Smokin

I don't have the defender, but I do have another vortex 6 moa red dot and I'm not impressed. Rather than a single dot, it is actually a ring of about 6-9 dots with a single dot in the middle. I bought it for an AR pistol and it is only OK. Assuming this is the same thing in a smaller frame, might be OK for a short range defensive pistol, but I don't know you'd extend your accurate range that much more than some quality after market iron sights.

Yes, unfortunately $345 is a good price for the LCP Max right now. I like it; shoots better than most pistols that small and holds more rounds. As I stated, I'm a fan of the crossbreed holsters. Similar to brabus, my oldest one is over a decade old and is holding up great. I've since bought 3-4 others for other guns. I'm also looking to move my CC pistol sights over to red dots. There's a reason they're basically the standard on ARs and it is because almost everyone is far faster and more accurate with them than with iron sights. Only real downside is the added size and battery issues. Leupold's Deltapoint Micro looks interesting if you go with a Glock or M&P. Would be nice if they figured out a way to mount the battery under the sight though, sticking out the back looks a little awkward.

Everything is a tradeoff, so depends on what you're willing to trade. Need it to stay relatively hidden wearing work out shorts? LCP Max. Live in the mountains and you wear a winter coat 8 months a year? I'd imagine a shoulder holster with the biggest gun you like to shoot would be fairly comfortable. Personally I like the LCP Max when I'm making a low threat trip to the store. Easy to throw in a pocket, put a truck key in there and it disappears. You can no kidding have it in the pocket of a workout shorts as long as you don't wear jarhead shorts. For a higher threat or normal clothes, the XDS 9mm is great. Paired with a crossbreed holster IWB it is comfortable enough that I'm not going to skip taking it, which is really the most important factor. A full auto cannon in the safe at home is useless when you're somewhere else.

Every day you show up to work past 20 years, you're working for $60K less since you'd get that $60K in retirement to just have a heart beat. If you think you might be done, you're probably done. Retiring as an O-6 at 30 years just doubled your retirement pay to $120K and you stand a chance to full up retire in your early 50's if you're good with money. But by then most peoples kids will have moved to college and you'll have missed much of their childhood with queep the boss 'needs tonight'.

Words matter. The original quote was 'Christians believe gay marriage is a sin' and the poll you quoted asks if gay marriage should be legal. I would imagine that a large percentage of Christians believe both to be true. I'll give you an easier example: I believe it is a sin to not worship God. I do not think it should be illegal in America to not worship God. They are not mutually exclusive.

If you're going to take the bonus, do so in the guard after you have a line number.

https://www.news.com.au/sport/sports-life/bearded-man-smashes-womens-weightlighting-record-held-by-trans-lifter/news-story/f7e925cde26ffb394e0aed56db0cf42a Good on this dude showcasing how absurd the argument is. Crushes the record that was previously held by a tranny, who had previously crushed the record held by an actual woman. Then the tranny has the balls to cry about how unfair it was. Next you're going to have Olympic athletes going back to their high school to crush the high school records because they identify as a 17 year old.

I agree with @Danger41 that it is interesting that, for the most part, each generation has more knowledge available than the previous generation yet never seems to learn that we are always learning and much of what previous generations "knew for a fact" was in fact wrong. Go through a museum today and what strikes me even more than the vast amount of information available is the absolute absence of any humility. You will almost never see the terms "scientists think" or "evidence suggests". Theories are presented as irrefutable fact because science cannot be wrong. A generation ago, many considered the majority of the Old Testament to be complete fiction and even much of the historic figures and places of the New Testament to be fictional as well. Historians pointed to the absence of any King David, until the Tel Dan Inscription was discovered. Then more and more archeology discoveries proved Luke's description of people and places to be remarkably accurate, even places he never personally went to. People may be quick to dismiss the Bible has parables and fiction, but put just as much faith in unproven theories with considerable problems in them. For example, what actually caused the big bang? Something doesn't explode for no reason. How did life come from inanimate objects? Richard Dawkins, one of the smartest atheists of our time, answers that with ... aliens. But that only prolongs the question because then where did the aliens come from? To me, the atheist potion takes more faith than the Christian position. If I'm wrong, I've wasted time time and money. If the atheist is wrong, there is literally hell to pay for eternity. Perhaps we should start a thread on Christian apologetics in the Air Force.

As a Christian, yes, but that's not my point. China is built on a communist ideology. Converting China from a communist (and therefore atheist) ideology to a Christian one would undermine everything it is built on and likely make it collapse, especially if that was largely done in one person's lifetime. We are just doing the opposite (going from Christian to atheist). The United States surviving (at least in any form that even remotely resembles our current one) that quick transition as a country/culture/power seems unlikely.

We have walked away from what made us great. Every great power I can think of in history that walked away from what made them a great power has completely collapsed. I cannot think of any that have peacefully transitioned from one type of successful society to another. Perhaps Great Britain, but that was also driven by the two worst wars in history and still caused her to fall from the status of a great power. Athens was a great power due to their navy and empire. During the war with Sparta, they built up a land army and rested on their laurels with their navy. Sparta built a navy, took the empire from Athens and Athens has been a marginal power since. Ironically, Sparta's change from a small elite land army to a larger naval power led to her collapse. Similarly, Rome became great largely due to their style of government and incentives for conquered peoples to profit from joining Rome. After Cesar, the government slowly grew to be completely out of control (sound familiar?) and Rome collapsed. The United States became great because of a combination of a limited but effective government, the work ethic of the citizens, the ideal that anyone could rise as high as their talent and effort merited, an abundance in natural resources, and, most importantly, a strong sense of Judaeo-Christian values even if the founders did not always profess that faith. Today our government has grown so far beyond what it started that the founding fathers would almost certainly rise up in rebellion if they were somehow transported in time to be now. The work ethic of our citizens appears to be at a depressingly low level and I personally know healthy, capable individuals that would rather sit at home on unemployment than take a job they were offered. The new 'equity' movement gives the appearance that skin color is more important than merit. Even if you do well, you have combined tax rates pushing 50% in some states that drastically reduce the appeal to work harder to earn more. Finally, we are willingly stopping from using our own natural resources in favor importing those exact same natural resources from other countries. Most importantly, the Judaeo-Christian values that this country was built upon are being actively attacked and portrayed as hateful. Those values are/were the bedrock of the American family which is a microcosm of America in general. Without that traditional American family unit, you cannot expect children to grow up and endorse those values in any significant percentage. As others have mentioned, you cannot rip the foundation out from under a house and expect the house to stand. We are living in a house where members of the household are taking jackhammers to the foundation. If this goes on for too long, the house will collapse and take many of us with it.

