunter-biden-laptop-story-after-fbi-warning-defends-agency-as-legitimate-institution/amp/

If you are not tried in court, and there is no statute of limitations, a crime does not expire. You go back as far as the law allows and the crime occurred. If the statute of limitations has passed, public humiliation will suffice. You've obviously never been charged with a crime. I have, and believe me, "the law applied and the investigation thorough" is getting put through the ringer. Full stop. Doesn't matter how innocent you are. I'd like to see most of the assholes in Washington locked up, and I don't care what team they're on. But if it's not going to be fair, it would be better if we went back to the old days of ignoring *all* political corruption on both sides. At least then the voters feel like they are getting fucked equally. Whataboutism isn't a political trick, it's human (animal) nature. As with most liberal failings, ignore human nature at your peril.

Anyone buying gold online? What sites do you use? I suspect all the big names are kosher, but I'd rather have a recommendation all the same. I think the collapse of fiat currency is somewhere in the low single digits probability-wise, so I need to add something a bit "catastrophe proof" to my holdings. Thanks

Obese. A 76 year old obese man.