Blue

Regarding the "life in general" bucket, I'm going to assume you're a heterosexual single male. If those descriptors don't apply, then feel free to ignore. Be cautious about the woman you decide to attach yourself to. For sure, a lot of the common bar room wisdom is "never get married, stay single forever." But for most of us out there, you eventually find yourself wanting to put a ring on a woman's finger, for one reason or another. Be advised, women have changed in the last ~25 years or so. I feel like anyone in their mid-40s or older today has had a front row seat to it happening. The last couple of decades has seen an incredible rise in the number of women whose entire identity revolves around the following: Anything they succeed at in life is due to them overcoming the Powers of the Patriarchy. Anything they fail at in life is due to the interference of the Powers of the Patriarchy. It's frustrating and soul-sucking to be attached to these kinds of women. Whatever you do, don't put a ring on one of them.

Man, I'll go against the grain here...... Blues are military uniforms that you are required to maintain in serviceable condition. O's are required to maintain mess dress as well, I think the E's have something different (not required to own a mess dress, but "encouraged" for NCOs and above, as I recall). A quarterly inspection of a required uniform doesn't strike me as overly intrusive. Annoying, sure. But not a hill to die on. Like many of the annoying things that are unique to the military, the trick is in the implementation. A good boss will mandate the open ranks inspection on a Friday morning from 0900 - 0930. Designate a couple of sharp NCO's and O's to quickly go through the ranks, ding people appropriately for uniforms that aren't up to standards. Quick couple of words from the boss saying thanks for the effort, and everyone dismissed early to begin the weekend NLT 1000. Good bosses will do something inline with the above. Meet the requirements of the order from above, while still being reasonable about the implementation. Shitty bosses will have it be 0800 on a random Tuesday, with expectations for the rest of the duty day to continue uninterrupted, with no consideration for the underlying logistics (blues vs duty uniform, etc).

Man, that's a 56 minute video. Can you give us a high-level summary?

I could spend all day listening to the controlled chaos at Oshkosh. Turboprops and B-25s orbiting Warbird Island, traffic for Fisk extending back almost to Madison, runway closures due to disabled aircraft, controllers who never miss a beat, and the occasional old timer who feels the need to chime-in when he feels he's been wronged. Entertaining stuff. https://www.liveatc.net/search/?icao=KOSH

Not sure if this helps, but I was surprised to find out that some countries in the EU will give you a passport if your parents, grandparents, or in some cases, great-grandparents were from that country. I don't know all of the nuances of working in different countries in Europe, but if your spouse was somehow able to get a passport from a EU member, I'd assume it would make getting a job in Germany that much easier (certainly much easier than applying as an American passport holder).

These are valid opinions and good insight, but not really relevant, right? You're both pilots, and while opinions vary, being an Air Force pilot has to be one of the most sought after job in the military. There is no shortage of folks wanting to fly. When you hear of a "recruiting shortage," it's generally a shortage of high-school grads willing to sign up for a four year enlistment. A high school grad today was born in 2005. Think about all they've seen growing up (Iraq, Afghanistan, etc). More importantly, and as the WSJ article touches on, someone who thinks about enlisting is going to seek out someone they know who's been in the military. Say your Uncle Joe just retired from the Army. What kind of recommendation do you think old Joe is going to give after spending the last 20 years on an endless series of deployments to the Middle East?

From AP News: I'd always shake my head at the budget shenanigans in the military and the wider government. "Different colors of money," "fiscal year end dollars," all that bullshit. But I get that a lot of those gyrations had some larger purpose, however inefficient. Given the above quotes though, can't we all agree we're just fucking making it up at this point? Give Ukraine 1,000 tanks, 10,000 pieces of artillery, and a whole wing of F-16's, and tell the American people it was all worth $100, because we said so. It doesn't appear that anyone cares anymore.

It is kind of stunning when you look back at the last ~15 years. Progressive politics have co-opted nearly the entire Democrat Party. Meanwhile, the nation has faced incredible crises, that in years past might have seen people marching on DC with literal pitchforks and torches. Covid, Proxy wars in Syria and Ukraine, rampant inflation, crushing wealth inequality, etc. Instead, in the face of those challenges, the national discussion is centered on an endless stream of increasingly fringe nonsense (I don't know how much further you can extend LGBTQQIP2SA, for example). It's incredible what's been done to this country, all in plain sight.

