Mark1

Oh good. More one-off, cherry-picked, anecdotal examples purported to be representative of one, and only one, ideological belief system (nevermind the fact that these people are again, barely classifiable as politicians, and certainly not leaders of the country). You do understand that politicians of all ideological convictions make a living off of saying things that they don't have to follow through on, no? Every presidential campaign depends on it. On principle I refuse to post any of the readily accessible pictures of conservatives holding up retarded hashtags for causes they brain-dumped two seconds after their press secretary snapped the photo. You're apparently blind to them, so why waste my time. As I said earlier, I don't have enough days left on Earth to gather a representative sample. The fact that you only actually internalize politicians promising the world and then not delivering for one very specific belief system while absolving those who do the same thing but are more like-minded with you is sad. It's as sad as meaningless gestures taking the place of necessary actions.

I made no comment on whatever bigger picture might have been discussed earlier in the thread. I couldn't have because I literally didn't see anything in this thread but the post containing the picture of the first lady. It's this simple: She's holding up a piece of paper that implies that she feels bad about the Boko Haram kidnappings, and hopes that that the girls make it out safely. Since I didn't see any non-progressive politicians featured in pictures of them holding up hashtags conveying opposing views....you know, perhaps like "#RapeThemKillThemAndDumpTheBodies", for example...I assume that they all generally agree with the sentiment she's conveying. If that's not the case, by all means show me the non-progressive politician who felt, "I hope they all die miserable deaths" about the situation and went out of their way to advertise that to the world. Assuming you won't find an example of that, the point is that there is no distinguishing factor between her (progressive) sentiment and that of any other ideological viewpoint. Therefore, to respond with partisanship (it's appropriate HeloDude, look it up) is a sign of neurosis. There are plenty of legitimate differences in ideology to attack. Go after those. You just cheapen your own argument when you so rabidly clamor for something to criticize that you end up finding fault where there is none.

You are so right. Progressives have a corner on that market. Never have I ever seen an alternate philosophy politician (if you can even call the first lady a politician) champion a cause in a wholly symbolic way for personal gain without actually doing anything meaningful to change it. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Insert faceplam .jpeg of epic proportions here. ------------------------------------------------------------------- I'd dig up a couple examples for you, but I don't have enough years left on this Earth to compile a representative sample. That was pretty much my point. It's called satire.

This is an example of progressive idealogy? Oh yeah, I forgot the opposing conservative stance on the issue, #RapeThemKillThemAndDumpTheBodies. As pointlessly symbolic as this was it makes my head hurt to think of the paranoia you must live with if you can find partisan politics in this. WTF indeed.

Has nothing to do with the MWS and everything to do with the unit itself, and I don't blame them. I'd have made the same call.

I couldn't agree more. We should be looking to put a cannon that is a generational improvement over the 105 on the next generation gunship. Unfortunately, for 2.5 AFSOC Commander's tenures, research into finding a suitable upgrade was abandoned on the notion that a large bore cannon was unnecessary. My delight that Heithold unfucked this situation is only driven by the assumption that it is now too late to pursue better alternatives because he had a pile of shit dropped on his plate when he took control. He's making the best of a bad situation. A 105 is better than nothing at all, and it is literally a life saver over an SDB option. If I'm wrong that it's too late to find a better alternative, then by all means, AFSOC should start researching. I was a part of that hunt for something better before it was largely shut down, and although anything we found was never going to go on the AC-H, you would not have seen any institutional resistance to it from geezers who just love grandpas old musket. The community doesn't love the large bore cannon because it's cool, or because it's comfortably familiar. They love it because it allows them to save more lives, period. Find an alternative that improves that capability and the 'old school' community will embrace it, I promise. PSP ain't it. And of course nobody in their right mind would expect it to be. Its development was a band-aid fix, a stopgap. The 'W' exists solely because AFSOC couldn't get a properly designed, ground-up, platform fielded in the time-frame (and for affordable cost) that the user needed. So they took an existing airframe, cut a bunch of holes in it, and bolted a bunch of shit on in an impressively short time. Then they realized it wasn't half bad, and that they could save a bunch of money if they just didn't bother with any of that pesky innovation shit that usually goes along with a new billion dollar acquisition. You see, the geezers aren't trying to hold on to antiquity...they're trying to ensure that the next generation is actually a legitimate improvement over it. I once had a conversation with the key players for a squad that, organizationally, should be supported by the 'W', but isn't. I'll avoid posting the direct quote of what was said because it's a bit inflammatory, but suffice to say, the 'W' isn't welcome in their ROZs. It surprised me because this was a squad that would routinely stack 6 fires platforms on top God himself for a routine mission while conventional units took casualties elsewhere. So why not just have the 'W' do the same? You don't have to employ with them. At the very least it's another set of eyes. But they didn't want anything to do with it. For a stopgap measure, fine. But if the next generation comes off looking like a platform that these guys wouldn't touch, AFSOC should be ashamed. Nobody is trying to reincarnate the H/U. Nothing could be further from the truth. They want something that is leaps and bounds better, and right now things aren't on the track to make that happen.

