brabus

But seriously, congrats on that much land. Good luck with the communists in charge of the state.

I wasn’t referring to just the BBB, I’m speaking generally about avoiding the fiscal cliff - the answer is not more taxes, it’s stop spending ludicrous amounts of money on dumb shit. Though I’m glad to hear you say you’re down with cutting entitlements (e.g. where the vast majority of “the dumb shit” resides). The point I made above, and am making now, is large cuts in entitlements is the only answer that moves the needle enough. Until we do that, everything else is par for the course noise, including this bill.

They’ll need to do a whole lot more than the protesting that has occurred. Directed violence is the only answer at this point.

Not saying there aren’t Islamic groups who “project power” in a terrorizing/iron fist rule method, but the general populace of the Islamic world will not fight it. They’ll keep their heads down, do what they’re told, etc. The percentage of those people who will stand up and fight evil and tyranny is very small.

The regular citizens should man the fuck up and start fighting back for real. But, their culture’s bedrock is subservience and cowardice. So, they will not; while that doesn’t justify the regime’s actions, it also shouldn’t make any rational westerner feel like the west has to go in and save them. They won’t save themselves, not our problem.

The rest of the flybys have already been covered. But your answer right here demonstrates the D’s base misunderstanding of finances. “But more taxes will fix it!” and never “hey we should stop spending like drunken sailors buying absolutely stupid shit.” Until you guys can understand basic finances my children understand, this is a useless discussion.

There’s what we want to happen in a “perfect world” and then there’s reality. Reality is nobody anywhere on the political spectrum, in large enough numbers, is serious about significantly cutting entitlements. That’s the only rational way we’re going to see meaningful debt reduction and avoid the “fiscal cliff.” Everything else like DOGE-driven savings, reasonable DoD cuts, etc. will not appreciably move the needle. I suppose the other option is massive cuts in areas that completely gut our country and turn it into Venezuela, but I’m not considering that a rational option. So, the BBB is like every federal bill since the “beginning of time:” full of pork and spending too much. If you’re a realist, you understand this and can at least see there’s some good stuff in there (in spite of the stuff you don’t like). If you’re an idealist who doesn’t live in reality and likes to cast stones from your utopian view of what things should be like, without offering actual solutions that are attainable in the real world, well then by all means have fun sport bitching with your buddy Massie.

Found a recent picture of M2 - looks like he can only afford beans for dinner.

Like many things, it’s also one of those capabilities that would have been phenomenal to have FOC 15 years ago, but a late 2020s IOC just makes it a “meh.” The US acquisitions process is horrible.

I agree, and no I don’t have all the answers, never made that claim. I guess I misunderstood your statement of “I know how to get sensors in range” to mean manned, airborne ISR. Perhaps we are on the same page, but just confusing a bit when earlier you seemed to be debating me on the utility of manned, airborne ISR in a peer fight (in the beginning at least).

So do I, but it doesn’t involve E-3, E-2D, E-7, etc. If you think it does, you are unfortunately missing some valuable information, context, experience, and overall understanding gleaned from all of that. That’s not a spear, it’s just a pragmatic “you don’t know what you don’t know,” and I’ll leave it at that. That we agree on. Acquisitions process has been fucked for a long time.

Makes sense they wouldn’t have a releasable AIB for security reasons in some cases.

I hope FL doesn’t end up on the short end of this stick. The last thing any state needs is a bunch of dumbass NYC-ers moving their way.

I think the big hump for many to get over is the significant paradigm shift - peer warfare has rapidly changed and airborne C2, as we know it, is essentially obsolete (at least until we destroy a lot of adversary capabilities). So, we’ve had to look at other means to gain battle space awareness, ITW, data passage, etc. So again, yawn to the E7 getting shitcanned; G550s (or similar) to support the non-peer stuff.