Lord Ratner

I'm not sure that's the appropriate metric. Biden isn't selling water softeners at Costco, he's the leader of the free world, elected by us. Part of the application for the job is what kind of a man or woman you are. Of course one of my main arguments *against* Trump to the conservatives I fly with has been that America deserves a better man than Trump. I always ask, "would you want your daughter dating Trump?" And "Trump has cheated on every relationship he's been in." These stories were not systematically hidden from the American voters by the press and Big Tech. Say what you will, but Trump raised three very functional children who are fiercely loyal to him (with two still to be determined). There is much more to consider, but that says a lot to a lot of voters. And he was up against a candidate who regularly painted himself as a grounded, no-nonsense family man. Biden was one of the dumbest people in the Senate for years, but he was supposed to be moderate and compassionate. Obama was clearly a man deeply committed to his wife and kids. But the "smartest man I know" according to Joe Biden was addicted to hookers, crack, illegally owned firearms, and curiously, filming all of his crimes. That same son, deeply flawed, had incredibly lucrative connections to foreign businesses with government ties to our adversaries, all on the basis of his blood connection to the senator/vice president/president. You don't think that's relevant to the voters interest in selecting a president? You don't think most people will look at that dumpster fire of a 52-year old and think, no way his high-profile parents aren't aware of this? How would that story affect a security clearance? OSI: Do you or any of your family members have connections to officials of foreign governments? You: Me? No not really. My son is on the board of several foreign companies with ties to their respective governments. Hmm? Oh yeah, China is one of them, sure. And he has hours of footage of him engaging in illegal activities involving drugs, prostitutes, and firearms, many of which he suspects have already been seized by members of the Russian Mafia. But other than that I can't think of anything... Right... By this logic, what did the candidate do that was illegal, many of the arguments against Trump vaporize too, as they still remain largely unproven. As to question one, seriously? First, have you seen any of the videos? They are hilarious, but quite obviously real. Second, have you ever, EVER, in your life, seen politicians let that type of story hit without categorically rejecting it? Your question should be has any Biden family member actually gone on the record denying the authenticity of the videos? Spoiler alert: no. I'm not sure the nepotism argument has legs given the Kennedy, Bush, Clinton dynasties. Ultimately it's not illegal, nor should it be, to use family members as advisors, or for them to use their name as a campaign tool. I wish the American people didn't go for it, but it's not illegal. Joe Biden rented his home to the secret service for years. Trump rented them rooms at his hotels. Ok, neither really bothered me. But Trump's kids didn't become "gajillionaires" because of their father's access to the highest office in the world. And at least the American people got the Abraham accords out of the arrangement. What are we getting now?

Just watched the Hunter Biden videos. That fact these aren't dominating the news cycle is a testament to a broken system. I know we only have 3 liberals here, but I'd love to hear a defense of the near media-blackout. If Eric Trump had 15 seconds of similar video leaked, it would have never ended. The dude flat out says his laptop, stolen by Russians, could be used to blackmail him. It's mind-blowing.

It's a transitory peak, don't worry 🤣😂 If you really want a laugh, find one of the sites that uses the 1980 inflation formula. It's more like an 80 year high.

This is quite conveniently timed. Now that we have Hunter Biden, on tape, admitting that the Russian Mafia stole a laptop full of incriminating evidence, with the potential to blackmail him, while he makes "gajillions," I'd say the laptop story has some legs.

There's always an excuse. The guys hired in the last few years spent 10-17 years stuck at the regionals. The TWA guys got stapled twice. B-scale, mergers, integrations, bankruptcies, pandemics... It's always something. You either act as a unionist or the bad times will persist. You don't have to like it. I don't. But it's a unionized career, so act accordingly. You did, but others don't. I always find it funny when an old guy tells me about how when he was hired they said he'd be a captain in 5 years and they'd have to back up a dump truck full of money to his driveway. Then he got screwed by xxx or yyy and it took decades to get where he was "supposed to be." That's why he can't afford to follow the union guidance this time. Sorry. But don't worry, he tells me, you'll be a captain in 5 years and they'll have to back a dump truck full of money to my driveway, so I shouldn't worry about him acting like an independent contractor, it'll be different for me... Even after a pandemic these guys still don't see the irony or hypocrisy. But pilots are funny creatures...

