Waingro

🤣 I'd almost forgotten about the recession that was always just around the corner. Legitimate congrats on the contracts and the profit sharing, gents!

We're doing old emails now? Here's an email the APA Vice President sent to a cadet while on active duty. https://www.afforums.com/index.php?threads/cadet-request-for-an-f-15-ride.4933/

Is it that amazing though? These are the same guys who quibble in a debrief, or maybe they hold it down a little but definitely whip out the quibbling in the bar. "Sure, I went inside of MAR and took missile to the face, but we got a late dec, and #1 was all over the place, and the RTO didn't even acknowledge #3's shot. Total bullshit!" Those clowns exist in every squadron. The people who are quibbling about Hillary or Hunter Biden, or planted documents, when whole cartons of classified are on the loose? They're all the same person.

Wait, what? It is? Unemployment is at record lows. Personal income is up month over month, as is disposable income, as is consumer spending. Our load factors are back to pre-Covid levels if not higher. We're often full, and we've been leaving non-revs behind at least half the time. What's going on in your world that has the economy in the toilet where you live?

You make a good argument, but it's also comical that you call someone out for "regurgitating talking points" when you plagiarized the American Petroleum Institute's website, bullet point by bullet point, without attributing a word of it as anyone's other than your own.

Here's the source I cited above showing vaccine efficacy. You can infer from that what you will. I never said I was in favor of vaccine mandates, only that they're pretty plainly lawful orders. The only argument that I'm putting forth is that if you don't want to follow orders, you should be shown the door, and in this case, without prejudice.

The strange punctuation and capitalization of random words gives your post somewhat of a National Enquirer feel. Good stuff. Anyway, the vaccine has not been proven to lack efficacy. I'm not going to bother asking you to cite a source, because I know you can't. But in the spirit of facts, here's my source. You might have a point, wanting the requirement to be dropped. But until they drop it, it's still an order, a lawful one at that. We don't get to cherry-pick which lawful orders we follow. Otherwise we could just call them suggestions. And in a strange turn of events, we also don't get to decide what countries we deploy to. I kept telling my last commander that we should deploy to Tahiti, but it fell on deaf ears and we ended up in Afghanistan.

That's a pretty high bar to clear. What about off-limits locales in town? Double hearing protection required? Reflective belts? Flu vaccine? Buddy requirements downtown on a TDY? E-4s and below can't drive cars? We have to work on Sundays, my holy day of rest? That's all really subjective. Ordering a vaccine in the middle of a pandemic doesn't break the noise threshold in terms of military necessity. This vaccine for this virus looks like a gross overreaction in hindsight. Sort of like the anthrax vaccine. Or smallpox for that matter. But here we are, and those who chose to disobey what's pretty plainly a lawful order, should get a handshake, a litho, and a DD-214.

I don't disagree, but expecting wing leadership to buck a SECDEF directive is some higher-level fantasy thinking.

I'll bite. Good. And let's go into this assuming that the effects of the virus are overblown, and that the vaccine was overpromised and underdelivered. And that this isn't in fact a readiness issue. All of that aside, a segment of the population decided to ignore a military order. It shouldn't matter if they were first-term Airmen handing out volleyballs, or AETC instructor pilots. Either way, their actions are not compatible with military service in an all-volunteer force. They should be shown the door, honorably. Not punitively. Absolve all ADSCs and bonus repayments, just a quick date of separation and an honorable discharge. Nobody is forced to be here.

I happily don't wear a mask unless it's absolutely a requirement to do something (air travel, etc.) That said, I constantly hear your complaint from the same crowd who have long preached that it didn't matter what anyone else does, so long as they didn't force masks or vaccines on anyone else. Ted Cruz, our favorite Canadian-turned-Texan, recently went on a tirade against Mr. T of all people, because Mr. T publicly said he was going to continue to social distance. Ted Cruz apparently still cares, and it seems like you really do care, a lot, about what other people around you are doing. I saw westerners in Kabul, a decade ago, exercising outdoors with masks on (very poor air quality, leaded gas in shitty generators, etc.) While I found that precaution excessive, it didn't bother me to the point that I'd go online and rail against it. If a middle-schooler wants to run a race in a mask, or get a dumb haircut, or wear stupid clothes, then so be it.

Go back to the first thing I said. Your response is more tribal nonsense. I've never met any of these two-dimensional people in real life.

Because people aren't two-dimensional caricatures. There are more than two different belief systems out there. Subscribing to a dialogue that can't deviate from a binary solution is asinine.

I feel sorry for anyone still falls for this tribal nonsense. What a ridiculous thing to buy into. I can't imagine harboring this much disdain for my fellow Americans.

Keystone pipeline sends about 850K BBL a day. Or did you mean the Keystone XL? I'm not too sad about Canadian product having to take the long way to refineries; the XL would have helped out Canada for sure, not a lot of impact for the U.S. The post from nsplayr above is way more comprehensive, but domestic crude production is presently higher than it was at the beginning of Trump's presidency (by a large amount) and also at the end of Trump's presidency (source). So again, which executive branch energy policy is hurting us right now? I'm not the biggest Biden fan, but I just don't see that he's the boogeyman here.

Which policies, specifically? There are a shitload of oil leases that are unused, and a whole lot of wells that aren't producing. Which was the case both before the Biden administration, and now today. I'd be more eager to criticize any executive branch energy policy if we were actually operating anywhere near capacity, and were somehow hamstrung because of it.

Using capital letters really lends credibility to your arguments. You're a huge Paul Harvey fan too, aren't you? Is your Facebook page filled with a bunch of stupid shít that ends with "I bet I can't get 5 followers to share this!" while containing exactly zero percent correct information? How many people out there claim you as their senile uncle who sends them email forwards about Q-Anon? 😂 By whom? Seriously, I'm curious who you think he's running against.

Oh, when the previous poster said that blankets were what cost Ukraine the Crimea, I didn't realize we were speaking in hyperbole. The way he wrote it, it sounded like he was making an actual assertion and actually believed the line about blankets to be true and correct. Otherwise yeah, it sure looks like lethal assistance should have been on the table years earlier. And yes, and the present fight should be the focus. Seeing the Russian military failures to date has been a pleasant surprise.

Sure it matters. A poster overtly stated that sending blankets ended up costing Ukraine possession of Crimea. A pretty bold claim, so I don't think it's too much to ask for verification. Especially since the assertion was made as a defense of The Former Guy withholding security assistance resources because of a personal vendetta. There are good arguments about whether or not the Obama administration should have done more sooner with respect to lethal weaponry. History and hindsight sure make it look that way. But words matter, and the previous poster wanted to play some "whataboutism roulette" and lost.

That's weird, I read the whole article and only found the citation pasted below. I'm sure I missed it, can you point me to the verbiage in the article you posted that said we were providing blankets? "What the White House offered was a military aid package that will provide body armor, helmets, vehicles, night and thermal vision devices, advanced radios, patrol boats, counter-mortar radars, rations, tents and uniforms."

Go with a source for blankets. Any one source.

So long as he doesn't withhold $400m worth of anti-tank weaponry to Zelenskyy in exchange for political dirt, it'll be better than last time around.

Nailed it.

That's a lot to extrapolate from what started as a reddit post using video game graphics. I like the propaganda value, but engaging in intel analysis with it is a little over the top.

Except, you were literally just complaining about other people's independent decisions. "My favorite is the people riding bikes or, ...I saw this a couple weeks ago...., SKIING while wearing a surgical mask. " Like MCO said, people in Japan have been wearing masks in public long before covid. You're complaining about mandates - yet you seem to feel pretty strongly about what choices other people make for themselves. Odd.