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$100M???? For that you could give 100 million Americans a million dollars! smh. end sarcasm.

'Member when there was a 3-4 year campaign against Trump because he supposedly was working with Russians to win the election? This is like the same thing, except its the other side. Just let people complain and be skeptical Enjoy your layover in Motel 6 with the FA 🙂

Is 12% the national average? Where are you getting this number? For UT the last number we have for positivity is 23.6%. Which means, according to the experts, there's a lot of people that aren't getting tested that are positive. Our hospitalization rate is high, also: Percent of all non-ICU Bed Occupied - 53.7% Percent of all ICU Beds Occupied - 87.9% Percent of Referral Center ICU Beds Occupied - 91.9% So I guess the question, for us locally at least, is when do we want to get serious about burning out our healthcare workers and not having to ration care? Of course we've got people trying to break into hospitals to show it's a hoax, and saying germ-theory is a lie while protesting the mask "mandate" also...so. This is exactly what happened to us. Ex-wife is a school teacher, she needs that check (she didn't get any of my retirement..woo) and had to go back to school. Daughter goes over before Ex has symptoms. Boom, 8 days later daughter has COVID. Ex's husband had to do a few days in hospital, and a week later is still on O2 looking really rough and she's had to go back to work but is exhausted at the end of the day. Ex's symptoms were done last week. Are we counting people in their 50's as elderly? That's the median and average age for hospitalizations in our State. Yes, avg deaths is prob the same as everywhere else - 70's. Our state is extremely healthy, and extremely white (minorities are having much worse outcomes). The gov't here, in ND and Republican Gov's across the midwest have been suggesting wearing masks for months. Doc's sure weren't making the policies here because the Gov's ignored their pleas for months for a mask mandate. But the gov's damn near begged people to do it, and asking businesses to enforce it. Why would the Governors change that now to a mandate? Do they suddenly hate common sense, and got a case of the "COVID fear." Might be because North Dakota had 9 ICU beds left in the whole state. UT's had exponential growth and an extremely stressed healthcare system. Plus people throwing Halloween parties in warehouses because "they engaged in plenty of high risk activities that are more likely to cause harm than COVID. Life is to short for us to hide in the house for something that most likely a non factor." But they're young people, they'll not be hit to hard and prob go out with a slight cough. Get someone sick in line at Starbucks who's in Healthcare who just wants a coffee before another long shift at work, or a teacher, or a nursing home worker, or a grocery store worker. Advising doesn't work for the majority of the population, ever. Didn't work for seat belts, smoking indoors, drunk driving, and other "personal liberties" that were eventually legislated against. Which is really too bad. This could have been a moment where we can together as Americans to fight a common foe like many other countries. I'm pretty sure I posted this when it kicked off, but this whole thing is a giant, "It's not about you" test.

Drifting off the two major, recent points down the “yeah, but...” road; to bring it back: - Does a 12% positive test rate and a 99.86% survival rate warrant all of the current things going on? Is that our threshold for destroying businesses and the economic reliance owners and employees have on them? Is that our threshold for putting children’s education on pause for what will amount to at least a year for many? Is that our threshold that makes all the mental health decline worth it? - Is it rational/logical to take your .14% chance of death if you get covid, and skip the vaccine until there is more time, trials, testing, etc. under its belt?

It sounds good but in reality I suspect it is more of the same from the globalist swamp- sell out your working and middle class by committing to one sided trade deals, deterrence for allies capable but unwilling to put skin in the game and sign on to agreements that others ignore or will never actually meet to win virtue points with the Davos crowd. No thanks. America First is not America Alone. It is a lot of things but mainly it is non-privileged, screwed over for the last 40 years Americans standing up for their interests in a world of aggressive competitors, fickle allies and remorseless players where the elites of their own country use their future as bargaining chips as they are cajoled and fellated by the conniving elites of other nations, particularly China, to sell them out to the false god of globalism. Angry rant complete. As to troops in Afghanistan and the authors of the article to include Mattis, it is face saving at it’s worst. Does anyone with an IQ above 75 think that Afghanistan will be anything different in 10 or 20 years with the mission as proposed continuing to whenever? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I wouldn’t use one day of it unless you actually need or want to use it. You never know. They may extend the order due to ROM.

