Pooter

I still fail to understand the mandate outrage from military members. The military can literally order you on an ALR-extreme suicide mission in some bullshit war halfway around the world. Of course they don't have your best interests at heart. The military can mandate things about your fitness, alcohol consumption, drug use, grooming standards, and they can even put you in jail for things that are perfectly legal in the civilian world. And you signed up for it. No one made you. So if they need you to be vaxxed so the rotator doesnt get held up by a customs shitshow at your deployed location.. tough cookies. Do I think the mandates did anything? No. Do I trust the government or big pharma? Also No. Do I think the vaccine risks are zero? Also no. But the military mandated it for a multitude of reasons, some bad and some less bad. And in the grand scheme of things a 84% increase in a 0.01% chance of maybe getting myocarditis doesn't even register on the scale of things that are actual health dangers. Id believe the "my body is a temple" argument a lot more if it weren't for the bro-science pre-workout powder, twice-a-year cardio regimen, 7 shots at roll call, 3 monsters, and a pack of zyns per day. Because I promise all of those things are far worse for your heart.

There's not much that bothers me more than Air Force PA / journalists botching aircraft visrecce. I can understand the occasional nonner poster with flanker clip art but the people whose literal core job is to report factually on the mission we do is a bridge too far. @HuggyU2 you're a far better man than I. FFS the F-22 has never been stationed at Shaw and Looks absolutely nothing like a viper

Back on the nukes thing, I would definitely still bet on Russia having a big stockpile of functional nukes. They pulled out a lot of their fanciest toys for this Ukraine debacle and a lot of them appeared to function as advertised. Watching them utterly bungle their logistics chain and severely underestimate Ukrainian resistance/creativity has been a joy, but that doesn't mean we can write off all of their high end threats. Honestly, pulling off a successful invasion of a country backed by the entire western world is a much taller order than maintaining a handful of nukes.

Dude you seem really determined to pigeon hole people into one "side" or the other so you can set straw men up to argue against. I never said the government response, or fauci, or the CDC were perfect. I also specifically already mentioned that masking kids makes no sense, tech censorship is bad, and mandates on the civilian population were a gross overreach. So just calm down for a second. My whole point here is that we live in a big country, and a lot of people reacted in knee jerk fashion with incomplete information to this thing in a lot of different ways. Some states did nothing and some states went batshit with rules. And to a certain extent.. that's their prerogative because our government is designed that way. Were there some severe infringements on peoples rights? Yes. Were there states that sat on their hands and exposed potentially vulnerable people to needless risk? Also yes. Hopefully we can investigate and debrief both. But that is the nature of living in a very large country that pushes governance down to a low level. So cobbling together the reactions you specifically don't like a-la Fox & Friends and insinuating a giant coordinated conspiracy is silly.

Kindof, yes. Our constitution's take on federalism delegates massive authority to the states to govern differently based on the desires of different groups. And I'm not aware of any part of the constitution other than speech/religion/arms that says freedom will always be prioritized 100% over safety/health especially in a public sense. Regulations for "public health" are always a cost-benefit analysis, and depending how you weigh the variables (freedom vs safety), the answer to that cost-benefit analysis will be different. This is why the constitution is so great, it pushes governance down to the lowest level where things can be decided with higher fidelity. And when the cost benefit gets skewed too far away from freedom, that's what the courts are for.

Checks. They also almost perfectly match the inverse of vaccination rates. I'd bet it also maps pretty closely onto education and poverty rates. So you could argue those states, having such vulnerable populations, could have benefitted the most from more covid mitigation measures. Losing substantial weight isn't an overnight process so perhaps vaccination, masking, and distancing were good stop gaps as people worked to get in better shape. But instead the residents of Mississippi yelled freedom at the top of their lungs, continued shoveling hot pockets down their gullets, blew off mitigation measures and as a result have 4 times the death rate of Vermont. Which is totally fine. That's what the people in Mississippi want to do. And the people in Vermont want to be vegan marathon runners who live in an overbearing nanny state that probably destroyed tons of small businesses.

