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Several members of the Police Benevolent Association allegedly approached him, one telling him that he had to obey the courtesy-card customs or the union wouldn’t protect him.

Looks like they were correct about that. The police union protects almost anything, except giving those with union 'courtesy cards' a traffic ticket apparently. That is just too far.

I saw the dumb defender say he was conflating immigrant and migrant but I replayed that part a dozen times. It really, really sounds like an 'N' as the first letter. It definitely was not him beginning to pronounce 'immgr'. You can plainly hear it.

But even if we gave him the benefit of the doubt, the fact that Megyn Kelly completely ignored it and the fact that he didn't apologize immediately and explain it says volumes about both of them. Why didn't Kelly even say anything? Maybe she's so used to hearing it in her circles, maybe even saying it, that it didn't even register as something unusual to her and she didn't notice it.

Time to move the unacceptable line farther away again.

Bank checks and account balances.

It isn't going to be one or the other (if they don't offer a 401k, then you can use IRAs), unless you just make a bad choice. An employer can contribute to a 401k and also provide a pension (mine used to but I've been around long enough that I get both the pension and 401k with matching) but if I had a choice, I could pick a pension for example but also put money into an IRA for retirement that would normally go to a 401k.

If you absolutely had to pick one, it isn't going to be the same answer for everyone. Amounts, what you're able to contribute, matching, risks and tax situations are going to vary from person to person and their employer.

As far as controlling your money, some 401k's allow some extra control, some don't but most have a middle ground except for their company stock which you can usually directly buy. If you're 401k allows general different 'markets' and/or 'lifecycle' buckets (they get more conservative on investment risk the closer you get to your retirement age) is, at the end of the day, all controlled by a broker and they are making the actual decision as to what to invest and how. Some plans may allow you to invest into individual stocks through the 401k's brokerage though.

At the end of the day though, if all you had was a pension offered which you aren't going to be contributing your income to, then you should invest in some sort of retirement plan yourself, be it an IRA, money market, bonds, CDs or whatever.

I don't want to keep replying to this but in response to your 'this is from a .mil site specifically ...' I linked to the DOD's actual gov website.

This article is relevant for NAVPERS 18068F because the Navy has all of this annoying traditions, like referring to '-' as Tack like they are pretending to be a flagman from 1835 on a ship and refer to a snackbar as a gedunk and blah blah blah.

But they still have a military rank. Sure, if you ask someone enlisted person what their 'rate' is they are going to respond with "PO1" if they are a Petty Officer First Class but if you have a CAC ID, under RANK it is going to say PO1 with the USN's seal in the top-right. Because it is their military rank. The USN can call it a rate as well and traditionally it can be known as a rate in the USN but it is still a military rank. It will even say that on your ID card if you have one or have had one. As I recall, this is also true for the old green ID cards.

OK, let me just break this down for you. Rates are a job in the Navy. For example, in that wikipedia article, a Fireman recruit is a rate -- their job. Their rank would be a Seaman Recruit. Their paygrade would be an E-1.

In your example, a Constructionman would be an E-3. Constructionman would be their rate. Their rank would be Seaman.

You can see this better at https://www.defense.gov/Resources/Insignia/

They don't list rates, because there's many, many, many different jobs in the different branches. The Navy is odd in that they usually refer to each other by rates, not ranks. In every other branch, people usually refer to each other by rank and not their MOS/AFSC/Whatever. It would be weird in the USAF for example to refer to some Airman First Class as 2A33C or whatever.

You can see this further explained at https://www.military.com/navy/enlisted-rates.html where they list the rates and talk about them but then they list the ranks and talk about them. They are tied together by paygrade.

And once again, in the US Navy, an enlisted person can literally not have a rate and be called Unrated until they are assigned a rate. Usually this happens to very junior enlisted.

They have pay grades, rank and rates in the Navy, though there are actually also unrated enlisted that get all assigned all the crappiest jobs until they get assigned a rate.

A CMDCM, so an E9. No Congressional approval is needed to bust down an E8 though.

In the navytimes article, they said some of the Cheif's Mess installed a bunch of wired 'repeaters' all over the ship (probably wireless access points and not repeaters though).

Effectively they did through obfuscation. The Command Chief renamed it to look like their wireless printers. She did that because so many more junior people (relative to the Chief's Mess) complained that the officers tried to check (with their phones) for some wifi Internet. They couldn't find it because they thought it was a printer. The Command Chief is obviously trusted since she's the most senior enlisted but she's also the one that lead the entire scheme. When asked directly by the Commander, she denied it existed, so after not finding it, they just assumed it was a rumor. So, they had a ship-wide call and told everyone that there was no rogue Internet access point on the ship.

It took months because when a tech from a port they were at was installing a Starshield transceiver they physically saw the Starlink transceiver.

Clark on her own personal account likes a post on Twitter.

MAGA: Keep politics out of sports!

Chief's Kicker (Butker): Makes a misogynist and politically charged speech at a Christian college graduation.

MAGA: Way to tell them like it is! Keep it up.