Tore a vein and gave him blood cots? Damn, I didn't know covid could do that...

The only way I'd go back to that part of the world is with a fully nuke loaded B-52/B-1/B-2 but I know a couple of guys who enjoy it over there.

The merc engine...it's so...whew.

One of the many reasons I recommend to all my AD bros avoid the reserves, especially units at AD bases. I continue to be amazed by the guys that say they're done with the AD bullshit, then join an AFRC squadron that is embedded in the AD wing they just "left," and complain that not much has changed (not directed at you). Also, more of a reason to be a part timer, as your give a fuck about extraneous bullshit is near zero. Even more so if you're at the rank in which you don't mind retiring. Stand alone ANG is the last bastion of hope in the ARC. Even better if you do it as a part timer.

The dumb thing about all this is it just boils down to "1) if you're sick, stay home until you're completely (and not just mostly) better." And since there's the complication of being contagious with COVID before the onset of symptoms, "2) if you were in close contact with someone who was sick, stay home for a bit a to see if you get symptoms. If you get symptoms, stay home and contact your doctor." But for a whole host of social and economic reasons, that doesn't happen, especially in the US. We could probably be a lot more open right now if people just followed the two rules I led with, even without masks or social distancing. But we as a society can't (won't?) stay home if we're sick, which puts us where we are now. Right or wrong, people are going to work when they probably shouldn't to get that paycheck, and since healthcare is largely tied to employment here. So there's a strong incentive to go to work sick, and maybe take tylenol to knock down any fever and some cough syrup to suppress coughing. Or some people just don't care because it doesn't affect them since their symptoms are mild, so they see it as a non issue. Which is great and all until they interact with someone who is high risk (like a grocery worker or a waiter/waitress who can't stay home to avoid illness despite being high risk, due to bills or lack of sick leave). Still doesn't really affect the original person who was sick, but could be devastating to a stranger that has to interact with them and can't avoid the interaction. As military flyers, especially as pilots, we benefit from having access to decent healthcare, as well as pretty rigorous medical screening early on that identifies underlying conditions, so our peer group is relatively low risk, outside maybe a spouse or kid with health issues. I guess what I'm getting at is there are people/neighbors/fellow Americans that due to circumstance, can't choose to just avoid the whole COVID thing and hunker down (or have a choice to accept risk or not), and have to go in to work and interact with the public. Do we have a responsibility to protect those people? Or does it just suck to be them, and say they're in our thoughts and prayers? I think at least some semblance of a social safety net (such as unemployment benefits, better sick leave policies/regulations, or access to at least emergency healthcare) is needed, and is similar to an ejection seat; should be a last resort, don't ever want to use it, but glad to know it's there if you need it, and hope that the system is maintained in the event it's needed. What percent of sorties require the use of the seat? Fractions of a percent? Cool, we can defer mx due to parts availability... Hopefully we didn't defer other actions or have outside factors (wx, threats) that drive up the likelihood of needing to use that seat.

That's true, and it's BS. Businesses should be enforcing the mandates in order to minimize the potential for spread. And I have zero toleration for the "F you, I'm good" crowd. That said, those people are a fact of life and it's impossible to avoid them. I'm more irritated by the larger political context that is screaming that the sky is falling and what I consider a fairly immature response across the board.

That needs to be more inclusive....strong person....

You’re taking his analogy out of context. Sorry. Couldn’t pass that up. Hello kettle.

I'm invoking Goodwin's law.

For those anxiously awaiting the vaccine... not so fast. Dr. Tedros, The Director General of the World Health Organization warns: So, we're not going back to anything resembling "normal". Seems like all the vaccines require follow-on boosters. Pfizer, Moderna, and Astra Zeneca. Perhaps annually. And if you don't want to get it, that's fine. No one will be pointing a gun at your head. However, The post-vaccine world sounds awesome.

