Lord Ratner

Anyone have experience with a good VA rep they can point me to? I'm in Pittsburgh, but if I need to travel somewhere to sit down with someone who knows what they're doing, I will. The one I had in Columbus, OH was pants-on-head stupid, so part of my claim was denied. I'd like someone who knows what they're doing to help me with the appeal. Thanks in advance

Whining? No, it will be a full on tantrum. I'm mostly convinced the reason he picked Kavanaugh is because he wanted to save Coney-Barrett for the possibility RGB dies in the next couple years. The left will go nuclear if RGB is replaced under Trump, and the optics of the Dems yelling at a woman about abortion is exactly the type of thing that Trump exploits perfectly.

All this at least indicates that some level of leadership is convinced that there is literally no way to retain currently serving pilots. Therefore very dramatic and very immediate steps are required to replace them. They've gone from thinking there's no problem at all (under reaction) to thinking the problem is so dire it can't be undone (over reaction). I wonder if any of this will ever be attributed to their unwillingness to properly present the problem to Congress for so many years.

I guess so. I'm not sure which is crazier, this tunnel, which is clearly impossible given the water table and hurricane activity in the region, or that a bunch of educated adults who literally fly through the air on the magic of (decades-old) human innovation think that we couldn't find a way protect small airplanes from wind and water. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Miami_Tunnel

Shut up. Holes are too expensive to dig in Florida.

I retract my suggestion. The solution already exists

Ok ok ok ok. Then make it a swimming pool big enough for airplanes. Tens of millions of dollars in damage, maybe hundreds. Stronger together. We are the change we've been waiting for. Hakuna Matata.

I can't imagine how they built all those hotels in Miami Beach with this impossible feat of engineering to overcome. Besides, why pump? Wrap the jets in plastic and let it flood. This is not something we should have difficulty overcoming.

I wonder how many F22s it would have cost to dig underground plane shelters. And no scoffing. If we can land on the moon, build a missile tracking base in a mountain, and drive floating airports all over the ocean, we could have built a few big basements for planes as small as fighters in hurricane land.

Team loyalties are very strong. People get depressed/jubilant/furious when "their" team of perfect strangers perform a certain way in a kids' game. They attack other people for wearing the costumes of opposing teams. Now politics is a team sport. We can expect similar performances as long as this remains true

Honestly these days it's more of a celebrate or celebrate type situation

I think you mean Representative...

With the rather important distinction that they used their completely lawful power to refuse Garland, and they didn't resort to exploiting a questionable accuser for the purposes of character assassination.

Are we talking month 1 or month 5? Why forestall the inevitable?

Guess what? There were plenty of "unlawful" options in Bagram too. And they were exploited far more than in UPT. I don't think anyone is asking for sympathy, it's just a fact of life in a coed organization. Always has, always will.

The pixel phones are awesome. I've been on Google phones (starting with the Nexus 4) for years, and the pixel phones are the first that are true iPhone competitors. Personally, I would never buy Samsung because I don't like the Samsung apps. Google apps are very very polished now, and the camera and photo album app are better than anything else out there, including Apple. If you are already tied into the Google ecosystem (Gmail, Google calendar, search, YouTube, etc), the pixel is a no brainier. Free uncompressed photo and video storage is pretty awesome too.

You think this is new? It's not called "the Sport of Kings" because it's a new phenomenon. Has always happened, will always happen. Rules will never trump human nature.

School choice and private school are not the same thing.

And while we're picking apart everything Seriously had said, the right and left are not polarizing at similar rates: https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/pew-research-center-study-shows-that-democrats-have-shifted-to-the-extreme-left/ And going way back to the estate tax, you still haven't addressed your claim that the rich in America are only such if their parents were wealthy. If we really want to get to the heart of the matter, it's stupid claims like this that are the fuel for socialistic policies that fail time after time after time. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/269593 https://www.thomasjstanley.com/2014/05/america-where-millionaires-are-self-made/ https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/real-1-percent https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0810/7-millionaire-myths.aspx The things you believe are simply incorrect. That's makes your prescriptions irrelevant.

Another semantics point: there is nothing liberal about today's Democrat party. Liberalism is exactly the concepts today more associated with the right of American politics, like freedom of expression and the sovereignty of the individual. If anything, libertarians are the closest thing we have to liberals in modern America.

Not quite correct. If the money from taxes is being given directly to the other, especially if based on their income status ("to each according to his needs") then yes, this is a form of socialism. If the money is being used by government for a program that provides a non-monetary benefit to all Americans (such as the military), then it is not at all socialism.

Since we're on the semantics train, and since Seriously is still engaging in this debate in (very) good faith, here's where I see the wording issue getting cloudy. I think you are getting a hung up on the absolutist definition of socialism, where the government has to own the means of production. It's not just the production that makes a system socialist, the "distribution and exchange" are also controlled, or regulated, by the government. I don't think we're going to see a system anytime soon where the government overtly tries to take control of the production, such as nationalizing the industries. But they are very much moving towards controlling the output, and taxation is a part of that. The more of your (and corporate) income that the government taxes, the closer we get to that type of socialism. Another key distinction here is choice. Many of the programs that you point out as not being socialistic hinge on whether or not you end up with a choice. Schools are a perfect example. There are many "liberals" who are very much against the idea of school choice. So if the government is providing a public school system, you are not allowed to pick which school your kids go to, then it doesn't really matter what you want to call it, it's socialism. Same thing goes for medical care. We can move to Canada for an example. They have the government-run system that many progressives desire, and recently a case was brought before their Supreme Court where the government did not want a doctor to open up a practice that was separate from the state-run system. As what schools, if you take Choice out of the equation it's socialism. Taxation is not socialism, but it is an integral and necessary part of it. And when you see taxes approach absurd levels (like 50% of your stuff when you die), it's probably the smoke to socialism's fire, since it costs a lot to run socialist programs. A somewhat reliable litmus test is to look at what the program is doing. If the government is taking your money in order to fund a program that promotes choice, then it's probably not socialism. The interstate highways are a good example of this. They are facilitators of business, travel, choice. Same goes for bridges, and fire stations, and many financial regulators. Because capitalism requires some measure of oversight, once again, because people are flawed.

They are not a vocal minority. Their argument makes the most sense, if you have no history to draw on. Capitalism took thousands of years to stumble upon precisely because it's so counter intuitive. But the evidence is crystal clear. As people become less educated about the past, these ideas will take greater hold. If I were a betting man, I'd say we will probably lose the battle. All you can do is have very respectful debates (in person) with sound evidence. Listen carefully, find the parts of their life they take pride in, and explain how socialism would ruin it. For all you upper-middle-class folks with upper-middle-class friends, their kids are usually the best means of pointing out their own ideological hypocrisies. Oh, and teach your own kids about the horrors of socialistic experiments. No one else will

Where did clown shoes go? Just when the questions were getting tough he vanished. https://www.politico.com/magazine/amp/story/2018/09/03/what-would-a-socialist-america-look-like-219626 Here's a great look at what our new batch of socialist want. Note that these people are completely unable to articulate the differences between their "plans" and the failed experiments of the past.

Which part? Genetics or predictor of success? There's an ocean of research available with a quick Google search. Here's something I found in five seconds https://www.newstatesman.com/2018/04/iq-trap-how-study-genetics-could-transform-education