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Hurlburt Field dispensed all their allotted doses this week. I got the 1st Moderna shot on Thursday, felt a little shitty yesterday but otherwise it wasn’t bad at all (personally thought anthrax and yellow fever were worse). As an added bonus, post vaccine my 5G download speeds have been incredible (4K UHD streaming pornog in the middle of the range, no problem!) and an image of Bill Gates constantly pops up in my periph with helpful dining out suggestions. Totally worth it!!

I had the 1st Moderna dose Thursday. Had a decent fever before going to bed last night with a really sore arm. Fever broke middle of night. Feel fine this morning. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

First moderana dose down the hatch. No issues 4 days later. The Gates Foundation is on the hook to replace teh battery every 3 years, which is nice.

Vaccine microchips are the new chemtrails. I love it.

Posters on other forums really really like the G fund for their conservative holding. There’s nothing like it in the retail world so they say keep your TSP for that. I’d like to consolidate accounts but haven’t pulled the trigger for that reason.

Any rumint in this year's bonus release? I'm not eligible but curious how big the knee jerk will be with the covid retention bump.

@ThreeHoler and @Guardian have the options right. Put it in the TSP for cheap investments but limited options; pull it to a Roth IRA for a broader investment choice but a higher burden (ish; depends on what you do with it) of investing and (slightly) higher fees. Also realize that the MATCH is not a Roth; it’s Traditional pre-tax match. So, it doesn’t get you extra in your Roth.

TSP has some of the lowest fees out there and the basic funds perform well. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

Any guys with suppressors on here? I keep waffling on it, mostly wondering is it worth it... - cost (meh, not that big of a factor, but do I do this or get another rifle?) - All the NFA bullshit with the ATF (timeline, paperwork, etc.) - Paranoid about becoming a “registered” gun owner on some NFA list. Though obviously I’ve been background checked by the FBI many times for gun purchases, so maybe this isn’t any different?

Found the root cause of your friend’s problem. The good news is the fix is easy!

Fuckin’ zipper suit sun god pilots! 😜🍻

I'll lead off with I agree with your last paragraph, the status quo isn't good enough, and we need to do better in discouraging abusing the system while making it available to people who need it. So I think we both want to see us get to the same end state. I will however, challenge some of your assumptions, mainly because years ago I held very similar beliefs and viewpoints you did (and that's not to say I'm right now and you're wrong, but I've questioned some of my assumptions when presented with different viewpoints I hadn't considered and it changed my opinion). You assume that the construction worker could get a job with better benefits: those are likely to be more competitive, and limited. But let's assume they have good work ethic, and don't want to be in unemployment waiting for a "good" job while taking a government handout, so they take whatever job they can to pay their bills. If they then have a workplace accident that results in their leg being crushed and subsequently amputated, then what? "Sorry bro, life sucks and you had bad luck? Thanks for your contribution to the economy in building stores/homes, good luck finding a job with one leg, hope someone donates a prosthetic leg?" Sure, there may be some workers comp available, and that may cover the initial hospital bills, but what happens long term? Being in crutches permanently isn't conducive to many low skill jobs, and while discrimination against disabled is generally illegal, an employer can usually find another reason (plausible deniability) to hire someone else without a disability, especially for low skill or entry level work. And retraining into a new field of work costs money, both for training, and to cover expenses while in training (though admittedly unemployment benefits can help bridge the gap). I agree that the welfare system should have changes to prevent abuse. But we have to address social and economic barriers to do so. Some of it is practical (those financial cliffs mentioned earlier in the thread). Some of it is learned behavior from multiple sources. I don't dispute your experience with workers in welfare. All I will say is be careful generalizing based on a small population. Maybe your assessment is correct for the overall population of people on welfare in America, but then again maybe not. The way to draw generalizations needed for policy is to study a relevant portion of that population, while controlling for other factors. If you have a minimum wage or low paying job with decent (i.e. non high deductible plans) health insurance, great. If you get sick and have to go to urgent care, that $20 copay may mean skipping meals to make ends meet, not to mention the cost of any medicines required. Referred out to specialty care? That's an extra $50 copay, and likely half a day missed from work (increasing the financial pain). Need an operation done? Hope you have the $1-3k available for your deductible and you don't have coinsurance requirements. So while they may have health insurance, you may not be able to practically use it except in an emergency, at which point it may drain any savings you have anyways. And if you don't have paid sick leave, you may just deal with the issue and show up to work anyways because you need the money to make rent. But if you keep hours to the point you remain on welfare, you end up not having to pay those medical costs, and may not have to skip means and go hungry to get medical care. You don't have to work about an emergency wiping out your work because there's nothing really to lose. So there's this painful transition point. If you can get through it and start earning more money (maybe you get a raise after 1 year of work), you can be better off than on welfare. But you've got to get through to that point, and the way welfare is set up doesn't allow for a graceful transition. Maybe an individual has tried to make that jump and failed, and it's now disincentived to try again because of their previous failure. And even middle class workers can be wiped out by a medical event despite having okay health insurance due to deductible and coinsurance requirements. Maybe this speaks more to problems in healthcare, but it's still intertwined with the welfare issue. On the behavioral point, how do we get people to shift their mindset and actions? Also consider that many factors influence how a person chooses to live: family, race, gender, friends, religion, location, culture, etc. All of which influence your values and your decisions. You could teach finances in school, though the education system has incentive to focus on standardized testing (which right now doesn't measure financial planning knowledge) for school funding. That testing focused on skills to make the individual more valuable in the workforce, not skills needed to navigate life, with the assumption that the latter will come from the parents (who may not be good examples). How do you change a social group's norms? Part of it may be showing examples of people that made changes in their life and we're able to "succeed." I used to think it was dumb for all these "firsts" for race/gender/pick you group. To some extent, it still is when it's done for purely political reasons or for virtue signaling (potentially a wrong action for a "right" reason). But if a disadvantaged group can see people from their group be successful, it can provide hope that they too can be successful and escape their current circumstances. So those "firsts" may not mean anything to me as someone outside that group, or just seem like a waste if time, but that doesn't mean it has no meaning to some people within the group. And it doesn't really cost much if anything to recognize people's accomplishments. So it's less about dividing the country based on certain group affiliations, but rather showing a group they are accepted and can succeed within the greater society. On the flip side, there's the whole crabs in a pot problem, where if someone starts to make progress escaping their circumstances, others around them pull them back down, making it harder to escape. A person trying to escape welfare may be ridiculed or cut off from their friends/family (maybe seen as being "too good" for them anymore), making that transition harder because now it is being done without a social network to support or encourage them. Do people on welfare spend money on drugs and alcohol because they are pursuing pleasure ahead of essentials (they can't budget right!), or are they using them as tools to escape their life/circumstances for a bit and take the edge off their pain for a while? Put another way, are they poor because they abuse drugs/alcohol, or do they abuse drugs/alcohol because they are poor? The answer may not be the same for everyone, but usually conservatives will assume the former (poor because of drug abuse), I know I did for a long time. It goes back to the belief that if you work hard, there's no way for you to be poor, so if you are poor, you must have a moral failing and poor work ethic. The use of drugs further reinforces the belief that the poor are immoral (regardless of if the person making that judgement also uses drugs, usually with a hand waive of something along the lines of "I've earned it" and the poors are just being financially irresponsible). Compare the response to prescription opioid abuse vs heroin abuse: one is predominantly abused by wealthier people and viewed as them needing therapy to address their underlying issues (get them medical care, not jail time), and the other is abused by poorer people who are breaking the law to get high and should be punished for breaking the law since they should know better (give them jail time, not medical care). Plus, poor people on welfare likely won't have access to treatments for depression, so they self medicate with whatever is available and cheap. I will say that there are lots of good charities out there that fill some of the gaps our government doesn't cover. And a lot of these issues with being poor are community issues. But I think government money, spent wisely, can help enable charities and communities be more effective in addressing problems.

