Leaderboard

RIP to Matt, if y'all can, please donate to help his family out. Luckily I just saw that the Special Operations Warrior Foundation will be taking are of all of his kids' educational expenses from here on out. SOWF is one of my absolute favorite charities to donate to and support, and I encourage you to do that too if you can.

The USG spent $6.13T in FY23. $69B of that went to Ukraine, sort of, because a significant portion went to our defense industry. If you think our budget problems are due to giving munitions to Ukraine, maybe you’ve been listening to too many clowns.

Will you morons just get a room already … for fucks sake

Yes, and zero (in the government spending component) would dramatically lower the GDP. We agree. And it's sad I need to add this, but not all govt spending is a loan. Taxation is the primary source. That's why government spending is in the GDP in the first place, because it is meant to capture the spending by the populace that was precluded through government taxation. If there was no deficit spending, this would actually be a fair measure, as taxation responds reliably to economic growth and contraction. Sure you did: "Growth is a measure of spending, if the gov spends, growth increases by definition." You weren't. Just pointing out another silly metric used to portray the economic reality in a politically favorable light. The secretary of Treasury. Good enough? “We’ve raised the interest-rate forecast,” Yellen noted Friday in an interview with Bloomberg News. “That does make a difference. It makes it somewhat more challenging to keep deficits and interest expense under control.” https://fortune.com/2024/05/25/deficit-debt-warning-janet-yellen-higher-rate-outlook-interest-expenses/ https://www.wsj.com/economy/central-banking/boj-wont-raise-rates-when-markets-are-unstable-deputy-gov-says-6f4bf962 Right, they just had to backtrack on future hikes after a whopping .25% hike. That screams stability. The Yen devaluing by 1/3 in a few years is perfect normal too. No, what's happening here is the normal people are talking about the actual economy using unambiguous terminology. You are attempting to convert the conversation into something more akin to academic economics. But the field of macroeconomics has been dead for decades. There's a reason investors don't lean on guys like Krugman to make money. Modern economics stopped being viable when it became a political tool to justify the utopian desires of elected fools. And no matter how many times the predictions are wrong, we just get more reasons why actually its very very complicated and you definitely can't use common sense. You've once again demonstrated this quite effectively.

Russian propaganda is directly influencing conservative media and indirectly influencing you if you think that specific 0.01% of the budget is the problem to focus on. Best ROR of any defense spending program ever. Because fuck Putin, that’s why.

You can go through the data here: https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/ About 20B is reserve deposits to purchase USD goods or services. The rest is real. You get the difference between real and financial, yeah?

@HeloDude Agreed, just like to make them actually articulate their viewpoint, but as expected, it was dodged via a re-direct/non-answer.

He’s a leftist who is (in a fancy way) suggesting that inflation was due to “corporate greed” vs a massive increase of the money supply without an associated economic growth (ie too many dollars chasing the same/fewer good and resources).

We’re probably free-ish now but trending in the wrong direction, they (the UK) are in the stick shaker we’re just a few knots above it, Jan 6 rioters and MI militia dudes entrapped by FBI would be some of our examples of not right what they were doing but Fed LE made it worse / exacerbated it Freedom is sometimes a shit sandwich you have to eat when you see people you disagree with / personally despise doing / saying lawful but awful things you hate but it’s better to eat that turd sandwich than the alternative Choir preaching complete Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ah yes, the AI chatbot with no actual point is back. Those of us humans with a budget already have the answer.

The UK was never a free country…neither are we.

I know you live in this weird world where the term, “total return on investment,” doesn’t exist, but yes in this case your original statement wasn’t in need of clarification it was a bold faced misstatement of truth. You implied we simply gifted them weapons (in this case F16s) like allowing a person to simply walk in and out of Costco with a full cart and not pay. That is in no way representative of what is going on with these aid bills and it’s damn sure not an accurate depiction of a bunch of allied air and ground forces paying premium dollar totals to accelerate replacement of the systems they are donating to the Ukrainians. To say nothing of the investment in our own industrial capacity when most would agree this rollercoaster will get worse before it gets better. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Flying instruments at 120kts in GA and at 300kts in a T-7 is a considerable jump. How many airline guys with a couple thousand hours have you seen struggle in a T-38? Will it work for a select few? Sure. But for 1500 a year...doubtful.

