Smokin

Which democrat did Republicans previously complain about in the same manner that democrats are currently complaining Musk? There were many officials that Republicans complained about being incompetent, over-reaching their authority, or just plain dumb, but I don't recall Republicans holding up signs saying "Buttigieg was not elected".

Unfortunately, I doubt that the inability to fire government employees will be fixed ever. There are so many intertwined rules, regulations, and laws and enough activist judges that feel no problem inserting themselves into things they have business being involved in. You would almost have to can the entire system and start from scratch, which would probably be a good thing. I know of GS employees that have been repeatedly caught falsifying time cards, yelling at their boss, showing up to work more than an hour late on a routine basis, and even overtly refusing to do their job because someone upset them. One guy in my old unit was finally getting fired until state leadership found out that the employee was black. State ordered the employee to be reinstated even after they were involved and approved of the all paperwork to fire him.

Virtually any other tax system is going to hit the poor harder than the current system because they have an effective negative tax rate at the federal level. A flat tax or a sales tax only are the only ethical tax systems. Our current tax system is legalized theft because people are effectively voting to have other people's property taken from them. If you break into your neighbor's house and steal a bunch of money because he's in the top 1%, you go to prison. But when 51% of the population votes to have the government do the same thing, somehow that is not only ok but is commendable. This is basically the tax system that we have now. People that pay almost nothing, or even get paid rather than paying taxes, vote to take money from other people simply because they can. And just to make my post piss off the left as much as possible, all cooperate tax is dumb. All you're doing with corporate tax is doing a bread and circus act to be popular with voters that don't see past the smoke and mirrors. If you add a 10% tax on a company, that company isn't just suddenly going to make 10% less money that year. They're going to raise their prices, cut costs, or both to try to make up for it. Raising the corporate tax rate is going to increase the cost of goods, which is going to be paid for by everyone buying the product, so it is effectively no different than increasing the sales tax. And since they will likely not be able to raise their prices by 10% without a substantial decrease in revenue, they're going to cut labor as well since that is the largest variable cost for most companies. So raising the corporate tax rate is going to result in layoffs, inflation, and overall decreased quality of life for the workers and consumers. But it sure sounds good when politicians say they're not going to raise your taxes, instead they're going to make sure companies "pay their fair share."

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.

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.

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.

The way I understand the development of the Max, is that if an airline is to blame, then it's American, not Southwest. Apparently they went to Boeing looking for a big new order they wanted quick. Boeing had a new airplane on the design sheets and said it would be X years until ready. American said, thanks, guess we'll talk to Airbus. Boeing said, wait, how bout an updated 737? Now we're all stuck with the Max.

To paraphrase, Joe Rogan, prior to COVID, I would have likely ranked vaccines as one of mankind's greatest accomplishments. Now? Not so sure. After COVID, I wonder how many of them are just full of junk that I don't need and won't work anyway. Has the flu vaccine really worked for me? I've had the flu many times after the vaccines, so was it really less severe than it would have been? I fully recognize that vaccines defeated small pox, polio, etc (reference the greatest accomplishments thing). But when governments and big corporations team up to almost force people to get a vaccine that hasn't been fully tested to prevent an illness that wasn't as bad as many were claiming, you have to wonder why. And then as soon as you do and you realize there's a guy behind the curtain telling you to ignore the guy behind the curtain, that makes you question a lot of things you had previously accepted as fact. I think part of being a conservative is a natural distrust of consolidation of power. Governments and big companies used COVID to consolidate power and vaccines as an enforcement mechanism. Hence the right's relatively newfound distrust of vaccines and many medical 'experts'.

If this were another "do more with less" then I'd agree with you guys. But, this is finally a "do less with the same". As in, same budget but less mouths to feed that don't contribute to the mission. There is plenty of ripe fruit in the DoD to pick if Congress gets behind this initiative. For example, I learned absolutely zero at TAPs from the mouth breathers reading me the slides and there's an online CBT option. Drop the entire TAPs staff to a single person at each base and you just saved the military millions. And I would bet that when they start looking at the DoD, they will likely focus on the contract side, which is where I think they could make some serious money for actual warfighter budgets. If that house budget increase of $3T is legit, that is absolutely absurd and only proves that Trump and most Republicans now are not actual conservatives, simply populists. That last section on the ways and means tanks the entire thing. Prior to that committee it was a $1.2T reduction in the deficit. As much good as they can do, there is no way that DOGE finds enough efficiency that will stick long term. We as a country need to come to the realization that entitlements and unbalanced budgets are going to bankrupt us.

Interesting, I never flew into DCA. I guess if it is an expected procedure, then maybe not the contributing factor I thought it could be. Although it would have been a fairly minimal one at that.

So far, this is about the only criticism of the RJ crew that I can think of: accepting a change to the approach and runway that close in. In a fighter in VMC? Absolutely, no problem. But the latest that I've accepted a change to a landing runway in an airliner has been outside 10 miles and even that was pushing it. You can hardly call that causal, but it is something to think about and learn from as an airline pilot. Don't let ATC fly your plane. Had a captain tell ATC no to keeping us high and fast on an approach (my airplane does not like to slow down in any decent). He told them 'we can be high or fast, but not both'. ATC tried to shame us by then slowing us to approach speed and vectoring another flight in front of us and even made a comment to the other airplane about them being able to do it. Capt basically shrugged said 'whatever'.

To be fair, they didn't suck at war. They were far better at it man for man than the north was. If the Confederate Army had the same population, economy, and industrialization to draw from that the Union Army had, the world would be a very different place now. I'm a solid northerner, but to say the Confederates sucked at war because they lost is like saying Sparta sucked at war because they were conquered by Rome. And to the FAA thing, HeloDude is spot on. The only reason to change it in the first place was politics, so to call out someone for lack of focus for changing it back is a bit ironic.

Maybe. But the regional pilots likely heard one side of the radio traffic that would have lead them to believe that the military traffic had them in sight and was deconflicting from them. Before this accident, I'm betting the vast majority (like 95% or more) of pilots would hear that and move on to focusing 100% on flying the non-standard night visual approach they likely hadn't expected or briefed. Also, if the FO was flying, that would only make it less likely that he would time share looking for the helo while on short final. And that's if they even had an idea of where to look for it.

Not even remotely the same. Ukraine didn't send a bunch of thugs into Russia to rape women, randomly kill people, and literally throw babies into bonfires. If Ukraine had done that to Russia and Russia invaded Ukraine as a response, I don't think you would see anyone here advocating helping Ukraine. Keep in mind that Hamas was elected by the people. They knew the type of people they were putting in power. The Palestinians celebrated Oct 7th as a victory. Women and children beat hostages and cheered as they dragged the bodies naked dead women down the street. What's a reasonable long term solution? Clearly the status quo isn't working and is only going to lead to more death and suffering. Palestine was offered statehood in Gaza and they rejected it. There will be no long-term peace. This is one sad situation where there doesn't seem to be any middle ground and so it looks like it is going to be a winner-take-all solution. If that's the case, I support the side that doesn't celebrate throwing babies into fires. As far as the region, the leaders of other countries in the area only pay lip service to supporting Palestine. They don't like or want the Palestinians and I would bet that if they could get a good excuse to look the other way while Israel takes over Gaza, they would do so happily. Only reason they pretend to support the Palestinians is because it would look bad to their people to favor Israel.

He initially pressed the Arab nations to take the Palestinians, which they have basically refused to do since 1947 and still refuse to do. Hopefully, this is a shot across the bow that the other countries in that region need to chip in and figure out a real long term solution before the US basically turns Gaza into a Middle East Hong Kong. The idea has also been floated of bulldozing the entire strip and just leaving it bare for a while. Hopefully that is what actually happens. Then in 10 years, Israel turns it into a tourist beach resort area and shows the world what the Palestinians could have done but instead chose to elect a government of terrorists more focused on killing other people than providing for their own people.