Pooter

No. But you can change course without going full retard. If you want to attack the debt you cut spending in a meaningful way like they were *kindof* trying to do with the doge stuff.. and leave trade policy tf alone. We are not getting ripped off by Vietnam because we have a trade deficit with them. We are a rich country. They are a poor country. They make stuff for super cheap. We then buy that stuff for super cheap and have more money left over for other things. It is a win-win. Trump is under this insane misimpression that voluntary trade is a zero-sum game where there has to be a winner and a loser. And somehow since the word "deficit" sounds bad, we are the loser?? As others have pointed out, you have a trade deficit with your local grocery store, or your dry cleaner, or literally every service you pay for ever. So are you being ripped off when you voluntarily engage in a market transaction to buy something that someone else made? Not to mention we're tariffing countries who we have a trade surplus with... please make it make sense I think tariffs are almost always stupid, but I would be slightly more willing to take this ride if it seemed like there was any semblance of a coherent plan. The reason the market is tanking is because there is no plan and we've been in a constant state of will-he-won't-he for the the last two months. If we actually want to "bring manufacturing back to the US" businesses need some stability and predictability before they go sink millions and billions into new domestic production capacity. But they can't do that when the president is flip-flopping on his own policies and creating random new carve outs and exemptions on an hourly basis. Because who knows, trump could use these tariffs to get some concessions from a few countries and then dump the policy entirely in a few months.. well inside the turn circle of setting up a new production line. In summary: -you can address the debt without dumpstering world trade -trade deficits are not us being ripped off -blanket tariffs are bad and dumb -the market wants stability, not constant whiplash -if there is a plan, fucking communicate it

I just don’t see how starting a worldwide trade war that tanks our markets and makes virtually every product more expensive fixes our debt problem. And the republicans just passed a continuing resolution that failed to cut spending in any meaningful way so I have a hard time believing this is some all-aspect strategy to attack the national debt. I will grant that trumps tariff plan is at least different. But so is shooting yourself in the dick.

This is one of the most epic economic self-owns in history. I've never seen the right and left so united against anything, but when you propose possibly the most retarded economic plan ever, I guess that's what happens. I'm so glad we're tariffing Vietnam into oblivion to bring back all those quality t-shirt sweatshop manufacturing jobs. Just happy I'm a long way from retirement and can use it as an opportunity to buy the dip.

Denying it while knowing full well the journalist has the receipts might be the wildest part. Like how do your teams not come up with a better damage control strategy

Agreed, but I would like our deportations screening process to at least be rigorous enough not to detain american citizens, refuse green card holders entry into the country, or deport people with real madrid tattoos under the false assumption they're dangerous gang members. I get that our illegal immigrant problem demands urgency, but I want us to be sure when we take life-ruining actions against people. Each edge case mistake gives the left more ammunition to paint the right as evil racists, and honestly I want to live in a country where we at least follow our own processes well enough not to F*** the wrong people

I'm sure it was all 4d chess because trump is such a generational negotiating talent /s Definitely not him getting into a shouting match because he's an easily offended boob with no filter

Gen Brown banned Friday shirts which, while extremely unimportant, signaled the beginning of the asinine dress and appearance crackdown we are now in the midst of. I’m sure his firing has nothing to do with that and everything to do with the Trump admin’s anti-DEI posturing but I’m going to pretend it was causal as I crack another beer and laugh my ass off.

@nsplayr I’ve seen the plans as well and I will tell you at least as they pertain to my community and our readiness, the assumptions going into those plans are pipedreams. China is a peer. Not near peer. A near peer doesn’t debut weapons you don’t have and then you scramble to catch up. I like the attempt to use WW2 lore to justify yet another foreign boondoggle but this is not Germany or Japan. This is a country the same size as us. With a far larger population, and a far larger industrial base, who is already out producing us. And we will be fighting in their back yard. We have another thread on this site about how we can’t train new pilots properly or field a single engine trainer aircraft in a reasonable timeframe. If we can’t do those things I think we need to have a real look in the mirror and ask ourselves if we actually can fight WW3 on the opposite side of the world, on our enemy’s turf. We don’t have to fully abandon Taiwan and we can funnel weapons to them to make the invasion as difficult as possible. But if China really wants it we aren’t stopping them and the faster we realize that the faster we can stop wasting money a hypothetical WW3 we’ll either lose quickly or never fight to begin with.

