Pooter

Sorry guys but this isn't really up for debate. Trump will go down as one of if not the worst president in US history. The longer you deny that or make mealy-mouthed statements about how his SC picks were pretty good or how he didn't actively start a new war, the longer you will look like an ignorant fool. Send me your address and I'll ship you 15 more punisher/Molon labe stickers for the back window of your sweet truck. The best parts of trumps presidency were when he stuck perfectly to a script or when he did absolutely nothing. Anything he actively involved himself in went to shit almost immediately.. including but not limited to: the border wall, immigration in general, covid, saudis murdering a journalist, not being a sexual predator and hanging out with them, the election, Iran, literally anything having to do with the climate, literally anything having to do with race, his own family business, nepotism, any public speaking event ever, his own taxes, public health guidance, respecting people in the military, being tethered to reality etc.. etc.. etc... He got three Supreme Court picks.. wow amazing. Now tell me, is that more luck and timing and having a Congress that green-lit them for you or is that just trumps brilliance? I bet it was the former because his own SC picks didn't seem to think he was too brilliant when he brought them nonsensical election fraud allegations. I would never argue with you over the fact that most politicians are phony and will lie to get ahead. But there's only one politician in my life and in my parents life and in my grandparents life who denied fair election results right up until the moment his followers invaded the capitol, killed people, and endangered our elected officials who were actively working to certify that election. It literally took the entire world standing still, looking at America, and wondering, "are they about to implode in a civil war" for this damaged egomaniac to back down. I'm 1000000% with @Homestar on this one. Trump was bad on a different level. If one good thing came out of his presidency, it's that his treasonous antics separated the principled conservatives from the droves of bandwagoning celeb-obsessed trash, and maybe that will allow a healthier conservative movement to happen in the future.

The really crazy thing is that basic levels of organizational accountability are now originating from Reddit forums and Instagram meme pages. B-2 pilots on tik tok, a mortuary affairs patch with flankers on it, a cmsaf who doesn't understand her job or basic personal accountability.. These are all things that were started by and are in the process of being fixed by anonymous internet jokesters. It's certainly not the system we deserve but it's the system we need right now, and goddamn if these train wrecks aren't a treat to watch.

Yeah totally different from the last generation who confused the generation before theirs with newfangled social media nonsense too.. definitely way different...

I would think it depends wildly on the airframe. I have familiarity in the upt and bomber world. In UPT squadrons, commanders get tagged for 89 rides virtually non-stop so this forces them to fly a decent amount. Additionally they're usually an evaluator and do a lot of the IP form 8s. In the bomber world sq/ccs are usually high time guys (often patches) with most of the LOX checked off. So they fly a lot simply by virtue of their numerous quals. The biggest flying time drop offs I see is when people move to the OSS or up to the group/wing. Other communities are probably different though.

It's almost like the demographics lining up for the shot are precisely the demographics it's currently being offered to...

Copy. Extremely selfish. Hate to break it to you but wearing a mask and getting a shot to hold a pandemic at bay are not violations of your personal rights. They're basic acts of human decency that you can easily do to protect your fellow countrymen. But if caring about the welfare of other people isn't really your thing I'll appeal to the selfishness side: doing both of those things is the fastest way to get to go back to normal so your hypothetical business can flourish. Maybe the 'make America great again' crowd could take a page out of the greatest generation's book and realize that cooperating to protect your fellow Americans isn't the gubment trying to take your rights. It's just the decent thing to do. and not sure why you keep bringing up lockdowns. I too think they're mostly retarded, but it's entirely unrelated to what we're talking about. Masking and vaccines have science, common sense, and history all backing them up.

Only slightly more than half of all eligible adults vote too. So I'm not sure what your argument is here.. because half of Americans are ignorant/lazy pos's we shouldn't get vaccinated? Also you can bet the take rate for the covid vaccine is going to be much much higher than your average flu shot. So as a "reflection of the populace" we should probably get it.

