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With the benefit of hindsight, what should he have done differently? whatever your answer is, imagine trying to implement that COA in the Feb 2020 environment with the other party calling you racist for curtailing travel from China. There was so much flip flopping on recommendations in the early days, that all politics aside I’m really curious what you think was so obvious.

It is real. The end game for heavies is airline style training, as far as the Kwast-bred PTN illuminati is concerned. There's even sub-pipelines in the works to get hypothetical regional (and equivalent experience et al) civilian re-treads and just send them to FTU after an assessment of "credit" for civilian training. The paradigm is being baked to dispense with heavy sortie counts in the aircraft, which is SOP in airline training. That means T-1 sims only in the most likely formulation, though they'd love to jam the FTUs with T-6 direct. That's their Motrin you see; every problem in the USAF can be solved by Oculus and "t-6 dIrEcT". They got a fever, and the only Rx...is more T-6. *cowbell clanging* As to the question about quality, the quiet part has already been spoken out loud. It's even in the title FFS. This is about throughput and quantity, not quality. As to retention? oh children, enough already....They don't care about retention. And our new CSAF already took a jab at critics in that propaganda piece. So don't forget, any objective criticism of these opportunity costs just lands you in Luddite "you're part of the problem, old guy" re-education camp. Now it's on public record, so there should be no question what the marching orders are from the top. This will be the new reality. And be careful, the commissars are everywhere, "mentoring" has already occurred in some instances, if I may be euphemistic. From the article [my emphasis]: So they don't need your skepticism, now get back on the parade line and look enthusiastic for dear Leader, you're not singing convincingly enough. 😄 Stay safe out there everyone. LINK: Air Force Magazine, Aug 23 2020

He certainly was.

You are mistaken about that. Trump was acting derisively in January 2020 while Nancy Pelosi was dancing in crowded alleys in San Francisco and Biden was bitching that it was 'Xenophobic' for Trump to restrict travel from Wuhan China. Operation 'Warp Speed' is a real thing, something the Democrats would never have thought of. I tracked this from the beginning. https://consolidatedopinions.blogspot.com/2020/04/covid-19-time-line.html

Certainly not blaming Trump for Covid. However, his response was and continues to be an absolute shitshow. His initial reaction to the crisis was that it was a hoax invented by his political opponents. Wrong. Then it was just a few cases and would be down to zero shortly (just as long as cruise ships with infected American citizens on board were kept safely offshore). Wrong. Then it was ban travel from China. Right, but too little too late (Dems we’re wrong here as well....I’ll give you that). Then it was it’ll be gone with the warmer weather. Wrong. Then it was anyone who wants a test gets a test. Wrong. Then it was shutdown the economy, but people protesting the shutdown were freedom fighting patriots. Talk about mixed messaging (but it wasn’t really mixed....Trump obviously didn’t really want to shutdown). Then it was open back up. But it was too early and without adequate safeguards like a national policy on distancing, masks, testing, or contact tracing. Then it was (and still is) Hydroxychloroquine. (Still) Wrong. Then it was inject yourself with disinfectant. What the actual fuck? Then it was let Doctors Fauci and Brix take over for a bit to appease those elitist science people, but, wink wink, we all really know Faici’s a quack. More mixed messaging. Then it was masks are stupid. Wrong. Then it was if we stop testing, we’ll stop seeing so many cases. Well, right, I guess, but sounds suspiciously like the exact same logic my 9 year old uses when he’s trying to convince me something’s not his fault. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad. Trump’s response has been disjointed and ineffective at best and in reality has been nothing short of pathetic. We have some of the highest rates of infection and mortality amongst developed nations and have become a laughingstock around the world while we should be leading the way. We have the gold standard disease research and control organization in the world with the CDC, and yet here we are with our thumbs up our collective asses. What else could the administration have done? Well, how about taking things seriously from day one for a start? Trump should’ve leveled with Americans early on about the magnitude of the disaster and the fact that we would have to make sacrifices to effect the recovery. He should’ve worn a mask in public and practiced the distancing and other protocols espoused by his own administration, demonstrating the practices Americans would need to use to get through this mess. Isn’t that what leaders are supposed to do? His administration should’ve spearheaded a massive testing and contract tracing program early on that would expedite a safe reopening of the economy. I do give them some credit for working with Congress to pass the initial stimulus bill, but what about the long term future of our economy? There is about to be a housing and lending crisis as thousands of Americans, unable to pay rent, are about to be evicted. What will become of all of the small business unable to cover their costs? Will we just let them fail? They employ half of all American workers. What becomes of them? We needed and continue to need bold ideas from our leaders to address this calamity. Instead we get deflection, excuses, and reality TV gibberish. So, no, I don’t blame Trump for COVID. But I absolutely do blame him for being completely and utterly ineffective when tested in battle. I guess he’ll try to blame it all on his bone spurs next.