Sorry the truth hurts. I hope that you're out there pounding the pavement to keep the 105 off the 'W', because if your exceptionally biased opinion holds weight, it's just going to cost several thousand pounds of gas while providing no benefit. There are several 'W' BDA videos I'd love to post in support of my opinion. Thank god, by pure chance, they didn't result in unnecessary casualties. And yeah, I love the crack.

Do you need any graphic artists? I'm quite skilled in drawing cartoon dicks of all shapes, sizes, and ethnicity. I could send you a portfolio of my work if necessary.

You guys should be more open minded and just let Chang open your aperture for you already.

The lack of S.A. and general comprehension associated with this post makes my brain hurt.

Credit to Heithold for this. I wonder how much time/money could have been saved if his predecessors had listened to every SME who had an opinion on the J having a large bore cannon from the start so that Heithold didn't have to unfuck it. It's not the kind of thing that can be proven (because you can't subject different platforms to identical scenarios and compare the outcome), but the Stinger configuration costs lives in the long run.

I'm glad it worked out for you, but yeah, a single 10yr trial demonstrates nothing. Historical analysis would actually suggest that the higher returning fund will do worse than its peers moving forward (on your investment timescales that fact is negligible though). It's not a theory that you have to test for yourself. There's plenty of historical data. A proper statistical analysis is probably beyond what most people are capable of or willing to do, but luckily there are plenty of people that have already done it for you. It's been shown time and time again, no genius fund manager can beat the market unless they're doing something illegal. So the best idea is to index the market, and forget about it (and obviously you'll have to move away from indexing the market as you get closer to retirement in order to reduce volatility). The lifecycle funds are decent for somebody who isn't willing to put in a little effort to pick an appropriate allocation of other funds, but they don't approximate the total market very well. So a handpicked mix of the other funds is a better option, and eliminates the concern over the lifecycles being too conservative. As far as the military messing with contributions, it sucks, but I'd imagine its a rare occurrence, and it's still worth putting up with. If the military still has their hands on you then your choices are either to contribute, or not (you can't roll over because you're still active). The tax advantage is too good to pass up while you're on payroll. Once you're out and have the option to roll over to a 401k you aren't making contributions so there's nothing for finance to mess with.

To your first point, I hadn't thought of that. In that case, if you're able to transfer only the tax-exempt portion out, then that's a benefit. If you have to transfer all or nothing, you'd have to look at the ratio of tax-exempt to taxable contributions in your account and decide if the lower expense ratios will overcome the tax advantage of transferring out over time. To your second point, any disparity in performance between L2050 and VFIFX is due purely to chance, and should not be considered in a decision of where best to place your investment. Over the long term they will both converge towards the same return percentage, minus expenses. The fund with the lower expenses is best. Vanguard funds are, in general, the best option open to the general public, so it's hard to go wrong with them. However, TSP is objectively the better option for taxable principal.