No matter F-35 delivered munition or 2 month prior delivery by Amazon, doesn't matter. What does matter is Iran was known as the safest of havens for terrorists and one of the Hamas leaders took the room temperature challenge and lost in Tehran. Israel has fully implemented the FO part of FAFO much to the dismay of the surviving dirtbags. Hopefully, more Hamas barbarians will get the invitation to meet Allah.

Maybe the solution lies in a Hollywood movie. Each aspiring USAF pilot gets matched to an old crusty vet that teaches them with stolen sim time til their dad is captured by the evil side, then they make a plan and steal a few planes and save the day. A leg-strapped cassette player is required in order to intimidate the evil side with Twister Sister.

They prefer to call it an innovative approach to student centric learning using a competency-based training method.....

I get it, the AF has 69 other issues but this is more important than it seems, it’s not just training officers to fly but training, evaluating and forming the mind set of who will be the leaders of the AF, if we phone it in for AMC, AFSOC, part of AFGSC, AETC as I guess some of these T-6 only studs will be FAIPs we need not be surprised when as we push thru the mass of studs thru this process, some of which will not be like the hand picked strong swimmers for these small group try outs, the likely problems we encounter Why is the Navy not giving up on an advanced ME trainer? The Army for their fixed wing qual is not cutting back hours. Why are the mins staying in place for ATP and other civ tickets? Even though they have more access to more and likely better advanced training devices, because flight hours matter, getting thru multiple phases of training matter, proving your skills in at least two different platforms matters Choir preaching and I know you understand the problem of half assing things If we really are this behind and don’t have the money then contract everything but a T-6 program to figure out who’s going single seat or crew. Get the big flight training programs like UND, ER, All ATPs, etc… close 1 of the SUPT bases, you’ll either save X millions and still get a better product than T-6 only or kick the hornets nest for Congress to come up with supplemental funds or allow the AF to divest programs to fund I’m all for out of the container ideas to do it better or be additive to UPT ref the program the Lt attended but ultimately it is about a year of training, X hours of flight and simulator training and academics, no matter how much advanced tech we throw at it, the studs today are about the same as the studs of the past in terms of intelligence and skills, they’re going to absorb it at about the same rate and you’re gonna need to observe them going thru about the same number of events to see if they’re who you want flying AF iron, we can teach a bit faster individual tasks but the overall building of airmanship still requires that time in the air Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

They aren’t the only ones… It’s insane the number of military aircraft with dual keyed GPS/INS that somehow we didn’t find the money to get approved in the national airspace. We also deliberately leave Copter RNAV points out of DAFIF so even if we were approach certified the points aren’t contained in the non corruptible database. “Oh cool we can enroute RNAV in VMC… thanks I was pretty much doing that anyway it’s called flying.” Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Recommend reading Operation Pineapple Express by Lt Col Scott Mann (ret.). First hand account of a group led by prior Green Berets to get former Afghan SOF/Interpreters and their families out prior to the U.S. exit. Libby has it for free on audiobook. Eye opening to say the least for someone that isn't familiar with what went down.

Something like this:

The same as the role of the HH-60, MV-22, C-130, C-17, roro ships, landing craft, infantry fighting vehicles and every other platform or logistics entity that we have to deliver sustained combat power: Complete the mission that the pointy stealth aircraft allowed to happen. In the air force specifically OCA, DCA, and SEAD assets capable of existing in a high threat environment are the zambonis of warfare: They exist to create the environment for the real politics by other means to start occurring. You can't win the war them alone, but you can't win the war without them. Measuring every asset by it's ability to survive in a high threat environment is a false premise.