Jesus h Christ how many times does this need to be explained here. Getting a vaccine isn't just about protecting yourself. I'm glad you're in a low risk demographic. Hooray for you. Your risk is probably comparable to the flu or possibly even lower for certain age groups. But getting the vaccine isn't all about you. There are people out there who for one reason or another can't get vaccines. Maybe it's an access problem or maybe they have a medical condition that prevents it. When you get vaccinated you not only protect yourself but you also bring us one step closer to herd immunity.. protecting other people too. The fact that you're ignoring this part tells me you're either extremely selfish or being deliberately obtuse.

Yes.. I know that. Which is why I brought up another vaccine for a very similar virus, which is mandatory, and somehow no one loses their minds over that.

..comparable to the flu. And transmission rates are far far higher than the flu. Which is why this has been significantly deadlier in terms of total numbers. The military requires you to be vaccinated for every year and no one has a conniption, so what exactly is the issue here.

The free market is amazing (for businesses I personally agree with.) For example: I fully support businesses' constitutional right to not bake gay wedding cakes or refuse service to certain minorities. But the idea a business could deny internet service to a seditious mob actively inciting violence is simply a bridge too far.

One of the dumbest side effects of this ordeal is that the California covid shitstorm currently happening is going to be completely swept under the rug. It would be nice if blue states with insane lockdown rules had to answer the mail when they spike just as bad or worse than the evil Floridas of the world. But I guess trump and the far right taking a steaming dump in the halls of the capitol kind of overshadows that.

Yeah but if he had an actual press conference he might have to answer super duper unfair questions from the lame stream media. Questions like: why did you incite an insurrection? why do you continue to deny the results of an election virtually all republicans acknowledge was legitimate? why did you try to pressure the Vice President into doing something he has no constitutional power to do? I suspect this is why you're seeing mainly pre-recorded messages from the president at this point. Yet, somehow he manages to botch those too.

Go watch "the dissident" right now. Documentary made by the guy who made Icarus, it goes into detail about the Jamal khashoggi murder and the Saudi coverup/social media campaign to silence political opponents. Not available for streaming yet but you can rent it.

Your argument would make sense if it weren't for all of the prominent conservative voices that are still all over Twitter and the rest of big tech. You act like there was some giant purge and every conservative on the internet is now some sort of social media refugee wandering the wilderness looking for a place to exercise their FiRsT aMeNdmUnt rIGhts!!! This is not what's happening, but it fits perfectly into your view of the world, so it's no surprise that you believe it to be the case. But the truth, as always, lies somewhere in the middle. Did some conservatives flock to parler out of fear of being silenced? Yes. Did other conservatives make an account because it's literally the first time they've heard of the app? Also yes. Did curious liberals download the app just to peep on the shitstorm? Also yes. The events of last week brought parler from a tiny fringe social media site into the mainstream (however temporarily.) And since neither of us has parler's account statistics, the only unbiased read of the situation is that any publicity is good publicity and this caused increased engagement across all demographics. As for parler's regular users, the truth also lies somewhere in the middle. I'm sure there are plenty of responsible wonderful people on parler who just want to exchange ideas. I'm sure there are also trolls, and I'm sure there of some severely radicalized, dangerous nut jobs. Also, I don't doubt that Amazon and apple have left leaning biases and would look for any excuse to axe a hotbed of conservative activity. So the job of a responsible community would be to self-regulate, and not shit the bed.. giving big tech an excuse to do exactly that. But we all saw what happened last week. The bed was shat in historic fashion and now no one is particularly interested in hearing about all of the good aspects of parler. Assuming you're in the Air Force, you should be very familiar with everyone having to wear diapers because of an isolated incident.

