FLEA

Well fuck..... Here y'all go. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-army/2020/12/01/this-retired-three-star-falsely-claims-us-soldiers-died-attacking-a-cia-facility-in-germany-tied-to-election-fraud/

Well, part of the problem, I think, is the AF doesn't really want more Lt Col pilot types hanging around. Militaries are a tiered hierarchy and it sort of makes sense you want less O-5s than O-2 through O-4. There isn't enough to do with O-5s as it is, so many of them get sent back to the squadron level which is an absolute waste for anything other than a DO or CC. From a strictly force Management perspective this could actually yield a better looking force. However, that system fails to recognize the depth that comes with airmenship, and the loss of expereince you get by letting people go at the 12-13 year point. Those people have the best potential to be your core instructors and have the most expereince to share. I think a lot of the problems we have are caused by the fact that the traditional military structure isn't meant to uphold a body of talent that is both technically proficient and strategically proficient like the AF has done.

A large part of that is the vulnerable population that is really at risk for this disease isn't valued as highly by our society as children or even middle aged adults. This is reflected in the court systems where the elderly usually recieve the smallest wrongful death claims. Generally, when people have obtained senior age we feel that they've already lived a good life, and any further time they get is just additional blessing. When a person over 60 dies it does not invoke the same sense of dissapointment at the objective loss of potential that life held. At 60, a person has already given about all they will give to society in their life. But when a child dies, we tend to be appalled because we think of how much growth and contribution that child had in front of him/her. This is culturally different than say Japan were elders are revered for their contributions and there is a heavy obligation to take care of them. There's a mathematical moral problem with the risk of a vaccine as well. First off, when people say the vaccine is safe they mean short term. There has been no long term test done on any of the COVID vaccines. It would be impossible given the time frame and developers have come out and said the world is not willing to wait and see what a 3-4 year study might bring when people are still living in lockdowns. So we don't know things like 1.) Does the vaccine increase risk to cancer? 2.) Does the vaccine increase risk to heart disease? 3.) Does the vaccine increase risk to infertility. Etc... We are making the assumption that those probabilities are low based on the existing body of knowledge of a new technology that has never been administered in human patients before. As you all know, an assumption is a calculated risk. So to the mathematical argument is we are taking a potentially enormous risk (by sample size not by probabilities) when we inoculate the human population. Does that risk outweigh the risk that is assumed by the over 70 population with a 13% chance of dieing, and is that risk worth it to save 1-8 years of their nearly over life. If the vaccine has a 1% chance of increasing the risk to certain types of cancer for instance, how many people will assume that risk and how early will their own lives be terminated?

Honestly I could care less about the AvB since I don't plant on staying but the VSP would be a nice chunk of change to leave on. What I don't want is to get stuck in some weird middle where we get no VSP but are some how not needed to stay either.

"“Some of that probably reflects the economic challenges and things associated with COVID,” Kelly told reporters Dec. 1. “But it also hopefully reflects a little bit of our ability to start to provide that kind of culture and environment where Airmen and families want to stay with us, and want to be part of what the mission of the United States Air Force is.” Fucking hell is this guy clueless? Anyway, doesn't sound like he's in a hurry to let pilots out. Wonder what changes hes looking at to change assignment night though?

So I'm curious now: What is your opinion on the human right to bodily autonomy? Do you not think that people have a right to decide what goes in their bodies and the sanctity of their body?

Ohio is a swing state but the Rs won it this year. First time in 50 years a President won an election without winning Ohio. Republicans not challenging it doesn't mean fraud didn't happen there. It just means it wasn't enough to overturn the election. The house, senate and presidential races are all seperate races. If you're going to commit fraud your aims would be 1.) To ensure the votes look legitimate and 2.) Give as little appearance for organization of fraud as possible. The way I would go about it, if. I were doing it, is I would study the election system for a particular state, find the vulnerabilities, then instruct others on those vulnerabilities and ask them to do the same. Pick the races that are important to your goals. Randomize the ballot on the rest to cover tracks. You want lots of people committing small amounts of fraud. Not one person committing huge amounts. This way if the fraud is discovered it likely only amounts to a few discounted votes. Both sides participate to a limited extent but you don't know as to how much. Does it happen? Sure. But nobody knows how much. Enough to swing an election? I don't know. But I'm nearly certain it happens a lot more than people expect. Especially now because there are large margins on the ideaological extremes who believe they are faced with ideaological survival right now.

Ok to be fair, this is sort of a dumb question. If you were going to invest in fraud as a democrat, why would you waste you money on California or New York? You are obviously going to target swing states. Furthermore, if you were going to investigate fraud as a Republican, why would you do it in Ohio? A state you won.

Evil might be a poor word choice. Self interested probably describes it better. Society hasnt collapsed because cooperation is still a better security strategy than lone-wolfing it. However, the minute that cooperation begins to stretch a person's values outside their self interest they will cease to cooperate. It doesn't make the world horrible. Its just nature. And people will justify horrendous acts on a platform of moral virtue because they will try to uphold their own self interest.

