filthy_liar

I knew as soon as I typed that someone was going to say go with link. I'll try to dig it out.

To your first sentence, me neither. To your second paragraph... no. But I hate lawyers, I think they have done way more damage than good in protecting my liberties. Unfortunately that brings us to a very ugly historical reality - the press is controlled by violence. A side decides that enough is enough in whatever condition, they change that environment, and they make sure the press, the professors, and anyone else that can influence society are overthrown also. I've no idea how to reign in what you are talking about, and to make matters worse, the spread of info is so fast it makes the violence option that much more attractive at the strategic level. That's why so many governments resort to it.

Concur.

Good gouge. Look at everything you can. Flea you triggered a thought that I left out - this stuff changes and evolves. If you are exiting the military keep up with the current gouge/policies/rules.

My opinion, which is going to be surprise surprise highly unpopular - is that we should not have E-9s or E-8s in the Air Force. In the AF officers do the fighting. Sure, there are some exceptions but by and large the officers (aircrew) are what the exord is providing to meet the wartime requirement. So we need support to meet the demands of the aircrew, just like infantry needs support. But the difference is, in the AF, the infantry is all officers (exceptions noted). So unlike the Army, we don't need high ranking enlisted to support the requirement (aircrew). In the Army and Marines, you have a boatload of enlisted in the fight. Actually fighting. So it makes sense that you have high ranking enlisted guiding those troops. Not so in the AF. I flew in combat and called in a few airstrikes on the ground in the AF while supporting Armies, and I never once, in any of those situations, needed an E-8/9 who had not only not done what I did and the Armies were doing, but didn't even understand it. I think this is why we have the Leadership in the Deid thread. AF officers just accept that we are just like every other branch and need some senior Es to look like the other services. In my experience that has gone horribly wrong. On the ground side if you ever wanted to ID someone who was not in the fight and therefore more concerned about reflective belts and other nonsense, you just pointed to an E8/9. Same was true in garrison. My anecdotal experience. I've had an awful lot of non aircrew officers disagree with me on this and maintain that MSgt/CMSgts are gold.

Disagree. Do it all yourself. You will absolutely be better off. I had a VSO from MOAA who was a young lawyer in DC and was energetic and good willed, but clueless. And in DC, if you get a VSO you keep them because 69,000 people retire from there per hour and VSOs are difficult to find. I had my initial consultation and I could tell she wasn't tracking on the process, but after talking to some other retirees, she seemed to meet the expectations of a VSO. That's when I decided that I would have to take the claim on myself. A lot of research, a lot of time. Worth it. Once I built the package, I handed it to her, she said "wow," filed it, and that was that. And I was pleased with the results. The one thing that stands out as extraordinarily frustrating was finding the VA website that listed every service related condition. Took some digging and it shouldn't have. That site is gold. Tells you the condition and what score you will get based on every factor imaginable.

Ok fair enough. We don't have those codes here for now. But if we did, and don't quote me on this, but there are a lot of videos on how to bypass the contractors and install every bit of it yourself.

Makes sense to me now. You are disconnected from reality. On several fronts. There is so much incorrectness in that sentence I don't know where to begin. Let's start with...we're not beating the shit out of Russia. And end with...in the real world, yes, if you beat the shit out of a mugger, there's going to be a wheelbarrel full of people who care why you did it.

Do you really believe this?

lol. ok, you've had some decent posts. this is not one of them.

How are you looking on your primary duties? I did all of my PME up to AWC but I never obtained the level of understanding of all of that up there. Maybe I was an idiot...if they selected me for a school, I showed up and did my best. Those two paragraphs just read to me that you are putting a heck of a lot of effort into participating in and understanding PME. Maybe it has changed, but when I went through - instead of all of that up there that you typed, we would be strategizing tee times and arguing about who owed who a round of scotch.

So lawman, we did the same thing we're doing now with Ukraine that we did with Afghanistan in the 80s/90s. But you already know that. So how do you explain that what we did in Afghanistan in the 80s/90s had zero impact on what Russia was going to do in Georgia and now Ukraine? It sure made a lot of people a lot of money. In this country. Not in Afghanistan.

uhhello you should be able to completely separate your solar from the utility company. That's what they do here. The solar batteries, regulators, panels, etc are all feeding a box that is completely separate from the power company's box. Unless they physically came out and inspected, they would never know that you had the solar setup. Now if you're saying that if your utility bill suddenly dropped and now you're carrying a spike for an inspection from the utility company - you are indeed living in an unfree state.

