Lawman

I’m still mind blown that Tesla hasn’t spent more time trying to attack the segment I think would make the most impact in wedging it’s self into American driveways. Crossover/SUV/minivan is what I need as a middle class household with the budget to afford an EV, not a luxury sedan or hyper powered space truck. And no the Model X absolutely does not qualify for this. I don’t need a battery powered Jeep Compass Where the heck is the Tesla model to take on the Honda Pilots of the world. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Somewhere in Europe circa 1997: Euros: “We are building an Eagle killer... “ US: “Yeah we kinda did that a decade ago... and we gave you a chance to jump on it...” Seriously the Typhoon is the 4.5 gen fighter version of Tornado, a plane which literally did nothing as well as any of its peers except fly fat slow and stupid down a runway and get shot down in spectacular fashion. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Did you flip a switch in your house and the lights come on? Ok you know how that is like an expectation because you pay a bill... yeah that’s part of being a 1st world country. And no, you can’t choose to not be part of that. There have been court cases literally requiring property owners to reattach themselves to power/water/etc utilities. Turns out there is an actual category which makes something a public utility vs just another commercial business. If a private company wants to make themselves part of that enterprise, they have to meet certain expected capabilities. A lot of them are safety related like you can’t just kill people with crap wiring, others are expectation related like yes you have to pay overtime and maintain a grid of sufficient resilience we don’t see rolling blackouts because it snowed. Right now there is a war going on in legislation as to whether or not to categorize digital data exchange (ie the thing we are talking via) as a utility and that fight is ongoing. We long ago decided that sewage, water, electricity, etc were public utilities. So yes, the governmental oversight and the private companies responsible for designing and managing Texas electrical utilities absolutely have questions to answer here. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I mean... they seem to have no business billing me for them and if I saw fit to take myself off the grid, they will use the power of the courts to force my commitment to support them. Now that’s not to say the Mayor didn’t have a reasonable point even if messaging was totally bonkers. It shouldn’t be so easy for people to simply throw up their hands and wait for the rescue they expect to immediately take place. This seems to be a force of personal resilience that we have somehow abandoned in general. However there is reasonable expectation that the governing and private companies we grant sole operation of utilities to go managing that responsibility in good faith. That’s exactly why there are power companies being sued by people provided they can prove that bungling priority shows harm. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I think somebody is playing 3D chess with the X... Something along the lines of Boeing exec to Congress/SECAF: Now that you’ve established Boeing’s light grey 15X program to fix your light grey problem, how about a 15Y program doing similar to get some new build Strikes... We can use “off the shelf” and “interchangeability” so it will be “Low Cost/Low Risk” development. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

It’s a nonsense talking point developed to generate outrage by people with no basis for comparison. Look just to give you an idea how dumb this idea that 400 hours and we give you a gun... the deputy program in my counties Sheriff department was 6 months working in the jail. You were ineligible for work as a road officer until you passed that hurdle, which was after you met the state required course provided at the collegiate level (most places have gone to this model instead of individual academy programs outside major cities). If you actually looked around plenty of guys had been working the jail for as much as 18 months because of a limited number of field training officers so intake was managed to avoid deluding the road training. After that time in the jail where one could find themselves permanently because they were deemed unfit for road work, you went to a field training probation period... that was typically another 6-8 months before you were certified for individual patrol. The city metro program was similar, with higher qualification standards for immediate hiring, so while you skipped the jail per say you also had to show more quality to even get in. So yeah as some have pointed to, this nonsense you can be a cop easier than you can be a hairdresser is just noise from the same people screaming all cops are bastards. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

“Greener Cement....” See the funny part here is Cement/concrete production is one of the most intensive single carbon related issues on our impact on the eco system so really it has almost no way to go but up. While this is better than “just bury the damn things” between all its other issues I would hardly call this the single fix to make wind power THE way forward some think it is. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

There are plenty of people that would argue the actual act of prostitution is without violence (or even with if it’s agreed upon) a “victimless crime.” Now any dive into the world looking at it from the point of exploitation and all the little resultant negatives that come with it would see there is a whole lot of 2nd/3rd order effects that would definitely equal victimization. Likewise when I lived in Washington a whole lot of vocal people wanted to get rid of the victimless act of drug use... forget all the property crime and other issues that resulted from it. Who is that junky hurting but themselves.... just ignore all those other issues. There is very little in the typically referenced events that would be actual “victimless crimes.” Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