There are two potential outcomes. 1. The progressive movement concentrates into a smaller and smaller core of activists who eventually get discarded from the Democratic party machinery. The more extreme they get, the smaller the coalition will be. I think they are very close to, or have already passed a point of no return. Their only power is in the asymmetrical advantage social media communication gives them, coupled with the disproportionate representation of progressives in media and academia. 2. If they are successful in holding the party hostage and maintaining their grip over the moderates (by scaring the liberal voters into believing conservatives are monsters that hate them), they will eventually trigger a fear response and humans will do what they've done really well for thousands of years: hate and harm people who act or look differently. I didn't think this was the prominent threat until they literally started going after the kids. Smart on the one hand, because societal changes are mostly generational, but much riskier on the other hand, because parents will get very brave very fast when their kids are at stake. I think they have taken for granted the victories of the past, but racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia have not been removed from the human heart, and they can spread faster than most think. It's going to boil down to the post-2022 election Democratic party. If they don't excise the progressive movement from their ranks and get back to their class-based roots, the second option becomes more likely.

The left has defined themselves over the past few decades as the crusader party. Problem is, they ran out of crusades. The causes will get progressively dumber as they chase the high they felt from fighting racism, securing gay rights, protecting the environment, etc. How ironic. They created a better world and are miserable in it.

First, strong dollar. But more importantly, the broader market believes a few things that steer away from gold: 1. Inflation will be controlled by next year 2. The Fed will not raise rates as high as they are signaling, and will resume QE soon-ish. 3. Earnings will see double digit increases next year. I think those three things are very wrong. But I also think there will be a deleveraging cascade that will hit gold and silver just like it did in March 2020. After the margin calls I plan to buy both.

If the metal moves in July, there will be no contract. I'm tired of listening to pilots bitch about the contract, then spend 15 minutes on the phone fixing a catering problem, or refusing to write up small discrepancies that will delay their flight, or chasing contractually non-compliant assignments for a few bucks, etc,etc,etc. "Well I don't want to delay the passengers..." "But they might have to cancel the flight!" "I'm not going to screw over the FAs" "I just want to get to the hotel" "I have family in Tulsa, so I'm just going to get us there." It's the same here as it was in the military. A lot of type-A people who love the smell of their own farts. But if it isn't a specifically-enumerated decision authority for the PIC/A-code from the FAA/11-202, the tough guys get real soft when it gets to be time to cancel the flight. Fatigue, weather, maintenance, doesn't matter, the metal moves. And since the motivations in the airlines are completely different, it's made me rethink my military experience entirely. I always thought it was fear of being passed over, or missing the next award, or not getting the desired assignment that kept military pilots grinding on, despite the regs and despite safety. But none of those considerations exist at the airline. So the only logical conclusion is that pilots are by and large a bunch of golden retrievers that get immense validation from "getting it done," even when no one gives a shit on the other side of the table. That's probably a good thing in the context of a risk mitigation career. But it makes you incredibly vulnerable at the negotiating table.

Bitcoin will not go up until/unless the fed resumes Quantitative Easing. When exactly that happens is going to be the biggest factor in determining the fate of our entire economy.

Here's an unpopular opinion: You shouldn't have to invest in the stock market to improve your financial situation. There is one constant over the last three recessions. The retail investors always get cleaned out. Look up how Robin Hood makes money. The further we get from being an economy that rewards productivity, the worse this is going to get. Banking should not be the easiest way to become a millionaire.

I'd run a bus full of orphans of a cliff for a threesome with her and AOC.

What generation do you think made this possible? What's the average age in Congress? What generation has dominated academia for the past 30 years? Who ran the Fed? Obviously it's not an indictment on *all* boomers. There are plenty who lived honest, honorable lives. But anyone who decries the laziness, weakness, sensitivity, neediness, absence, wokeness, etc of a generation that is only just now reaching the age and ability to have influence over the vast systems they are a part of (millennials, the genZers are still completely subordinated) is being obtuse. Millennials did not create participation trophies. They didn't create infinite useless social-studies degrees to justify tuition costs for themselves. They didn't increase the tuition costs, nor did they increase the administrative staffs. They didn't change the interpretation of Title IX. They didn't put critical theory or Marxism into the curriculum, nor did they invent critical race theory or intersectionality. They didn't create CDOs, mortgage backed securities, or order-flow processing fees. They didn't set the interest rates to zero. They didn't rezone entire regions to prevent stable housing growth. They didn't lower the lending standards in 2002-2006, and they didn't bail out the banks when those lending standards destroyed them. They didn't invent Quantitative Easing and they didn't raise the debt ceiling a few dozen times. They didn't outsource our entire manufacturing base to a geopolitical adversary. They didn't come up with global warming and they certainly didn't fly their private jets to Davos to pontificate on carbon emissions. There's a huge list of societal changes that the US underwent from 1990-present, and the boomers were overwhelmingly steering the ship. Gen X certainly didn't help, but they were more profiteers than anything, and their sins, the wholesale destruction of the common polity through social media algorithms designed to increase marketing revenues, are another topic. I'm sure our generation will have our own sins, but that doesn't change the facts, or who owns them. The successful millennials who were lucky to have good parents (another factor that didn't used to matter as much in America), good genetics, and good timing should be wary of leaving the others behind. That evolved sense of fairness is not easily tamed. The boomers who created the greatest income inequality in modern American history will be dead by the time the bottom half radicalizes and starts "eating the rich." If the poor can't save (0% interest rates + inflation = savings destruction), can't invest (wildly overpriced equities), can't support a family on a single income, and especially when the implications of the Millennials being the first generation to be worse-off financially than their parents becomes the norm, cheap TVs and free phones won't keep them quiet.