Shamelessly stolen from a MAF corner of the internet.

Just what the MAF needs, worse hands. No way this is real.

You completely missed the point. Trump didn’t mishandle Covid. My point was that Covid is an international pandemic and blaming Trump for its’ effects is next level stupid. Further, besides Covid, the country has been doing extremely well during his tenure. So I fail to see why that should change besides your feelings.

I get what you’re trying to say, but you could say this about almost every president. I bet you didn’t vote for Obama in 2012, but did your life get worse? Doubt you can argue it significantly affected any aspect of your life, but I bet it felt like it did. It’s the same, now. In my mind, our national debt has ballooned, healthcare options for my brothers and sisters that aren’t in the military have gotten more expensive and less available, and I don’t realistically believe that the economy has really gotten better. I enjoy that my 401k has done well, but I don’t enjoy the fact that, when I tried to help my 26 year old nephew (who unfortunately isn’t that smart) find a plan to move out of his parents house, there was no reasonable option other than to take on gig economy jobs and have 2 roommates. You make minimum wage in the majority of the US, your take home pay is on the realm of 1200 dollars a month. Show me how you budget that out in any average CoL area (healthcare+rent+car+food alone exceeds that). He looked into trades, which is probably what he’s going to go with, but that brings his pay to ~$15 an hour, or 1800 dollars a month, but no one would accept him without a personal connection to his family. It’s not as easy as people make it out to be. Finally, told him to join the military, but he’s not medically qualified. The fundamental disagreement I have with you, I think, is that I believe tax rates are probably too low. Mainly at the highest echelons of society, but even at our level. The bottom 50% of society has a horribly hard time due to exponentially increasing rent and education prices, all while wages stagnate. No real income improvement for lower middle class in decades. On top of this, we aren’t anywhere close to balancing budgets, as we are approaching $27T of debt. That comes out to over $200k a taxpayer, and it’s only going up. How are we going to deal with that? *crickets* I believe that this is an example of something that has become markedly worse over the last 4 years. Please look at the marginal tax rates (don’t worry about the article if you don’t want, just the graphs) over the last 70 years, and realize that what you think about “trickle down” or tax rates did not apply during the greatest periods of real economic expansion in the US. Bottom line, taxes MUST go up: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/06/opinion/income-tax-rate-wealthy.html I encourage you to read about “quantitative easing” and its effect on stock prices. Bottom line, the stock market is inflated, grossly. An additional $3-5T has been added to the money supply of the market (estimated at ~$30T) over the past 4 years by the federal reserve balance sheet. We should have tightened when we had a chance (2016-2019) but the first, and I think only, time that they tried to do that, the DOW dropped slightly. Now you and the rest of America are addicted to seeing the numbers go up, and even with the highest unemployment and lowest wage growth in recent history, we have ATHs in the stock market. And that’s why we’re gonna have $10T on the fed balance sheet. It’s akin to airlines doing stock buybacks then asking for handouts, when we should stop robbing Peter to pay Paul. Global warming is real, and its effects are real. The scientific community has a very strong consensus on this. Current admin: at best, no plans; at worst, open and push for coal and actively make the situation worse. We have to invest in future technology. And that’s gonna cost money. These posts are useless, because you’ll find one thing that you disagree with and then entirely disregard the rest, but a lot of people aren’t voting against trump just cause “Orange man bad.” And, I will say, Biden is a terrible choice. But he’s still better.

The Duffel Blog being its usual subtle self! 🤣🤣 🤣 Toxic Air Force colonel promoted to toxic Air Force general

It’s great hearing opinions from people who never flown with a WSO what it’s really like. I guess people actually think the Air Force will let one person fly in it when it was designed for two? We will look back at this thread 5 years from now and see who was correct.

Yep, any day now it should be over just like he said. We just need those bleach drinks and anal light probes.

You know what kills small businesses? States like California continuing to shut everything down. Edit: oh, and rioters and looters, if you want to go there on your concern for small businesses.

I don’t know about this exact plan, but there is a desire in 19 AF to completely ditch the T-1 and send pilots to the MAF after getting winged from T-6s. AMC/A3T is quite concerned about it. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

Machines do difficult things easily and make easy things difficult.

