patrick.net

The annuity is a variable annuity, like a non-deductible IRA.

California can’t tax me because I have not taken anything out of it.

An interesting characteristic of a variable annuity is the government does not know you own it during the accumulation phase.

The government will only know that you’re taking money out and will tax the income when and if you spend the annuity. There are several ways to spend it.

That’s why you don’t receive a notice every year that was also sent to the government by the guys who administer your IRA, SEP-IRA, etc.

If you find a suitcase of cash somewhere, you can buy a variable annuity and nobody needs to know.
It’s a contract between you and the insurance company even though it contains sub accounts which are identical to mutual funds.

HeadSet says

rocketjoe79 says

Glock that was modified for Full auto. Simple mechanical insert, apparently.

Then that is what the news should report. I did see a news story from Minnesota where a man at a gun range demonstrated that insert for the Glock, and one squeeze of the trigger emptied the clip full auto. Does not seem productive since the clip only hold 10 shots or so, and a modified longer clip would tend to melt the barrel. Shock effect, I guess.

Full-auto fire from a pistol is idiotic. You simply can't control it and chance of getting anything beyond the first shot on target is essentially zero.

Full auto pistol is "spray and pray", hence the large number of innocents wounded and killed in this event.
I think doublestacked Glocks can hold up to 20 rounds? Reloads are trivial.

HeadSet says

I did see a news story from Minnesota where a man at a gun range demonstrated that insert for the Glock, and one squeeze of the trigger emptied the clip full auto.

What that man did was manufacturing a fully automatic weapon. Unless he was licensed for that (which is super hard and expensive since 1986) he painted a fat legal target on his back. You may get in trouble (a different kind of trouble, "possession") even if your semi-auto firearm has a defect which makes it go off twice for one squeeze of a trigger.

There are 1.6 million vacant houses/condos empty in Florida.

I'm splitting for Baja California Sur Mexico for a while, it's fun.

That’s pretty much spot on

good point.

mostly reader says

even if your semi-auto firearm has a defect which makes it go off twice for one squeeze of a trigger.

California Catch 22. If you get caught carrying a gun you are charged with a crime and then you are not allowed to carry guns anymore.

But criminals break laws.

Even the rural parts of Sacto County have issues. This Range Rover has 60 or so bullet holes:

http://www.galtheraldonline.com/news/man-injured-in-hood-franklin-road-shooting/article_9760ca8a-b5e1-11ec-b8fb-7f7fd0be1806.html?source=patrick.net

That link has some encouraging analysis. Seems like even though prices have skyrocketed, the credit of the buyers is much better than in the 2008 days. So, slowdown coming, but no crash.

Of course, so does investing in stock mutual funds.

The point is you must divert some of the wages they pay you to go down in the salt mines and invest in something.

Edit: stocks are better than real estate.
My Apple shares have split; can your 1 bedroom become a 7 bedroom by itself overnight?

"Nobody is irreplaceable" --Joseph Stalin


Russia is no exception.

RWSGFY says

"Nobody is irreplaceable" --Joseph Stalin


Russia is no exception.

right now they are replacing us Americans

Not for me. My last job transition resulted in a 13% raise. Actual profit I can spend every paycheck, not potential profit I have to sell to realize. My housing costs have actually gone down the last three years vs the previous three. How is that possible? Well, I'm a renter, so I decide how much I'm willing to spend.

clambo says

My Apple shares have split; can your 1 bedroom become a 7 bedroom by itself overnight?

It can if you rent to illegals....

Yeah, a garage can become a 2 bedroom addition, just put in bunkbeds.

To get a VA loan for a 30 year mortgage, I believe the maximum monthly home payment (mortgage, property tax, insurance and hoa fee) is not more than 38% of monthly household gross income.

This will be fun.

Very underhanded way to dump on Trump and elevate Cuomo while seemingly a hit piece on CNN and Zucker. Has the CIA infiltrated Drooling Stone?

Except you cannot spend your house slowly in retirement unless you reverse mortgage it.

Or, you can get a roommate.

FarmersWon says

he was arrested by FBI agents and charged in an audacious plot to dole out millions of dollars in bribes to African leaders in exchange for major energy contracts that appeared to advance Chinese government interests.

He didn't include the "big guy" in the spoils.

clambo says

Except you cannot spend your house slowly in retirement unless you reverse mortgage it.

Or, you can get a roommate.

Based on what you said, you can spend your house slowly. 😁

With the new regulations, you can also spend your money by building an ADU and a Junior ADU. The value is in the land. Can’t do this with a condo or townhouse.

DooDahMan says

What can Americans do to hedge themselves against this? In reality, being a homeowner over the past decade has set consumers up nicely during this burst of inflation!

This has been true. The question is will it continue to be true for the next 5-7 years?

bitcern

No matter what a countries laws, they will turn over the info and eventually the account if Uncle Sam asks. They will flagrantly violate their own laws to do so.

Bury Yams and .22LR ammo somewhere off your property if you must, but overseas back accounts are less than worthless for Joe Six Pack or anybody with less than a few ten million.

Even Switzerland bent the knee.

Let me give you an example. US turns into Shanghai China in August 2022 to 'stop COVID'. USG finds people left the country and wants them back for whatever reason.

It goes to St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Belize and says "If you don't hand over all your info on American or suspected American citizen owned private bank accounts, we'll put your vacation spots under interdiction from any and all US cruise lines and US Airlines. Or, we'll simply cut your aid 10% this year. Or charge you a new fee to transfer money in/out of the USA."

