Pooter

Everything everyone said above. Also, know that some of the best flying to be had in the Air Force these days is flying the line in a UPT squadron. You will never fly more with less prep work than you do there, and you will hone your airmanship and competence in the airframe to an extreme degree. And yes it's very nice to basically check all of the boxes for your airline application in your very first assignment. One downside: if you are a guy who has their heart set on weapons school, know that you have a huge game of catch-up ahead of you. When you eventually get to your MWS you will be well behind your peers in tactical knowledge and the time window to apply will be rapidly closing as you will be a mid level captain at that point. Definitely seen it done, just know that the window of opportunity is small, and closes quickly.

Okay that's something.. But is that ever going to happen in the real world? What other medications do you know of where the manufacturer/government preemptively accept full financial liability for any/all future side effects? In this hypothetical scenario, how would you even go about proving the vaccine is causal in a medical problem you have 10 or 20 years down the road? And which side effects should be covered? Also are we going to apply this rule to other medications? I'm sure in a country of 300 million I can find five people who died after taking Advil. I'm asking these things because if the line in the sand we're drawing is unrealistic, maybe we need to come up with a better one. For me the calculus is very simple. We don't know the long term effects of the vaccine or covid so there's no point trying to compare two unknown variables. What we do know is the short/medium term effects of both, and even for young healthy people a bad vaccine reaction is orders of magnitude less likely than dying from covid 19.

As interesting as this conversation is.. I am neither a fighter pilot nor a nav and I'm curious at what point the quality and quantity of data supporting the efficacy/safety of the covid vaccines could convince you guys to get it. Is there a benchmark you are looking for it to surpass? A certain number of years without widespread major side effects? A specific number of long term studies that prove its safety? A certain entity whose data you would trust? Would the emergence of a more dangerous covid variant change your calculus? I'm just wondering, because without a logical, measurable benchmark to evaluate this on it's essentially the same trash argument as the granola munching anti-vax mom crowd... I'm seeing a lot of similarities "I don't trust anyone, the science was rushed/flawed, the data is doctored" etc.. So what data, when, how much, and from whom do you want for it to be good enough?

Edit: these vaccines are so good they made the liberals clinging to mask wearing look like complete idiots. What's not to love?

For what it's worth, I trust the vaccine because of the pharmaceutical companies, not in spite of them. Conservatives (including myself) love to tout how the free market in America fosters more medical innovation than anywhere else on the planet. And I really believe that is the case. Most drugs are developed here. If you need world class surgery of pretty much any kind, you come here. The system isn't perfect but on the innovation front, we solve the shit out of medical problems. And the covid pandemic is the perfect example of that. 9 months ago the US was the covid dumpster fire of the entire world, and now because of these vaccines we are more open, back to normal, and with lower case loads than almost anywhere else. That's an amazing achievement and it has absolutely nothing to do with the government. It has to do with the awesomely smart people who figured this shit out and who would have never signed off on it if the benefits didn't outweigh the risks. It also has to do with the fact that the free market incentivized these companies to make a vaccine that would actually work. They knew they'd have to compete with other vaccine brands and they also knew the mother of all global class action lawsuits would be waiting for them if they porked it.

People with the means to will just say F the city and move out to red states and more rural areas in general. Which is what we're already seeing happen. That's the one good thing to come out of this pandemic--it showed everyone how shitty the liberal policies that dominate our cities are. The only draws cities ever had in the first place were employment opportunities and amenities like nice bars/restaurants/shopping etc... but the Democrats just proved they'll shut that down if they feel like it. And then all you have left is an expensive, crowded, crime-riddled shithole.

They can talk about whatever useless nonsense they want in sociology classes.. perfectly fine by me. That degree already isnt worth the paper it's written on so CRT conversations certainly aren't going to change that. But with CRT itself I don't think we need to wait at all. Despite entering the mainstream very recently it's been around for decades and is basically Marxist class struggles repackaged in terms of race. The gist is that any outcome differential between racial groups along any metric imaginable can be chalked up to a racist system. The part they don't want you to know is that since differentials between groups have and always will exist, "the work" needed to alleviate "systemic racism" will never be complete. And If you disagree with the assertion that all of the systems are racist, that's because you're a beneficiary of those systems which only increases your need for remediation. If the goal is to permanently cast oneself as the victim, it's basically a perfect ideology.

I think senior generals are heavily influenced by the whims of the administration. It is also possible that he's busy, doesn't have the bandwidth to fully look into this stuff, and does not realize now nefarious the content he's quasi-endorsing truly is.

