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welcome to BODN🍻

When you two are done giving each other a reach-around… Sent from my iPad using Baseops Network mobile app

We were doing a lot of cargo only flights during the COVID debacle and the topic of cargo vs pax came up often. The general consensus was it doesn't suck. No pax and no flight attendants made for very peaceful and quiet flights.

When the other candidate continues to question the legitimacy of the election, I would say that is more than hyperbole. When did Trump say storm the capital, please show me that. Now if you want to fault him for his comments about the VP, for saying "stop the steal", or for not being a leader and stepping forward sooner to stop what was happening I completely agree, but when you fabricate facts you lose all credibility. "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard." AGAIN, I've said i don't support Trump, and as I predicted he would use the Twitter files to concoct another lunatic rant which includes suspending the Constitution. Here is what I simply don't understand, if all the warriors on this forum swore an oath to the Constitution how can you be so nonchalant about the possibility that an American Presidential Election was influenced and likely tampered with by a big tech company, and that elements of the FBI played a part in that. Do you hate the Orange man that much that you will simply turn a blind eye? For the 1000th time I want Trump to go away, but I want justice and the integrity of our system more than anything.

100% right. The FBI had in their possession proof of multiple felonies. Instead of investigating or prosecuting, they hid those crimes and even deceived tech companies into thinking it was Russian disinformation so they would silence investigative journalists. This is deeply partisan criminal behavior, and clearly not an isolated incident. We have the largest and most advanced law-enforcement agency in the history of the world orchestrating third party First Amendment suppression, at massive scale, to manipulate citizens and change election outcomes. Is there a more serious scandal in American history?

Have you ever heard of 230? Of course there is a case when they hide behind 230. As for the FBI, it should be far more than criticism, the depths of rot are actually frightening. Just curious, have you looked at anything Elon has released? By name they have the FBI agent that met with Big Tech weekly SPECIFICALLY said there would be an October surprise and it would have something to do with Hunter Biden. They knew about the laptop, they knew it was real yet they put their fingers on the scales that at least impacted the election. I don't care which side of the aisle you are on, that should make your blood boil as an American.

Fact - Big Tech suppressed the laptop story. Fact - The FBI was meeting with Big Tech Weekly Of course you are not nearly as sure, because it didn't happen to your side. Please tell me one negative story about trump or his kids that was suppressed by Big Tech. Dear god, do you actually believe what you just typed. First, as you well know the attention span of the average American is at an all time low. Most Americans now get their news from social media. Additionally, we are completely politically bifurcated, it is the independents who decided most elections and the independents didn't know to go to the NY Post. Not only did they stop users from posting the story, they stopped it from being DM'd or shared on both Twitter and Facebook. Seriously brother, you are a smart dude, you have to understand how this suppressed the story. A story that was TRUE! Here is the money shot, you can't even comprehend that something nefarious might have happened. Sorry brother but I want to know the truth. Put aside your hate for the orange man and think about the long-term impacts on democracy and our way of governance. So flippant about the implications, anything for victory? As long as the Big Guy gets his 10% and you get rid of the orange man all is well...really sad, REALLY sad.

Recommend avoiding anything Juan Brown/ Dan Gryder related if you are looking for meaningful knowledge or analysis.. I have absolute faith that the professionals will get the appropriate information out in due time, but I know it’s certainly hard to avoid speculation. CAF will come out of this tragedy a better and safer organization - still an absolute tragedy this mishap occurred.

Yeah, I want some dude "who just snapped" and attempted to kill someone in what can be a high stress occupation complete with the occasional personality conflict in a tight enclosed area. What could possibly go wrong?