Neat. But societies don't work through anecdote. You can pull yourself up by the bootstraps all you want (I certainly did as I sit comfortably in the upper 10%), but the distribution of wealth doesn't lie, and the boomers leveraged trillions of future wealth into their pockets, so now their kids have to pay more for housing, education, transportation, and investments. All while real wages have stagnated or declined. But hey, we can get TVs pretty cheap... And while all this has happened, the upper echelon of society has engineered weapons-grade blinders to avoid the unpleasantness of the increasingly desperate reality of those in the bottom half. It's much more comfortable that way, until the proletariat come knocking on your door with their pitchforks and torches. Most intelligent animals have a very finely-tuned sense of fairness, and brother, it hasn't been fair for a while. COVID was the single greatest transfer of wealth to the top earners in history. Most people can't follow the complicated chain of financial implements used to move money from the middle-class pockets into the investment accounts of the rich(Robinhood, Bitcoin, etc), but they can still smell a scam somewhere in there. What's amazing to me is how the conservatives have been asleep at the wheel. They seem so fucking proud of their non-representative success stories, like yours, that they have completely missed the raping and pillaging of our capitalist system by politicians, foreign actors, and the financial industry. Those who *do* are now subordinated to those who manipulate. I hope I'm wrong, but we'll know very soon. The chickens have all come home to roost at the same time, and the "smart money" (insiders) are already positioning themselves for the pain. I expect they'll all be on CNBC shilling their holdings to the retail investors before they become much less valuable. The final scam before the bill comes due.

Overturning Roe does not ban abortion, as you said, and I don't think as many states as people think will ban it. I suspect only the most conservative states will outright ban Roe. Most of the rest will probably end up somewhere around where Europe ultimately settled, 12-16 weeks. CDC claims 91% of abortions are week 13 or earlier. So you're probably not going to see enough of a crime spike to rue anything.

In a single sentence you prove my point. Exactly what is an "anti-Democratic opinion? Are you implying the court overruled a democratically enacted law on abortion? I'm not sure at this point that you understand the purpose of the SCOTUS. Or perhaps you aren't familiar with how Roe was ruled? I'm but a layman, but I'm pretty sure voting, not opinion polls are how democracies function, yes? Again, please point me to the democratically-enacted abortion law (either through direct voting or representative legislation) that the court has overturned here. Ok, you're fucking with me now, right? Who exactly do you think is *constitutionally charged* with determining what is correct in the constitution? I'll give you a hint, there are only 9 correct answers... This goes back to you not not understanding how an originalist works on the court. He did not call for re-examining whether you can use contraceptives with your wife. He called for re-examining whether that determination is meant to be a legislative one, or a judicial one. If you can't grasp the difference then this conversation will go nowhere. But you wouldn't be alone. Yes, exactly how Roe cited the 14th amendment. And yet there's nothing in the Fourteenth amendment that in any capacity protects abortion. This is where reading either Roe itself or the majority opinion would be valuable, as it quite clearly spells out the utter lack of support within the 14th amendment for abortion protections. Let's take a look: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Life and property obviously aren't at issue here (unless you mean the fetal life, which you don't). So we have liberty and equal protection. Now, if you believe that in 1868 the country believed that anti-abortion laws represented a threat to the liberty of women, I'm not sure you'll find much historical support for that. So liberty is out. And men are not given any special privilege to abort a fetus, not does constitutional law consider gender differences to be "unequal protection." So explain to me, slowly, because I don't read much, how the fourteenth amendment applies. This is another one of those strange misunderstandings of how the court works, which is much more eloquently explained in the majority opinion that I could ever hope to do. But this logic doesn't hold in any historical context, as we have some pretty heinous rulings that had to be overturned 50 plus years later to right egregious wrongs. I think every black American is quite happy that stare decisis is not immutable. I don't think you know as much as you think you know.

