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You find it ironic I talked about roads in a post highlighting problems with our government spending? I find it extremely ironic that you referenced the 'ask not what your country can do for you' quote when talking about the budget when the majority of the federal government budget is purely wealth redistribution under various names. That is 100% people asking what their country can do for them and many of them do virtually nothing for their country in return. I gave the best 20+ years of my life defending this country; I've asked and answered what I can do for my country. I'm not asking anything of my country now other than to stop taking my money and giving it to people that haven't done a thing to deserve it. As @blueingreen said, I'd gladly forfeit everything I've contributed to social security in order to kill all wealth redistribution plans. I'm just fine paying taxes for things like roads, national defense, etc. I fully grasp that those have real costs that I've paid for, both in taxes and service. But the majority of our budget is not roads and such. And the enormous bureaucracy gobbles up significant portions of the very small portions of our budget that are allocated for what the federal government actually should be doing. If our government doesn't start focusing on what it should be doing and cutting out the rest of the BS, we're going to be in a world of hurt.

No offense taken! I am 61. There are currently 2 guys flying that are 64: One sits next to me and has about 3,500 hours and 1,000 - 1,100 sorties in The Deuce. The other flies the ER-2 for NASA out of Edwards, is a TPS grad and has a boatload of hours too. I believe that many moons ago, NASA allowed pilots older than 65 to fly and a few did. As an AF civilian pilot, I don't do anything "operational". But if you want to learn how to land her, do EP patterns, or fly in a spacesuit, then I'm your Huckleberry.

The government doesn't "deserve" anything and telling high wage earners that they need to pay more so we can give their money away to people that didn't earn it is what started our country down this dangerous road that we're currently on. Wealth redistribution (Social Security, Medicare, Medicade, and other income security programs) in 2023 expended 75% ($3.3B) of the tax collected ($4.4B). You will never find enough efficiencies with a scalpel. I don't think an axe is a big enough tool. I'd prefer they use a bulldozer. Bureaucracies naturally grow bigger and try to empire build, it is just part of the build of a bureaucracy. Go cut a small chunk of the mold off of old bread and the next day it'll have grown back again. Our government bureaucracies have grown to the point that we need to cut entire agencies to stem the growth.

Turning with an engine out for non-terrain considerations. Aircraft with less than 500' vertical separation on final. Modified landing data for the shorter runway. That shit doesn't fly at other airfields. That's the deviance. Only a few select "special" places is it allowed. That's the normalization. The helo flying high is just "deviance."

The government deserves more of your money, especially if you are a high earner, based on what the American people expect the government to do and provide. If you want to become a second-rate power relegated to the sidelines of world affairs, go ahead and austerity yourself there I guess. I however do not want that fate. We need more ships, more jets & flying hours, more munitions, more space launch & satellites, more primary care & preventive medicine, more rural hospitals and medical providers, more support for farms & farmers, better disaster response, more basic scientific research, more investment into AI and AI safety, and more support for hungry and poor children in particular. Just the first handful things off the top of my head. If we can find efficiencies, which we can, great, I'm for it. We've all seen wasteful stuff in the course of government employment. I've also seen waste in the private sector that would rival any government department. But "finding efficiencies" is not a mission for an axe, that's a mission for a scalpel. Our capitalist economic system and the overall entrepreneurial drive of Americans can provide a lot of that stuff (for a price), but the government needs the resources to make that stuff happen too - you don't get a new sub or F-35 or rural hospital from the free market alone. You don't get any of that stuff by wantonly firing government employees, cancelling contracts, or otherwise destabilizing an otherwise steadying piece of our overall economic castle. Burn it all down with vague promises to built it back better & more efficient is a strategy you can try with a little bird app or a small company - it's not a good idea for the government of the world's premier superpower. There's a reason some things are designed to move fast and other things are designed to move slow. That's my view - I'm very sure I can't convince you of anything though so I'm sure you will disagree.

