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I'm voting Trump because I mostly approved of his policies while POTUS. I won't vote for Harris because I totally disapprove of the Biden-Harris policies. See, it's easy to make a decision without making excuses.

Ok, thanks for the explanation. So your issue is that you took his statement seriously. I took his statement as tongue in cheek. I find the lawfare conducted against him as far more threatening to our constitutional republic than a few joking tweets. So yes, I think we're pretty far apart on this issue.

A formation of MC’s… ironic coming from him since he, you know, wanted to kill formation.

Of course this is a response from someone who gets called out for their BS—you were also called out similarly a while back as well. But again, you recently said that we should be concerned that Trump has said he’ll terminate the Constitution…but then afterwards you admit that it will never happen. So why should I be concerned about something that you and I both agree will never happen? However we look at it, the odds are extremely likely that either Trump or Kamala will be the next President, so of course I’m going to vote for the one who I believe has better policies/screws me the least. All that “Trump is a fascist” stuff is just hyperbole nonsense.

I mean, I won't lie, I wouldn't mind this if it helped catch the asshole I saw the other day that drove off after causing a crash because they were weaving in and out of traffic and ran someone off the road. BUT....I understand slippery slopes and all. Ya, unless you live out in sticks, you're probably on some camera anytime you're outside of the house (and even sometimes inside), even in your back yard. Look at how many incidents have been witnessed thanks to ring cameras (SWA low in Chicago, NFL players parents house explosion, etc...). They already canvas the neighborhood for these videos, but I'm not sure I like the idea of them just tapping into them all without approval. I have no doubt it will play out as a "do it for the children" or "if it saves one life," type of argument.

Amen. And not to be a prick, but why is he entitled to get moved to another job as a 3 star? It didn’t go well in charge of a MAJCOM, that’s it. Retirement time. Thanks for your service.

I didn't say it wasn't retarded. Try reading the post a little slower for comprehension.

Absolute bull$hit. If Kamala had ever suggested “terminating the constitution,” you would be appalled and outraged. And you know it. There is zero chance you’d respond with “well, she says a lot of off-the-cuff dumb things” (which is absolutely true). ….. “she’s not really going to do it.” GMAFB You make excuses for Trump because he’s your guy. Period, end of story.

The T-7 is easier to fly than the T-38, but it is still is a fast mover. FWIW, I think IPT to T-7 a dumb idea. AETCs risks were all about losses to production but never anything about students morting themselves. There are also a lot of MAF dudes (no offense to them) making these decisions that have never flown fast jets in their life. And hindsight, for those of us who know you, your writing style doxx’d you years ago. hah

For someone who talks about reading comprehension you fell short of my expectations. It was implied in my last comment that yes, that was a shitty tweet, but I did not care because my focus was on policies (and an acknowledgement his rash tweet was impossible to execute). That's not making excuses, it's prioritizing actions over words when judging others. Something I do with everyone in my life. I'm not understanding your point; are you saying you do not support candidates unless you agree with everything they've ever tweeted or said? I'd rather somebody speak plainly and say dumb shit periodically than be a scripted chameleon afraid to engage the public like our current commander-in-chief.

A slightly scary but potentially good use of that would be an Amber Alert. Suddenly every recent model year car on the road is looking for that license plate, kidnappers wouldn't get very far. If you are in public, you have to assume you're on camera these days. Even on your own property, there is limited privacy as police can legally sit somewhere else with a telephoto lens or fly a drone over your property. Will be really interesting to see when a drone case gets to the Supreme Court.

Here's the problem green suiters never seem to understand about this tired "contractor deus ex machina" COA. Every.single.time the question gets posed in the real world (and it has, ad nauseam) it boils down to the same self-evident retort: "Where and for how much?". And the answer continues to be the same: "No thanks." The contractor undergraduate training pipedream cannot be scaled to the requirement, unless and until you get rid of the unholy Trinity: Laughlin, Columbus and Vance. I'd give details of what it takes to staff the place, but I don't want to doxx myself, plus I'm not even sure some of the stuff I've dealt with is fully JTR-kosher anyways, so 1 2 3 4 fifth. "Senator, that hooker was dead when I got to the gangbang....." 😄 BL, it is my lived experience that what you people want, cannot be had for what your bosses are willing to pay. A few townie-married check o the month types willing to teach "back waivered" UPT in a Grob are not going to save this enterprise. If you don't move the enterprise to metro USA, that COA is DOA. Reality. There's zero political will to move XL and CB. Reality. The number you get is equal to however many green bags you can non-volunteer to do the job for 3 years at a time + the aggregate cost of 7-day opts. Reality.

