slackline

That is mind bogglingly frustrating. I'm 100% with you on the economy and covid. It's long since past time to open up smarty. It's really too bad that a certain someone in power made this a political thing from the get go where one side stupidly has to show how 180 out from him they are, thereby ruining the economy. Completely blame the Dems for not being smart enough to ignore his childish games. Had this not been a political thing, and instead a "let's keep everyone safe thing" we'd be in a totally different economic situation right now.

Seriously? Tell me which young person I could have voted for. When we're at the end of the race you pick from the horses still running. Or stand on principle and write a name in. I almost did, but when faced with 4 more of Trump I went with the lesser of two evils. That was a statement for all. If it somehow made you feel triggered or guilty... my bad, I guess.

100% agreed that starting with a 78 yr old president is a problem. Totally disagree you don't need to be a mental health expert to see the problems you guys are talking about. I'm not saying he doesn't have the issues. I'm saying no one has proven it, and that you absolutely cannot judge a person's mental health on sound bites, but you obviously are an expert on the possible here, so by all means. If Trump hadn't been such an NTAC with regards to his dismissiveness towards the Rona, he'd be the president right now. He'd be a 74 yr old tool sitting in that office, so not much better. Stop voting for old people. They are out of touch. Along with term limits we should have age limits. We recognize a bottom age is important, why is it difficult to do the same on the upper stops?

It’s like you haven’t read a word posted by the many smart people in here as to why getting rid of 230 is a bad idea. Do you honestly not see how that is going to bite everyone in a bad way? It’s like that bear chasing you. You’re in the woods, come across a bear which starts to chase you. As you run from the bear, you pray, “please Lord, let this bear be a Christian!” When the bear catches you and knocks you down, as it’s standing above you, before it eats you, the bear folds its arms and says, “Dear Lord, please bless this meal I’m about to eat, thank you Jesus. Amen!” 230 is not what you want. All the reasons have been laid out, so I’m not going to rehash them. Careful what you ask for, you just might get it... Don’t ignore the press treatment issue. Trump has always treated them like trash, like everyone. It doesn’t excuse their clear bias, they should be better/have some journalist integrity, but he was/is a super douche, so he invited their treatment. He loved it even. Played very well to his base. Funny thing, Trump wouldn’t be caught dead hanging with the majority of people that voted for him. Too “white trash” for him, but he sure knew how to whip em up into a frenzy! It’s funny too because you even admit to not liking him, but you’re still harping about it. He’s get you focused on the wrong thing. Screw how the media treats the president. Do a good job and the public won’t care because their lives are getting better. Go back and read my post. Please highlight the parts where I linked the racial inequalities we’re (as a nation) struggling with and BLM/Antifa. This is hilarious, I didn’t say anything of the kind, I even said riots/violence hurt the cause, not help it. Let me put it more clearly, it is more easy to understand why POC would feel that it is a last resort after their cries for equality consistently fall on deaf ears. You acknowledged in this post what many on this forum flat out say isn’t happening, there are no problems, POC just need to pick themselves up by their bootstraps like other successful POC have done, no excuses. Careful, they’re going to call you a SJW and an extreme leftist for that acknowledgment. As for the mental health decline of Biden, dude is old. Like the majority of old options we were presented with, he’s not as sharp as he used to be, but still, no one has presented anything that can be used as proof. Yet, people on the right constantly latch on every bit of “evidence” presented by every “expert” who hasn’t actually examined or tested him. I’d sure love to have a bunch of people watching me from afar comment on my cognitive health, especially people with incentive to say I’m in decline. Sounds fun. If we stop voting these dbags into office, people so out of touch with reality it’s not even funny anymore, maybe we’ll get better options. But no, we tear apart the younger ones, leaving the old as the only options remaining. No way was Trump the best option back in 2016 just like Biden wasn’t the best option last fall. In fact, they were both horrible options. We screwed ourselves!