You'd have to ask Trump about his personnel choices. As I understand it, the Senate report documents the facts of attempted, possibly successful, influence on the 2016 election with Russia favoring Trump and China favoring Clinton. That the report is not about the investigations into the Trump campaign and administration but rather about foreign attempts on our election systems. Which, by the way, occurred under Obama's watch and he, literally, did nothing. That said, my on-going concern with the Russiagate/Obamagate thing is the strong possibility that one administration actively used the instruments of US power - mainly federal law enforcemet and intel community - to spy on and delay/obstruct/interfere with the actions of, another succeeding administration. If that's true, it's really bad. As in end of the Republic bad. Political shenanigans are one thing, but when rank and file worker bees choose sides and use their offices/powers to aid/abet that use, I fear that. Against me, against you, against anyone. And if it's happened already, it's very likely to happen again, and worse, unless there are public consequences against those that did so. Certainly, I hope to see Brennan (admitted former Communist, not a wild accusation, but historical fact. Not to mention that he literally spied on the Senate, lied to them under oath, then got caught out, and the then-Democrat led Senate did nothing...) led away in cuffs. Same for some other high-profile folks involved. But if Clinesmith, Vindmann, et al, feel like they can take on political leadership they don't happen to like, then it's all moot and we become who can gain/hold power by means that I don't get a vote about. I fear it is too late, but I am hoping that if there are fairly severe consequences, that others in the future won't be so quick to say, "Sure, I'll do that."

Remember when Democrats got pissed that Republicans beat them to the punch on a $1200 unemployment insurance check to curtail economic collapse for the economically underprivileged?

The “Fuck everyone who’s not a progressive socialist!” will be the downfall of the Democratic Party. See how this goes? You are an idiot if you can’t see this bullshit coming from both sides. The problem with America is 80% of us are generally moderate +/- center a bit, but the other 20% are bat shit crazy and have consumed politics, the media, etc. Instructional Fix: The 80% get off their asses and do something about it, instead of just bitching in private and doing nothing about it. FWIW, I live in a very liberal/libertarian area. The amount of hate, intolerance, and “assimilate to us or you should fuck off and die!” is HEAVY from the left and almost non-existent from the libertarians and conservatives. It’s truly amazing to see the difference in discourse...us moderates are absolutely disgusted with it, which helps push me over the edge to the other side. So that dovetails into... We have trump because of the insane bullshit the far left was pedaling - and they’ve quadrupled down in the last 3 years. I mean WTF, lots of moderates don’t want trump, but we also don’t want anti-constitution people who are attempting to shove socialism down our throats and fundamentally alter America in a negative way. Bring the Democrats back towards the center, push the far left lunatics into a new “Progressive” party, and we can have a 4 party system (the other being Libertarian) that will give better options than Trump or Kamala. The democrats even may have had me at Tulsi, but she was too moderate for them.

Just sitting here scratching my head on this statement... Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I’m betting end of September. End of the fiscal year.

Your inspirational suggestion on the tactical usage of loyal wingman may be highly unlikely. I’d bank on updated avionics and AI still making WSOs obsolete in that fight. Besides, I’m guessing real fighter pilots would rather have extra fuel and a lack of intercom noise.

So I guess we're completely ignoring when he said neo-Nazis and white supremacists should be condemned?

Thank you! Enjoyed working with you again and saving you even more money. Hard to imagine we’ll be doing any more IRRRLs together after dropping you so low, but always here if you need anything. Jon

I think it is safe to say that judging politicians based on their morality is a mistake.

my friend was TA at Balad and said those dudes just wheeled a main tire over to his truck and give him some cash and a thumbs up and left it over him screaming at them to come back.

I assume you also blame Trump for the slashing of the UPT syllabus and the perceived mishaps of the last year, as well. Why hasn’t Trump increased the pilot bonus? Does he want our Air Force to fail? Or maybe these decisions fall much more squarely on the SECAF/CSAF/Congress.

I wonder how many days the average USAF Officer spends waiting for board results ? 🧐

Apart from Covid? Really? Isn’t handling a crisis an important measure of presidential leadership? Maybe THE most important measure? I can’t think of one recent president that hasn’t had to handle a major crisis. A savvy president will use the opportunity to band Americans together and cement his support (think W after Sep 11). All Trump had to do was pretend to take this seriously and encourage all Americans to come together and beat the virus. He’d be a shoe in for re-election right now if he’d done that. But Trump’s biggest weakness and his biggest failure is that he only sees himself as President of his own supporters. Politics for him is a zero sum game that involves vanquishing your opponent into oblivion rather than acknowledging that the other side is here to stay and compromise is the only path to stability and prosperity in a democratic society. His “fuck blue America” attitude will be his downfall and unfortunately he’s infected the whole republican party with it. He’s transformed the entire GOP into a cynical, xenophobic, isolationist shell of its former self and all of America will be worse off for a generation due to the damage he’s done. He spent three years lining your wallet? Well I guess that’s good for you. Me? Well call me a naive idealist but I expect much more out of the leader of the free world.