Last year 62% got the flu vaccine with an effectiveness rate of 29%. The 10 year average is 57.3% getting it and 42.4% effectiveness. So, even with a flu vaccine and 62% of the population getting it last year, it was still only .12% less deadly than covid with zero vaccine for the under 70 population. What does that say? Lots of future speculation, so I can speculate as accurately that if you show me one person with longterm can’t-workout problems, I’ll show you substantially more who got over it in a week or less and are fine (or were so unaffected they didn’t even know they had it). Both groups exist, but let’s not pretend we actually have statistically relevant data to make claims there are meaningful probabilities of long term effects in substantial numbers. I believe it is completely possible that could become an accurate statement in the future, but for now it’s almost purely speculation based on statistically irrelevant numbers, outliers, etc.

It’s a 360 degree turn in plane angled to look like a loop to the show line. It isn’t a loop. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

There hasn’t been your entire life, if we’re defining unsafe as risk of catching respiratory viruses in a public setting exists. The flu, pneumonia, etc. didn’t make people not want to eat out, yet here we are pretending 12% positive rate and 99.86% survival rates (US under 70) are Ebola reincarnated. For comparison, last year the positive test rate for the flu was 52% and death rate was ~ .02% for under 70. So quite literally, the risk to your average, healthy person under 70 is .12% higher than the flu. Clearly risk goes exponentially up or down to age groups above and below the 70 line. People spent 2018 cool with a 52% chance of catching a virus followed by a 99.98% survival rate, yet are incredibly concerned in 2020 over a 12% chance of catching a different virus followed by a 99.86% survival rate. I get it this doesn’t encompass specific scenarios like elderly family with health issues, the individuals with compromised immune systems, healthcare workers in close proximity to high risk patients, etc. But, it does encapsulate the vast majority of our demographics.

Oh no! But what about the kraken of voter fraud evidence she was going to release?! I was reliably informed that it was going to be biblical... And in literally the least shocking turn of events of all time, it turned out to be a bunch of hot air. Now that the grandiose communist conspiracy angle is dead, its gonna be fun to watch our little parade of baseops trumpers revise their public mental gymnastics to contrive new scenarios where trump is somehow still in this. In the end, I think this situation is the best we could have hoped for. Trump was never going to concede so the only question was whether he'd mount a competent legal case, or a clown show. If his team actually had their legal and public messaging act together it would be far more dangerous, because they might succeed in undermining confidence in our elections. Luckily, we got the clown show and it's such a severe one it's actually turning off fence sitters and most of the moderate right. Prediction time: before the end of this train wreck, I predict trump fires Rudy too. But don't worry guys, it's just normal administration turnover.

I guess LM trusts the Herc wing boxes now.

No, the Governor of California have forbid people from gathering for Thanksgiving - Doesn't mean he has the legal power to do so. As such, it won't prevent me and my family from going to Big Bear this week with three of my closest friends and their families to eat, drink, and be merry. We're also relatively young, fit, and healthy. People have to make their own choices based on the lives they've lived. We're not close to any elderly family members so it's a calculated risk, just like each time you go fly a mission, drive to work, or any other activity where potential harm can occur.