Look at the waste doge is finding and convince me the government deserves more of my money.

This, but Huggy has to look down to yell at the clouds 😎

I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it further.

Latest I saw was everyone survived, 2x in critical but stable condition, several other less serious injuries. Thank god everyone lived! Next time they really gotta remember to land right side up. At least the gear is down and this was their intended destination, amirite C-17 bros? 😁

The top 1% pay nearly 50% of federal taxes, top 10% pay over 75%, and the bottom 50% (I say again, HALF of tax payers) pay less than 3% of total federal taxes. The top 50% pay over 97% of the taxes. It is pure insanity and completely illogical to argue “the rich don’t pay their fare share.” But it’s a nice progressive talking point to be absorbed and repeated by ignorant, intellectually dishonest, and/or unintelligent people. Other related points… - We need to rein in spending on a historic scale. Should Medicare/SS be shuttered? Well I do believe we need a social safety net (we agree on that), but these are horribly ran programs, and as of now all of my SS witholdings across adult life are literal theft because the program will be completely insolvent and defunct by the time I’m of age…unless they fix it. We need a new system along with a SS sunset - I’m OK with taxes staying flat for a short time while we solve spending problems and reduce the deficit. But reality is we the people are currently being taxed 100s of billions that are paying for utter bullshit. Thats 100s of billions that need to be back in taxpayer pockets via cuts as soon as feasible. We can’t right the wrong of the past (because we need to reduce deficit), but we should at least start righting it ASAP (e.g. start with a clean slate) - General point: conservatives aren’t anti-tax, but we are anti-tax to fund bullshit the federal gov has no business funding, let alone managing/controlling. For example, Dept of Ed had a $238B budget in 2024…that dept shouldn’t exist at all and $238B is either not required by the gov (and therefore tax reduced) or I could see still collecting it to pay down deficit (again, for a short timeframe, not forever). That’s one example from a large sea of examples.

The problem with socialism is the eventually you run out do other people’s money. We already have a very progressive tax system and yet we’re extremely in debt…but sure, let’s just do more of it. And have you seen the average American today?—yeah, not what I would call a model example of thriving society.

Again, we have too much welfare and federal spending as it is…and the poorest don’t pay federal income taxes, and if they work, they actually get paid by the IRS, so don’t give me the “poor pay too much in federal income taxes” BS. Compare apples to apples and tell me what percentage of revenue received from federal income taxes are paid by the top 20% of earners vs the bottom half of earners. You’re just for more social programs, paid by higher earners, and I am for less.

Reducing taxes on people who make more money is not “giving” them anything…it was their money to begin with. And “taking away” from the poor is not taking anything from them as was never their resources to begin with.

Everyone's acceptance of ops at DCA. The FAA approved stupid procedures, and everyone else accepted and flew them for decades.

I think they are really focusing on the known bad dudes they talked about in the press leading up to the election (murderers, child rapists, gang members, etc) and getting them booted from the country. Once they begin the second phase of finding people here illegally that are workers just trying to make a way in life, and they get push back from those politicians and others trying to hinder their efforts, I predict a few high profile arrests and charges to get people’s attention. Sometimes you gotta let the kids touch the hot stove to learn the lesson.

I’m in that camp. There will always be threats and there is never a good time. I think we can do it without crippling ourselves, but maybe that means we don’t go shoot X% of WRM at OWA drones from Iran, we don’t spread ourselves around the world at the rate we have for so long (e.g. where did 20+ years of spending like a drunken sailor in OEF, OIF, OIR, OFS, etc. get us), we stop sending hundreds of billions around the world and getting little to nothing in return, etc. There will be tough decisions to make, we can’t “save them all,” and bad things will happen to good people. We won’t turn off the lights by any means, but we will tighten the belt. We’ll come out much better on the other side in the mid 2030s.

Breaking reports - flipped upside down. Initial report say most people survived. 35-45 Knts winds at landing.