You should be looking for only two things in an investment plan: The ability to approximate the total market with the provided funds Minimization of expenses TSP allows you to approximate the total market fairly well. You could perhaps do slightly better on your own, but it would take a decent amount of effort and any benefit would be negligible in the long run. You will not find a fund in the private sector that comes close to TSP expense ratios. Even low maintenance funds in the private sector that are widely considered to be 'great' in terms of expense ratios are ~3 times more expensive to the investor than TSP (for example: the SPY ETF). On top of that, TSP trades are free so re-balancing your account costs you nothing. Take whatever you have in TSP and find a mix of the available funds to suit your risk tolerance (or use the lifecycle funds), and then come back every 6 months to re-balance the funds back to your ideal mix. In between that time, forget about it. At retirement your TSP account will have more cash in it than had you attempted a comparable strategy with any other private sector fund. There is no good monetary argument for removing your funds from TSP (assuming you're still investing on a 'long term' timeline). If some buddy of yours tries to convince you that TSP is shit, make sure you educate yourself before you make the irreversible decision to withdraw from the Program. Once you pull your funds, you can't get back in when 5 years down the road you realize your mistake. I have only one complaint with TSP, and really I'm probably just being protected from myself. I'd like to be able to sit everything in my account on the sideline as cash if I want. Financially it makes no sense, but I still find myself wanting the security of knowing I could if I wanted to. However, it's not enough to pass up the opportunity to participate in TSP. I can move my civilian sector investments to cash if I feel the need, and again, it's a stupid move anyway.

Yeah, that's true. I did so multiple times...because the alternative was to be at Cannon dealing with all the bullshit that goes along with home station. Sadly, after about 2 months exposure to home station, Afghanistan was a welcome break. When the choice is between being at Cannon dealing with the bullshit, or being at Hickam dealing with the bullshit, you're going to run short on volunteers. Not even close to comparable. I wish individual officers approached all things with the same selflessness that might lead them to jump on a grenade, but it's just not true to life. Reference the active thread on this forum of people calling bullshit for having to pay $10 out of pocket for food while sitting alert. They'll fly into enemy WEZs, but won't put up with being subjugated to the same treatment that any private citizen called into work to fix an issue on the weekend faces: having to feed themselves with funds from their paycheck. And it's not an unexpected response given human nature. When faced with the opportunity to raise your hand and volunteer to take an assignment at Minot, or just let the lottery happen and accept your fate if your number is pulled, you're not going to see a lot of hands shooting up. In claim #3 he says that people will selflessly sacrifice and voluntarily take non-desirable assignments for the good of the force. Now all the sudden seeing their families jerked around and uprooted every few years with little or no say in the process is enough to throw in the towel? This is a direct contradiction of his assertion in claim #3. The assignment system can absolutely be improved and his general premise is sound, but you cost yourself credibility when you propose a solution to a problem that has no 100% correct solution, and then defend your proposal from all angles as if it's perfect. Just propose it as a better alternative, not a perfect one. Explain the benefits of the proposal and acknowledge that there are inevitably some shortcomings, but that they're less significant than with the status quo.

So you're spending between 10 and 15k per month? I've got a better 'free cash' plan. Ditch the cash back rewards, spend between 9 and 14k per month, pocket the $500 difference between the two plans, and spend your free time on your boat instead of in the Walmart money order line (that's a scary place to be).

