Lord Ratner

They should not have this option. It invalidates every other thing that you said. Human migration, willing and unwilling, is just a fact of History.

I'll say the thing no one wants to admit. There is no future for Gaza with 1.7 million Palestinians in it. Or likely even a couple hundred thousand. They need to be moved. They need to be somewhere where they are not surrounded by people they believe God himself wants them to slaughter. They should be entirely or mostly surrounded by people who they do not believe God himself wants them to slaughter. It will be another generation before Israel is stupid enough to allow the Palestinians in Gaza to work within their borders. It doesn't matter whose fault it is, that reality makes it untenable for the Palestinians to remain in Gaza. The Palestinians in Gaza should be provided land somewhere else, either in the West Bank with the rest of the Palestinians or somewhere else in the Arab world. They should be moved there respectfully but forcefully if necessary, and all humanitarian aid money that will be spent (and it will be in the tens of billions) should go towards building up this new area, big enough to actually support 1.7 million people, and not surrounded by people they hate. It is possible that Trump realizes this obvious truth, and has figured out that no one is going to stop him. I hope so.

Beat me to it!

Does it matter? They are a dependant state of the US. They want to act like otherwise, then a few weeks of 25% tariffs will remind them. Germany tried hitching their wagon to Russia, how'd that work out? The populations of the world need a come-to-Jesus moment. This appears to be it. Also, what help do we need from Canada?

Yeah dude, welcome to negotiations. Like I said early, your predictive track record ain't great, so let's re-engage when we have some results (or lack of) to discuss. It's been 2 weeks.

Correct. Unrelated mechanisms.

That's a small part of what I think his tactics are. You left out the many and varied ways that America has to exert pressure. Tariffs for example. Bombing the everlasting shit out of enemy infrastructure. I absolutely believe we would have put tariffs on Mexico and Canada if they didn't play along. Still might. That's not the end of the world for anybody, and Trump will look strong (to everyone except for the people who refuse to acknowledge him as anything other than the devil). You have to enter a negotiation knowing what winning looks like and what losing looks like. You also have to be willing to walk away. The trick is to come up with more than one definition of victory, especially since you don't enter the negotiation knowing exactly what the other side wants or needs. When you have multiple end states that you can consider victory, you can adapt based on your growing knowledge of what the other side of the table is after, what they're willing to lose, and what they can't afford to lose. It's dynamic, and the biggest problem people make when negotiating is acting as though the strategy is set before walking into the room. You've lost before you've begun that way. I don't know you, so obviously I don't know your disposition or negotiating ability. But this isn't a particularly clever or complicated one. Start by kicking the door in. "We're going to take over Gaza and do everything the Israelis have dreamed of for the last 60 years. BUT, just in case you thought I was giving Netanyahu and early Hanukkah gift, it's going to be American land, not Israeli Land." Now you've got every leader in the Middle East paying attention. First off, every single person with an IQ higher than a shoe size knows that removing the Palestinians from Gaza and dumping them somewhere else solves the Gaza problem forever. There's no easy way back in there, and the rest of the world will only pretend to care until the next trip to the grocery store or Trump's next press conference. The dirty little secret has always been that no one gives two flying fucks about Palestine, other than as a tool of leverage against the US and Israel. Now that half of the Middle East is trying to align with Israel against Iran, the Palestinians have far less support than they used to. As long as the Israelis or the Americans don't slaughter the Gazans, no one is going to go to war against us to defend their rights to live in Gaza. This is where you stay flexible. I suspect what he's trying to do is get Jordan and Egypt and Saudi Arabia to sweep in and take over the management of Palestine. No one cares when Arab dictators kill Arab protesters; as long as it's not the Israelis policing things, and they won't have to if Saudi Arabia steps in, then a lot of the problems are once again solved. I mean he even said that Jordan and Egypt were on board. I don't believe that they are, I doubt they were even warned ahead of time, but now they have to pretend like they were in on some sort of planning for this or it's going to make them look like the president of the United States is just walking all over them. That's another key component of negotiating, when you say sensational shit, it's best to say something that the other side doesn't want to deny. Look at how Netanyahu responded. Now let's say, like you suggested, that they just call his bluff. Here come the tariffs. And we cut off aid to the Middle East, at least the countries that aren't playing along, and every single one of them requires us in some way. More so now than ever. All of a sudden, just like Canada and Mexico, we've got common ground and a quickly resolved misunderstanding. Or maybe they call that bluff too, okay, throw another pressure point or two out there. The more of them that are rejected, the more justification you build for doing exactly what Trump said, relocate the Palestinians in Gaza (I suggest moving them all to the West Bank and creating a unified Palestine that the world can then ignore forever), and turn Gaza over to Israel. That's what should happen anyways. But the point is, there are a shitload of outcomes that Trump can consider a victory, because the status quo is so unfathomably catastrophic. It's almost difficult to imagine how the situation would be worse, other than of course by having hundreds or thousands of American troops dying in Gaza. But you've got your head in the sand if you think that's going to happen. It's a hell of a stick to wave around though.