If anyone grabbed internal landing footage it will be great. Wear your seatbelts kids

Did somebody say Cold Stone? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yeah, but you gotta deploy the masses if you want to knock back the queep monster. The queep monster is a pussy at heart, it fears combat and hardship.

I have been a long-term hater of Eric Adams since I saw him plant drugs in a bookcase in a campaign ad. The fact that he's the Dem mayor of NYC is neither here nor there. He's a corrupt asshole and the charges against him are very sound - he should face trial. Trump should not pardon or drop cases against corrupt politicians, but we all know why he does.

You lost me at “income inequality”…it’s called life, and some people are just better at it than others. Sorry, but if you’re a progressive who believe in more social programs than less, then you’re right, we’re definitely not going to agree on much.

Then we need to build many, many more homes (YIMBY), built and import more cars, and build many, many more utility-scale renewable energy facilities since those are the cheapest form of new energy production. I got $64K from 1914 dollars to 2025. Also doesn't include the land, actually building the house, windows, doors, etc. Also no central HVAC, it's less than 1,400 sq/ft, etc. Do you want electricity? That's not likely included, ~10% of homes had electricity in 1914. Should we build lots more "starter homes" that are < 1,500 sq/ft and don't cost an arm and a leg...yes! Would love to discuss what policy changes are needed to make this happen. Liberal states have failed on this utterly and some more conservative areas of the country have done better. I agree that part of "The American Dream" includes buying and owning a home, I would love to discuss how we can make that dream a more achievable on a median income, that should be the goal. Agreed on this. We need to actually invest in human and physical capital and better ensure public safety in public places. Disagree on this. You are going to have an impossibly hard time achieving the above goals without more and better spending. The "ideal life" most folks here probably envision was in the 1950s, right? Single working father buying a home and a car and providing for his family while his wife would SAHM with 2.5 kids and white picket fence right? I'm not saying that's the only good life, but it is a good one and one I personally live pretty much! You know what we did to achieve that? Spend a FUCK TON of money investing in human and physical capital + war production & victory under FDR. All the New Deal spending and policy changes plus eventually winning WWII launched us from depression-era second-rate power to global superpower & most prosperous nation on earth. Going from the great depression of the 30s to the Leave It To Beaver American Dream of the 1950s did not happen by accident and it definitely didn't happen by lowering taxes and spending. You cannot austerity yourself to greater prosperity.

How is giving more money to the owning class and taking away resources from the working class going to get us back to the affordability you claim existed in the 1940s?

Don’t try to get up Banzai

That’s not what will cause a delay in release by the Safety Center. If (and this is currently happening with a couple incidents) there is an attempt at legal action by families naming the Army crew at fault then the tapes will go to a special withholding where they can only be used in evidence of the legal proceeding. The Army safety center will cooperate through the investigation but now have the added issue of releasing delayed for however long those legal proceedings go on. Theres a current tape that’s been held for years now because of a suit against the manufacturer for a fault in design and the associated crew recording and flight recorder data is held as part of the suit. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

This argument doesn't even make sense in 2025 when you consider the many ways in which our standard of living has declined while our tax burdens have increased. And don't give me some bullshit about cheap toys like consumer electronics and the like. I want affordable homes, reliable cars, and cheap energy, not a $100 LCD monitor or a $15 polyester sweater made in Bangladesh. What's the point of my taxes going up, of seeing the numbers on the GDP chart go up every year, if I can't even do something as simple as ordering a beautiful and affordable kit home from the Sears catalog anymore? This house would cost $45,000 today after adjusting for inflation. According to your logic, life in 2025 should be better than it was in 1995, 1985, or 1955 because we pay more taxes, but a man in 1940 could live better than me... The whole point of "hard power" and "soft power" is to enable us to live in peace and prosperity, either through the carrot or the stick. But instead of building onwards and upwards from the success of our predecessors, we chose to coast on their legacy. Now I have to regularly worry about something as ridiculous as being accosted by a drugged out schizophrenic when taking public transportation in most major cities, which would have been a once-in-a-lifetime experience for my grandfather. It's just death by a thousand little cuts with this kind of stuff, and it fatigues the collective consciousness of our society... and empties our wallets... We need to seriously rethink our approach to these things. Higher taxation is not the answer. We need less spending, but it's almost impossible to achieve because people can't fathom the thought of losing enormous cash cows like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. "I paid into it, other people should too!!" And while we're figuring out this domestic spending crisis, we certainly shouldn't be spending any money on condoms for Gaza, transsexual theater troupes, DEI bullshit, and countless other misallocations of taxpayer money.