You’ve got some very good points in there. I actually agree with you on quite a bit of it. Some things he did were absolutely good calls, too bad he had to do them in the ways he did... Having the respect of the world is on an identical footing as doing some of the things he did. Problem is, he’s lost us so much of that “respect capital” that it will make it hard to be taken seriously going forward. We’ll be able to get there, but it will be that much harder. China, loved the positions he took with them, hated how he did it. Paris climate accords, agreed with the action, not his stated reasons for it because it continues to enable those of you in here (don’t know your stance on it, so royal you, not you specifically) who continue to pull out bogus science to deny the overwhelming bulk of scientific evidence that says climate change is real and that we could do something about it. The accords are not good for America, once again, we end up doing the lion’s share of the work. The WHO, absolutely agree with you again. But also, once again, he’s POTUS, act like it. You didn’t mention holding NATO’s feet to the fire, but I’m sure you’re on the same page. Good, but again, bedside manner matters. I also agree that the press, by and large, is garbage, but I also don’t have a ton of heartburn over the way he was treated because he gave worse than he got on the daily. He can’t complain about unfair treatment when he was goading them, lying to them, and constantly belittling every personality that he didn’t like. You honestly think that had nothing to do with his treatment? You honestly think it would have gone down similarly if he had treated them with respect from the get go? I don’t. His press secretary started lying from the moment he was in office, which was simply behavior carried over from before he was sworn in. I mentioned on here I wasn’t a fan of many of the EOs Biden signed on days one and two. Let’s see if he keeps up the pace. He’s gonna need to sign a lot more to catch up to Trump on that face... At the same time, Biden’s a politician, he has to show his base why they elected him. If he keeps going, ignoring everything else out there, then yeah, but I’m willing to give the dude more than half a week before saying his pledge to be a president for all of Americans, R or D, is BS... I also agree about the Twitter crap, again, I’m no fan of social media. Call a spade a spade. Again, though, Twitter’s a business, so they’re gonna do what makes sense for their bottom line. A US citizen, president or not, is subject to the public opinion of the US population. A Chinese press release, not so much. Not a Trump apologist, fine, I’ll take your word for it. But you sure did a nice job of cherry-picking the only line out of his speech that one could taken as peaceful. You’re not being intellectually honest if you think Trump was intending peaceful protest with his delivery of his peace inspiring speech. MLK struck the same tone in his “I have a dream” speech... Trump sure didn’t stand up to tone things down when his lackies said other “peaceful things”. I’m sorry, but as much as us comfortable white people want it to not be true, there are 100% racial inequalities in this country. Comparing Trump’s behaving like a sore loser since he lost, and riling up his base until it eventually lost control, and POC’s fight for social justice is just a non-starter. Forgive most of the world (because almost everyone but us privileged white people in the US sees it, so clearly we must be right) for giving a little slack to people that simple want to not be looked at as criminals when driving their cars, have an equal shot at getting the job, not get life sentences when a white dude gets probation, etc., etc., etc. Rioting doesn’t help, it won’t make the problems magically go away, and the left definitely owns some of that through tacit approval of the actions. It isn’t right, but man, it is definitely understandable after centuries of mistreatment that started with slavery and has seen every shade in between. But again, parade out some twisted statistic to show how I’m wrong, all while ignoring the FACTS that are screaming from literally every corner of the world of history, recent and distant. One last point, I love all of the arm-chair mental health experts out there that are convinced of Biden’s mental decline because he’s “showing all the signs of it”. Actually, no, I won’t address it more than this, it’s just stupid because Trump was the picture of mental health, a rational actor... ETA: Harris is scary for sure, and I hope and pray for Biden’s health for that reason. I vote for the P though, not the VP. Safe bet is that this will go down like the overwhelming majority of admins in the past have, the P will be the P and the VP is largely forgotten. Here’s to hoping I’m not wrong...

🤣 Good point, I stand corrected.

Ok, I guess you think you got me? He's been president for what, 2.69 days, I can't believe he hasn't fixed the decades of partisanship already! I think you may be forgetting the 8 years of blaming Obama for every bad thing that happened. Stop being a sore loser for long enough to realize that during Trump's presidency Democrats didn't invent blaming the president for crap that went wrong. Not much of a fake bait there hoss, the statement you made falls in line with 90% of the statements made by every Trump apologist on this forum. This was the first election I've ever voted for a democratic candidate of any flavor. Thank the bang up job done by the QAnon savior for driving enough people like me away to lose him the election. I feel like you guys all band together at these pseudo zingers and upvote/like each other's posts that slam the supposed liberals. #notsurewhywearehashtaggingthis

Agreed

How sad that you believe Biden was involved in that call... You keep coming with those catchy, but baseless memes though.

Agreed, but it also ignores that plenty of toxic leaders (that Flt/cc could fit that bill, we don’t know) have driven out highly qualified, good officers. In that case, he’s wrong.

I think we’re on the same page, I just didn’t go into the detail you did. You made the crazy apples to oranges comparison with the AF. The military is 10x more cut and dry and measurable than political appointments. I’ll disagree with you on the idea that “there are highly discernible characteristics” in that arena. Basic qualifications are it, then it all goes into what you discussed, subjective decisions by the one making the call. If it’s a choice between super awesome candidate a vs super awesome candidate b who would be the first whatever to do it, give yourself the win and the headline. If it’s between the win/headline with a clearly less qualified candidate, you’re wrong. BL: all things being equal (to the extent that there is no real difference in the quality of the candidate, the end-product you’ll get) I don’t see the harm in giving a group that has traditionally been excluded a shot over a group that is always in power.