Sorry, been busy. How about these: https://financesonline.com/single-parent-statistics/ https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/less-poverty-less-prison-more-college-what-two-parents-mean-for-black-and-white-children/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/12/12/u-s-children-more-likely-than-children-in-other-countries-to-live-with-just-one-parent/ https://www.educationnext.org/education-gap-grows-adolescents-single-parent-families/ https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2015/february/teens-from-single-parent-families-leave-school-earlier.html Single parent homes are an effect of the change in American cultural values and there are significant consequences for subsequent generations. It is not an excuse for subsequent generations, but in general they do have to work harder to catch up to their two parent home counterparts.

Sure it's 1%? When I looked it up (it was close to two decades ago so may have changed) it was 1/4 of 1%. As in 1/12 of the money I get back using my good travel card.

While epidemic in the black community, the rest of the United States (and the western world overall) isn't far behind. This is absolutely the root cause of the majority of what is wrong with America.

Great to see there are still people in our country that run toward the sound of gunfire. Good on that cop wearing the body cam both figuratively and literally pushing any of his fellow cops that appeared to slow down. A plan of nothing more than 'run to the sound of the gunshots and shoot that person' violently executed right now is better than SEAL team six showing up in 5 minutes. Now if only we can get some of the front office people armed and doors that consist of more than glass, we might have a chance at this being a page three news article about someone being killed trying to break into a school.

They found the "boat accident" stash: https://www.foxnews.com/us/new-york-ffisherman-tips-police-cache-rifles-handguns-submerged-jamaica-bay

Careful with all this backdoor talk or the eagle drivers will take over this thread...

That's scary accurate...

I would not. Assuming that hiring continues along the current trend and you're going to a legacy passenger airline, you won't be forced to sit reserve very long. Commuting to the worst line is usually better than commuting to reserve. Once you get a line, you'll have a decent chance of either commuting in or home, so your nights in domicile on your own dime could realistically be under 6 within a reasonable amount of time and possibly down to zero within a year. I just stayed in a hotel when I commuted to reserve (roughly 5 months back in 2019) and only spent maybe $100-200 more a month than most my buddies that had crashpads. For that price, it's worth it to me to have my own room, a shuttle on demand, and every 4-5 days paid earns enough points for a free night. Also opens up the opportunity to pick up cross town trips for a bit extra pay and just commute straight into the cross town airport.

How so? Military pilots go through a rigorous flight school and experience a wider variety of problems to solve before being ready to be hired by a major than most civilian path pilots. While most require some adjustment to the 121 world, very few former military pilots I know (including single seat fighters) have had any issue in training or on the line. This is the opposite of a DEI hire; hiring an individual that you know to be highly experienced, well trained, disciplined, and more potential than your company needs and with potentially no more training required than any other new hire.

Increasing the diversity of the hiring pool is very different than increasing the diversity of those hired. The pure civilian path to an airline pilot has traditionally been an expensive ordeal. Loans were likely not available to inner city kids that had no credit and no one to co-sign the loans. If we are talking about looking at creative ways to get kids that have the right aptitude and attitude, but not the means, into that training pipeline then that increases the pool of applicants. However, that is only a very small part of the discussion right now. United has stated that they want 50% of their new hires to be women or minorities. I think it would be naive to think that is not being considered at some level during the actual hiring process. That serves to reduce the effective size of the hiring pool, which makes it certain that you're going to end up with a less qualified pilot being hired. Finally, the diversity we should be interested in is diversity of thought, not skin color. I have met many people that look very different than me that think in a similar way I do. Hiring them only makes us look diverse. But if you hire a white dude from Texas and a white South African, I guarantee you're going to have more real diversity than hiring two Air Force fighter pilots that happen to be different races. Obviously that's not important because we all know that only appearances matter these days. This is why our superpower days are over.

The other thing to consider is that you generally buy insurance for something that is unlikely but expensive. It is unlikely that my house burns down, but it would be financially crippling if it did and I was uninsured. I know that my family and I are going to need dental work over the course of our lives and the expense is not generally crippling financially for most middle income people. In my mind, the only reason to have dental insurance is if it is significantly subsidized by my employer.

That letter can also come from the MPF if said commander won't write it. Just have it say the day the leave starts and the day the orders end.

Don't kid yourself. He's a figurehead.

APKWS future balloon buster? Maybe make a few with less explosive to get a slower decent rate to examine all the stuff inside. Or even one with a parachute instead of a warhead that deploys when the rocket burns out. Just to punch a couple 2.75" holes in it over land and let the thing slowly descend. Almost no risk to US citizens and we get the balloon intact.

We just spent 1000x as much money shooting down the balloon as China spent launching it. If I were them, I'd launch 20 next week and just watch us waste missiles, flight hours, etc.