To your first point - Absolutely. As for Gen Milley's context, it could be a "know ones adversary" situation or it could be more of an endorsement of those ideas on his part. I air toward the second option when you look at what else makes up most of these reading lists: bonafide military history/strategy books and organizational/leadership self help books. I don't see him putting kendi on there just to play some devils advocate.. especially on a hugely hot button issue. There's also a third option: he was pressured to include it on the list, and "know thy enemy" is just the excuse he's using to try to pass it off. Probably why he's a four star and I'm not.

Agreed on Ingram and gaetz. But hugely object to putting CRT trash like that on the reading list just to be "well read." I noticed that Marx, Lenin, etc.. aren't on there. Which is a good thing because those are bad ideas and antithetical to fundamental American principles. We should know what CRT is, but only for purposes of debunking it. Featuring critical race theory on the chiefs reading list is a de-facto endorsement, and I would bet the good general was "strongly encouraged" to include those titles by administration officials who have a vested interest in this ideology that goes much deeper than being "well-read" and "understanding the American people"

Pushing for "equity" is a master stroke by the left because it can never be achieved. You will always have more work to do in the pursuit of perfect equity so it always gives them a racist/classist boogeyman to point at when things between groups are inevitably inequitable. I think the best strategy for republicans is to try and educate the public that equity between all groups is never possible and has never happened in the entirety of human history at any time or any place. The fact that the equity goal is vague and the goalposts are always moving is the feature, not the bug.

It's almost like the president of the United States, who has the highest access to intelligence reports of any human being on earth, could have....... set the story straight. but instead we got: "it's not a big deal it'll go away soon OH WAIT actually it's a huge deal and probably a Chinese bioweapon OH WAIT take this hydroxychloroquine drug and shine a flashlight up your ass OH WAIT masking is a fundamental violation of your rights." Again, for the one millionth time, of course the media is biased. Of course they hated trump. And of course they wanted to do everything in their power to trash him. But at a certain point even they are limited by the bounds of reality. If trump came out and made responsible, cogent, fact-based points based on quality intelligence he had pertaining to the origins of the virus, that would be very difficult to discount. Instead he spewed xenophobic, scientifically illiterate mixed messaging like the absolute clown that he is. He is not a serious person, so stop complaining that he wasn't taken seriously.

Yes, I understand your point and I completely agree big tech, media et al. are way out of line. This is truly some dystopian 1984 shit. But it's a wild oversimplification to pretend that one side is solely responsible. I think you need to ask yourself why you're holding social media companies to higher standards of truth and transparency than the literal elected leader of the free world. Factual, responsible discourse should start with the president and serve as an example to everyone else. If you elect a troll, don't get upset when they get banned.

No. It does matter. The president of the United States cannot continuously spew garbage and then magically expect everyone to take him super duper serious when one tiny portion of what he's saying turns out to be true. Trump is like a right wing idiot's Nostradamus. They think he's a genius and make constant excuses for him because he's right occasionally, while conveniently ignoring the mountain of chaff and nonsense. I agree that trump derangement syndrome is a thing and the media was looking for reasons to discount or oppose anything trump said. But two things can be true at once. The media needs to uphold better journalistic standards and trump needed to uphold basic standards of truth and honesty as the president of the United States.

https://youtu.be/sSfejgwbDQ8 Jon Stewart on the lab leak theory. Absolute gold. A few thoughts in no particular order: -I really miss Jon Stewart on tv and his show was genuinely the last time a parody news show was funny. Definitely didn't agree with him all the time but you could tell he thought critically about things and formed his own opinions. -Pretty wild that the lab leak theory is now mainstream after being a cancellable offense only a few weeks ago. -Maybe the lab leak would have been taken more seriously by everyone involved if trump and fringe right wingers hadn't immediately equated it with an intentional release of a bioweapon. That was one of trumps biggest weaknesses. He said plenty of true things but most of them were buried under a mountain of horsesh!t and/or packaged in the dumbest way imaginable.

