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Showing content with the highest reputation on 09/19/2022 in all areas
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Why has fact-checking disappeared under Biden? | The Hill But of course, the Biden administration never lies. The border is secure, inflation is under control, food prices aren't rising, and Afghanistan was the greatest airlift in history.2 points
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No it wasn't, it was on the NYANG job board for like a couple weeks, i just happened to check that day for some reason.1 point
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Hopefully the family can use that to sue the contractor for wrongful death. The Air Force is immune to that lawsuit, but the contractors are on the hook.1 point
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I mean on the bright side the ambiguity has to have China very WTF!? right now.1 point
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Checking bogidope and milrecruiter is part of my morning routine, so I don’t think so. To be honest, I’m a little disappointed too, because I called and talked to someone at the 109AW for about 30 minutes or so less than a year ago, and they said they’d email me the next time they had a UPT board. To be fair, the person I spoke to also heavily implied that they’re really big on hiring internally, more so than the average guard squadron (according to them), so I’m also not too surprised at 109AW not advertising their board very widely.1 point
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Valid, and something that became readily apparent once inside the belly of the acquisition beast. Contractors are incentivized to "ship it" and get paid, regardless of quality. The USG (civilian employees and military members) try to put up guardrails and speed bumps, but when push comes to shove, the contractors win. And it's on the USG to hope for the best, pick up the pieces, and try to make things work. All of that, I accepted as part and parcel with the entire acquisitions ecosystem. However...... While the F-16 is a ~$25 mil a copy, and the ACES-II seat is ~$2mil a copy, the choices that made the difference between life and death in this case were on the order of tens of thousands of dollars. My experience was the USG civilians and uniformed personnel in the SPOs had little sway with the stuff involving big bucks. They could however move the needle significantly when the dollar values were small. Somewhere in the forest of cubicles at Wright Patt or Hill, some Item Manager, Equipment Specialist, or Engineer could have made some noise about the availability of the shorting plug. They could have pushed the issue to the forefront, and it sounds like it's enough of a low-buck part that a company like Teledyne might have found another source just to make the USG shut up. Or, someone at Teledyne might have even taken notice, recognized the issue as well, and taken up the flag inside their company. While the company is incentivized by the almighty dollar, there are a lot of worker-bees punching a clock at these companies who really believe in what they're doing for the warfighter. Same with the decisions on setting and subsequently extending the TCTO deadlines, and signing off on life extensions of the DRS. Someone with the USG who cares could have raised the red flag. A USG civilian could have refused to sign off on the extension. Everyone knows the trope about USG civilians being next to impossible to fire. There is very little standing in the way of those folks saying "No." I spent the better part of my 20s and 30s in the belly of the beast, and I've had a good bit of time to reflect on it all. The Air Force has a literal army of civilians that are supposed to be managing all of this stuff, along with a smaller contingent of uniformed members. They're spread throughout the SPOs, Depots, etc. There is a tremendous amount of Make Work, and it's all very much a jobs program. In amongst the deadwood, seat-warmers, and oxygen thieves, there are also a lot of good people, who want to do what's best, and really believe in what they're doing on a day-to-day basis. In amongst all the bullshit, every once in a great while, I got to see instances when something no shit really mattered. Events where technical decision making by a conference room full of pasty-faced nobody civilians had a real direct impact on people's lives. Real "figure out a way to fix the oxygen system or they'll die" Apollo 13 style shit. And I was always surprised. The bullshit got put aside, the bureaucracy was swept away, and Shit Got Done. If people were lucky, there were some back patting, and maybe a couple beers together after work. On rare occasion, six months later some people tangentially involved with it would get a meaningless award or two. Mostly though, the people who made the wins only had their own job satisfaction as a reward, but for those folks, it was enough. It's not like there was a Big Red Button on the wall that someone pressed and everyone switched from bullshit-mode to get-down-to-work mode. It was more the fact that, as a whole, you collectively had enough people that gave a shit, that they were able to generate a critical mass