You fundamentally do not understand the constitution, and thus do not understand Thomas. *Exactly* like Roe and the inferred right to privacy, substantive due process is a concept that has no actual basis in the constitution. Therefore regardless of their views, an originalist will oppose such precedents. The inability to separate legal reasoning from personal beliefs is a foundational flaw in progressive ideology. If you have the time, read the dissent with the specific focus of finding constitutional arguments. In over 60 pages, there are none. But on the risks of losing birth control and gay marriage, if we're cherry-picking non-majority concurrences, here's some from Kavanaugh, who will be on the court long after Thomas retires. "First is the question of how this decision will affect other precedents involving issues such as contraception and mar- riage—in particular, the decisions in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479 (1965); Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U. S. 438 (1972); Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1 (1967); and Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. 644 (2015). I emphasize what the Court today states: Overruling Roe does not mean the over-ruling of those precedents, and does not threaten or cast doubt on those precedents." "For example, may a State bar a resident of that State from traveling to another State to obtain an abortion? In my view, the answer is no based on the constitutional right to interstate travel. May a State retroactively impose liability or punishment for an abortion that occurred before today’s decision takes effect? In my view, the answer is no based on the Due Process Clause or the Ex Post Facto Clause" Roe proved that you can't answer deep societal debates with court-derived solutions. Now the system can once again work as intended. The population of each state gets to decide what is best for themselves, as long as it doesn't violate the constitution. Or a federal law protecting abortion can be passed. Or a constitutional amendment can be ratified. But if those solutions aren't reasonable, then maybe the left should reconsider the meaning of democracy.

Do you have kids? Were you ever one? To imply that a bunch of 16-17 year olds supposed to have the experience and rationality to ignore/refute/buck their parents, teachers, role models, politicians, etc is just absurd. Just like when the boomers complain about millennials and genZ getting participation trophies. Well yeah, clown, who exactly bought the trophy? If your argument blames teenagers, it's probably a pretty weak argument.

This is simply not true in a historical context. As pointed out, the median income is no longer capable of buying the same things. And the distribution of wealth over the generations at specific ages has shifted dramatically lower. The college scam has started millions off with crippling debt. Millennials did not create this world, their parents did.

Shack. Sounds exactly like my rant when these boomer captains bitch about their kids not meeting their expectations. Why aren't you doing well in the world we control? Now we get the privilege of paying for their decades of financial malfeasance while simultaneously funding the social security program they bankrupted, which we will never benefit from. And they have the audacity of invoking capitalism when their kids flirt with socialism, when in reality their kids are only leaning towards socialist solutions because they watched their parents' generation drag capitalism into an alley and rape it for the last 30 years. And just wait, their over-leveraged, over invested 401k accounts are going to implode and they'll be back to the government trough for another bailout, all while lecturing us on responsibility and hard work 😂🤣

Shack.

That's fucking rich. Seriously, do you pause for even a second before stabbing your justice boner straight through your keyboard? Pathetic

Because as soon as the west loses interest, Ukraine is toast.

Two fundamental failures of the "elites" running the world: 1) They are generally some of the smartest people in the world, and a certain level of intellectualism has a profound effect on motivations and decision-making. In particular, the intellectual class are disproportionately agreeable and conscientious. They also generally believe that the rest of the population, given the proper resources and framing, will come to the same conclusions/actions they have. This is false. The "animals" kill for sport, and this is inconceivable to the intellectuals. They recognize the behavior, but they are incapable of predicting it. 2) They believe their intellect makes them immune to basic human nature. The best example of this is the endless stream of generals/politicians/celebrities/pastors who get caught cheating or otherwise engaging in unacceptable sexual behavior. But stealing, lying, and cheating (professionally) are other fine examples. So you have the vast majority of the academic and political sphere that doesn't understand the motivations of the proletariat they seek to rule, while overestimating their own capabilities. Then we wonder why they fail so consistently in their jobs/predictions.

There it is. If you disagree with me, it's a phobia. It calls into question everything else you say.