So no.... You just want to be mad at a number you don’t understand then, but luckily you can find no lack of people telling your with little/no Context that it’s a bad number and you should be mad. While we are at it, I can’t believe there were over 300 fatal plane crashes in this country. Year after year we do nothing to change that... we should be doing more. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I’d honestly say we as a society need to be asking these questions but hell wherever anybody stands in this jump in. Answer the question in dollars and let’s say % of current deaths reduced. It would be good to get a wide array of answers out in the forum only to show just how far apart (and in some cases backward) opinions are on a way forward. Having been both in the academic and physical ends of this discussion it’s always amazing to see people demand change, only to immediately withdraw any actual motivation or funding that would result in any. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

How many hours of training are you willing to fund as a taxpayer? What qualitative impact in fatalities do we need to see to call it a good ROI? These are the two immediate questions that come to mind with people screaming we have to do something about the “epidemic of improper police violence” as som have called it. You know what would actually translate better than most to immediately alleviating fear and stressors going into an encounter which will likely result to an officer employing greater force to include deadly force? Mandatory 2 officer patrol units, and more hours spent doing hand to hand combative/retention/ground drills. Both those are dead concepts the second you suggest them because while they do have an impact, they cost way more than anybody is willing to pay for a solution. Again, this is stuff that requires more and wider funding/Manning to achieve actual downstream results (more arrests/less fatal encounters), but that’s not what the mob is shouting for now is it. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Are you willing to evaluate those from the wider optic of the number of times and conditions creating/resulting in the encounters? Police encounters isn’t the leading cause of black men under 40, its Homicide in general. So are police simply so out to kill that it’s causing a massive skew in numbers do they possibly exist by disproportionate representation in an environmental condition more likely to have a negative outcomes associated with all encounters, not just the ones with law enforcement. This is one of those arguments that quickly gets the race card played against it because encounters above certain points in the socio economic strata have a disproportionately “positive” outcome. Meanwhile below a particular point which is where the demographic population swaps you end up with a combination of higher number of violent/exigent circumstances creating the encounter as well as less tangible impact points like the fact that an officer who patrols in that environment carries more behavioral stressors than the guy patrolling in another area. Population densities in particular urban vs rural environment also means the areas of denser population involve more encounters per patrol hours from say rural areas... again skewing numbers towards minorities. BCJS has done some pretty exhaustive peer studies into this math, and while there is a disparity, it is not supportive of the idea there is some baked in “with whites you gotta try and de-escalate, but you can just shoot the black guys,” crap being peddled by the ACAB crowd. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Do you think there is currently an epidemic or Racist extremism or to borrow from 10 years ago predatory sexual conduct that is a systemic part of the military? Do you think they are either consciously or subconsciously baked into our population. Now of course both those ideas are pretty absurd (and currently being peddled to the mob), but those of us that have experience in the military know better. What we see is a narrative on those topics created through cherry picking of details and a steady diet of shock and outrage media pumped into a society full of echo chamber social media circles. Similarly the idea that police face no action for misconduct and that police unions are somehow more powerful than city legislatures and mayors is being peddled. Sorry dude, I watched cops get fired for misconduct. I know guys who never made it past the state certificate from the academy because no department would hire them (one in particular was the son of a Lt in that department). Is there room for improvement? Sure as with any field where the median salary is in the sub 50k range, same as it is for teachers or nurses or any other field. But anybody who has spent a week in the military should know damn well empty promises to study the problem and “mandatory training” will lead to nothing but hours expended on PowerPoint briefings so leadership can tell it’s constituency “we did something.” Unless you and a whole lot of others are prepared for a full reinvestment of serious capital and time vetting, equipping, and training a Law Enforcement enterprise demands for change are nothing more than shouting to feel better about a tree in a forest of greater societal issues. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Infinitely superior to both A-29 and AT-6 for the intended role... Ignored completely in our attempts to sell it for AVFID because it’s “just a crop duster with guns,” and not “fully aerobatic.” Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