I don't know if it's turning our backs as much as recognizing these realities: a. it isn't our fight b. even if you can do the mental gymnastics to say it is our fight, we can't project power enough to have a reasonable chance of success c. China gets to decide when it starts, and you can bet they won't pick a time convenient for us d. The longer China waits, the more their production of combat assets outstrips our own. Taking all these into account I don't see how anyone could come to any conclusion other than: China is going to wait until a time that is advantageous to them, and with their military's trajectory plotted against ours, eventually they will have amassed overwhelming force. So we get to decide do we want to fight a losing battle or not fight at all. My point is, why sink more money and resources into a boondoggle that's debatably already out of our control and trending worse?

Not to mention all the civilians we hired to alleviate additional duties now all being offered paid separation.. and their positions will not be able to be backfilled. I'm sure that will be a boon for morale. But I will say, I think we can find some room in the budget if we can be honest with ourselves about our biggest, dumbest, and most expensive mission: the collective delusion that we would actually fight WW3 against China over control of Taiwan.

The VR and pilot training next stuff wasn't originally a problem in and of itself. If you added VR sims to the legacy UPT syllabus us old hats are familiar with, you would end up with a better product. Full stop. I'm all for trying to modernize sims/chairflying and I'm all for auditing the syllabus to make sure we aren't wasting time on things that don't matter operationally, like fingertip takeoffs and landings or serially hooking kids on ELPs. The problem arose when the brass started using the VR and PTN/UPT 2.5 syllabus cuts to mask the fact that they can't generate aircraft. That's when all the newfangled VR and syllabi basically became a trojan horse to cut hours while keeping slides green.

Caveat up front: there are good/bad/disciplined/undisciplined pilots in every community and this is not geared toward any individual. But I'm gonna be the asshole here. In my experience, the army rotary wing community ranges anywhere from lackadaisical to outright dangerous WRT instrument procedures, airspace and traffic awareness, and flight discipline. I've witnessed a 5-ship Army Apache mission brief take place in the lobby of the San Angelo FBO that was basically: "Alright dudes, we're gonna take off, head east, 200A, everybody fall in. Questions?" "Sick. Step complete." I've been in control of a T-6 pattern full of solo students and had to send them all breakpoint straight through (half of them didn't even know what to do) because we had a 4 ship of army black hawks blast perpendicular through our pattern while talking to precisely no one on the radio. The second I saw the news out of DCA my first reaction was "goddammit some army rw clowns got everyone killed." Then I felt bad for jumping to conclusions and not waiting for the report. But after a few weeks, each new piece of data points right back to them and I'm back to being pissed. Why were they off altitude? Why are they dicking around at night in the approach corridor of a major airport? Why are they not on VHF? Why was this even an approved routing for them in the first place? Why were 28 different agencies permitted to fly helos in close proximity to DCA? These were not one-off, swiss-cheese-holes-aligning, mistakes. This was business as usual, proven by the fact there had been multiple near misses at DCA in the recent past including a helo-caused airliner go-around the day before. Obviously an airspace/procedure re-design is warranted, but I think we need to take a look at community-wide culture that was comfortable operating like this in the first place. @busdriver said it best that these procedures are "no-step stupid." The problem with that is if you've been raised in a community of hot dogging and "we'll do it live" you're probably not equipped to make a good risk assessment.

I have zero issues whatsoever with the army response. There wouldn't have been the need for the Army to withhold the name to give the family time for damage control if Trump hadn't painted them into a corner with his completely out of line comments. Everyone else is still trying to get the facts straight and pull bodies out of the Potomac, and we have the leader of the free world talking out of his ass in the least possible productive way during a crisis. DEI is toxic, but even more toxic than that is blaming a crash on DEI less than 24 hours from the accident when you have zero facts to support it.

The O-6's I interact will fully agree all this uniform revamp BS is dumb and a waste of time.. behind closed doors. They just can't publicly say that, so they have to fall back on the tired "get the basics right" refrain

I think it's actually really simple. The GOs see that the air force is falling apart and they know real solutions will be painful and risky to their career advancement/political ambitions. So they focus on things they can easily control like uniform nonsense, and pretend that's the "real" root cause of our issues. Same thing happens in politics. Can't solve any of our real problems.. just do some dumb shit that makes it look like you're addressing problems, like re-naming Fort Bragg or the Gulf of Mexico