This is something that always got me - particularly when looking at the back at the evolution of the Air Force aircraft inventory from the 1950s to today. Ostensibly, the Air Force is supposed to be the nation's military experts in flying and fixing aircraft. By definition, we should have a lot of airplanes, and a lot of pilots. Yet, at every turn, we shun bringing on any fleet that is "different," or hasn't had the blessing of the larger defense establishment. We park C-27Js, we drag our feet with things like the AT-6 and the A-29 until the programs die a merciful death, and we strive to retire planes like the A-10. At the same time, we have the absurdly large "winner take all" competitions like the F-35 that lock us into one airframe for decades. There is always a lot of hand-waving that goes on about "efficiencies of scale," and "we need to retire this fleet in order to fund development of this new fleet," etc. I think the reality is that defense decisions are driven by what's best for defense companies. And with budget's being finite, the Lockheeds and Boeings of the world don't want to see the Air Force budget going towards feeding hundreds of C-27s, AT-6's, AT-29s, OV-10s, or anything else. When times are flush, those fleets would take away from the money available for their leviathan defense programs. When times are lean, someone in government might dare make an argument that maybe we could get by with a couple fewer F-35s, and instead plug the gap with AT-29s at a fraction of the cost. A lot of words to say I think "Inexpensive yet relevant platforms" are something the Air Force sorely needs, and used to have. But they're gone, and I don't think they're ever coming back.

The Air Heritage Museum C-123K "Thunder Pig" had an exciting landing at the Geneseo Airshow this past weekend. I believe it's the only flying C-123 on the airshow circuit (maybe the only one flying in the US). Got to tour it at Oshkosh several years ago. Neat airplane, and good people. Powered by two big radial engines, and has the pods for two J85 turbojets. Turbojets were normally used during takeoff and landing from what I understand, but are unfortunately no longer installed.

Drifting from the thread topic a bit, and somewhat outta my lane of experience. But I won't believe the fairy tales about squadrons of armed Air Tractors until they are no-shit sitting on an Air Force ramp somewhere. Yeah yeah, I know contracts signed, and development ongoing, and all that. At one point there was going to be a bunch of C-27Js in Air Force markings, too.....

I wouldn't unequivocally trust the service academies to put out accurate data on number of applications and number of selections. The Naval Academy has been shown in the past to inflate their numbers; I assume the other academies have done the same. That said, "down 70%" is an incredible number if accurate.

Real talk now - The current administration has a laser-like focus on identity politics, and no where is this more evident than in their political appointments, particularly in the high profile positions. And it doesn't get much more high profile than a service chief. The talk about qualifications and experience of different candidates is laughable. The next CSAF is going to be chosen based on which box they check. Given the current field, I assume it's going to be "First Female CSAF."

I mean, it's a story from a local Tucson news station. If I was a resident there, I sure would care what happens to the mission at DM. They've had Uncle Sam spending money in their community for decades. They don't want to see that gravy train stop. The article talks about "the DM 50," presumably a group of local business leaders. I've heard so much about the "Shifty 50" in Clovis NM and how it relates to Cannon AFB. What is it with these local 50-person business groups. Is that a Southwestern US thing? Speaking of Cannon, I'd read that when AFSOC went looking for their Western US base, DM was one of the finalists that lost out to Cannon. If the A-10 is going to be retired, it seems like a win to.....everyone to move people and missions out of Cannon and put them at DM.

Eh, you look at Kathleen Hicks' bio, and it becomes clear how someone like her could arrive unprepared. She's a DC swamp creature through and through. She's spent her entire career within the DC Beltway. It's not surprising that she would appear so entirely out of touch. She probably thought Jon Stewart would crack a couple jokes, shake her hand, and leave. Look at her bio; she's spent her entire adult life as a bureaucrat in the federal government. She's married to a fellow swamp creature (Thomas Hicks) who had such career highlights as "helping to pursue low emissions alternative fuels" as Undersecretary of the Navy, and now runs a K-street advisory firm focusing on "help(ing) companies, organizations, governments and institutions prepare for, mitigate against and take advantage of change." Whatever the fuck that means. When people talk about the "Deep State," these are the kind of folks they're talking about. A huge body of career bureaucrats, answerable only to their fellow bureaucrats. They make buckets of money, and provide vanishingly little in return. As time goes on and their numbers increase, they only get more and more out of touch with the day to day lives or ordinary Americans.