There is a growing argument for Salt based nuclear reactors being the only available means of scaling up electrical generation and the country investing the most in it... is China. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Will report back. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Speaking of vaccines... I’d advise anybody getting the series to deliberately plan the backside of those shots to not be busy. 1st shot didn’t do much, just a little muscle stiffness in my arm/neck which meant a poor nights sleep and a touch of hangover... 2nd shot put me solidly on my ass 6 hours after getting it, basically it’s the 24-36 hour flu without the nausea/vomiting. Needless to say if you told your wife you were gonna paint the bathroom that weekend or something, think about maybe putting something else on the schedule. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No you can’t fix it by changing out immediate echelon electorate officials in local government... See what you need to do is blame the President and blame Police Unions as the convenient scapegoat as to why you can’t change anything at the local level... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The organization that did all it could to carry China’s water at the beginning of this wants to assure us, it couldn’t possibly be anything from a Chinese lab... not at all... stop looking there. Look I don’t really buy the conspiracy theory or anything, but at this point anything the WHO publishes on “where it came from” is at best suspect. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I’m with Jazzman on this. Without a Pearl Harbor or 9/11 type event to galvanize resolve the likelihood of us engaging in conflict is moot at best. Even more important is to remember while those events were the big ticket casualty moments that pushed us to act they were not alone in being attacks on our nation. We had already had ships fired on and sunk in WWII before Pearl Harbor, and the isolationist “not our problem” voices were successful in seeing those events were ignored. Similarly AQ was totally inflicting attacks on us before 9/11 and we weren’t doing much to anything about it. Again, not until GW Bush got on a megaphone in a pile or rubble in our backyard did Americans care enough to mobilize their efforts. Americans will absolutely send thoughts and prayers to a conflict that they see from a distance. They don’t get that option if 2ACR is suddenly very much in a fight for its life after blowing out to defend against a Russian backed incursion. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

See we would have better security... but we were too busy having them harass a bunch of dudes going to/from their Helicopters in a marked vehicle while wearing flight gear. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

That settles it, I want a transfer... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It’s funny you mention land mines and cluster munitions in a discussion about defending an area where most are signatories of treaties to use neither, but that’s a whole other threat worth of discussion. (For the record I find them going that way incredibly stupid). I’ve seen the Rand a few other groups pushing the general theory you’re talking about, and there is a huge flaw to this tactic. Having forward forces you can’t just immediately evacuate in sufficient number not only demonstrates commitment to allies, it forces that commitment if the balloon goes up. Fulda was the trip wire in the old game, the game is on when it’s crossed and everybody knows what they are doing or start learning the lyrics to Гимн СССР. We don’t get that in the hang back at a distance, deterrence on the back side of conflict strategy. We demonstrated that twice already. It allows too much time to “consider all options” which is code for talk ourselves out of backing up deterrence with the commitment to force of arms that makes those agreements worth anything. You’ll see the media give justification like we did with “well actually many in Crimea want to be Russian due to ethnic ties,” we will get the give peace a chance crowd screaming why should we die for Estonia, and oh yeah expect a massive IO campaign from the Russians to defeat our resolve to respond. Having forces forward immediately committed force action because the other option is leaving the thousands of your own citizens fighting out to dry while you dither and think of a “proportionate resolve.” Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Because our intel people weren’t completely awestruck at their ability to deploy to Syria the way they did at the time... Because they haven’t been using Syria as a proving ground to rotate their professional contract officer and NCO corps through to build capabilities... Because they don’t leverage more EW capability than we have face in the last 3 decades within each individual Brigade element just look at some of the timed intentional displays of GPS and VHF harassment going on in Syria... We had a hard enough time cracking the egg on where you can and cannot go in Syria and they’d spent a decade having a civil war at the time. Don’t sit here and pretend Belarus is just gonna be another demo on the awesome shock and awe of Air Power. They don’t need to sortie TU-160s to F up Sprang//Aviano/etc. If the Iran question creates the problems it does (some of you are probably familiar by now) what do you think squaring off with the Russians does, because I don’t think for a second any of our NATO allies or us for that matter are willing to suffer some of the annihilated battalion here, bombed out airbase over here casualty reports they are likely to generate. This isn’t about whether we can do cool stuff and blow stuff up, this has to do with having way more to lose than them and a far higher threshold for anything resembling “victory” on the back end of a conflict. They the Russians truly believe they are responding at this point to our aggression. That already absolves a lot of first strike jitters. If the Russians lose a few divisions achieving their goal of breaking the spine of a half dozen western powers and putting us into a reset of half century isolationism/fear of conflict, they absolutely win. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Wow, we caught a bunch of unsupported throw away contractors out in the open rolling in tactical column with an AC-130 overhead... Go look at the denied area capes in the 130J, it’s an absolute analogy at our wholesale investment in 99 cents of every dollar to fight the coin fight while pretending we are ready to take on the other peers out there. No you are right in that Russia doesn’t want a conflict that will solidify China as the global super power that didn’t piss it all away when it’s over, but for the love of Christ can we as a nation stop viewing Russia through the same 1990s Vodka swilling “Da Comrade” tropes and understand they actually can hurt us. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk