Leaderboard

Say, liberals and current Administration and press (but I repeat myself...), IF this happened and you knew about it, why aren't you baying for the blood of, or at least an investigation of, the current Executive Branch and departments that allowed this happen and what are they doing to stop it from occurring again? Why isn't this being brought up in the UN Security Council by the current Administration? Why hasn't the United States Government publicly responded and taken action against this aggressive action upon the American people? You know, the one's actually in charge now? Why haven't people been fired/court-martialed/pilloried on the editorial pages of the NYT, WaPo, HuffPo (ok, another repetition), MSNBC, CBS/ABC/NBC, Univision, et al? Oh, neverTrump. Got it...

Try asking the Wing Historian. He might know and he'll probably be overjoyed to know that someone knows he exists.

I once asked a wing historian what something on a patch was. GPF is 100% correct in the response.

You're still going to use mypay. Go in and make the percentage elections. It'll give you an effective date. If I made a change today then it'd take affect starting on 1 Jan so it'd be the Jan 15 paycheck before I saw the first deduction from my pay. If you are already at $18k then the only way to get more than that in the calendar year is by doing traditional as roth doesn't benefit from the higher limit. Also, make sure that if you choose 92% of your base pay that your pay can support that after any allotments that you may have. For example, if you make $5,000 in base pay and choose 92% then that'd be $4,600 but if you have more than $400 in deductions then the TSP election will likely get rejected and not take anything out of your pay. Click the "traditional election worksheet" link at the following: https://www.dfas.mil/militarymembers/tspformilitary/tspac.html. That worksheet will help calculate the correct percentage to avoid any issues. Annual maximum: The maximum Internal Revenue Code (IRC) contribution elective deferral limit for 2017, which is the combined total of your Traditional deferred contributions and Roth contributions, is $18,000. Also, the IRC annual addition limit for 2017 which includes exempt Traditional contributions as well as Traditional deferred contributions and Roth contributions, is $54,000. Roth contributions may be made from combat zone tax exempt pay as well as post-tax pay, however, the annual limit for Roth remains at $18,000 for 2017 even if you are in a combat zone. Exempt contributions above that amount may only be made to Traditional TSP. However, as an exception to the limits described in this paragraph, deferred contributions may also be made to Traditional catch-up; and post-tax or exempt contributions may be made to Roth catch-up, if you are eligible (see catch-up).

Please check with your WSO before posting.

What's your source for POTUS saying the Russians played no part? I would genuinely like to read/hear/watch that if you have a link. Election rigging via voter fraud (Trump's accusation) and election meddling via hacking/leaking (intelligence community's assessment) aren't the same thing. And we're not taking about not accepting the results of the election. Hillary conceded and is off walking in the woods still. Obama has met with Trump and there will be a peaceful transition of power in January. Those things are settled facts as well. I point back to the DNI/DHS statement from October, back when Hillary was leading in the polls. That was the United States and the Obama administration officially accusing Russia of meddling in the election. The statement was put out when Obama's preferred successor appeared to be winning and wasn't a sour grapes maneuver as the election hadn't happened yet. The argument could be made that Obama wasn't nearly forceful enough in denouncing Russian interference at that time. This is part of why political debates are so frustrating today. There are apparently no facts and no bipartisan national objectives anymore. It is a fact, according to public statements by the US intelligence community, that Russian state actors deployed cyber attacks to meddle in our election (exact intent is still up for debate). Russia is a geopolitical adversary and we should not accept their interference in our critical internal national affairs. I would hope those two statements would be agreed upon and agreeable to everyone...if not I'll show myself out and I wish you all good luck in thawing relations with Russia in a way that's beneficial to the United States. In all seriousness, I sincerely hope that when Trump is President he follows Congress' lead and brings the full weight of the USG to bear on this investigation because no matter who benefited or who was hurt politically, the integrity of our democratic process was hurt by Russian actions and that's a wound we shouldn't accept lightly.

The DNI absolutely said that the Russians conducted offensive cyber operations to interfere with the US election process. That much is not in disputed whatsoever. https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/215-press-releases-2016/1423-joint-dhs-odni-election-security-statement What is currently up for debate is what the Russians' intent was. Was it to sow general confusion and disruption or were their efforts specifically intended to hurt Clinton and help Trump? The CIA apparently concluded in a classified assessment briefed to Congress that the intent was specific. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/12/11/us/politics/cia-judgment-intelligence-russia-hacking-evidence.html The DNI apparently isn't 100% sold on those conclusions, and communicated while they don't disputed the CIA's conclusions, they can't prove them either. https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/310112-dni-not-sold-on-cia-assessment-of-russian-hacking-report Look, I'm not in the camp saying Russians hacked the election and that's the reason Hillary lost. There were a lot of factors at play, including her own weaknesses as a candidate and Trump's particular strengths in the states that ended up mattering. Trump won the electoral college and will be the next President - that's a fact. But the reason a bipartisan group of senators is investigating Russian involvement is because it 100% happened and no matter the intent, it's bad. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/amp/sen-mcconnell-backs-senate-investigations-russian-breach-n694876 I don't want foreign powers interfering in our elections to help either my allies or my political opponents and neither should anyone else. The Russians do not have our interests at heart and I don't want them hacking the RNC or the Trump administration any more than I want them hacking the DNC or the Obama administration.

Man, that sounds completely different than AirLand Battle, errr, I mean, Full Spectrum Operations.

It's not always about kinetics. Actually having intimate familiarity with your AO and knowing the people who operate there actually counts for something. Despite what the PowerPoint warriors claim to be true on the AF side of the Puzzle Palace, ISR is the vast majority of the mission sets for COIN, not CAS. I can't even begin to fathom the number of times I was ordered to log CAS for all of my air requests, even when it was not warranted. Or breaking up a single air request so that we could have a greater number of requests for the same amount of coverage to make sure, and I wish I were kidding, the PowerPoint slides were greened up. The best way for the AF to advocate its existence with the Army during COIN operations is the LAAR and pushing the crews forward to operate with a specific Army unit. But this kind of operations mean something Big Blue would completely abhor. That being decentralized planning and execution. You would actually have to empower a pilot to go forth and conquer within the set bounds. Crazy talk I know, especially in this day and age of micromanagement. Sure, downed aircrews become a big deal, no one will argue that. There are definitely some inherent risk associated with aviation. So losing an aircraft is going to happen regardless. However, if flown properly, the risks will not be as high as the Army rotorywing assets. So are you going to tell them their risks are too high, and that they should go ahead and park their assets? The AF is doing a great job breaking its own aircraft, burning out its people and spending way too much overall. Why else would there be a push for the transition to the laser rocket? Because it is a lot more cost effective than a GBU-54 dropped by a Strike Eagle with a lot less collateral damage. Hell, just look at the success and cost of the recent OV-10 deployment the Afghanistan. Now there is a time and place for a real kick down the door fighter armed with multiple 500/2000#s of hate, like when thing get bad. Therefore the LAAR would be your armed FAC-A, working in concert with JTACs, and be a local pilot with some real knowledge of what is going on/where people are. Now you have someone that can advocate the service while gaining intimate knowledge of a specific AO to aid the local unit in kinetic and mainly non kinetic operations. Fly-Fight-Win or some such thing. This is COIN, so let's fight it that way.

Redshift actually refers the how a tactical aviation radar works or redshifted light in astronomy. I have American roots dating to the 1600s, family in the revolutionary, civil war and every conflict that America has been involved with, so you with that said, kindly GFYS. Secondly the source is the WASHINGTON POST who hates Donald Trump. Two tools for you today cause that's what you are, calling me a Russian. I'm the furthest thing from it.