Thanks, it works now!

I think most folks on this forum would prefer that DEI go away entirely, and people be hired based upon merit alone. My experience in corporate America has been that DEI preferences focus on very specific groups that do not include veteran status and age.

For one member, when I put in their name I got an error message: "You are not allowed to ignore that member." Just curious as to what the logic is for who can and can't be ignored?

Yeah, this is a particularly concerning aspect of the whole clown show. Karl Denninger does a good job of breaking it down. Excerpt below: This is a serious problem for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the number of people sitting in prison -- or convicted on connived, false claims with no ability for their defense to access the evidence proving that in many cases they were escorted. At worst most of these people are guilty of trespass, but even there you likely can't make it stick as trespass is voided if you're invited or chaperoned, and its quite clear that at least in some cases -- they are. There's another problem too: The Brady decision by the USSC makes clear that the prosecution must turn over all evidence they have which exculpates a defendant. It's not optional and it dates to 1963. The violations here are severe and in fact it appears basically universal. Indeed the definition of malicious prosecution is to bring a case before the court where you know the exculpatory evidence is so strong you'd never win a conviction and you intentionally withhold it from the defense. That opens up the DOJ and even the individuals involved to personal liability. I have no idea how the DOJ thought they'd get away with this indefinitely, but apparently they did think they would.

Is there a setting or some other method to not see a particular user when looking at threads? A "block" or "mute" option?

It's not even so much that "the government lied." Governments and politicians lie. It's an unfortunate aspect of our system of government. To me, it's more the fact that we're all awash in propaganda and narrative, and so many people are blind to it. The NPC memes that get tossed around are frighteningly accurate.

Dunno what to tell you. This board isn't "a good chunk of conservative media," or "a good chunk of conservatives." The only person saying any of this in this thread is you.

It's difficult to take your posts seriously when you start off with juvenile nonsense like "Putin simps," and then proceed to categorize every disagreement into some bullshit "red vs blue" narrative. Be better.

Interesting link, and quite the rabbit hole. Seems like a fascinating hobby. Some quotes from the article below. I'm amazed that these can not only circumnavigate the entire globe, but can do it multiple times. Well built balloons can totally circumnavigate the globe several times over several months before degrading. There is speculation that at least one of the objects shot down over Canada, Yukon by a US Air Force jet may have been amateur radio pico balloon K9YO-15 which was launched from Illinois on October 10 2022. It was on it's seventh circumnavigation of the globe after being aloft for 123 days. The launch blog post indicates that the K9YO-15 balloon was flying a silver mylar 32" sphere SAG balloon which appears to be this one from balloons.online.

Hasn't Haiti been more or less on the brink of being a failed state for the past......forever? I remember someone opining once about all the great things Hattian immigrants have done in the US, and their impressive accomplishments here. And how sad it is that all that talent couldn't be leveraged in their home country. I'm sure the problems of the country are multifaceted, and an onion that goes 1000 layers deep. This board has a wide readership, maybe someone will come along and offer a perspective that goes beyond my Wikipedia-deep knowledge of the place. Someone has to lead the charge, but it shouldn't be Uncle Sam, due to our relatively poor track record in that respect. Haiti shared Hispaniola Island with the Dominican Republic. Surely the D.R. has a vested interest in the health of their neighbor. The linked article also talks about Jamaica taking a role. Taking a quick look at Haiti on Google Maps and waving my ill-informed but well-intentioned magic wand: Tell Cuba we'll open up trade and relations - no strings attached - as long as they provide a safe haven for the Haitians. Don't we have some mothballed Cold War bases in Puerto Rico? Open those up, and make it a staging area for supplies. All I know is Haiti has a population of about 12 million people. That's a lot of people. That's a lot of humanity. If we have the ability, we should do something. At the same time, it seems like every time we "do something" on the global stage, it goes horribly wrong. I dunno.