Some sanity. Good to see. And you should note that the 15% of managed funds that did beat the market did so through sheer luck of the draw, not skill or knowledge of the managers. They will, on average, not beat the market next year...and in the long run their returns will approximate market return minus their exorbitant expenses. Its been conclusively shown over an over that the 'brightest investment minds' in the world do no better than would a monkey choosing investment vehicles by throwing shit at a dartboard. The investment managers make their millions by taking a percentage of their clients money in exchange for providing a sham service. Read this: https://www.amazon.com/Four-Pillars-Investing-Building-Portfolio-ebook/dp/B0041842TW/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1420257749&sr=1-1&keywords=the+four+pillars+of+investing When you're done, go back and fix anything that is costing you return on your retirement investments. After that, if you still want to gamble in the market (and that's fine, just as long as you understand that it is a straight gamble, and you seem to), open a separate account with whatever dollar amount you're willing to lose, and start throwing your shit at a dartboard. If you lose it all, you're done, until such time that you feel comfortable throwing away another chunk of change for the entertainment value of betting on the market. Personally, I'd just hold on to the money and wait until you're TDY to Vegas.

Given that they don't have any significant benchmarks in that arena, and that The Interview is still going to lose money for them, I don't think that's much to write home about.

Wow. That's about as far off the mark as you could possibly get. It's not really relevant, but I'm as libertarian as you can get. I think the collective should do the absolute minimum of thinking for the individual. I don't give one shit what anybody else does or thinks, and I don't want to tell them how to do it. As long as what they do doesn't infringe upon others' rights, go for it. It's quite the opposite. You straight up insinuated that because 79% (given the numbers you presented...it's not actually that high) were okay with torture, that their opinions should dictate the U.S.'s actions on behalf of 100%. You advocate thinking for others. And yes, I understand that the U.S. government has to take one action or another, and not everybody is going to be happy with it, but running with the concept of 'majority rules', back to my over-the-top example: The majority of Americans when asked, 'Do you think Judaism has any merit?', would answer 'no'. So we should deport Jews and outllaw the religion because the majority has spoken? It's about as un-American as you can get. People need to get this 'majority rules' concept out of their head, because it's literally the antithesis of what this country was founded on. Majority opinion plays a significant role in how this country runs, but it does not reign supreme. It is severely restrained by a higher power in the form of the Constitution, as it should be. I'd love to see pure 'majority rules' form of governance implemented in this country. Vote on everything. Anything with 50.01% support goes. Then you can let me know if you still take offense to my 'the average American is stupid' comment. I can't even imagine all the dumb shit that would be going on, and I think you know it's true. I certainly know that the number of circumstances in which you felt the collective had decided [incorrectly] how to act or think on your behalf would increase by orders of magnitude.

Yeah, you're right, we aren't. That's the point. We should be. And it's been quite a while since we've 'won' one. It has nothing to do with making our enemies love us. I know this is going to be taken personally, but I assure you I don't mean it to be inflammatory: This is exactly the problem. The country collectively acts selfishly when emotion is involved, but then a couple years down the road still tries to stand on the pedestal and say we're better than the rest. 'Whatever it takes to keep my family and I safe' with no regard for the bigger picture and the greater good. Tap the phones, torture the bad guys for intel, hastily invade Iraq. Then two months down the line we see some other entity acting selfishly and get all indignant about it. Beheading journalists on camera serves a purpose for ISIS, whether you believe it or not. Don't get righteous and bent out of shape over it when it happens, because they're just acting selfishly with no regard for others, same as us if we condone torture when it's convenient. It's just more personally painful when the shoe is on the other foot (and no, I'm not suggesting that if we set the example, ISIS will follow...it's not about that). The rules are that you accept the fact that living freely comes with a cost...and that the cost is worth paying. I don't point my fingers when something goes 'boom'. To the contrary, I would accept a 9/11 magnitude attack on a regular basis as the cost of living freely without concern...even if it affected me personally (I'm aware that I'm in the minority here, but I mean what I say...and I'm not saying I wouldn't support doing everything reasonable to prevent it, but it wouldn't involve subverting the Constitution or the ideals we claim to stand for). This country gave G.W. the keys to the cupboard post 9/11 because it was collectively acting on emotion. I'd wish that our politicians could be counted on to act logically under strain even when the citizens are delusional with emotion, but no. Instead we got the Patriot Act, and all other assortment of Executive mandates behind the scenes. They are collectively some of the most counter-Constitutional acts that we've seen in decades (I don't need examples of Civil War era government overreach...horrible behavior doesn't justify bad behavior, and if everything we did in the past was some sort of benchmark of acceptability, then I guess we need to bring back slavery and prevent women from voting). For god's sake, John Ashcroft eventually cried foul and made it known he thought the administration [that he was employed by] was way out of line, and he was about as far from a Constitutional savior as you can get. You know that guy, Gruber? We'll he was right. The American people are stupid. Despite what we're taught in elementary school, the governance structure in the U.S. is absolutely not a 'majority rules' Democracy. There's plenty of dumb shit we'd be doing if we acted on population surveys. The Bill of Rights is all about protecting minority positions against majority rule. The majority of people in this country would object to carrying a gun in a lot of circumstances, burning a flag, or being a Jew. There aren't laws reflecting that majority opinion for a reason. I don't follow your logic that because nobody has derailed the conversation by bringing up Al-Awlaki, it somehow indicates everybody's stance on the matter. There are a million different topics of conversation that could tie into this discussion; they can't all be addressed simultaneously.