Still pushing that hoax, eh? Let's look at the whole quote: He explicitly excluded white supremacists and neo-Nazis from the "very fine people" comment.

Has your life worsened between 2016 and now? Apart from Covid, which is a global pandemic, how has Trump hurt your life? A lot of good changes between his election and now. Lower taxes, ISIS eliminated, strong economy. Not bad things at all. Biden? He won’t make it more than a few months past the election. Which means Kamala Harris as your POTUS. A radical California politician who stands against everything American. Higher taxes, open borders, gun grabber...you name it. Trump’s “dumpster fire” is much more palatable. Questions?

That’s what go pills are for

What is amazing is that, in an Air Force that is massively overly concerned with "how things look", on this one they're mostly concerned with trying desperately to gaslight the people who have identified that there is a problem into thinking that *they* are the problem. The AF can't even get their own dysfunctional leadership processes and priorities executed well.

It’s irrelevant as to whether the Russian/Chinese FLANKERS are on an American military unit emblem because of a mistake or because or regulation. What matters is that it makes you look stooopid. Surely it’s someone’s job in the Air Force to give a shit about that, even if it does mean having to know your arse from your elbow?

You can't fix stupid. AZ has the same problem with people from CA. They can't afford to live there and the state is a mess but they vote for the policies that created the environment that caused their flight. Idiots.

Something is not right with that logo.

Had three friends get FedEx interview invitations this week, and one get a job offer at UPS. The dudes who got Purple invites: - One current active duty pointy-nose TPS grad O-4 with a separation date on file this fall. - One former pointy-nose driver, now reserve SUPT IP O-3. - One former AD/reserve MC-12 and C-17 O-4, now a couple years into a Legacy (and vulnerable to being furloughed) who didn't previously have a FX app in. The UPS guy is a former pointy-nose DO who is freshly-separated.

My view in the rearview mirror says that it really took a no-shit turn for the worse right around 9/11.

Uh, Prosuper, I uh, talked to the pilot. He was smoking, he was coughing, he didn’t smell very good and he was wearing a tight blue flight suit. He didn’t speak much English but I think he said they would be leaving on time.

True story, I'm at OAMS and I have a new guy I send out to C-5 to ask a pilot if everything is good and if they will be leaving on time. He went out to a IL-76 . Yes knowing the correct MDS is important, you can't park 4 KC-10s in the same space as 4 KC-135's.

I wonder if this question has ever been asked before in the 16+ years of archived data on this site...

Two good things for America, I believe. One yesterday, one today. Yesterday, the current Administration announced it had brokered a deal for diplomatic relations establishment between UAE and Israel. That's a very significant development. Today, the first guilty plea occured in the Obamagate investigation. An FBI lawyer pled guilty to intentionally altering a document that was used to renew, again, one of the bogus FISA applications on the Trump campaign. While I'm too cynical to believe that any of those "too big to fail" will ever perform a perp walk, that fact that a worker bee is being held accountable might, just maybe, be a hindarance for future wannabe hop on board the corruption train riders in our government. I do hope there will be more such items to follow.

I just pretend I am part of a breaking bad episode.

I just turned 31 dude stfu lol

Long time lurker... I was also at HRT for too long. At least Cannon has some dry heat and you are away from AFSOC HQ. Hurlburt Cons - Its southern Alabama - Incredible humidity (see above) - I-98 is overcrowded and they keep building more.. drunk southerners like to crash on the bridges which are huge choke points - Tourists... and not the good looking kind - The wing has slowly degraded into "big air force" while still maintaining an incredible deployment/TDY tempo - Live in Destin with terrible traffic, Fort Walton Beach with crime, or Navarre with traffic and not much going on... Niceville is probably the best option Hurlburt Pros - The beach?

Get LinkedIn premium for a year (free for veterans, probably current mil, too) and do LinkedIn Learning. Earn your PMP, Green Belt, A+ and several other credentials for the cost of the test. Look at jobs and see what skills they want and find a certification that proves you have those skills. You’re probably more capable than most civilian applicants but good luck proving it with your resume. AF has an e-learning app on the portal with many of the same topics but LI Premium has better delivery.

It’s easy to say that, and I won’t argue that he did. Anyone would say Nazis are bad when questioned directly, of course. “You had people -- and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists; they should be condemned totally -- you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists.“ But he also said numerous times that this group had fine people in it that werent neo-Nazis or white supremacists. The group doesn’t deserve such leniency just because they had Trump flags with them. It legitimizes a group, which included such people as David Duke, as a group that was more moderate than they really were. I, and much of America, disagree that there were “many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists.” Call a spade a spade.