kaputt

So is the plan to just pretend the southern border doesn’t exist for the next 4 years? Because it seems like that is the plan.

So politicians and celebrities can give money to bail out rioters, but a cop can’t donate to someone’s legal defense. America, 2021. That being said, he should have used his brain a little more and not used a work related email.

I find it shocking and frankly downright scary, the amount of people in this country, including people in positions of power, that believe the burden of proving your innocence should fall on the defendant.

You would think it would make sense that contributions could be made to the same account. But it’s also a govt run entity we’re talking about here.

Does anyone know how TSP works when you transition to the Reserves? I was under the impression I would still be able to contribute to the account that was created when I joined active duty. I’m transitioning to an IMA gig and already separated from AD, but the reserve Det I’m supposed to in-process into is dragging its feet on getting me gained into the unit (already learning the true meaning of IMA; I am alone). Since I’ve just been sitting in the IRR in the meantime, the TSP thinks I have separated from federal service and sent me a little packet saying so. My question is, once I am gained into the reserves can I reactivate that account and make contributions to it? The TSP packet I was sent, as well as the TSP website, aren’t very clear on that. I’d hate to have to start a whole new TSP account when I already have one with a healthy balance.

We are starting to live in scary times. What is one supposed to do when the line between a private enterprise and government entity can no longer be discerned? Big tech has become so powerful and so intertwined with the Democrat party that they are essentially a defacto arm of the party/government. The left of course loves this because they can censor, delete, or promote any speech they wish and then hide behind the guise of “It’s a private business, they can set their own terms of service”.

Having had first hand experience in acquisitions, our process is truly a joke. The hilarious thing is that a commercial off the shelf upgrade to something like a Garmin GPS 175 (not to mention an even more featured GTN 650) would be super inexpensive in relative terms, and in the T-6 specifically, you could place it in the same space the old GPS sat and it would probably even be plug and play with the already existing avionics. And even if not, you could replace the ADI and HSI with a dual Garmin G5 set up and be done with it. But bring that solution forward in our acquisition process and we’ll tell you a thousand different reasons it could be a problem, spend a ton of money and years investigating, and either end up at the originally suggested solution having spent way more time and money than needed; or even more likely, spend the same amount of time and money and still end up at an ineffectual solution.

Hydrogen fuel cell is the only way that “clean” burning vehicles will replicate the flexibility and convenience of an internal combustion engine vehicle. Similar fuel up time and similar range. That being said, it is decently more expensive per gallon than gasoline, and likely always will be due to a more complicated production and distribution process. However if you ramped up the economy of scale a bit, prices would certainly come down from where they are now. The only reason electric has made such early gains is because it’s been easy to pass the infrastructure off to the consumer to charge at home and the primary market has mostly been upper middle class or higher individuals buying it as a second or third commuter car vs their primary transportation. Electric only will NEVER work as a primary means of transportation for many Americans. The tech to charge a battery to full will likely never equal gas or hydrogen fuel cell fill up time and lots of Americans street park their cars, live in apartments, live in rural areas, or otherwise don’t have a reliable access to charging infrastructure. Not to mention the issues of literally every citizen requiring use of the electric grid for their vehicle. Come to California in the summer and tell me if you’d still like to trust the “fueling” of your primary means of transportation to electricity. The smart path forward is that efficient ICE vehicles, hydrogen, and electric should all be part of the vehicle options consumers have for the foreseeable future. Each one has its merits that make sense for certain situations. Unfortunately though, our political class long ago stopped pushing for moderate solutions that make sense for the average American and instead tries to shove far reaching regulation down our throats in order to score political points and solidify power.

Got the J&J shot yesterday. Nothing crazy happened. Arm feels the same as getting a flu shot and no other response other than maybe a little extra tired last night.

Biden/Harris is one of the worst, if not the worst, presidential pairings we’ve had in a long time. And it has nothing to do with politics but the fact that it’s frankly a weak pairing of two incompetent people. Biden, a man losing his mental faculties (this is honestly sad for me to watch from a human perspective) who was also a mediocre senator that accomplished nearly nothing of note in his 50 years of service. Harris is actually even worse. She was not even remotely competitive in the Democrat primaries because she was such a terrible candidate; she couldn’t even produce a single coherent position on key issues in the primaries. Slept her way up the ranks in San Francisco to then get a chance to run for a senate seat (funny how this was barely mentioned, guess only Orange man can take part in affairs). But thanks to Obama connections she now has a non-zero chance of becoming President. The border crisis is case in point of complete ineffectual leadership. Biden appointed Harris to manage it. She hasn’t been to the border once, laughs at questions about the border, and hasn’t given any press conferences or updates on a plan of action. It doesn’t even matter if you think flooding the country with refugees is good for political reasons; there are still kids getting chucked over fences left to fend for themselves in the desert and then sitting in cages at risk of sexual assault, and our top two leaders can’t even lift their finger to do anything or even remotely provide a plan of action. Now Trump is no shining example of leadership, far from it in fact. Personally I considered voting 3rd party several times this past election. But when it came down to analyzing every candidate available, including the 3rd party ones, Trump was by far the most qualified to actually run the country, and it wasn’t even close.

You basically have to stick to niche sports now to avoid getting hit over the head with political messaging. My regular sports viewing is basically down to auto racing (Indycar, sports cars, sometimes F1) and golf.

