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At some point, you really do have to decide who are the good guys, who are the bad guys, and what you’re willing to stand up for. Yes, we live in a “gray” world. Is the United States or Ukraine 100% good or innocent? No. Is Russia 100% awful? No. But the circumstances of this war are pretty clear cut and I can’t, offhand, think of a conflict in my lifetime where it was more apparent who the bad guys are. I find the fact that we are able to have such a major effect without putting actual American human beings and assets at risk to be fucking fantastic & it’s got to be one of the more no-shit effective uses of government money as of late. I’m more than happy to have a few dollars a paycheck go towards turning Putin’s Flankers into beer cans & degrading his ability to threaten more of Europe.

That's what I look like the morning after a no fly day in Vegas.

Another angle: “Free money” gov bailout - now where’s the incentive for universities and lenders to reduce costs and rates? This in reality rewards universities and lenders for their actions. I think most people are in general agreement that the cost of college and their buddies in the student loan business are out of control, but why do people simultaneously think dumping gas on the fire will put it out, because that’s essentially what is happening. Let’s not also forget the impact on the deficit and fucking over millions who did pay for their degree/those who couldn’t afford a degree and were responsible enough to not take a loan out they couldn’t pay back.

As I already said... this is some of the cheapest and most effective military spending we've ever done. Taking out a near-peer adversary without a single American casualty is a win in my book.

Gawd damn some of y’all are triggered rn 😂 Every comment telling an RPA pilot “yOu’Re NoT a ReAl PiLoT” makes your dick 1 inch shorter, that’s also a fact. Some of you may need to limit your comments to only a couple before you go into negative territory… In other news…what was this thread about again?

Have you read a single SIGARS report? Lol. I'm completely fine sending these aid packages but not acknowledging that we probably don't have accountability of every dollar that is spent is either academically dishonest or naive, whichever one fits. We have a poor track record of tracking foreign aid money. That isn't going to change just because it's Russia now.

I don't think that at all. I think you're a very intelligent, self-driven idealist. And I've noticed that there's a huge and growing divide between the professional class and the plebes. The ability to isolate amongst similarly-situated and like minded families, both online and in communities, is abnormally high in the modern era. Look no further than people like yourself who regularly talk about how great everything is in the modern world while completely failing to see a huge part of the country who have lives that are materially worse than their parents' lives were. You might call it Trump country, but based on your commentary you have little experience with the people in that demographic. The gap between the haves and the have nots is growing at an alarming rate. Unfortunately, the only people who are focused on this issue, probably you, but definitely the hyper progressive activists/politicians in the Democratic party, have a twofold problem. - They hate half of the people in the have-not group. The Trumpers, if you will. - Their prescriptions to help the half they like are violative of human nature and are doomed to failure. You can't see past the teams. That's not on you, the political class figured out how to polarize the electorate almost identically to how sports teams polarize their fans. It's generally harmless in football, but politically it's tearing the country apart. The real game isn't democrat vs Republican, it's the new aristocracy vs everyone else. Just look at the percentage of wealth of the 1% and look at how it changed during the pandemic. The least vulnerable people increased their share of the pie by a huge amount, and they did it with monetary and political trick-fuckery. No, the problem at hand is the continued erosion of faith, shared equally by Democrats and Republicans, in the institutions and elections of our country. In 2016 most Democrats thought the election was rigged. Same for Republicans in 2020. Some boxes of secrets in Trump's basement or emails in Hillary's bathroom are irrelevant. The differing treatment of these offenses by the law enforcement institutions is everything. That is what you fail to grasp.