You're not wrong. Social media censorship is always bad. The wrong decisions were made by government in a lot of cases. Closing peoples businesses on the grounds that they're non essential is horseshit. Masking kids for years on end is pointless. Vax mandates for civilian workers is a huge violation of medical autonomy and privacy. But when you have a country of 320 million people in a patchwork of 50 states you're going to get a wide variety of responses. And cobbling together the ones you don't like into a big laundry list doesn't constitute a conspiracy. My state (Texas) did almost none of the things listed above. And if I asked you pre-pandemic which states would go batshit with regulations and mandates, you probably could have predicted it with high accuracy. But that's the cool part of the United States. You can choose where to live. It sounds like the voters in California and New York value perceived safety over freedom. I think that's ass backwards and it sounds like you do too. So shocker, I don't live in California or New York and I never will. On the flip side of the coin, the 5 worst states in covid deaths per capita are all Republican. I'd bet there are plenty of California and New York people who think these states' covid response was batshit. The lesson learned here is that there are trade offs between safety and freedom and you should live in a place that aligns with your values. edit: and if the federal government response is your primary concern.. maybe the Republican party should kick their trump addiction. Because no one in the history of the United States drives Democrat voter turnout like he does. Hitching your wagon to the mid 70's orange clown who denies election results, mishandles classified, and has zero appeal outside of the far right is not a way you get the things you want at the federal level.

Spot on. Perhaps American defense contractors should consider designing secret kill switches into all of our military tech... Because we seem to be stuck in an endless cycle of arming countries in proxy wars vs Russia/China only to turn around and have the exact weapons we gave away used on us a few years later.

*citation needed. I know joe and Jill Biden are important and I'm no scientist but I'm pretty sure one old couple with repeat infections is not a statistically significant data set. Also I've been reliably informed by far right pundits that getting covid isn't the concern. Dying from covid is. So what's the problem here? Biden got the vax which was designed for and was far more effective against the early variants. (Which were also more deadly.) This boosted immunity in the early stages of the pandemic when it was particularly dangerous for the elderly. Now that the virus has had 2+ years to mutate, the vaccine is less effective, and the strains are more contagious but thankfully less virulent. (Something literally every scientist worth their salt predicted..) And as the data changed the CDC and basically every state has lifted mandates correspondingly. Turns out the dems are still in charge and we aren't descending into a "zero covid or bust" 1984 hellhole. Things are just kindof going back to normal now that it isn't as big of a threat. You guys so desperately want there to be a conspiracy but I'm just not seeing it. Perhaps the one valid complaint you have left is how slow the military has been to get their policies in line with emerging medical guidance. But if you expected timely policy updates from the military I have a bridge to sell you.

You got me! I'm actually a mask mandate-loving cuck, and this cartoonist's subtle, biting political commentary doesn't have a homoerotic trump fixation at all.

I don't always get my political wisdom from ham-fisted hyper biased cartoons.. but when I do its from the guy who's sucking trump off so hard he invariably portrays a 76 year old man as a fit beefcake. Such compelling stuff. Much commentary. Wow.

Reuters is also good for basic facts and the breaking points podcast (recommended ad nauseum by Rogan) is great for in depth analysis.

Help me understand why applying the "comey standard" here would make anything better. His bungling of the email investigation led to Hillary not being held accountable.. is that what you want to happen again? Seems like your argument stems much more from what feels "fair" rather than what the right thing to do is right now. It's political tribalism at its finest.. the other team got away with it, why shouldn't your team get away with it too? This is the kind of childish tit-for-tat game that ends with no one being held accountable and the DOJ being used as a club only to try to whack your political opposition. I've said it before and I'll say it again, either classified matters or it doesn't. If you hold literally any consistent principles above political tribalism you don't get to be mad that Hillary isn't locked up while simultaneously defending/quibbling for trump. They should both be in jail and I honestly can't think of two people who deserve each other more.

Lol the mental gymnastics of trump apologists.. "we don't even know what they were looking for" "okay so they were looking for classified but we don't know if they found any" "okay well we know they found classified but he probably declassified it beforehand" "okay so he didn't follow the process to declassify it but surely other administrations have done this too right" "okay maybe we've never had another president do this before but it's probably not like important classified" "okay maybe it's classified pertaining to nukes but probably not like anything actually dangerous like bombs and stuff" Can't wait to see where the parade of quibbling and justifications lead in the coming weeks. It's been truly entertaining so far. Just here to remind everyone that standards should exist. And you should hold those standards above your political biases. Because If any of us were under investigation for anything remotely close to this or what Hillary did, we'd likely be in jail. Which is precisely where both of them should be.