@nsplayer I'm against cutting taxes until we clean up spending. I'm also against raising them. But they do need to be standardized and lowered soon after getting debt levels down. We need a constitutional amendment that absolutely nothing can be funded for longer than ten years, and all funding must be a specific dollar amount. No future adjustments for inflation, no COLA, no fixed percentages, no per capita budget, nothing. Every single program and expense gets a fixed dollar amount in the budget, and can't exceed 10 years of funding. Right now it takes an act of God to get a program defunded. It should take an act of God to get the program funded. Yes this includes SSI and Medicare/Medicaid. You will always have rot and bloat and ancient politicians rape the future to fund their bullshit, but it should be just as easy for the next generation of politicians to turn off the spigot.

Couldn't agree more. The scalpel-based approach would have worked maybe 60 years ago, probably even longer. But the cancer has metastasized beyond belief and we're now at the point where the whole system is going to need to suffer to rid ourselves of the rot. It's easy for me to say as a young and healthy guy with little invested / little to lose thus far, but I would gladly forfeit social security, medicare, and medicaid entirely if it meant that future generations wouldn't have to deal with the consequences of our irresponsibility. We're headed into South Africa territory where a shrinking subset of the population is going to be called upon to shoulder an increasingly impossible financial burden.

The pendulum is swinging comically hard toward strict-interpretation queep bullshit. We gotta have another war to actually focus up on shit that matters, only half kidding... Who put a barbed wire baseball bat up these people's asses?? Leadership is busy funging everything in sight, with no end in sight. Funge = fun sponge for those who are uninitiated. I for one can't wait to do my open ranks inspection in service dress with a super straight gig line and not a single hair besmirching my ears on a cancelled Family Day while also not teleworking during no-longer-Women's History month! /sarcasm

Honest question for those here who sincerely believe we need to reign in the budget. The framework GOP proposal for their NLT March 14th spending bill is $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, with $1.5 trillion in planned discretionary spending cuts and a "goal" of $2 trillion in additional mandatory spending cuts. The net effect, even absolute best case, is a $1 trillion increase in the annual deficit compared to baseline now i.e. the TCJA expires on time. Let alone getting to a balanced budget, let alone paying down the national debt after running a surplus, etc., all of which Trump has at various times talked about or promised, albeit I'm sure unseriously. Does that plan work for you? Do you support adding $1 trillion annually to the deficit? And that's AFTER severely cutting discretionary spending, which includes DoD spending? AND after cutting mandatory spending, which as you know is unlikely to be popular with older folks either. My POV is that every time a Dem is in the white house, a large segment of the GOP wants everything paid for, cut, trimmed, etc., but as soon as a Republican is in the seat they will happily deficit spend (usually by cutting taxes, but also spending on other things they like) with nary a peep. I know many of you here are likely more intellectually honest and consistent than your average member of Congress, so I'd love to hear a rationale for what is likely to happen on or around March 14th. My plan would be to raise taxes modestly and keep mandatory & discretionary spending relatively flat. Perhaps work around the edges of mandatory e.x. raising the social security age by 6 months or a year for the youngest workers today, etc. That has a much bigger long-term effect than cutting the EPA or CFPB down to zero.