To get a little bit back on track here, I finally decided to read the Georgia voter law from the actual government of Georgia website. Holy smokes the media, politicians, and even our sitting President have completely fabricated the outrage over this law. It’s frankly unbelievable the lies they’ve been able to spread on it. About the only thing I wasn’t a fan of was the increased powers of the state over what are usually county run election procedures. But beyond that, every single measure in there is perfectly reasonable to helping ensure legal voters are able to vote. The whole thing about the ID requirement is massively blown out of proportion. If someone doesn’t have an ID, they can can use last 4 of social, a utility bill, or several other items in order to validate themselves as a legal Georgia voter. And yes, grandma can still get water at the polls, it just can’t be handed out by someone who also says “here’s some water, but why don’t you vote for _____ today”. The worst part is that our own President got up there and called it worse than Jim Crow and wasn’t even remotely checked on that absolutely ludicrous statement.

Show me a study that actually says the color of your skin is a biological reason for being at higher risk of Covid... I’ve looked myself and the reason minorities have a higher death rate seems to be due to socio-economic factors, health culture within the community, and medical access. Those are real issues of course, but the thing about socio-economic issues is that they aren’t only limited to people of color. Although I guess people really believe that these days (Joe Biden’s “Poor kids are just as bright as white kids” comes to mind), which is honestly a form of soft racism in and of itself, but that’s a whole other topic itself. Bottom line though, a white person can also be poor, unhealthy, and have limited limited access to health care. I’ll reiterate again why this policy is legitimately racist. A poor person of color and a poor white person live next to each other in a poor section of Vermont that has had higher rates of COVID death. Each person has the exact same biological risk factor, is the same age, is the same sex, same access to health care, and both have no at risk people in their house. Under the governor’s policy, the white person cannot get a shot simply because they are white even though the person next to them, who is by all other measures equal to them other than skin color, can. That is discrimination in its most pure and basic form!!! Its honestly embarrassing that people in this country would give that a pass these days.

I understand that data. But under the current Governor’s mandate, a white person and a person of color that have not met previous eligibility criteria and have the exact same risk level, with the only difference being the pigment of their skin; the white person gets to pound sand and wait just because they don’t have the right color skin. That’s discrimination. There is of course a legitimate way to handle this that doesn’t segregate shot eligibility based on skin color, and it goes like this, “As the governor of Vermont I am opening vaccine eligibility to all Vermont residents age 16 and up. In addition, I have authorized our vaccine task force to put special emphasis on getting additional vaccine supply to our underserved communities that have been hit harder by this virus. We need as many Vermonters as possible to get this shot as soon as possible and opening up the eligibility to all will accomplish this.” Of course there are almost no real leaders anymore in the political class, so we get race based decision to score political points. Can you imagine if you replaced POC with “white person” in the governors statement? It would sound like something right out of Deep South segregation.

Gov Phil Scott of Vermont says that if you are a person of color of any age you are now eligible to get a COVID vaccine... Based simply on the color of your skin. That is racism. We have literally gone back in time and are a segregated society again. But I guess it’s okay because it’s in favor of people with a darker skin complexion. We are screwed as a country if we don’t wake up and stop this run away freight train.

I'm all for non-towered airports; at least until I started flying GA in the LA Basin. Actually all of SoCal is nuts traffic wise. Get me on flight following and in and out of a Class D airport ASAP please. That being said though, my favorite airport in the area, Agua Dulce, is non-towered. Its an absolutely picture perfect SoCal airport and could be a postcard for GA flying. Tons of interesting movie history at the field as well. L70.com - Agua Dulce Airport (l70airport.com)

You mean Martin Luther King’s actual dream? It honestly an embarrassment to his legacy where we are as a country right now with this whole social justice quest.

An RFI was put out a few weeks ago seeking inputs on the feasibility of increasing IFT to 50 flight hours and also including instrument flight training. Will be interesting to see if it becomes an RFP.

Your COVID vaccine doom porn reads exactly like the clowns that are all in on the "COVID is the worst tragedy to ever strike this earth" doom porn. COVID vax doomers and COVID doomers remind me of the old Communism/Fascism adage; both are so far to opposite sides they actually find themselves back to back in the same spot. I think you should maybe lay off the Epoch Times for a bit. The data I saw showed under 1,000 people had died after getting at least the first shot. However it's already come out that the data includes people who died in car accidents or other causes of death. It's not even remotely surprising either that some have died after getting a vaccine when you consider the massive effort to get the elderly vaccinated. It's not hard to imagine an 88 year old getting the vaccine and then dying 2 weeks later because guess what!? They're old! I've also noticed a hilarious trend of the Vax Doomers. They are often the first to jump and point out that the COVID death numbers make it hard to determine whether someone actually died of COVID or just with COVID, including pointing to examples of car accident deaths or overdoses being labeled as COVID if the person tested positive (which btw, I agree with the notion that our death numbers are likely flawed). But as soon as some data comes out showing deaths after vaccine, the data is all of a sudden gospel truth and proof that people are dropping dead from the jabs and only the jabs. Forgive me while I don't jump on your doom train, just like I didn't jump on the COVID fear porn train. Its amazing if you step back and take an objective look at things for more than a few minutes how often you find yourself in a nice middle ground.

Also had the log-on error. Upvote option still doesn't work either.

You mean Biden didn’t actually join the senate 120 years ago? Lol

Yep, that was my reaction too. I also heard some other RUMINT on this guy but I’m not sure I should be the one to share it on a public forum. FWIW it also seems the Air Force did do an investigation into his claims and came up empty.

I asked a buddy who flies 38s with the Raptors if he had heard any rumblings about this guy. “Oh yeah, everyone here says that guy was an awful pilot.” And... ”Apparently he Q3’d an evaluation up at Elmendorf so they sent him to IFF” So yeah, there’s more to the story.

Predictable