Before I got out we were all hands on deck for protecting this election in case DHS called for federal help. We did some prelim research into the voting system and figured out it was a fools errand, because each state does it their own way, and we literally couldn't prepare for 50 eventualities with our resources. We could focus on the top 3 producers of voting machines, but they, like state gov'ts, do not want any "help" as is evidenced in the video. So, I don't really have any idea about what types of machines they had in particular. But again we get back to the breadth of the term hackable - everything is. There is a port somewhere on those machines, even if it's just the power cable, the CPU fans, the hard drives spinning up. Ben Gurion University in Israel has been doing amazing research on it. The question is: is this hacking plausible knowing that cyber is a finite resource that can cost a lot of treasure to be done at a professional level? Here is a report from a hacker group attacking a professional malware development company that goes through a lot of what is required. It's getting older now, but a good read. Note, it reads like 1 person did this, but it was probably at least 3, maybe more. I've seen the NBC video before. The work they do at DEFCON its great, it's why we send folks there on the regular. I think at the last one they did some of our satellites and found some of the exact same problems. But this just dropped a few hours ago about hacking the Dominion machines, Steel is the PR dude: "Well, it's physically impossible," Steel said of vote switching. "Look, when a voter votes on a Dominion machine, they fill out a ballot on a touch screen. They are given a printed copy which they then give to a local election official for safekeeping. If any electronic interference had taken place, the tally reported electronically would not match the printed ballots. and in every case where we've looked at -- in Georgia, all across the country -- the printed ballot, the gold standard in election security, has matched the electronic tally." EDIT - Actually, you need to read the article, I think it address all the lies "soon to come evidence" that is being thrown around. But I could be wrong, I'll wait for the evidence that's "Going to explode Georgia." So there is a physical audit for at least the Dominion machines. I'm 99.99999% positive there were also instructions for voters to check their paper ballot to make sure it actually reflected what they wanted. Sidney Powell's claims are just...absurd. I give it a 0% chance that "communist countries" got together to share in the spoils of a hack on the voting infrastructure of the US. Who... Cuba, Venezuela and China? Did I miss anyone? Oh wait, NK - technically communist. I guess Vietnam as well. These renowned "cyber powerhouses" that are so secret and quiet we'd never catch them until after the election was over? I phrased it that way because China is very loud on the wire traditionally. These countries have not been after these types of systems in the past. You can check online for what APT's come out of these countries and see what they target, but TL;DR - Banks, economic espionage, casinos, etc. CN tries to steal for their economic benefit to industry (J-20 anyone) and everyone else is trying to make Bitcoin through various frauds/cryptolockers. Could they have shifted their TTP's to target something else...I mean, technically anything is possible. But I'd think it very, very unlikely. Tooling up for these things takes awhile. Also, they're not culturally aligned for it. It has been amazing to see just how much the culture of each one of these nations (and our own) impact the way we all operate in cyberspace. I don't know if that's reflected in how they fly either. Is it? For the rest of the twitter thread, they disabled the computer and there was security guards doing the rounds. Looks like the report slipped in when they walked away. Humans doing human things.

Dang - she only lasted ‘About Half A Scaramucci’:

Fuck'em, let them takeover more of a role if it's so important to them. GTFO of that shit hole tomorrow!

We've got a TSgt personnelist in my squadron with pilot wings. She was a C-12 pilot in the early 2000s, resigned her commission to raise a family, and then reenlisted. Of note, she says she works harder as a TSgt than she ever did as a Major (I can vouch for her work effort now). When she hits her 20 good years she'll retire as a Major... It's the ANG so YMMV.

This is everything when it comes to the issue at hand.

Flying at HRT the Navy pogues from Pcola and Whiting would always trash our pattern, sometimes four or five at a time. After the three times being told to extend my base while doing two engine training in order to accommodate a T-34, I cleaned up my Gunship and departed VFR to the west. A few minutes later I checked in with PCola and reported initial Runway 25...it was a fucking bomb burst of white jets trying to get out of the way. After a low approach I requested closed and the tower was fuming (do they have a SOF?) I then requested to go tower to tower at Whiting. They initially cleared me but the tower controller must have called Whiting and told them what I did so they told me they were "saturated and could not accommodate practice patterns." I got called up to the OG/CC's office the next morning and he asked what happened...apparently the Navy wasn't too happy. I told him it was a continuing theme with them dorking up our pattern and how they ruined three consecutive two engine approaches (two engine work was challenging and you had to be low on fuel to get to the training allowed weight so you didn't get a lot of second chances). He laughed and told me to have a great day. I didn't see another T-34 in our pattern for two months.

Flea, Slackline, Prozac, Drewpey and Breckey. I'm sure I've left out some of you tards. Have you ever. Ever in your life, had any one of your troops look up to you? You whine on an internet forum about what all is wrong with America. From the looks of it, on the weekends too. Have you ever done anything in your military career that caused people to look up to you and say hey, I'll follow this one into combat. What do you do? What is your life like? You sound like you are fighting for the latest organic blast double milkshake of bat turds at trader joes. Jesus Christ. What do you tards do?

So I guess if you wanted to go full fucking inception, yes, I quoted Clark quoting someone else, and then you quoted me. But who's fucking tracking.