Because we disagree on the facts of what happened, just like many on the right do with Russian election interference in 2016. State actors, parties, corporate interests, lobbying groups, etc. have always influenced American elections...it's what you do in a democracy! Ideally you limit foreign interference almost entirely and you try to keep domestic political wrangling to a manageable level and within understood and reasonable rules. Good people can disagree what those are, e.g. dark money, campaign finance reform, fairness doctrine, foreign ownership of media companies, etc. Tech companies and especially social media companies do hold a lot of power over the collective conversation, not unlike traditional media. There should be standards of acceptable conduct, I totally agree on that. Is what Twitter did a gross violation of standards of acceptable conduct? I'm not nearly as sure as you are. The Hunter laptop story was widely reported and available freely and openly to anyone who cared to type www.nypost.com into their browser windows. The government in no way suppressed The New York Post or banned people from reading their reporting, reposting it, talking about it, or developing their own stories based on their reporting. Look at China especially or Iran or Russia for examples of true state repression of information, it's many orders of magnitude different than what you see here or in other Western capitalist democratic societies. Both campaigns in 2020 made requests to social media companies (legacy media companies) when they believed stories published about their candidate were misleading, unfair or false. Sometimes the media and tech companies put out corrections or disclaimers or retractions and sometimes they did not. I do not agree that "the Twitter files" is some smoking gun bombshell. This story about Hunter and his laptop has been around now for more than two years, and no made-up GOP polling (e.g. MRC) should convince you that the story has more legs than it has received in the open information environment. Their "polling methodology" of saying that oh if only people had known about this story (faints back onto a strategically placed couch), Trump would have gotten 300+ EVs is incredibly laughable. We don't need to speculate about a past event, it happened! We know the results for real, not just for make-believe! The GOP talked quite a bit about Hunter and his laptop at the end of the campaign and Joe Biden still won the 2020 Presidential election. It wasn't the October Surprise some were hoping for and I'm sorry that didn't work out for y'all the way Hillary's emails did - better luck next time. That's how patriotic Americans who are all working more or less toward the same goals (being a strong, prosperous American nation that is a key leader in a peaceful and cooperative world) can approach this topic. 🇺🇸

Watched this a bunch, and I've yet to hear him call for a riot, coup, or insurrection. Now, it's some Dem's turn to post the part where he does. I'll wait.

I must’ve missed it in there: Where’s the part where she advocated suspension of the constitution, encouraged her supporters to storm the capitol, and suggest hanging the VP? C’mon man, yeah Hillary sucks (or maybe doesn’t….have to ask Bill), but Trump is objectively on another level of awful. While I disagree with a lot of the tone & hyperbole you insist on constantly posting about the Biden admin, I can understand why you don’t like him. So support a better conservative candidate rather than tacitly defend Cheetos for brains with “whatabout” arguments.

Your post reads like an invitation to becoming better-informed. If that's an authentic feeling, you might consider checking out this podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/all-things-re-considered-with-peter-boghossian/id1650150225 It's from a (previously) liberal professor who has witnessed the change in tone and tenor in the conversation that has taken place inside American universities (and bled over) over the last 10 years. He was one (of many) who have been subjected to the increasingly illiberal attitudes and actions that are finding aid and comfort in our society. At times it has some hokey elements, but overall it is sharp and on point. Boghossian and his co-host correctly identify the broader trend in some of our cultural institutions (i.e. NPR) that are working to enable such illiberal attitudes, that being: lies are now espoused and propagated as truth, and these lies are in turn used to enable illegitimate power. He and his co-host pick through numerous stories and how they were reported on NPR. He then contrasts their reporting with what actually happened and lays bare the striking contrast between those two things. A podcast with this type of meta-reporting is something which was sorely overdue, and deserves much accolade. Case in point: the Kyle Rittenhouse saga. NPR worked overtime casting that story in a false light. They systematically dive into the details, how easy it was to get it right, and how NPR got it so exceptionally wrong: to listen to NPR is to become misinformed. Their reporting is conducted in a soothing, breathy tone, and in delectable, oh so perfectly-enunciated English, but it is largely a disinformation network. Your complaint about Republican over-focus on "dog whistle" issues is fair, but it's also wholly incomplete. There are real constitutional issues that were on trial in the court of public opinion, which are not diminished by the other "issues" you raised. NPR played (and plays) a major part in the mosaic of propaganda that makes up our information space. For my part in the mid 2010s, I underwent the same transformation as espoused in many of the show's featured vignettes with regard to NPR. I listened to it everyday on the way to work - yes, I am an ex-NPR acolyte - but somewhere in there it just became insufferable. I couldn't point at any one thing, but my belief is that their transformation coincided directly with the 2016 presidential election. Wrapping up: it's all well and good if you don't believe the "media is stacked against us" argument, but there's a source for you that lays it out in black and white. To all my conservative friends: it's a good podcast in that it goes far deeper than just shouting at the TV and yelling "get off my lawn." In short, it's actual reporting.

