FLEA

I really wouldn't be sore if we just left Pakistan. They were a Cold War convenience but that is long passed.

Regarding the point to the government subsidizing rights. This is not entirely true. We do force attorneys to represent clients who can't afford one. This is done differently in different states but often times if you are fostered to practice certain types of law in a whatever district you go into a lottery, or the state just retains a defense team. Either way, I think you can see the point.

I lean conservative but I for one could care less about socialized health care, and I think, for the most part, a lot of Republicans wouldn't. This is a great example of a potential compromise. Make an agreement for a balanced budget going forward and get Democrats to cave on an issue Republicans really so care about. Dems always want to lump gun control with healthcare. (Under Obama, the Natl Center for Disease Control was responsible for researching gun violence) Tell Dems they can have health care full stop but most agree to reciprocity for concealed carry and certain types of fire arms owner ship nation wide. Now you have something. One thing I wish from the left on this topic is they need to be more honest on it. You will increase access to healthcare but you will 110% decrease quality. If you've never had premium, private health care, it's night and day compared to the goose shit we get from Tricare. (Which is honestly probably better than whatd a full public system would be) I played a lot of sports in highschool and also did MMA. Getting access to steroids, pain killers and rehabilitation therapies was 1000X easier than the cluster fuck I need to go through now. Fortunately, I can thank Tricare for a permanent shoulder injury now because I doctor didn't want to jump straight to doing a contrast dye MRI when I knew I had a rotator cuff tear and thought 4 months of physical therapy exercising the tear would just magically make it go away. Great thing I can't sue the government! Oh and I want nation wide PT testing. No way I want to pay higher taxes cause some lazy ass doesn't know how to say know to Nachos and sprints to pre Diabetes at the ripe old age of 40. Edit: Germany is another good example of public compromise. Hope you didn't want anastetic for that minor out patient surgery because there's a good chance the government might not pay for it. Better suck it up!

This is absolutely true. You aren't going to forward deploy any meaningful strategic assets in Afghanistan with legs into China because the security situation. There is also a massive assumption here that Afghanistan would let us prosecute against China from their territory.

I've been reading a lot on the science behind political blame following crises lately and found this nugget that I thought was interesting. In reviewing his whole article it is clear to me where Trump is on the pandemic now. He is either lucky, or is actually listening to some very astute political advisors. Jones had some great context in the rest of the article if you check it out. But basically, downplaying the virus was about the smartest thing Trump could do. Another good one Kirlin "COVID-19 Upends Pandemic Plan" which as a military planner is fascinating. In short, Kirlin looked at the CDC pandemic plan and recognized there were no decision points in it. Basically, the CDC wrote the plan in 2009 under direction of Obama following the H1N1 scare. The problem was, the CDC at this point in time, felt their roll in a pandemic was limited to providing protective guidance to communities and hospitals on how to prevent infection spread (like hospital procedures and handwashing techniques). They had no idea that the most important means of social protection (enforced social distancing, quarantine, closing businesses) would require the executive authority of elected political leaders (mayors, governors, POTUS) to make decisions. So there was no pre-identified COAs, decision points, or information requirements to make those decisions which led to a massive analysis-paralysis at the onset of the pandemic while government lawyers spun their wheels trying to figure out what orders they could legally give. (Something that should have been figured out in the plan already). I write all of that because its becoming clear to me the phenomenon of political blame is more nuanced than we often understand and as government employees we should recognize more than most that many of the big muscle movements big government makes are influenced and motivated by career employees who have been with the government for years. POTUS often puts their own flavor on things but the truth is events would probably play out very similarly in many ways if Hillary was in office now as well. Just interesting food for thought.

I think it may be Trump's reality star status, but I honestly believe he is on to something with the Twitter thing. He has changed the rules to public communication and found a way to bypass the media on his messaging. Unfortunately, the media might have done some gracing for him on some of those messages.

You're that dude that holds everyone up for 30 minutes so you can use a coupon that expired last week at the grocery store too arent you?

You know..... I believe this dude could work for the CIA though believe it or not....

You don't deserve to know!

Wait what?

