busdriver

In sum sortie count and variety of experience is what matters, the hour count just happens. And I agree.

Ok fine, ignoring Pitt, and not arguing with a heavy guy about flight hours. Nothing about this accident screams "caused by inexperience." Your point is the procedure is dumb, which it is. Because it's fucking dangerous no matter how experienced the crew is. Her hours are irrelevant.

Except that is exactly what Pitt was doing. When actual evidence is to the contrary.

Stop. You don't know anything about the Army or what an RLO's primary duties are. You don't know what a "normal" amount of flight hours for an Army officer are in right now. You don't know anything about this person. You are pulling your un-informed, vapid internet opinions out of your ass.

Yeah, and to be fair to them, the GOP hasn't been the party of small government in a long time. They're like the party of different big government. I mean we might get some wins amongst the poop sandwich that is the trump administration, but it ain't gonna be roses the whole way down.

Just so everyone is on the same page. This is a continuation of a previous cut, right? So spending cuts are required to prevent a tax increase. While increasing the deficit and saying you're decreasing it. Anyways Continue flinging poop at each other boys!

Is anyone surprised the organization that made people take photos of their wives off of desks would also over-react here? The DoD only knows bang-bang control logic.

I have a Henry Big Boy X in .44mag. It's slick, fun, and not accurate at all. It'll shoot hot ammo reasonably (assuming you don't want to shoot past 50 yards or so), but the softer stuff is atrocious. I haven't gotten a can for it yet, but that's the plan. I basically wanted a lever gun that looked like it came out of the Fallout computer game.

Please vomit all over all the threads. It's super useful.

There's providence, and then there's just plain gullibility.

NATO's job: Keep the Russian out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.

Every developed nation is basically broke, with collapsing demographics. But also, AI potentially replacing lots and lots of office work. The future is weird.

I'm not sure US debt default is the actual problem looming. Other nations would have to stop buying US debt, and they're all in worse financial situations than we are. I'm pretty sure you're just using "default" to generally mean economic calamity, which I am sure is coming. What happens if the US is always the least drunk of the sailors on a spending spree?

Social Security insolvency, otherwise maybe after the boomers all die off. Gen X is small enough that it might not be complete political suicide. Might.

Did you guys ever actually think reducing the deficit was going to happen in this administration? He took entitlement reform/cuts off the table long ago.

Screen grab from Youtube. Just thought some of you would appreciate the visual.

I guess I'm stepping outside the thing I said I'd stay inside. Fair enough. My point was about leverage and trust. In that case, back to what defines regional. In this case my point was leading towards a defensible land border. Which would define the "region" as I'm thinking.

Obviously we're not going to agree. But I appreciate the level headed responses. As to Moldova, I don't think that arrangement suffices if we're sticking to using the realist lens to analyze this. I don't think that at all works for regional hegemony. If Russia were a relatively democratic/honest participant in the global order, then I'd think different. But an oligarchy/autocracy/whatever, nope. I would think Moldova is next up after Ukraine actually. Low probability at this point, but following the realist logic...

I would say the only example of an acceptable relationship is Belarus. A puppet. It would take active actions by the West to ensure that position for Ukraine. Mearshimer blames the US for this war.

I'll try this another way. What relationship between Russia and Ukraine do you think would have been acceptable enough to not result in a war? Also, yes people are actually saying America is at fault.

My point is that anything less than a vasal state in Ukraine would have always been more than Russia could tolerate. NATO expansion is irrelevant.

The vein of thought saying "America provoked this war and is at fault" crowd has a major case of main character syndrome. They can't see any geopolitical actor other than the US having agency. Then they'll point to Mearsheimer, who agrees with the point above. The weird part is that his own treatise (The Tragedy of Great Power Politics) would point you to the opposite conclusion. If objective 1 of any great power is to seek regional hegemony and prevent others from doing the same (method of assuring survival by preventing effective rivals), by his theory Russia was always going to become belligerent again as is seeks hegemony. I guess a populist moment was always going to be based on emotion. Probably the same before the rise of the progressive era.

Same logic : We need to allow the tyrant to have what he wants so he doesn't destroy his own society. ETA: my impression is this was sarcasm. If serious, shrewd real-politic.

While ideologically, I like all the weird libertarian tax stuff; I think it's all picking at the edges of a pipe dream. The population is getting older. We will likely need to cut/reform spending and increase taxes. Of course that is political suicide. So it will only happen after fiscal insolvency. No one on this board should be planning on social security.