Lohmeier is a clown. Everything he says sounds like it came from a Ben Shapiro random phrase generator. I'm not saying he can't think those things but going on a podcast and spouting off about them while in command is wildly, unbelievably, preposterously unprofessional. Let's reverse the situation and see if it holds up. How professional would it be for a sitting squadron commander to go on The Young Turks and spout off about trump admin policies and general grievances about the Republican Party? Something tells me you would struggle to extend the same benefit of the doubt. The slippery slope argument resonates with me to an extent. But I, like others in this thread, think that bridge was crossed a very long time ago with the patriot act. Could this be taken in a very bad direction? Yes. But I have not seen evidence of that so far. Twitter mob cancellations and the literal gestapo rounding up political dissidents are two very different things that Republican political alarmists love to conflate.

Yes. Military funding, rules of engagement, the entire national defense strategy, and even top level policies that impact us socially all change when administrations change. I'm sure whatever liberals there are in the military weren't thrilled with the political wind direction of the last four years too. Tough. Deal with it. You decided to join a military in a country where the elected civilians are in charge of us.

Here's the catch though. You volunteered to be in the military and signed on the dotted line agreeing to be subject to a different set of rules above and beyond your average civilian. You can be sent to jail for all sorts of things that aren't illegal for regular people like desertion, adultery, insubordination, fraternization, and conduct unbecoming just to name a few. And the UCMJ does have specific limits on speech for military members already. You are correct that the implementation of this policy is going to be messy and difficult. And as always the devil is going to be in the details. But acting like this is some gross overreach that is new and different from the restrictions you've already agreed to is a bit alarmist in my opinion.

It's not nearly as bad here. Some threads get a little echo chamber-ey but there's nothing stopping more liberal users from chiming in if they want to. And they usually do. In contrast, my comments which aren't even that conservative would be blocked for even a slight deviation from the orthodoxy. Or the grave crimes of asking a probing question or playing devils advocate. Trust me it's much better here, but that isn't to say we can't be careful and always think critically to ensure we don't go in that direction too.

Got a story for you guys. This is going to be long and a little out of left field but I figure where better than to share it in this thread so I'll just go ahead. I have accidentally conducted a decade-long free speech experiment in the comment section of one of the most liberal leaning "news" sites in the world, and here are my findings. Let me explain. So there I was in college back in the 2010 timeframe and I got turned on to this fringe leftist news website called motherjones. Some of you might know it. They used to run an actual print magazine too. If you haven't heard of them just go check the site right now, they're running articles about how opposing dc statehood is racist, how much people like that Biden is "boring" and other standard leftist tropes. Compared to the bias in the MSM it's nothing particularly new or interesting, they've just been doing it shamelessly and for a lot longer. When I got turned on to this site in college I would read the ludicrous articles for fun and I immediately gravitated toward the comment section. It was a hive of activity with 40-50 comments on an average article and sometimes hundreds on the popular ones. I made an account and immediately started debating people. I never intended to troll, I simply enjoyed being in the minority there and trying to pick apart other peoples ideas. I became kind of addicted to playing political devils advocate in an ideologically homogenous place. Other quasi conservatives came and went, mostly trolls, but I was a semi active commenter for 7+ years. I had some legitimately good debates with people and I like to think I changed a few minds and had my mind changed about a few things too. The first time I noticed a change in the comments section was a few years back when they got rid of disqus (comment hosting software) and moved to a comment moderation/hosting service call coral. Coral is run by ... drumroll... Vox. So I think you can already guess where this story is going. The pitch was that the new moderation software was going to crack down on hate speech and inappropriate content. At first there was very little change, but then other users started complaining that the moderation was flagging them for profanity. I was always very careful not to swear in comments and didn't have an issue at first. But then I started having comments sent to moderation for no apparent reason. Moderation simply for cordially disagreeing or posting a mainstream opposing viewpoint. Some of my comments made it through the filters (with extremely careful wording) but then it got weirder as I noticed the bile filled responses to my comments weren't being blocked at all. Name calling, ad hominem attacks, death threats, and every label from nazi to the literal devil were thrown my way, laced with profanity the entire time. All the while More of my comments started getting blocked. Meanwhile comments from bots for porn sites and money scams started passing through the filter too. It became increasingly obvious that the sole purpose of the moderation was to shut down any opposing viewpoint no matter how it was presented. I tried making a new username but after 3 or 4 posts the moderation figures out you aren't a flaming liberal and just blocks anything new you submit. I noticed on my main account they even went back in my comment history and retroactively deleted some old comments of mine. It's simply not worth even trying to engage anymore because the moderation wall won't let anything through. So what is the motherjones comment section like today? Well it's 6-9 commenters that log on every day to violently agree with each other and say that conservatives are evil and the source of all problems. There are no dissenting opinions and the tone from the regular commenters is increasingly self-congratulatory. It's one of the most severe political echo chambers I've ever seen and a perfect microcosm of what our political discourse has become. Now I'm not going to complain that my speech is being infringed because of course motherjones is a private company that can do what it wants, but there are lessons to be learned here. 1. echo chambers are insidious. It's easy to look into another echo chamber and see the stupidity for what it is, but we need to be incredibly cautious with our own information diet to not end up in one ourselves. 2. Diversity of opinion is good for business. These days motherjones is always running some kind of pathetic donation campaign to stay afloat. I saw first hand what their idiotic moderation did to their comment section engagement and I'm sure those anti-speech tendencies are torpedoing the rest of their business. 3. Go to motherjones if you want to read some truly entertaining leftist nonsense. But I'll warn you, it will make you mad and you will want to comment. Don't waste your time.