@SpeedOfHeat Nice try. He’s not my guy, in fact I really wish he wasn’t the nominee. But here we are and once again, I will vote for the better policies even when I don’t love the person behind the policies. I believe Kamala’s track record and proposed future actions are a disaster. Don’t really care about her as a person - I’m not voting against her, I’m voting against her policies. If I wanted to be emotional about it, I could make a very long list of stupid and irrational statements and actions she has attached to her. Don’t act like any politician is without that baggage.

This just doesn't make sense when you say it out loud. What could be a *more* correct tool for an evaluator to evaluate the performance and compliance of an aviator than... an evaluation ride? If the Form 8 is being used as a career trajectory proxy, that's not on the evaluator, that's on leadership. Look, I get it, no one likes being the bad guy and putting a mark on someone's record. But the CAF mentality of saving all evaluation downgrades for the debrief instead of the form 8 is in itself invalidating the entire concept of the form 8 evaluation, and thus allowing it to be used for non-evaluation purposes. It also ensures that there's no way for someone looking over the records to effectively stratify pilots based on their actual ability in the cockpit. And this also ignores the very obvious assumption that in skitzo's example, the squadron was operating under the construct that you are suggesting (debrief, don't document), and yet were not following the regulations to the point that pilots weren't even following them with a majcom evaluator. The bro Network has limitations, and predictable outcomes. The problem in AMC was not that evaluators gave out Q2/Q3s when pilots were deficient during an evaluation. Believe me, the fighter pilots might forget that they are getting the top students from most pilot training classes, but in the KC-135 we absolutely were not. So you have far more deficient airmanship to deal with, and the evaluation is exactly where you would like to see that documented. The problem in AMC was commanders using Q3s in order to punish pilots for things they were doing, unintentionally and normally, on regular flights. But saying that the form 8 checkride isn't the right spot to document someone failing to follow the regs during an evaluation seems a little... forced. Especially when the squadron was warned ahead of time about the emphasis item, and the pilot in question was supposed to be the apex squadron instructor.

Yeah, great in theory, except in practice what you are describing is how complacency festers. There's always an excuse for why this rule isn't that important or you don't really have to follow that reg, or yeah maybe you're supposed to do it that way but does it really matter? Complacent squadrons with mishaps don't consciously create an environment that is ripe for catastrophe. There isn't some dipshit who walks in saying "I can't wait to break the rules and eventually lead to calamity." I don't say this as some evaluator who had a boner for downgrading people. I say this as someone who is reflexively anti-authoritarian and always looking for a reason to do something differently. And that little shit adds up in your brain and builds the habit pattern of excusing regulatory deviance. Then when something goes wrong, or you screw something up, or something unplanned puts you in a position where the easier answer is to violate or keep violating the regulation, that habit pattern kicks in. It only has to kick in for a few minutes or seconds to put you in a position you would have assumed prior to the flight you wouldn't find yourself in. I remember this conflict when stabilized approach criteria came out. Maybe you've been able to shake the bonds of human nature, but the rest of us mortals are very much susceptible to all the things that created the need for these regulations in the first place. It is the literal function of the evaluator to enforce the regulations as they are written, and as we all remember from training, these regulations are written in blood. Including the blood of whatever dipshit had his finger degloved because he was wearing a wedding ring. Expecting the evaluators to have a secondary set of unwritten regulations that discriminate between "queep" rules and the ones that actually matter is easy to say with a beer in your hand, but very difficult to do when you're the one enforcing the standards. When I got downgraded on my T-6 instructor check ride for taking my mask off right after takeoff, it wasn't the evaluator's fault. I was the dummy. Does that mean guys should be sent to an FEB for wearing a wedding ring on a regular flight? Obviously not, considering I don't think pilots should be punished for uncharacteristic mistakes that might result in damage to the aircraft or person either. Sometimes you just have a hard landing. If it's not a trend, just debrief it. But if you can't play the game with an evaluator then it's very difficult to imagine that same person isn't applying their own layer of judgment subconsciously to all sorts of regulations day-to-day. Again, I speak from experience, not as the judge and jury. And it's not a moral judgment on that person. There are stupid rules. The real question is, are you violating the rule because it's keeping you from accomplishing the mission, or just because you think it's dumb/inconvenient? In my experience 99.9% of the time it's the latter, and while that may absolutely be true, the obvious follow-up question is "why not just take the fucking ring off?" It's funny, as I get dangerously close to 40 I finally understand why the majors and lieutenant colonels in the squadron all wore the damn reflective belt when we were on the flight line in Bagram. When I was younger and dumber and always looking for a fight I just thought they were sellouts or too afraid of getting in trouble. Now I realize that as you get older and more boring, which I absolutely am, you simply perform a more logical calculation: Is the reflective belt actually stopping me from doing anything in any way? No? *shrug* I guess I'll wear it then, not my circus, not my clowns. Anyway that's a really long-winded way of saying that the purpose of a majcom evaluator is literally to make sure *all* of the rules are being followed, and anybody flying with them should be smart enough to know that. And if you can't understand that, it's not the evaluator with their head up their ass. It's the job of the DO, the squadron evaluator, and the instructor pilots to determine whether or not a pilot is failing at the actual "important" shit. If you're waiting for a majcom evaluator to make sure you can perform the basic squadron mission, things have already gotten pretty bad.