While I think I see your theme, and it wasn't my intent to paint all recipients of relief as people who don't deserve or need it, there are plenty of people who fall into the category I identified. And that category is growing. In any case, my original point was why does a pandemic justify paying someone who didn't have income in the first place? Operable phrase: "Why does the pandemic..." Not: "I wonder if this person who didn't have a job needs or would like government cheese." So, why does the pandemic justify paying someone unemployment who didn't have income in the first place. If they qualified for unemployment, they should already be getting it. IMO, it's nothing more than a bribe. The idea underlying this thought I could get behind. One idea would be to punt their social security collection X months/years into the future. "Oh, I see right here, Mr. Jones, that you needed 8 years of unemployment assistance to get by?" "Yes..." "Cool, well your social security check will start when you're 73...thanks." Or, you want your social security to start on time? Sweet, then we'll enroll you in a "catch-up" plan to "re-fund" your "early withdrawal" and get you back in good standing. We cannot continue to act as if there is infinite money. The rest of the world is only gonna let us get away with that for so long.

the Air National Guard is fully involved and standing side by side the Army National Guard.

Bay Area resident here. For the record, all the weapons/magazines/ammo I had when I retired were lost in a tragic boating accident and I was unable save anything before I moved to CA. I am now totally defenseless like all the law-abiding citizens in CA. Of course you should comply with all state laws, but I have heard people say that local government officials only know what you tell them.

Do they not just hand you the PT test paperwork and say “come back looking tired with it filled in”. 🧐 The days of the base “fun run” with a keg at the end are gone even from the guard; at least pencil-whipping isn’t entirely dead.

I asked someone at AFPC and they told me that they have to brief the AFPC/CC at the end of January for his final blessing before any official results are published to either commanders or publicly. Mid February is still the best he could give me in terms of results. This individual also mentioned that due to the delays at UPT the original quota of 75 PIlots for 2021 was severely chopped, but he didn't want to give out numbers due to things being able to change for the better or for the worst at any moment before release. That is the most recent information I've gathered from a reliable source.

Anyone doing the meet and greet with Wyoming?

My position is we can stop when 1. Every person knows whether they are a carrier every day 2. Enough people are vaccinated that spread is negligible. Is it that hard to wear a mask? Do you rail against seatbelt laws or complain that requiring shoes in a place of business is oppressive? Putting a mask on is, quite literally, the least you can do.

Saw a congressman on Twitter joke that there would be noodles in the House cafeteria. Ramen...and rawomen.