AnimalMother

Is there an emoticon for the slow head shake accompanied by the disappointed frown?

It's a lot of money to waste, especially with Comrade Obama so vehemently opposed to raising the debt ceiling. Wait, sorry, that was 2006. Oh well, in either case I'm sure 08 and 12 will pale in comparison to his inauguration in '16.

Witch hunts are a great way to divert attention away from the actual problem. I'm not a big Air Force times fan but this article throws out some interesting numbers. https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2013/01/ap-sex-major-reason-military-brass-fired-012013/ We certainly have a problem in the military, but it doesn't stem from dirty songs and swimsuit calendars. I think I remember learning something in SOS about leadership setting the standard for behavior...

9000 hours?! Good lord. I guess that was before computers though, no CBTs and email to waste all your time.

I think that the primary problem with social scam...I mean security...is that it was never really intended to pay much back to those who invested in it. Unfortunately for the USG, modern medicine and growing health consciousness conspired against them and created the debacle we love to discuss today. My point? When SS was created in 1935, it established 65 years of age as the minimum for participants to begin drawing full benefits. I wonder what the average life expectancy of an American was in 1935...

Grow revenue? You talk about the government as if it's a business. I think maybe you should take another look at the primary sources of "revenue." The government gets most of its money from one place...my pocket. They thieve their "revenue" from their citizens in the form of income tax and inflation. This is as true today as it was in Rome over 2000 years ago. Don't bullshit me. The only thing worse than that is when the citizens finally realize that they can vote the earnings from my pocket into theirs. The spending fight is yet to come huh? Ha! I recommend you read " When Money Dies" by Adam Fergusson, then tell me if you think you still have a dog in the fight. What's left is little more than the death throes of socialism...again. I'm quite sure that you are at peace, because either way, I don't think you really give two shits about your vote. Your party is as crooked as the other one, and you both give Karzai a run for his money (actually, that would be our/my money). I'm glad you think you're doing your part, but please spare me your excuses. Governing isn't easy huh? Maybe it's because you're over thinking it. If you really want to help, do us all a favor and learn up yourself a bit about economics, humanity, and history. The Constitution would be a good place to start. Please forgive my rant. Rant off, beer light on.

I highly recommend the AU OLMP if all you're looking for is a square-filler. I'm just finishing up and I have to say that overall the coursework was incredibly easy, even with multiple deployments/TDYs (as long as you have Internet, but that probably goes for any course these days). I don't think I actually finished a single assigned reading, just skim over them, pick out a few good sounding quotes and add your 2 cents. Plus, at $free.99, it's hard to beat. I took one AMU class, it was way too time consuming and way too expensive. Save your $$ and your brain bytes for other endeavors. Feel free to PM me if you have more specific questions.

Professor Bacevich is an incredibly keen individual. He has authored several very insightful articles over the past decade or so. I had not yet seen this one.

So you can decline the PCS and maybe get a bad deal, or you can accept it, incur additional ADSC, and definitely get a bad deal? Sounds like a no-brainer to me. I've been deployed to nicer places than Clovis.

We should all be asking ourselves this question. I am truly concerned about the precedent that this may set for us in the future.

The kind folks upstairs would care to disagree with you.

RAB, as an outsider, I think you are mistakenly taking offense to the local vernacular. "Dude" is NOT a term of disrespect and, I can assure you that no one here means any disrespect to your kin, quite the opposite in fact. Go read some of the past threads involving casualties, I doubt you'll find any names in there either, maybe a callsign or two, but that's it. I'm not here to play the blame game, but I can tell you that the Air Force has an unfortunate habit of crucifying people simply due to circumstantial proximity to unfortunate incidents. We're not trying to blame people here, we're trying to support our bros here who are being thrown under the bus. No, I don't have a lot of the facts, but based on extensive experience with this shit, I can certainly tell you that there is an extremely high probability that this court martial is built on bullshit and a sense of self preservation of a lot of "leadership". Furthermore, as tough a pill as it is to swallow, you need to understand that people make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes cost them, or someone else, their life and that's just the business we're in. And if you think Francis was the first guy to take a fall on the DZ.... So, next time you feel the urge to roll in hot on a bunch of dudes who sacrifice more on a daily basis than you probably have in your entire life, slow your roll, ease up off it, try to learn up yourself and understand who is actually on your side. Honestly dude, I am truly sorry for your loss, but understand that there are a ton of Francis' bros out there who got to go home to their kids thanks to the tireless efforts of a lot of the guys on this forum. Respect that. Big ups.

Yea, I'll agree with that, but nevertheless, I didn't see the intel in '03, and I haven't seen it today-except what they tell me on the interwebs. It was more of a stab at the propensity for 'modern' civilizations to cripple-and ultimately destroy-their economies through the uncontrolled debasement of a fiat currency in order to finance foreign conflicts, all in the name of state security. I'll stop there.

Be careful man, we're not yet sure just how far they're going to take this one. I'm half serious too. Pretty soon this type of shit will be like joking about a bomb at the airport. On another note, I found some interesting, but actually not all that surprising, statistics in the annual DOD sexual assault reports, particularly regarding demographics. Just in case anyone cares to review. https://www.sapr.mil/

Something about this feels vaguely familiar....oh wait. Guess with Afghanistan winding down we need something else to keep the wheels turning...

You are a more trusting person than me. But, in either case, at this point too many keys to the taxpayer funded piggy bank have been carelessly handed out.

Just in case anyone hasn't seen this little gem: https://www.amazon.com/The-Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal/dp/091298645X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1354061297&sr=8-2&keywords=the+creature+from+jekyll+island This sheds some light on how our economic system really works. Fiscal cliff or not, we have some interesting economic times ahead. And by interesting I mean disasterous.

This is probably a good example of political/personal agendas being sold to the public as "tactical" requirements. I can't tell you for certain if the Marines will actually benefit from this one, but I sure as sh*t can find a bunch of people who will...it's just that none of them wear a uniform.

They don't. Unless you are a general and can't function without 69 feeds of meaningless isr coverage to stare at and micromanage. We've tried this before, it was a colossal waste of time and $$.

Ummm...not from there.

Have you considered signing the paperwork now, and then holding the wedding at a later date when you might possibly have more control over your schedule? I know a lot of guys (myself included) who went that route.

Totally off topic, but are people seriously still using SINCGARS? I thought we were past all that. On second thought, that about lines up with every other claim in that article.

I think we're missing the context of the incident.

I caught about half of it, very elegant. The man clearly cares. That said, it was obvious that he cares about things that may derail our ability to meet our basic requirements as a service, i.e. budget, readiness, quality of airmen etc. I would put Blues-Monday, for example, at number 1 on his top 10 list of things he probably doesn't give 2 shits about, especially when most of us still get to wear f'ing pajamas to work Tues-Fri. Some complaining from a few airmen about having to dress up one day a week probably doesn't even register on his radar right now. Furthermore, he obviously takes great pride in the privilege to wear the Air Force uniform, flight suit or otherwise, something which a lot of us readily take for granted after a few years. Is he out to make our service better for you and me? Absolutely, but it sounds like he has a different set of criteria by which he will measure improvement. Maybe when/if he succeeds in un-assing our budget he'll take a look a some of the more trivial issues that grate on the force. (unless he addressed any of this stuff in the first half, which I missed. In that case disregard all).

Awesome! This is my new Friday patch.