to make something happen when it really mattered. I spent ten years in that realm, and last turned in my badge about ten years ago. I watched the mass of the lets-get-it-done folks dwindle over my time, and I can only imagine it's continued to deteriorate. People retire or get sidelined. Merit no longer gets you promoted, and often it's not even political games that move you up anymore. The Drive for Diversity watered down a lot of the experience, up and down the org chart. Shouting matches over the proper technical solution used to be, not common, but not unheard of. Once it was resolved, the combatants would usually shake hands and go get lunch. That sort of thing would have you written up by HR now. I'm just bitter about my own experiences as a cog in the wheel, how bad the whole enterprise was, and how much I saw it get worse over time. Events like the Shaw crash just get me dwelling on it all. TL:DR: Contractors gonna contract, but I wonder if some cubicle-dwelling USG civilians cared enough and put their foot down, they could have prevented some of the "holes in the swiss cheese" of the Shaw crash.1 point
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The implosion of the Democratic message over this is stunningly fascinating......it is literally falling into shambles as the narrative can no longer logically outpace it's hypocrisy. I do not think AOC, Lightfoot, Bowser, others realize that as they bash the Republican party for doing this, the majority of Americans believe their message is resentful at the migrants and not at Republicans..... The ONLY way they could have played this and not done that would have been to accept the immigrants graciously, provide services, and not say a word about it. But the Republican governors totally outplayed them here recognizing that politicians can never keep their mouth shut... Personally, I'm very pro immigration. Especially after I spent the last year working with DoS and CIS and recognized what a disaster our immigration channels are. However, border state governor's are 100% correct. This is not only on their states and infrastructure to navigate this issue. It's going to take a whole country approach to it. And Biden is asleep at the wheel to come up with a comprehensive policy.1 point
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I'll bet that when the town council (or whatever passes for local government there) passed the "Sanctuary" thing, they never dreamed actual immigrants would ever show up. Maybe that should be called "Safe Hypocrisy"1 point
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https://apple.news/AskpqBgwBTwSZ79CZZsr42g Not a good time to be a pro-Russian puppet in the occupied territories. Also find it interesting that fighting has flared up again on the Armenia-Azerbaijan front. Meanwhile apparently Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are resolving old territorial disputes with tanks and heavy artillery; Russia doesn’t have the schilz to weigh in on their traditional sphere of influence (right across their border) that it did 9 months ago. Mr. Putin isn’t looking like the “strategic genius/very smart guy/chess master he was claimed by some to be in early January.1 point
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Narrative is collapsing. Lotta posters on here need to eat some serious crow. it’s only gonna get worse for the COVID crazies in the coming years.1 point
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Totally valid shot and putting the book in the Audible queue to be able to respond with comments based on reading the source material. My first impression from reading the reviews (from mostly conservative / nationalist leaning sites acknowledged) and the limited wiki entry on it is that it shows the position from the Left / Administrative-Planners that people are interchangeable widgets you just plug and play into societies and thru the magic of our ideals / values it will all work out. Not true, look at major European cities now and you see what mass uncontrolled migration into advanced economies that don't need large amounts of unskilled labor. Tents Cities on the streets of Paris and gangs of fighting age males formed in major cities From Paris Chechen gangs: Inside brutal Chechen drug wars where ‘maniac’ gangs barbecue rivals and terrorise streets with Kalashnikovs – The Sun Just opening your doors to the world is not a solution, there has to be a place for them to go into our economies, our societies and a destination culture that while accommodating does not bend itself to meet the new arrivals but allows them to bend to fit in with us, of late too many in our society want the opposite, that's a recipe for balkanization and increasing division. Putting aside the other arguments against Yglesias' idea, the vast majority of these people arrive with skills that qualify them for positions (manual labor, food processing, farm labor, etc...) in industries very soon to be automated Reference this Boston Robotics model: As quickly as physical media disappeared in the realm of music, movies, books, etc... human labor is about to do so in multiple industries. Bringing people in who are likely to become unemployable in the next 15-20 years is not a wise long term move.1 point