Check out 6:45-7:20 with a focus on 7:05-7:20. Jesus Christ, do you mind at least acknowledging the dead man, you asshole? Apparently he's got a slightly different take on Blackstone's Formulation ("better that 10 guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer"). It makes me physically sick that these kinds of people represent me. And before anybody makes a comment about the source of the video, I didn't watch the program that's showing the 'Meet the Press' clip. I just searched for 'Dick Cheney Meet the Press" on YouTube and this was the first result that had what I was looking for, so if they're a horrible freedom hating liberal news program, I don't need to hear it.

There's a big ######ing difference between volunteering to play a part in a production where you know the guy on the other end has no malice towards you and can't do anything physically damaging to you, and getting rolled up by an enemy that knows his actions will never see the light of day, and is acting on emotions. There's a big difference between hearing "boots" for 24hrs and hearing it for 24 days. There's a big difference between knowing you'll be done in 24hrs and not knowing if it'll ever end. There's a big difference between having the option to call for a medic and having it all instantly stop, and not. Don't compare it to SERE. I think that if you were rolled up by the North Koreans for an indefinite period and they were constrained to only using waterboarding, sleep deprivation, stress positions, confining spaces, mild beatings, etc., etc., you wouldn't have quite the rosy outlook that you had on the bus ride out to the SERE camp. It may not be bamboo shoots under your fingernails and broken bones, but it's a pretty common theme among guys who have been through that stuff that the psychological approaches were the worst. I have only this to say: Anybody saying "I'm not opposed to doing what had to be done" better not also think, "god damn savages" next time one of our guys shows up in a propaganda video and loses his head or is clearly not being treated well. It was convenient for our enemies to exploit their good fortune of having rolled up one of ours, and it's no different than when the tables were turned and we decided to act similarly.

I don't doubt that is true, but it would be even more disgusting than just trying to claim that the 'enhanced interrogation' wasn't torture. For all the congressmen arguing that the information garnered from the program saved lives: I take that to mean that you believe torture is acceptable when it's convenient for us. Go ###### yourselves. Whether it works or not (it doesn't) isn't even a conversation we should be having.

Watching members of Congress on the House and Senate floors saying this isn't torture, but then feeling the need to justify the actions with "we were dealing with uncertain times following 9/11 and didn't know if there were additional imminent attacks to come" makes me sick that I'm represented by them. If it's acceptable behavior, then it's acceptable behavior...you don't have to qualify it. Not to mention that even if there were imminent attacks to come, it's still no justification.

Congratulations ladies. You can take your place behind every other woman who has stunted progress towards gender equality by feeling the need to suggest that a woman accomplishing something extraordinary is more special than it would have otherwise been because it was a woman who accomplished it. Because of course, we don't expect much from you...you're just a woman.