Nope. Composite aided/unaided cross-check is preferable to not seeing things... All it takes is one burnt out street light on a bridge to make NVGs worth it in the city. The helicopter route is MSL, so baro-alt restriction. AGL off the river is usually 70-200, depending on altimeter setting and baro altimeter errors.

Better yet, reflective for normal ops, and if you’re downed, you turn it inside out for evasion! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ah gotcha, appreciate the breakdown!

US State Department position on Taiwan Before & After

The irony of sanitized & camouflaged flight suits + reflective belts never ceased to amaze me.

With regards to progressives complaining about the cuts, this is nothing new. In 2013 Pelosi said there wasn’t room to cut anything…and now we’re paying for DEI stuff overseas, promoting trans nonsense in other countries, paying hotels for illegals here in the US, on and on. It’s almost hard to fathom how the left is defending this crap, but that’s just who they are/how they think. https://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-now/2013/09/pelosi-says-the-cupboard-is-bare-173214

I love the passive aggressive approach to BS like this. I was directly told by my DO in 2008 that if I didn't wear a reflective belt out the door for the night sortie then I'd get no-stepped. So I doubled it up and wore it like a Jap about to do a Banzai. When I got the WTF look from him, I responded that it was far more visible and safer that way. My harness didn't cover any of it and the higher elevation would give greater visibility, and since safer is better, this should become the new standard. He turned around and basically stormed out. I got to fly my sortie and morally got a draw since I made the DO leave me alone for a while but at the cost of actually kind of wearing that absurd thing.

Libertarian fever dream: this will be the thing that spurs the legislative branch into taking power back from the executive!

I mean if you want to make the argument looking at the world and the role the U.S. has played since the end of WWII and argue we can do it on 50% of the budget, I’m all ears. No need really since cuts, let alone dramatic cuts will never make it through Congress. Just curious to know if my mil friends on the right could justify that statement in any way. Wow that is a high bar! Truly not sure why what I said there is so dumb. If I voted for Kamala Harris to be President but once she was sworn in Zuckerberg and a bunch of kids too young to even rent a car came in and started trashing the government, giving nonsense press conferences from behind her desk while she sat there mute, etc., I would not be too happy with that. If Trump and the GOP want to do these cuts, he should own it and use the constitutional process - y’all absolutely could achieved this given that you control Congress as well. He is supposed to be the leader, not a random unelected outsider. If the tables were turned and this was George Soros y’all would storm the capitol again 😅 Pass a new appropriations bill getting rid of agencies and departments you don’t like, etc. Fire employees with the proper notifications, timelines, etc. and pass Schedule F through Congress if you want more at-will government employees. 🤷‍♂️ I guess y’all don’t feel the same way.

150' over water is essentially IMC. I'd rather fly with goggles and look under as required in a city. Did it all the time in Vegas. This is all intellectual masturbation. The procedures are stupid, and purely a result of not wanting to tell people they can't have everything they want.

I’ll summarize this: J6 is all around a horrendous govt subversion slathered in heavy political weaponization of multiple agencies, tied up in a messy, and now widely exposed, scheme to target political opponents of the govt. This guy wasn’t even there. The amount of bold face lies spread about J6 by the MSM and govt officials/congressman, and the related BS charges/sentences that abound, should infuriate all Americans. Is everyone involved completely innocent, nope. Did people do dumb shit and deserve some punishment, yes. But the overarching theme is gross trampling of rights with zero fucks given for the truth or reasonable application of law. I understand you likely disagree with this assessment and that’s your prerogative. But based on this, I do not believe the guy you linked above committed treason, nor do I think any amount of what he did equals a sitting 4 star giving our #1 enemy a heads up on any moves the administration is about to execute/highly considering executing. This could rabbit hole into a lengthy discussion, but I don’t think anyone is interested in that, at least in this thread, so that’s my last piece regarding this guy vs. Milley. Back to Milley specifically…