@brabus I think we're on the same page. I'll make up my mind on election day and pray for God to give our country some help. We shouldn't suffer because a bunch of terds floated to the top. The cool thing about the US is we only have to deal with a bad president for four years. Everyone has a vote. May the rest of the election year be less crazy. God Bless America!

They couldn’t just find him a random desk job in the Pentagon while he awaited retirement? Instead they have to go poison an already cynical and queep ridden organization holding about a third of our future officers? Slife definitely protected his own here.

Do you think he was actually unaware of the plea deal? I find it hard to believe SecDef was not briefed routinely about a case this big. I think he knew about and blessed the plea deal and his revocation is purely a reaction to public sentiment 94 days before an election.

Trump says a lot of off the cuff dumb things. Also, you’re an idiot if you think he is actually going to try and terminate the constitution.

Gotta be a shitty life to be a shitbag going against Israel. No safe haven ever. Love it.

Second that. As the boat guy, make sure people give you gas money. Not sure what condition the lake is in currently. However, I loved Laughlin. Going in as a guard guy knowing I won't get stuck there was an added bonus though. Theres been a smattering of new businesses opening up in Del Rio, so you've got that. Mesquite Creeks membership (if they still do it) is a must if you enjoy some brews with the classmates. 2 free beers a day when you go in. They've always got some fun events going on, as well as downtown Del Rio. Laughlin itself is meh. The golf course is flat and dry, but fun enough. Used to be good fishing in its ponds. Not sure if they have water anymore. Club XL is too expensive. Not bad once in a while though. They have some fun events once in a while on base. Just take advantage of what they offer. A lot of times they give you beer for volunteering for stuff which is fun. If you can, get out of the dorms and get a house with some dudes from your class. Makes it way more fun in my opinion. Then, when several people in your class have houses, do a house crawl on a weekend. Great times. Austin and San Antonio aren't too far of a drive. Big Bend is, but I've heard it was worth it. Wish I had gone. As far as UPT itself. The others have nailed it. Always be ready for whats next, but dont reach too far with the studying. I usually stayed in the flight room for 10-12 hours everyday even though we weren't on formal release for T6s, because I studied better there, and didn't wanted to be available for my classmates. Most of us did, and we had a super tight knit flight room. I'll second that boldface advice. I did one every night when I got home to have ready, and to help study. Like the others said, if you use your time effectively during the day, you can actually relax when you get home for the night. Be a good bro and you'll be fine.

Today is 1 August... On this date in 1955, Tony LeVier went for a taxi test on Groom Lake in a new Lockheed aircraft that had yet to be flown. However, the aircraft had different plans, and before he knew it, Tony was airborne in what was the unplanned 1st flight of the U-2. So today, the pressure-breathing, pressure-suited prima donnas celebrate 69 years above 69,000 feet. And tomorrow, over 25% of all living U-2 pilots on the planet will gather for an exceptional Homecoming to celebrate the solo flights of what could be the last class of U-2 trainees. Hail Dragons

If I sent word out through informal channels to Sq CCs, DOs and Weapons shops that too many pilots are pressing weapons abort criteria, buffoning instrument procedures or failing to comply with published regs regarding wearing rings and then I show up on an announced check ride only to find pilots are pressing weapons abort criteria, buffoning instrument procedures, and failing to comply with published regs regarding wearing rings, I'd have no problem complying with checkride grade criteria and grading appropriately.

T-6 line IP here, please submit the AGEP surveys (or whatever they're called now...) to actually document the noted deficiencies from UPT grads. Thats the only truth data the Bobs will take at face value to increase the hideously slim amount of actual flight time to earn wings.

I’ve got $1 that says they’re trying to run the clock and bring him back after USAFA. We’re already in an episode of Black Mirror, why not make it a little more dystopian?