Veryyyyyyyy bashi *civil war canceled*

I don't think I could ask for a better proxy for the generalized problem with liberal/democratic thinking. For that I am grateful. In fact, they are inherently good. But they are also very susceptible to the corrupting influence of power, which our political class have retained in greater quantities since the founding. It has wildly distorted the system as it was designed, wherein the founders recognized this corrupting power and used elections and checks and balances to fight it. But obviously they weren't able to foresee the technological and demographic changes that have made politics a much different beast 200 years later. This is not borne out in the polling data. In fact, Americans on both sides are increasingly likely to believe the people who disagree with their politics are in fact bad people. https://www.npr.org/2022/08/13/1117232857/americans-have-increasingly-negative-views-of-those-in-the-other-political-party https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/10/10/partisan-antipathy-more-intense-more-personal/ And now we are back to the generalized failings of liberal thinking. You believe you are qualified to determine what bad reasoning or logical fallacies are. That you would not afford the same freedom to the proletariat, who you are completely out of touch with. And of course, I'm not making the argument that their decision making will result in better outcomes than yours. In fact, I would bet on you if we could create an isolated system. But we can't, and what we know for sure is that while bad decision making will result in bad outcomes when compared to good decision making, taking away that decision making authority will result in far more catastrophic outcomes. That, at its core, is the foundational error in progressive thought. Individual entities working in massive systems without centralized control always outperform hierarchical control structures. We see this both in the success of individualist-based governments versus socialist governments, and free market economies versus communist economies. We also see this in all manner of policy issues, the greatest of which may be abortion, but gun control, transgender children and their medical care, the gay wedding cake debacle, and the Democratic push to regulate what news stories are suitable for public consumption. Everything the liberals have done to advance these issues in their favor have exploded spectacularly in their face. That is not because of skilled Republican political maneuvering, it's because when you piss on the leg of human nature, human nature turns around and punches you right in the face.

Blue, you’re scoffing the others in this thread for being unintelligent without taking a step back. The USG already gives between $100B/yr to LM (depending on source), which accounts for about 70-80% of their revenue. The rest of their revenue comes from friendly governments (some just funded by ours anyway), with only 1-2% from non-government sources (which is likely cross-pollination with other USG contractors). Overall, the USG gave $682B to contractors in 2020, $482B from the DOD. Considering what we get for that - ancient technology that will always lag behind demand-funded consumer tech while never being actually employed - the bang for the buck against our adversaries approaches zero. The point that others are making in this thread is that - compared to normal spending - spending on Ukraine at the rate of $26B/yr (4% over what we normally spend) is pretty cheap considering the devastating effect it’s getting on an adversary. The weapons sent to Ukraine are actually being employed. As long as it doesn’t end up starting a nuclear war.

For years 11-202 said do not consume alcohol within 12 hours of takeoff and I REALLY wanted to press to test this and see what happens if you never take the plane off..... Think they eventually fixed that glitch though....

Yeah, this is a metric shit ton of money being sent to US defense contractors, which in turn are shipping out weapons to Ukraine. If you listen closely, you can hear the champagne bottles being popped in the boardrooms at Northrop, Boeing, Lockheed, etc. Also, from the linked fact sheet: United States security assistance committed to Ukraine includes: Over 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft systems We keep littering the globe with advanced man-portable anti-aircraft missiles, we're not going to like the result. Such things have a tendency to make their way into the wrong hands. Thanks @brwwg&b for linking that fact sheet; I hadn't seen that before. As a recap, in the past 6 months, we've committed 12.9 Billion dollars in "security assistance" to Ukraine. 12.9 Billion. In "Security Assistance." Over just six months. Lemme translate that for the people in the cheap seats. The United States is at fucking war with Russia. We're in a real live shooting war, and no one even bothered to ask the American people if they cared or not. I don't know, maybe it'll turn out to be the right decision. Maybe Putin will get toppled by some of the more moderate folks in his circle, and we'll all settle back into a nice frenemy relationship. But if you take all this in, and think that everything is all hunky-dory with our support of Ukraine, then you're an absolute fucking fool.

FIFY

The cable for said system had the failure from what it looks like.

The judge Rick Rolled us!

You do know it’s very ironic to call yourself @Lord Ratner and claim to be a voice of “the plebes” right? I keed… I have lived 86% of my life in states that were once part of the Confederacy. The county that I currently live in voted literally 69% for Trump in the 2020 election. You’re not characterizing me very well my friend, I know the people you’re talking about! My other other reply to the rest of your post is this, nay to populism whether it’s from the bernie left or the trumpy right. Beyond that I’m ceasing buzzer:

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Fixing root causes won't buy any votes. It also doesn't give you the ability to project virtue, real or not, so you can attack anyone who would dare to question you.

