Waingro

It's looking like he'll come away with 306 electoral votes, more than Trump won with in 2016. Which Kellyanne Conway at the time called a landslide and a blowout. You're right about the shifting demographics. Democrats should be concerned, especially in places like Florida. I think there are some weak areas for the GOP too, that they should look to shore up. Arizona was a surprise, and Texas was closer than it had any reason to be.

Don't expect anyone to take you seriously if you're subscribing to silly playground nicknames. I'd be embarrassed if my 9 year-old did that, and it's that much more cringey when adults do it.

Viper HUD has been certified as a primary flight instrument for quite a few years, not a recent change. Although there have been a couple instances recently where the attitude indications froze without telling the pilot, one of which led to a less than ideal outcome. Crosscheck is key.

I'm glad we can agree on at least one thing.

Here's a recent article about the "Oath Keeper" movement, the Meal-Team-6 cosplay crowd that PYB was so fervently aligned with. I wonder if he's still wasting his retirement suing his HOA or his neighbors or whatever for their Facebook posts. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/right-wing-militias-civil-war/616473/

That's like saying gunshot victims are actually dying from blood loss and sepsis as comorbidities, and not the gunshot itself.

I think it's a leap to say you're not able to defend yourself. There's a pretty distinct line between being armed and prepared, and being a bunch of cosplay Meal Team 6 / Y'all Qaeda wannabes like the ones that ended up shooting a protester in Albuquerque the other night. Obviously being the former is a good thing, but roving packs of morons with weapons, legal or otherwise, is usually not a predictor of a good outcome. Whether or not you're protesting or protesting the protesting, or any derivative in between.

I'd be OK with the 17th amendment going away. It's still not entirely based on population though. Texas could gain 10 million people and still have exactly 38 electoral votes. Under the Wyoming Plan though, Tennessee would pick up two votes. Texas would pick up nine. No states would lose any votes.

I watched the videos. Nothing new there. She incorrectly states at 1:35 or so that the number or representatives is "based entirely on population." This is false due to the Permanent Apportionment Act or 1929. We have been capped at 538 electoral votes ever since despite having grown just a tiny little bit as a country since then (it used 1910 population numbers.) Because of this act, a Wyoming vote is worth 3.7 times as much for a presidential election than a California vote. Artificially. Due to a law that is only 91 years old. Constitutional purists trip all over themselves to invoke the founding fathers but they always let this one slide. The Wyoming Rule theory of distribution would appear to bring us back closer to true electoral college parity. Hopefully we see something like that soon. You seem to be a proponent of the electoral college as written, so I'm curious to hear an argument as to why an artificial cap on electoral delegates makes sense in the context of the constitution?

It's been 16 years since the Republican nominee won the popular vote in the general election. But something the electoral college purists never concede is that the Permanent Apportionment Act capped house seats and thus electoral college votes, effectively diluting the power of a vote in a populated state. If they were truly purists about the electoral college, they would demand electoral college representation in line with actual population distribution, versus a representation artificially cuffed by a 90 year old law.

How'd you conflate politics with having common sense? Not happy with anyone dying but if people are going to willfully flaunt rules designed to protect lives, then I'm ok if they end up paying the price for it.

I'm OK with this, gotta clean out that gene pool!

War crimes leading to death? That's either a typo, overzealous leadership, or a hell of a story. Name omitted because we all know the USAF never gets it wrong. Available on the JAG docket of course. Also a host over other charges; drugs, conduct unbecoming etc.

He just now posted a link on that FB group... To a shitty blog article about how AFRC drill weekends are unconstitutional or some shit. Amazing that we used to trust this guy to fly airplanes with other people aboard.

Wait, are you talking about the same Trump that orated this gem? The man can barely finish a sentence. “Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you’re a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are — nuclear is so powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us, this is horrible.”

96 hours later, that assessment has aged like milk. See y'all in July!

It's literally in the first sentence of the article.

Valid for validity. Takeaway being that Schwartz was picked for his ability to fall in line with SECDEF. That and the nuke overflight also had the effect of breeding a generation of officers who knew no other world than one where you were beheaded for the slightest transgression, particularly true in AFGSC. As a result, we've bred an officer corps whose preferred COA will almost always be one of "that which is least likely to draw attention and/or get me fired."

Wait you don't remember who was before Welsh? Is that some sort of PTSD response? If you think Welsh was a disappointment, then Schwartz was straight up cancer. Or maybe AIDS. Probably both. Jumper got fired in 2008 because he wouldn't sacrifice 5th-Gen capabilities to feed the Army's insatiable demand for MQ-1 orbits. They found a perfect yes-man in Schwartz, and we're still digging out of it today. It's my opinion that he laid the foundation for the "everyone is a warrior" culture that has been decaying us as a combat force for the last decade. When everyone's a hero, nobody's a hero. Don't tell the services guy that he matters as much as a TACP or bomb dropper or even a maintainer working 12s on the ramp. Because in addition to being false, everyone knows it's false, and it comes off as insulting. A little bit off-topic there but yeah, if you've really forgotten who was before Welsh, then considering that a blessing. Schwartz's tenure is worth forgetting.

Correct, no per diem. But you do get the mileage rate if the dropoff/pickup is separate from the PCS move itself. "Allowance for POV Delivery Pick up or Drop Off. A Service member who is authorized POV transportation when ordered on a PCS is also authorized reimbursement to deliver or pick up the POV from the designated loading and unloading ports or VPC." "A Service member whose POV pick-up or POV delivery is a separate trip from his or her en route PCS travel is authorized round-trip transportation at the automobile mileage rate from the old PDS to the designated loading port or VPC and from the unloading port or VPC to the new PDS. PCS travel time is allowed and computed for the round trips to deliver and pick up the POV as specified in par. 050205."

He actually asked for less (2.1%) than the automatic military pay adjustment (2.4%), and was overridden by congress. So bizarre.

Toeing. Not towing.

So slightly off-topic, but if you're looking at switching carriers, look at Google Fi. Google Fi works in 170 countries. By "works", I mean you power it on, and you get a signal. The phone is wholly agnostic as to where you are on earth, it functions just like you're in Denver or Dallas. Pricing is dirt cheap, I think it's $20/month for baseline service, and $0.01/mb for data ($10/GB). This holds true the world over. SMS is free worldwide; if you're in Kabul or Vientiane then calls are a penny or two a minute. Unless you're on data making or receiving calls, which happens on its own in many places. Walk past a Starbucks and you're on their Wifi without you doing anything. In CONUS, your signal bounces between TMo, Sprint, and US Cellular, depending on who has the best signal. No contract, no sneaky fees. The bad: Data charges can rack up. In general, you have to pick from a small selection of phones (Pixel, Moto X4, Nexus, etc). It's possible to register a Fi sim on a Google device and then transfer it to an iPhone. You may get some queertrons down the road, so I'd recommend switching to one of the intended devices for full functionality. Get Fi if: You travel internationally a lot, or even a little. You don't use much data in a given month (off WiFi). You're a cheapskate. Skip Fi altogether if: You have no use for international capabilities. You use lots of data. You really don't want to part with your iPhone.

Drifter's a great American. Eagle patch, experience in white-jet world, some time in the F-35 and the B-52, and an all around good guy. I'm hopeful he makes lasting positive change at AFPC.