Hitting a drone shouldn't have put him in the same piece of sky as the B-17. It may have caused him not to look for the B-17 with a belly check, or further distracted him, but he was already in the wrong place at the wrong time. Also, the preliminary NTSB report makes no mention of this (and they would have this data by now). It's likely fake news.

If you want to criticize the FBI, go ahead, but you've got no case complaining about Twitter/'BigTech' or the DNC. You're upset that the DNC was trying to manipulate things in their favor? That's literally their reason for existence. Same as the RNC. They're private organizations and can do whatever they like within bounds of the law. Is it scummy? Sure. Is being a scumbag illegal? Unfortunately not. As for Twitter, we all know conservative Citizens United has established that corporations have the same rights as a person when it comes to political support. They're free to write a billion dollar check to a SuperPAC of their choice for the expressed intent of electing their preferred candidate. Running a business in a way that subtly supports a particular candidate or party is much less direct than monetarily funding a campaign, and it's just as legal. So let's not throw terms like 'freedom of speech' around where they don't belong. You know damn well MSNBC/Fox News/etc run their organizations with a policy of the same kind of "information suppression" so why are you singling out 'BigTech' as a boogeyman? Do laws need to change to account for the information age? Maybe. Is Citizens United kicking themselves for setting a precedent that currently favors their political opponents (through support of pinko commie lib media), probably. But there is no scandal with the DNC or 'BigTech'. The only thing that's clear is that last week Trump, for any slow learners that hadn't figured it out a decade ago, literally and explicitly declared himself an enemy of the Constitution. And since that's a bit of a conflict with the commissioning oath nobody on this forum will ever sing his praises again. Right....guys?

So…yes. Because if they didn’t fly fast sometimes, imagine how slow their brains would be then

You must be exhausted looking for someone, with a (D) after their name, who makes any of those policies a priority. How do you even mine that information out of a candidate who’s party has been tirelessly combatting the horrific racism of daylight savings time, ensuring their neighbors, in the PTA, are on terrorist watch lists, and isn’t hopelessly perplexed by the complexities of X and Y chromosomes??

We did one time and came back to our apartment early to find other kids that were not ours running around our home and our child being neglected. Lady double booked us and didn't want to admit it so she thought she would hide other family's kids at our place. Will never do that again. Came highly recommended, no criminal past, etc.... Just an example how all of that can be meaningless. Its not about whether you can or can't find anyone. I just don't care. It doesn't bother me if someone has successfully repented. That's not an overnight process and certainly doesn't happen the moment they're released from prison. But like I said, some of the most amazing contributions to society have been made by individuals actively seeking redemption. You're all jumping to the conclusion that this person committed homicide. The vast majority of felonies are drug related or assault. The assault charges are often complicated as well. We'd like to believe it was some dude who snapped and pummeled someone but it's usually a bar fight or some aggressive shoving that someone didn't like. Not that those things are bad but those are circumstances that are easy for most people to imagine themselves in. Especially in a society that feels strongly protective of their family and loved ones. (Yeah most of your self defense scenarios are not going to fly legal muster, especially in many liberal states where there are expectations to retreat, no stand your ground statutes.) I don't really find anything all that special about the job of flying airplanes that I wouldn't be able to trust the vast majority of people who are appropriately trained to do it. Yeah you can have discussions about judgement and decision making. But I've literally flown with dozens of pilots who have made absolutely terrible decisions either flying or in another aspect of their life, and they were still allowed to fly. Lets also not forget we live in a society that has deemed it ok to weaponize law enforcement to meet ends on political and personal vendettas; as well as the fact that legal, moral and ethical are all different concepts and rarely overlap neatly.

I love the number of PA announcements my brown boxes require.

Luckily I'm already at Wright-Pat, but this is different than the flight physical I already did that took an entire day? It seems like that's something they should do before they make pilot selections, but I did not know that, so thank you for the info!

Lol. I agree with you, I just had to put this picture FLEA made to use.

Kinda of like when Hillary continued to refuse to accept the results of the election.

They have a whole series of these. https://youtu.be/C4QFmBlpnNw

I get he's vice chairman of the joint chiefs, but seems like CSAF would have been a better fit regardless of his place in the JCS pecking order.

I don't normally allow anyone to watch my children so your point is moot. Regardless, people should be afforded the opportunity to redeem trust and gain confidence in society again. Child sex offenders have extremely low recidivism versus other types of crimes. Also lots of people permanently stigma'd to a list because their 17 to GF's parents didn't like her dating a 19 yo. Everything requires context and evolution of trust. You might not higher a prior child porn addict to be a school teacher but that shouldn't stop them from pursuing law, adult medicine, or even being a pilot. We tend to be stricter as a society with sex crimes because we see them as a perversion of impulse where the person is incapable of self control. However, that isn't the case with the vast majority of felonies and there is nothing specifically impulse triggering about flying an airplane. I work with a lot of justice impacted veterans now. We have hundreds of felons come through our national veterans treatment courts each year. The vast majority are decent people who are guilty of extremely poor decision making and often became entangled with drugs and substance abuse as a means with coping with some very hard realities that the DoD and VA will never do anything to help you for. The vast majority recognize their actions caused hurt to some people and they're truly remorseful for that. With the right guidance and mentorship most go on to be stalwart contributors to our society. Many of the best services to society were provided by people giving gratitude for the forgiveness they were given following something heinous they had done they were sorry for.

That's a good point. One for tyranny up close, and one for tyranny a little farther away.

Personally I don't care if they're a former felon. You can risk analyze that all you want but the data also says that felons are more likely to recidivate when they are denied gainful employment and reintegration into society. Who the fuck is going to go from a white collar employee, lawyer, or pilot to being a lawn care worker? Without the concept of redemption in our culture it means no one is better than their worst day. That's a sad world because it ignores the fact that many of us grow as humans and become more phenomenal the longer we are on earth.

Thanks for the reference. I can't speak to what happened in the briefing as I wasn't there and have avoided asking anyone about it that was. Russell has been an Air Boss for quite some time. His dad has been doing it for decades, and is one of the most well known people in the entire airshow industry. I have worked with both and consider them both friends, especially the father. The entire thing saddens me deeply and it's best if I leave it at that.

That would be incorrect.

You know what would be revolutionary though.. if we actually buy the number of them we said we will

Killer scores dude! What MDS are you currently on?

I'll answer this a different way. I hated everything about active duty. I loved every job. Its a bit psychotic but that's what it was. I loved being a student, and I hated formal release. Hated being a flight commander, and I found it rewarding to lead a few people. Loved the schools. ACSC was a dream - many of you haters have been mislead. School was out by 11 and on the golf course. Loved SAMS that came next. One of the best experiences I've had in the military. Hated DO. Worked for a shitty boss. Loved/hated squadron command. But one of the other best experiences I had in the military. Hated the system. Absolutely hated it. It drove me out. To me the system turned out to be not what I described what I loved above. It became all about PC, get the metrics green even if you have to blatantly lie, the mission isn't really what we're focused on right now, etc. Drove me the out.