Ruh roh 😂

I'm talking about admin.. not broader policy. You know.. the kind of admin that prevents you from getting a landscaping business and the four seasons hotel mixed up when you're shopping for press conference locations. Not here to debate George soros or military funding or which wars we should and should not have fought. I'm simply pointing out that the trump administration was notoriously all over the place on administrivia and it's pretty hilarious you'd even dispute that. Knowing who he is as a person and his level of disrespect for basic processes it seems not just probable, but likely he purposefully or accidentally mishandled classified. And now the DOJ is trying to make the warrant public and trumps legal team is potentially trying to prevent that move. Must be some good stuff in there.

That is the going theory. FBI hasn't yet released what was found in the raid. 1) would that make it okay? 2) I actually kindof doubt it. Looking from the outside-in those administrations seemed to have their shit far more in a sock than the trump camp. Also probably a better general respect for national security and classification procedures. There are literally insider accounts of trump attempting to flush documents down WH toilets.

Some hypocrisy In light of recent events.. The "lock her up" crowd suddenly not caring at all about mishandling of classified documents. The "but her emails" crowd suddenly caring so much about mishandling of classified documents. It's wild that people are so mentally broken by political polarization they can't even recognize a standard and apply it equally. Either classified documents matter or they don't.

Yeah I'm selling this one, beware it's appreciated since I bought it. I won't take a cent under $269,696. alternatively.. you could be more specific about what you're looking for

I saw someone shit on the sidewalk within 3 hrs of arriving in SF earlier this year. I was in LA for an overnight stay 2 years ago and saw more homeless people in 24 hours than I have seen cumulatively in the rest of my entire life including many years living in other major cities. There are very nice parts of California. But those places are either very far from the cities, or near the cities and prohibitively expensive

Specifically relating to the green new deal: Policy: spending massive sums of taxpayer money to achieve climate equity. The idea being that climate change "disproportionally affects people of color and marginalized communities" (Read the bill it's in there) so we have to dump truckloads of government cash into said communities and green energy initiatives to achieve equity. Result: -Skyrocketing energy costs making us uncompetitive with China, while also not solving the worldwide carbon emissions problem. -Higher inflation due to government spending/skewing of the energy market -Increased reliance on foreign oil. (How's that working out for Europe right now?) -Increased outsourcing of manufacturing jobs to countries without garbage climate policy. So I've given you a few examples, care to expand on why you think her policies won't empirically hurt the economy while also doing nothing to solve climate change?

Do the pre course workbook. You'll have a pre-test (grade doesn't matter) which will kick everyone's ass other than the nerdiest of MAF guys. Similar but not identical test on the last day and you must get a passing grade. Vast majority of the pre course workbook directly related to pre and post test questions so don't just chaff it off. As an RPA guy there will be a ton of gee whiz info for you that isn't super applicable which was the same for a lot of caf dudes. But if you have a genuine interest in aviation it's all good stuff to know and the course was taught really well.

Because every wild left fringe idea right now will be a mainstream democrat view in 5 years, and probably policy soon thereafter. The constant crusade to be ever more progressive dictates that they always have to out-do their past selves to continue to attain virtue. AOC is the foreshadowing of where the left is going to try to drag the Overton window. So maybe it's worth debating the garbage ideas now, before they take hold and cause real damage. Maybe right now we can chalk up The green new deal and other AOC proposed crap as some pie in the sky nonsense from a juvenile queens bartender/tik tok star. But come find me in five years when we've tanked the economy (further) in the quest for a racially equitable climate justice utopia. Then it will be very apparent exactly which of her policy prescriptions negatively affect you personally.

I don't buy that this is some sort of "in case of war break glass" test. Please describe to me a scenario where you are short a bunch of copilots (due to attrition or some kind of attack) where you're not also short on ACs, IPs, and airframes. I'll wait. This is how you socialize a garbage idea you know no one will sign off on for its own merits. You pitch it as some newfangled combat contingency test, get the waiver passed, and then implement it by precedent years after the original detractors are long gone. Call me a conspiracy theorist but what do you think is the air force's more pressing problem: a) pilot shortage or b) near peer shooting war where we somehow have a bunch of perfectly functional -46s laying around with no one to fly them

I think in normal normal ops, no it would not be crazy to fly with a single pilot. Lots of automation and low task loads when things are going completely standard. I would guess this holds for most crewed aircraft in benign situations. The issue is when the situation becomes not benign. When nonstandard things / EPs / mission changes start happening now you have a single brain having to manage a very large very complex aircraft and deal with those externalities as well.