That was my first thought when I saw the video. I don't see how a lighting effect could do that, since light isn't affected by airspeed. That looks like a trail of flames. That was really the only two things I took away from the video: it looks like it's on fire, and holy shit that thing is going into the ground fast. Sad

Ma' Deuce has entered the chat

There is an infinitesimal chance that we know what was actually agreed to, or will any time soon. People are ignoring everything Donald Trump has said over the years about how he negotiates. This is one of the reasons why he does so well in the Middle East, because he understands the concept of "saving face." Anyone who's done Air Force pme should be familiar with the difference between high context and low context interactions. America is a traditionally low context society existing in a world of high context allies and enemies. I tried using this negotiating tactic in our Union during the final weeks of signing the 2023 collective bargaining agreement. Our board of directors was, to put it lightly, flailing. I convinced them to put forward a list of demands that would immediately end negotiations and be pushed to the membership. I think it had eight or 10 things on it. The idea, when I pitched it to them, was that they should anticipate getting three to five things on the list and calling it a day. They could brag to the pilots that they secured more that gains, and the company could go back to their board of directors and show how even though the union had a list of 10 demands, the company resisted over half of them. Of course, pilots being the absolute dog shit negotiators that they are, half the board decided that they could only declare victory if they got everything on the list, and the other half panicked and decided that if they didn't abandon the list entirely they were going to somehow get no contract at all. So the plan only ended up barely working thanks to United Airlines. But the concept is the same. Give everyone at the table something to go back and brag to their people about.

Sure they were. Doing a lot of heavy lifting with "to some extent." Half of the problems between the United States and every country on the planet is that nobody is doing what they said they would do. NATO it's exhibit A. If the only thing Donald Trump accomplishes while in office is to make every country we deal with actually start living up to their word, he will be the single most successful president of all time. But I suspect that is an unreachable bar. Either way, as more of his "crazy" posturing yields results, we're going to see a whole lot of shifting from "What Donald Trump is doing is dangerous to the stability of our country and the world community" to "Actually everything that Donald Trump is doing was really happening under the Democrats, he's just taking credit." That's why the American people reelected the insane orange clown after getting rid of him in 2020... Because the Democrats were already mostly doing it anyways. Uh huh.

I don't agree with this logic, but it depends on the use case. When you start getting into these foldable super-compact guns, the idea in most cases is that you are either carrying it in a backpack, making it the "truck gun," or storing is somewhere with limited space. That's the exact scenario where you want to be able to fire the gun folded, as you are either struggling to get it out of the backpack or in the confines of a vehicle compartment. You might only have time to get your hands on the gun and point it in the right-ish direction. Obviously you would always prefer to have the stock extended, properly shouldered, and be staring down the sights. But that's not really how most self-defense shootings happen. Does that make it necessary? Obviously not. But if you're going to put a folding stock on a gun, then the ability to shoot it while folded is a pretty huge distinction in capability. A very realistic scenario is waking up to the intruder entering your room. The Sig Rattler fires great while folded. 300BO doesn't kick hard (especially subs) and it's already pretty heavy.

Hey bud, you've been wrong on pretty much everything. So maybe take a backseat and see if it pans out. We've been sitting around for decades watching The Establishment fail to get anything done but insist that theirs was the only way of doing things. Now someone comes in and "revolutionizes" politics by doing nothing more dan saying what everybody knows but won't admit, and actually acting like the most powerful country in the history of the planet, and everybody is stumbling over their keyboards to tell us how this couldn't possibly work. So far it's working. Let the man cook.