My gut is they will offer the bonus per normal this year. They hedge that the Coronavirus is temporary and even though retention is all time high, it could swing the other direction with a vaccine. Bonus takers get hooked for at least 3 years so there is some long term insurance to the bargain. But I'm thinking they probably offer VSP this year as well. Whether pilots are eligible for that who knows.

https://www.facebook.com/acombatveteran/videos/816382629187384/ Please let it be known my religion is now the Joe Rogan Experience! LMAO!

In retrospect forget it. It's opening a pandora's box. You have your opinion and I have mine. Ill presume they are both informed.

Our nuclear strategy was built in the cold war. It was never going to last forever. At which point did you think it would end?

No I do. However extended assurance isn't garunteed and our allies know that as well as we do.

Not really. You already live under several nuclear umbrellas. Russia for certain, but also China, likely North Korea in a few years. Just because a state has nuclear arms doesn't mean they have the will to use them. States act rational on their own interests. Most fledgling nuclear powers seek an assured second strike capability which is a basic means that ensures their offset to major powers. It's very very unlikely smaller states would develop nuclear weapons to a full warfighting capability. The simple truth is that capability is extraordinarily costly, and requires advanced command and control that requires tactical commanders to have access to make nuclear decisions. Small autocratic dictatorships are unlikely to ever give that level of control to a military commander. We still find ways to protect interest from China, Russia, and North Korea, and even Pakistan when they are against us. All of them are nuclear armed states.

To be fair though, we don't have the power to take nuclear weapons from nK, never did, and we probably don't have it to take them from Iran. So its sort of a poor strategy unless you're willing to sacrifice 51 million souls on the pyre of an unreasonable strategy. Nuclear weapons are 80 year old technology. Its a pandoras box and you wont keep it closed forever.

Eh, regardless of the deal the real problem is the US has no framework for how to exercise power in a world where everyone has access to nuclear arms. Essentially we are just delaying the inevitable without addressing how we will affect force on countries that have obtained assured second strike capability.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/thanksgiving-meals-troops-coronavirus-takeout-coronavirus-pandemic Ignore the article, but the statistic in the middle, 75,000 cases in the DoD?!?! Is that accurate? That seems astonishingly high, especially since I don't know a single person in the US DoD who's had it.

It occurs on both sides and yes it's largely random noise. For the results? We just accept them because it's largely the rational thing to do in interest of one's personal security. 4 years is a limited time to cause damage to your ideology versus the perils of a civil war. The only exception to that is the ideological extremist who are so far on the parties wings. 4 years does threaten their ideological survival. Those are the agents instituting the fraud I mentioned above.

I'm not a tribalist though. So your assessment is immediately invalid.

Hobbes argued in complete monarchy based on the idea that people needed some form of control since they were fundamentally evil. His advocacy for monarchy should not detract from his arguments that people are fundamentally evil. You either believe in altruism, or you don't. I've seen very little evidence for altruism in the world though. Democracy is not perfect, its simply the best system we have.

I simply live in a Hobbes worldview, and you are a Rousseau. That's fine, but to me you are the one making the outrageous claim. Here are 1300 proven allegations of voter fraud: Voter Fraud Map: Election Fraud Database | The Heritage Foundation These are small scale, but that's the point. When elections require scale to tip the balance why are these people tipping only 1-2 ballots? The simple answer to that would be, because they are trusting that others are also doing the same. As I said in my initial post, it happens, 100% guaranteed. Size, scale, and level of organization is unknown. But I think when people reject the idea of voter fraud they have this idea of conspiracy in the back of their head that plays out more like a Hollywood movie: Joe Biden hires an ex SEAL team to infiltrate a bunch of election offices. The reality is, Joe Biden probably has 0 idea that fraud is happening in his name, because if you were organizing fraud, you would be smart enough not to tell him or anyone within three circles of him. The agents that undertake this degree of disobedience are not unheard of. They pull strings attached to levers of power that are deliberately obfuscated from public view. In other vignettes we would call them terrorist, revolutionaries, and extremist. Edit: Also to you quote, Jim is an insurance salesman, that dude can't be trusted worth fuck and you should know that!

You know the funny thing about the anthrax vaccine? The dude who sent all of those anthrax laced envelopes around the country to government officials? Yeah, he held the patent on it. Think about that for a minute....

Oh no. I'd absolutely mandate it. And I'd be sure to give myself as much liability protection as possible in case that vax does cause a poor reaction in the future and somehow I'm agent to it's administration. I'm not going to let some ass hole jeapordize my billions of dollars. But I myself am probably not going to get the vax and I have enough money that I can afford a lifestyle where I won't have to. (Private air travel, exclusive vacation rentals, etc....) If in 3-4 years, noone has issues, then I'll very publicly get the vax to show that people who are hold outs have nothing to be afraid of and simoltaneosualy promote my business.

Lol ok....