So here’s my take on it. If there are people far and above more qualified that would clearly do the job way better than those he has nominated it is incredibly bad and simple pandering. If the people he’s nominated are close enough in quality/performance to those that are “better” than them, where’s the harm in giving those people that typically haven’t ever even been considered for those types of positions a shot? If there will be no discernible difference in how well the job is being done, I think it is beneficial to add some flavor to what is typically incredibly homogeneous. I’m not married to this idea, and could be talked out of it by sound arguments, but I can see more benefits by going with different over same old, same old when the end product is so close that it doesn’t matter. That other person is still going to be successful. Commence spear throwing.

Is it just me, or are these guardsmen being huge, whiney babies? https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/21/national-guard-troops-vacate-capitol-461220?cid=apn You’re called in to do a specific job, that job is done, you’re no longer needed... That’s a failure on the Guard Bureau if their mission is done and they haven’t redeployed them yet. Same goes for those who requested their presence, if no longer needed, terminate the request. Feeling butthurt because you “feel discarded” is ridiculous. Who let young kids talk to the press? The statement on how few bathrooms there are is not cool if true, but crying about no internet reception is garbage.

https://apnews.com/article/pfizer-study-vaccine-coronavirus-strain-3094dd3cc91b4a20780402476cdcb5ae That article talks about Pfizer’s effectiveness against new strains. https://www.barrons.com/articles/modernas-covid-vaccine-should-work-against-new-strains-for-now-what-its-ceo-said-51609870246 Moderna link. They’re both over 2 weeks old now, and I am struggling to find the one I referenced in my previous post.

I’ll have to look it up, but I saw an article on the Moderna vaccine from the UK that basically said it was covering down on different strains because of the RNA business it does.

Thanks, that’s what I’d always thought, hence not looking into it, but I’d rather look stupid and ask then not ask and be surprised later...

Agreed on the fact that the two don’t correlate. Think about the fact that we’re all basically kids in pilot training as well. Getting singled out by someone you, ostensibly, look up to like your Flt/CC in pilot training is nowhere close to the same thing as the stress of combat where we’re basically taught to have (while respecting their ability to kill you) disdain for the enemy. That’s a complete failure of leadership on the part of the Flt/CC back then. That’s quite a bit of “hindsight is 20/20” on my part since we don’t know the details of the situation from back then. Maybe the Flt/CC saw something in the kid that was a red flag? Who knows. By and large, UPT was way more stressful than coming back with holes in the bird and Winchester on the guns ever was.

Well, that’s a kick in the balls! So much for that one... Is that separate for AD retirement? Sorry for the completely ignorant question. 18 years in, and I never thought about this...

Just read an article this morning that Apple is contemplating making podcasts a subscription/pay based service as opposed to providing a platform for content. Gotta ring every last penny out... Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

One side significantly more... Guess which

I think you'd have a hard time getting anyone that they used a contrived rationale. I'll give you the double standard, and readily admit social media is garbage, poisoning our ability to critically think, but nothing was contrived. Ignoring the double standard, clear violations of ToS were present, warnings were given, and now they finally did what they should have been doing across the globe to left and right a long time ago. Now they need to step up and apply this standard evenhandedly. Here's me holding my breath... I don't use any social media for this reason. I agree, it's virtually impossible to not use Google or Amazon, but Facebook? Nope, have none of it. People value their social media more than they value their real lives, so good luck convincing people to jump ship en masse.

Yes, it will take me to about 22, but I'm happy to do the whole three years. Just curious for the end of the assignment.

I so wish we could close that Pandora's box...

The skills program is open for officers. I approved it for an O working for me, but as you probably already know, is totally dependent on the organization allowing you to leave. It is a net loss for the organization unless you are somehow able to work a drug deal to get a replacement in there anyway. I imagine for me, it won’t be an option, but believe me I’ll give it a shot. I didn’t know about 30 vs 20 for PTDY, so that is nice. That was helpful info, but I don’t know if it answers my question or not, at the risk of sounding obtuse. If an assignment is a controlled 3 years, does retirement trump assignment time? COVID keeps messing with my timeline. Pushed a class start date for me back 4 months, which in turn pushes assignment/retirement time back. So, let’s say it was 1 Sep this year for the DEROS. Can I start terminal prior to that date, or do I have to wait until 1 Sep to get out of there? I know all of this probably makes me look stupid, but I’ve just never dealt with this situation, which isn’t all that weird. My first overseas assignment was my first ops tour, my second was an exchange, so I wasn’t exactly in a position to hear about how retirements went down from overseas. I was either deployed all the time and too junior, or surrounded by Frenchies during those overseas tours. Other thing, can you do your final PCS while on terminal? People I’ve helped retire CONUS were always straightforward and easy.

I guess that's not a problem. Still curious about terminal and overseas moving home.