Maybe because interest in a thing tends to surge when it becomes the center of a national scandal/media shitstorm. It's so weird but for some reason I have a hard time believing a fringe media echo chamber with 1/50th the users of Twitter grew organically into the most popular app on the internet. Or am I making too much sense? 🤷🏻‍♂️

The cancel culture stuff is way overblown. There are huge communities of conservatives on every platform that exist without the threat of bans for one simple reason: they don't go around threatening people and inciting violence. If cancel culture is such a problem you're gonna have to explain to me how the #4 and #5 podcasts on apple right now are Dan bongino and Ben Shapiro. Seriously.. All of the biggest political channels are conservative. This is the case across most platforms. Conservatives are killing it on social media, and this has been the case for a long time. The problem Parler has is that they are the dumping ground for everyone that got kicked off normal social media for rules violations. This isn't a healthy pool of people from which to draw your user base. Think of it like AETC. It's no wonder the culture is toxic when you're getting the rejects from everywhere else. On top of that they weren't enforcing their own terms of service or maybe the wretched hive of scum and villainy grew too large to enforce, and at some point the hosting companies took notice. Probably doesn't help when a contingent of your nutjob users storms the capitol of the country. I actually think social media companies have been handling the delineation between conservative opinions vs things that are actually illegal and dangerous really well. Platforms like YouTube and Twitter keep conservatives around who actively trash them on a daily basis as long as what they're saying isn't incitement. Hell, every Steven crowder episode is basically just 90 minutes of him complaining about the YouTube algorithms. Lastly, to everyone invoking the section 230 town square argument I have two things: 1. If you go to the town square and try to start an insurrection, you will get arrested. 2. If you want to form your own alternative town square, no one is legally obligated to lease the space they own to you. TL;DR - if you want to behave like sh1t you're probably going to need to build your own infrastructure from the ground up.

Twitter just permanently suspended trumps account. Good move in my opinion. He's been using the platform irresponsibly for years and now has strayed into blatant violations of the terms of service.

@ViperMan the capitol "seeing some action" from a few nut jobs isn't the problem. Of course that was never going to go anywhere. The problem is those nut jobs were incited by a sitting president who has spewed falsehoods about an election he lost for over two months now. That is the concern. Over half of the republicans in the house opposed certifying the verified election results from Arizona earlier tonight based on absolutely no evidence. That is the coup attempt that could actually matter You want to talk about eroding trust in institutions? How about a sitting president lobbing unsubstantiated claims on Twitter since nov 3rd that have been thrown out by courts at literally every level of government.. including by his own nominees. And he just keeps spewing the crap anyway. In the long run, do I really think this is going to rip the country apart? No. But it will rip the Republican Party apart. So to you mealy mouthed trump-adjacent right wingers who just kindof tolerated his behavior: congrats. Have fun not having a leg to stand on for the next 5-10 years. It takes a lot to be crazier than today's Democrat party but you guys managed it. Last thing I'll say is I think today was a blessing in disguise. Only one person was killed which is a borderline miracle, especially since it was one of the belligerents and not someone in the capitol just trying to do their job. This episode exposed some serious security problems and the hot wash from this will help serve to beef up security for whatever lunacy trump tries to incite on the 20th.

I feel the exact same way. If left wing protesters had done this every trumper in the military would be screaming to high heaven about political norms and institutions and the constitution and what have you. Just goes to show how vulnerable people are to cults of personality. I'm no fan of the left and I think they continue to trend in a very damaging direction, but as of tonight there is only one political party whose supporters have invaded the capitol and endangered our duly elected officials conducting the people's business.

Nihilism is one strategy I suppose.

When they're incited by completely false and unconstitutional claims by a sitting president.. yes. and your tone might not be so flippant after you realize that the right just lost all of their power for at least the next two years and all of their credibility for the next decade.

Amen. The problem is that people have their political views inextricably tied to their identity and value as a person. This is where the whataboutism and equivocating and excuses come from. When your identity is wrapped up in politics it's more comfortable to keep doing that than admit you were wrong.

And yet you still can't admit his words and actions directly led to the violent riots today. You're right. Groups shouldn't be characterized by their worst people. They should be characterized by their leader. This situation is just unique because those happen to be the same person.

You're right. They're pretty much the same thing. So no doubt we can expect the exact same level of condemnation from you right?