The Dude and Spicoli live on!! 400198476_RealNewswecanallbenefitfromboatlifeyachtlifeDavidLevkowitzDavidLevkowitzOriginalaudio.mp4

Slightly different spin on this. Been in 22 years, almost all of that time has been as a part timer (I only take orders for deployments generally), and i've been an airline guy for the last 10+ years. I love going down range and doing the mission, but I absolutely regret going on orders nearly every time I do so. I just started a 5 month activation order and I've worked more in the last two weeks, then I worked in the last 2 months (combined) at Delta. I really don't know how guys do this shit for an entire career...painful! Very few of the "improvements" the AF has made in my career, has made life easier. DTS, AROWS, MyEval, JMPS (long live CFPS/Falcon view lol), AFFORGEN...DUBYA TEE EFF!!! It seems like nearly every time we try to do things, it's one self-imposed (big AF) road block after another. It's like the AF just sits around and dreams up shit to make life harder for the individual. I'm retiring this summer and I can't wait. I'll miss the flying but not much else. I'll maintain most of the camaraderie because nearly my entire squadron lives within a 4 sq mile area...my 2-3x weekly coffee/bourbon stops at bros houses will continue. Now get off my lawn!

Heard that the board was able to find more slots than originally forecasted but that’s it. No exact numbers.

I've seen good ones and I've seen bad ones. Like most positions of trust, the best ones were though who never wanted to be there but were put there anyway, and then stood up and took responsibility anyway. The best ones violently advocated for their juniors, and for enlisted in general. They ensured that our expensive visits to the NTTR weren't just to train our ABMs or EWOs, but also our 1A3s or 1A8s. Likewise, they often tried to filter pay issues and mpf issues themselves before the CC needed to get involved. Sometimes this meant putting on an angry face and putting boots up asses. The REALLY REALLY good ones also found creative ways to mentor CGOs without appearing to be in their chili. Just subtle comments, or inputs. Nothing overbearing, and very very nuanced. I never felt like I wasnt in control with these ones but rather was reassured I was making the correct decisions.

Simple, their guy won. What’s the harm in a little help from social media companies if it prevented DJT from remaining in office. It’s all okay because it was done to “preserve” democracy.

Pinned by blancolirio Good to know. This is what I read. Granted it's on a youtube comment but he seems pretty adamant Matt 1 day ago Juan, just to give some further context to your excellent reporting, the Air Boss was brand new. This was his first air show as the "Air Boss" and is the son of the former air boss who had retired the year before after a lengthy career as the Wings over Dallas Air Show air boss. According to pilots that were in the briefing prior to the show that day, they report that the briefing was lacking in various substantive and vital information such as altitude deconfliction yet no one including a FAA representative that was in attendance raised any concern about the inadequatenes of the briefing by this new air boss.

Still not buying the whole “media is stacked against us” argument. The problem with today’s conservatives is that they’ve decided the only way to win is to make sure their voters are perennially pissed off enough to show up at the polls. They prefer to fight boogeymen vs come up with a coherent platform. The media hates us, immigrants are taking your jobs and murdering you, Hillary’s emails, Hunter’s laptop, Slick Willy’s Oval Office hummer, CRT, pronouns, and on, and on, and on. Don’t you guys ever get tired of yelling at the TV? You know which Republican candidates reliably get independent and even Democratic voters to turn out for them? The ones who can actually articulate the policies they support vs just shitting on the other side to rile up the MAGA hats. Guys like Brian Kemp will win you elections because they can convince voters of all stripes that their way is better & they do it without continually insulting liberals or debasing themselves in the name of culture wars. Spend less time whining about your nephew’s man-bun or Rachel Maddow’s Adam’s apple and more time supporting good candidates & you might be surprised. And yes, I fully acknowledge that most of what I just said can be just as easily levied at Democrats. I wish there were better D candidates too. I just happen to lean on the side of thinking that the Ds have been slightly less bad than the Rs lately. The bar is low. It shouldn’t take too much effort to raise it.