While Bernie Bros and AOC types whine and rant about Big Oil, Big Pharma, and whatever other Big, Big College has far exceeded all others in the rate of increase in price. But the biggest supporter of the Leftist Libs are College educated white women so FJB is paying off his base.

Putting out a dumpster fire by pouring billions of dollars of cash on it. Gotta fix the root causes first then work on "forgiveness" issues.

The government gave $200k to some green haired person to pay for a degree in intersectional drum circles with a gender queer emphasis at some Ivy league SJW indoctrination school so now taxpayers have to pick up the tab because, surprisingly, you only qualify for a minimum wage job as a Starbucks barista with such an education.

Don't forget to add two more wing tanks and wear your scarf.

Sign of a losing debate: critiquing the means of debate vice the arguement itself 😉

Oh wow, he used the big font and even some ALL CAPS. A sure sign of winning the debate!

This is what the money is spent on, to knee-cap Vlad’s army and defend a free and independent people from unwarranted aggression. If we can’t even spend money to literally stop Russian tanks from streaming into a European capital, I mean… Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦

🤨 we're not just giving Ukraine $3B...

I personally wouldn’t spend money you don’t really have to go anywhere past your PPL. PPL is good enough to show you actually enjoy flying and are teachable. We’ve hired several people with single digit flying hours. Apply everywhere and don’t enlist in the ANG, too old to start playing that game.

Great post Danger. Just wanted to highlight this one part directed at a general audience…a big YMMV, but I punted airlines for a while due to this belief. But reality is even if you’re flying a “full” schedule of say 16 days, that’s 2 weeks of a month you’re doing 0% work, not even getting texts about work. Now let’s throw in the thousands of games you can play in the airlines schedule/money wise that can reduce that work-money ratio significantly in your favor. It’s worth considering what “home between airline trips” is compared to “home while working for the AF.” And FWIW, there are tons of schedules out there that are not some heinous 5 on/2 off, repeat…unless you’re in the regionals. To be clear, not a spear at your personal plan or your reasons (I think they’re great), but more just putting this out there for guys like past me. Talk to your airline bros before immediately passing on the idea because “I don’t want to be gone from home all the time.” It’s far more nuanced than that.

I'm more shocked that the Marine 1 crews wear bags. I'm pretty sure an ICBM could be inbound and I'd still have to change into blues to fly any Top 5 mission, let alone POTUS.

By excellent you mean an aircraft that is still dwarfed by a C-5 and is slow as a strat airlifter, and destroys the dirt airfields it lands on when performing the tac role. Good all purpose aircraft but not great at any one thing.

Six additional National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) with additional munitions for NASAMS; Up to 245,000 rounds of 155mm artillery ammunition; Up to 65,000 rounds of 120mm mortar ammunition; Up to 24 counter-artillery radars; Puma Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and support equipment for Scan Eagle UAS systems; VAMPIRE Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems; Laser-guided rocket systems; Funding for training, maintenance, and sustainment. Source: https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3138105/nearly-3-billion-in-additional-security-assistance-for-ukraine/ Bashi don't be so naive to think that we would just hand $3B in cash and say "go have fun." The USAI package absolutely makes sense and is aligned to both our and Ukraine's interests. Even looking at the $40B total aid, that's comparatively about 5% of the annual DoD budget, and easily the most direct bang for our buck at the moment. Throwing a fit over $3B being used how it is...you're the only ignorant one here.

Also…do you know what money laundering actually is? Can you explain how military aid sent to Ukraine could possible be structured as a way to churn ill-begotten profits from an illegal enterprise through a legitimate business in order for that money to appear “clean” to tax authorities? Because that’s what money laundering is.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/23/us-to-send-3-billion-in-aid-to-ukraine-as-war-hits-6-months-00053318 3 billion more to ukraine. i'd venture to guess we have no fucking clue where that money is going/being spent. what's the goal here? color me skeptical...

sorry smells fishy. seems like a money laundering operation on steroids. after the waste in iraq and afghanistan and the BS they pulled during COVID, our government has lost all trust. time for accountability.