I get what you're saying, but I will agree with you only once his plans start failing. Right now it's hard to argue that he doesn't have the most effective first weeks of presidency, maybe of any president ever. That doesn't mean you have to agree with what he's accomplishing, but if you measure success by accomplishing the things you're setting out to do, he is absolutely crushing it in less than a month.

Yeah, but you can't shoot it folded. Well, more than once.

Might be a way to scare the arab nations into participating in the solution. Or, since this is the common sense administration, it might just be the first public acknowledgment of what we all know. There's no way to make it work with the Palestinians and Gaza.

So I guess we're going to take over Gaza. I got to admit, this new season of the Trump show has been *exciting* 😂🤣

Consider the LT instead (I have it). The slightly longer barrel is better for 300 blackout ballistics, and the gun is still really short overall. Also, with almost every suppressor that you're going to want to put on it, that extended mlok shroud won't actually fit any mlok nuts between the shroud and the suppressor. Better to just put a suppressor cover on the LT and have more options. There's a guy on Reddit who makes some pretty baller suppressor covers for a good price. SWaller89

Keeping the retirement age at 65 would be more beneficial to my career than extending it and keeping the LTD in play forever. It's an insurance policy. The older the people on it, the more expensive it is. Furthermore, long-term disability is to protect your earning capacity till retirement. I do not concur with the notion that retirement needs to extend beyond 65, therefore neither does the insurance for it. Airline pilots are obsessed with making LTD some sort of moral imperative. It's just actuarial. You can have a more generous system the lower the maximum age is. I have no sympathy for people who want to work past 65, and so I see no need to create a disability system for them. Are the extra earning years not enough? I am one vote, and like the old guys begging for an extension to the retirement age, voting directly against my interests, I am happy to vote against theirs.

Simple solution. Ltd ends at 65 no matter what.

They may end up on LTD, but this is not the case. I don't know if you're an airline guy or not, but the number of guys I hear raging against age 65 because it is a direct attack on their perception of their own status and money making ability. I think airline Management is suspiciously quiet on age 65 because they know, especially with the new contracts and generous LTD plans, that they are going to pay a fortune to 65, 66, and 67-year-olds who did not realize how weak their bodies had become. It'll be the widebody captains who don't have a real job anyways who stick around until they look like the crypt keeper 🤣😂

Investigators will have access to everything that was deleted. This is the internet, you can't make it go away in a day. But it does keep people like you and me from seeing it. And I am 100% okay with that. The chattering class can wait for the report. I have no problem with us having this discussion in this forum, but we do not have an inherent right to unlimited information just because we want to know earlier.

To be fair to the other side, it's not actually clear that he's using these solely as a negotiating tool. When the president talks about the wonders of President McKinley, the only way to interpret that is that the tariffs are part of a plan to fund the government. Now I happen to support that plan, but it certainly pours water over the argument that Trump is just trying to twist everybody's arm with tariffs. At a certain point, unless we want to that inflation run wild, increase income taxes, and all the other stuff that will be required to bring our debt under control, tariffs are a pretty great way to fund your government. There's a reason so many places use them.

If you're going to be using supersonic rounds, then it doesn't make a ton of sense to choose 300 blackout over 556. That's not to say 300 blackout isn't going to ruin someone's day, but the ballistics of 556 are more damaging in pretty much every configuration over any 300 black. Especially if you don't care about overpenetration, then then 556 is going to put the most damaging hole in the bad guy. 300 blackout is quiet, scary quiet, and not having to worry about deafening yourself while defending your home is one of the things I like about it. But 556 suppressed is still quiet enough that you probably aren't going to ruin your flying career defending your home, and you get all the benefits of the sheer ferocity of 556. If you absolutely need the shortest SBR, or want a hearing safe home defense gun, then 300 black makes sense. That's what I have. But if you're going to use super sonic ammo I'd probably stick with 556.

I love my Rattler, but you pay a big premium for MCX guns. If it's just for the collection I'd want something that looks like the original. The Zenith ZF-5 fits the bill