The bigger problem than media bias or even outright lies is that most people don't have the self awareness to notice that they're radicalized on one side of the aisle or the other. I tend to think about one's information diet just like a food diet. You should consume a balanced variety of information just like a healthy diet has a variety of meat, veggies, carbs etc... The difference is that at least a shitty food diet will let you know it sucks because you'll get fat. A bad information diet is far more insidious because there are no objective outward signs of radicalization until it's too late. The other piece is people whose entire existence and sense of self worth is tied up in political views. And just like food, politics should be consumed in moderation. But moderation isn't the behavior media companies want. Fox and CNN survive based on engagement, and they know that outrage and inflammatory stories drive engagement more than anything else. Do we really think we're going to get for-profit media companies tone down their rhetoric when they know it will cost them engagement numbers? Is McDonald's going to purposely make their fries less tasty so you don't want to eat them as much?

Exactly. What do you do to improve a school system that's under performing? Cut funding even more? Yeah makes perfect sense. The dumbest part is that the defund movement isn't even logically consistent with the rest of the Democrat fiscal policy stances. They'll be the first to suggest increased funding for literally anything else that they deem a problem. Climate change? Throw money at it. Racial reparations? Throw money at it. The Biden administration is literally pulling off a time heist against our future economy to the tune of several trillion dollars to "fix" all sorts of perceived national problems. But when it comes to police funding, they're instantly fiscal conservatives because something something white supremacy.

In fairness the t-6 was developed during the steepest part of the gps learning curve (early 2000s) so it's not a huge surprise the kln900 became obsolete in a hurry. but that's no excuse for a broken acquisition system that can't figure out how to put something certified and relevant in the plane today when so many cheap great options exist. Sometimes I look down at the iPad on my leg and still think it's a miracle we actually got big AF to buy into foreflight.

This has nothing to do with that SF story. We are talking about police forces writ large. And unfortunately, patrol level law enforcement on average is a low to middle income career field with relatively few entry requirements. Of course there are exceptions and there are absolute rockstars in any community. I'm sure the same holds true for police/SF. But if we're going to talk about the qualifications of the hypothetical "average cop" we have to look to measurable metrics like pay and hiring requirements. Much in the same way, you can look at the average pay and qualifications of your average Walmart cashier and safely assume they aren't about to be hired by Spacex. None of this is meant to be a dig against police. They're good people doing honest work. It's meant to be a dig against what society expects police to be and why the defund movement is so stupid. If we want police to be infallible, unflappable law enforcement robocops who can deescalate any situation perfectly, then why don't we start recruiting, training, and paying them like it?

Unfortunately the common denominator here is the brutal truth that both civilian cops and SF troops average to slightly below average people with average to slightly below average training. This is not to take away from their selflessness and dedication but let's be honest here and acknowledge this isn't the cream of the crop we're dealing with. If you have the aptitude to be a surgeon or a pilot or a navy seal you probably aren't going to be a cop. These people are not smooth operators who make perfect split second decisions in times of stress. This is why you should do everything in your power to never give the cops a reason to interact with you and ruin your day.. or much worse. I set my cruise control on base to 1mph below the speed limit and stop for excessively long a stop signs precisely for this reason. Do not give these jabronis a reason to enter your life. If you do get stopped, then you have to mind your p's and q's even more to keep the situation on the rails. This understanding seems to be lost lately as everyone would rather start flipping out and filming with their phone instead of staying calm. This fuels bad reactions on the part of the police, which then fuels a media narrative, when then fuels more bad behavior by suspects who are convinced they're going to be summarily shot for no reason. This self licking ice cream cone is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.