The AFOQT is laughable to the MCAT and for a pilot slot the only score that needs to be competitive is your pilot score. The minimums on the rest will net you a commission. Anyway, this is an easy problem for you to solve. I would skip the math and English section of AFOQT prep because you have a solid foundation of that for the MCAT. But practice the pilot stuff a few hours because a lot of it is spacial comprehension and chart reading. None of it is cosmic but the time pressure is difficult in the test. You need to be able to infer information from an image or chart quickly to have enough time to answer all questions. You can cram this in one weekend and take the AFOQT the next week. Your scores will probably be fine. If not you get 6 months to line up your future again while you contemplate a retest.

"Did you just call me a jive turkey?"

Here's a few questions for you to ponder as a Group 3 type person for you to consider. 1.) You claim the US is a superpower, has global influence and is capable of the impossible. How long do you expect that to last? 2.) What is the cost of failure/risk when you are bargaining with the US electrical power grid? 3.) Why does the US have a responsibility to be the leader in this. We are only 4% of the world population. 4.) What will a failure to reverse climate change look like. Will it really be the end of life? Or the end of humanity?

I'm going to borrow that. Thanks.

I'm not sure what point your referring to specifically, but regarding just air and water the US already has nearly the cleanest air and water on earth. Like, ridiculously clean. We are consistently top 10 on both and the difference between us and #1 is almost always negligible. Most educated conservatives don't deny climate change. You really need to grasp that if you want to have an effective argument on the subject. Its an observable/measurable phenomenon. If you don't understand the detail of their platform you wont effectively persuade them to see your side.

I used the world probably for a reason. Noone is really certsin. Here are the facts: Ghandi admitted that he routinely slept naked with young girls in what he called Chasity or virtue checks. One of the girls included his niece who talked about it in an interview years later. Whether he had sex with them or not, nothing about this behavior is moral or ok. Gilded Heroes comes to mind. Martin Luther King Jr is another charismatic leader who had serious (depending on your outlook) character flaws.

For what it's worth my wife did her master's at ASU while I did mine through AMU and her coursework was actually much easier. I was a bit pissed about that.

See my above comment.

So did Ghandi, like all those preteen girls he was probably raping people love to not talk about.

Sort of. To his point, he is absolutely right. You are correct from a holistic point of view that 100K/yr is a small investment to save 33M. However, you are robbing Peter to pay Paul. The airfield portion of an airbase has something similar to a doc statement just like units do that specify what capabilities they are supposed to / not supposed to possess. These are usually codified in a base support plan and they are driven by the NAF or the MAJCOM. If AFMC or whatever NAF this base falls under don't have a requirement for arresting gear in the BSP, then SAA has no obligation to maintain the cables and they area using money that has been appropriated for other things to do that. In the BSP there are usually agreements with supported units though and this is where you would find something like 12AF or ACC giving X$/yr to support whatever function in case of whatever contingency.

So the rule sets for power and presidency are changing and I honestly think the debates, which used to be hugely important, have diminished in meaning anymore. This isn't the first election that this is true though. I remember it as far back as Obama v Mitt, the headlines coming out of the debate were about who had the most sick one-liners and ultimate burns. Like, are we discussing intellectual politics here or is this an 8-mile rap battle because I can't tell at this point. Last night, I think was a great display that nothing articulate or of any importance comes from the debate.

Thanks for your service! Obviously it would still be nice to keep you around so you can bicker at the SNAPs, tell them how shitty it was back in your day, and yell at people to get off your lawn. Regardless, as a service, we often forget how big of a deal it is to retire, especially now, that people from your generation on; have known nothing but GWOT ops the entire time they've been in! Serious Congrats! And best fortunes in your future endeavors!

I'm confused? Was it a fighter base? If so how did a personalist become the senior airfield authority? Usually if there is an Air Base Wing separate from a flying operation the ABW becomes BOS-I but the flying/operations Wing/Group becomes the SAA and should have their own money. Most wing commanders I've worked with begged for money to upgrade their airfield. The more ramp space/services/etc... they got, the more they could pad their OPR (or whatever O6/7's get) with how much oversight they had.

Bro, don't be discouraged. This thread is toxic hot garbage. But for your own mental health you might be right to take a break from the thread for a bit. I find myself doing so every few nights.

Because you won't ever make any head on discussions like this in an internet forum. If you want to change someone's mind you can't set out to do it in the course of a conversation. You need patience and the attitude that you will change it over the course of a decade long friendship. This needs to be done in person. Everything on the internet is just venting and sport.