Bang, boom, alakazam, they will all jump to do the US bidding.

A lawyer friend of mine once told me that title insurance was a waste of money. Especially if purchased as a VA, (and similar) house.

Most insurance is a scam until you need it. It's a fucked up thing. We've had three major (somewhat) claims and the insurance did what it should. Car (totaled) and got $18k over what we paid. Travel insurance, BIL off'd himself right before a Disney trip (don't give me shit, it was for Star Wars) and would have lost $6k. And then a bar didn't secure a door properly and legit fell and knocked my wife out. Doctors demanded someone stay with her it was that bad (work travel, so I wasn't there). $5k out of that.

I don't know the total I've paid for insurance over the years, but those payouts made bad situations better for sure. And we're not litigious people. We could have sued for substantially more in the bar situation.

Title insurance is a waste, until you need it. I hate it, but the whole housing industry is designed to get a piece of the pie so to speak. This is about all the people involved. Brokers, attorneys, appraisers, inspectors, lender, title company, village inspectors, etc. It's a damn house. Why do 7+ people need to be involved in a basic transaction? Sure it's a big one, but I've been involved in well over 1k home/condo sales in my career. Everyone is just flexing their muscles to justify what you're paying them. They don't really give a shit. They just want the money.

Is it really expected that anybody naive and gullible enough to expect information from a television would be expected to be anything other than easily controlled cattle?

I can rapidly tell CNN is concrete bullshit just on the face of them and the way they talk. The way they keep strobing the same 15 second clip while they drone on with some lie is intolerable.

You couldn't make me watch it long enough to draw a conclusion in such a study. The study must be another flawed production, because I don't think that thinking people would keep watching something that made them nauseous.

Read the article. The viewers were given regular viewing comprehension tests to make sure they were actually watching. At the end they were asked questions to see if their opinions had changed but they had already been trained to repeat what they heard on CNN. They probably repeated the televised predictions and interpretations of the events. Who knows if they actually changed their mind on anything. But yeah probably if all you know of what happened is just one side of the story how are you supposed to know any better? I’d like to see them do a similar experiment on CNN viewers. Which side is more likely to change its mind? How about go for equal time on both networks?

CNN is so bad that they had to pay people to watch it.

Undoctored says

Read the article.

It's from a mainstream news source:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/apr/11/fox-news-viewers-watch-cnn-study?source=patrick.net

Any string of words that is more than 6 words long is entirely unique in the English language. It's trivial to find a source, or plagiarism, or a quote today. Even when you are reading a "news" article from a "news" site you should get into the habit of taking 8-12 words from it and entering it into a search engine to find out if it's centrally disseminated.

If you do this, you will realize just how much bullshit our news media system is. It's centrally controlled - by whom? I don't know, but the same thing is said over and over again from dozens of outlets. Journalists just attach their names.

I found that with this search: https://yandex.com/search/?text=Polls+have+previously+shown+that+viewers+of+Fox+News%2C+the+most-watched+cable+news&from=os&clid=1836588&lang=en&lr=102749&source=patrick.net

Oh no, quick! Give more money to Raytheon!

If all of the reports out of Ukraine is correct, and they are slaughtering Russians and Russian tanks in a one sided shellacking.
And all of the captive Russians are playing like the hapless stooges that were duped into believing they were on a goodwill mission into Ukraine.

Then it would only make sense, that Putin is sending in the "D" team of unskilled conscripts riding in on out dated antiquated tanks to exhaust the US and NATO arms.
Once those weapons are depleted or Ukraine thinks they have won. Then Russia will send in their high-tech fighting force and modern state of the art hardware and War machines. Because we haven't seen any of that in this conflict.

I refuse to believe that everything Russia has shown to the world in the last 20 years in Military abilities were all just smoke and mirrors.

Javelins are not the only game in town. There are also NLAW, Carl Gustaf, Stugna, Korsar....

Peacetime production rates and wartime production rates are not the same.

A more valid comparison would be anti vehicle missle production rates vs Russian military vehicle production rates + Russian stored armored vehicle return to service rates.

Wax, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from Eastern Europe, criticized immigrants who criticize the U.S. during an interview with conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson on his Fox News show “Tucker Carlson Today” on April 8.

The 69-year-old professor stated that “Blacks” and “non-Western” groups have “a tremendous amount of resentment and shame against Western peoples for [their] outsized achievements and contributions” before specifically calling out Brahmin Indian immigrants.


Penn Law professor Amy Wax tells Tucker Carlson that "Blacks" and other "non-western" groups harbor "resentment, shame, and envy" against western people for their "outsized achievements and contributions." pic.twitter.com/jpQmOU554C


— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) April 11, 2022




“Here’s the problem. They’re taught that they are better than everybody else because they are Brahmin elites and yet, on some level, their country is a sh*thole,” Wax said. “They’ve realized that we’ve outgunned and outclassed them in every way… They feel anger. They feel envy. They feel shame. It creates ingratitude of the most monstrous kind.”

Booger says

Peacetime production rates and wartime production rates are not the same.

A more valid comparison would be anti vehicle missle production rates vs Russian military vehicle production rates + Russian stored armored vehicle return to service rates.

Russian military vehicle production/modernization relied heavily on the Western tech (like French night vision and comms from Thales Systems). Now they will have to return to service stuff they mothballed in 1989, which has been rotting away and was being looted for 30+ years (there are reports of tanks missing fucking engines of all things).