I'll try to boil it down so that you can understand. The fact that I drink coffee, wear clothes, drive a car, or use the internet would not be impacted if we did not intervene in Ukraine. The fact that I drive a car would not have been impacted if we did not start OIF. I guess some folks take longer than others to realize they've been had.

Illegal immigration.

I cherry picked a quote from your post, which overall I thought was outstanding and I agree with. But read that right up there. Since WWII other country's problems have not stayed in other countries. Heck, they've directly come to this country. And the last sentence of that quote...well, America sure as hell isn't what it is today what it was before 9/11. This thought will be wildly unpopular among fire breathing military folks, but what if we just stay the out of other country's problems to the extent possible? Not to the extent that the military industrial machine is telling us, which is everyone on the planet is a threat and we need to build a bigger military and all the drippings that come with that, but to the extent that it affects our daily lives. Russia doesn't impact my life at all. Neither does Ukraine. em both. Let them fight it out and let the western Europeans worry about that "crisis." And to the "well if you don't know that Russia is an existential threat and its all over JWICS so I don't know what to tell you" crowd...yea, there are so many existential threats in every domain on JWICS that we would need the world's GDP to fund a defense against it all. Its a good thing intel troops don't make it to the rank of CSAF. At least not yet.

I missed this. How on earth is the local utility company/coop able to dictate what you put on your roof, how you power your home, cook, etc? That is almost unbelievable to me. Do they shut off your city grid power if you don't comply? Fine you? Put a lien on your home? That is completely unamerican and needs to be shut down. Are you by chance in a non-free state? I'd hate to see the gun laws there. Your second sentence is awesome, but I could not live under the conditions of your first sentence.

Valid.

No worries, I'm not attacking you or Biden...and none of what you typed was distressing to me. I definitely agree with you that if a person chooses religion as a great foundation for living a good and moral life - that is a very very good thing.

This post really shines the spotlight on why I am not a follower of religion, beginning with your first paragraph and continuing throughout your post. Holy smokes, talk about anything goes, interpret whatever you want, believe whatever you want, even in a religious structure as ridiculously controlling as Catholicism. Not a personal attack on you and I don't have anything against believers, and I have millions of other reasons for not being a believer, but man, when someone can post something like that about Catholicism...am I the only one here that can see that the idea of saying you are a follower of a faith but can believe whatever you want is kind of a farce? Not trying to turn this into a religious thread derail, but instead of all of that up there, why don't humans just say "I don't know" when it comes to answering the question of what happens after death.

Don't forget about the sight placement part of this ATF "ruling." It includes verbiage that if the sight requires positioning the pistol to be braced by the shoulder to obtain a correct sight picture, the pistol is considered an sbr. I paraphrased the hell out of that, but its in there. Back to handguns...I'm addicted to Canik. Turkish made glock-like striker fired handgun. Started out with a TP9 SFX. Kind of a race gun setup, long barrel and heavy. Liked it so much I got a TP9 Elite SC for the nightstand. Nice sub, slightly larger than a 43X. Shoots great, need to upgrade to tritium night sights. No plan for a red dot for now, I'm kind've moving away from red dots. Unfortunately the Glock 20 moved from the nightstand down into the Saddam spider hole. Too heavy and not as easy to shoot as the TP9 Elite.

FourFans I'm not disagreeing with you. Yet. Are the russians bad? Yes. I think where we go off the rails is let them be russians. Let them be bad. Are they going to do bad shit like attack Ukraine? Of course they are. em. Let them get into that quagmire. That absolutely does not equal + our country gets involved immediately. At the end of the day, why the do I care if they attack a corrupt government that embezzled millions of dollars of their citizen's pension funds? Do I give one about a Ukranian's pension funds being embezzled? No. No I do not.

Kinda do know about that. Yes, you are correct some bad (maybe) men hold the keys. That construct has been held since the 1960s. I don't tell my daughter to hide under a desk for that.

FourFans, what do you do differently in your life now that Russia, China, and North Korea are all run by cults of personality? Nothing. You don't do anything differently. You might fancy yourself a badass that you're all prepared to step to night one, but really? What do you do differently? You seem to think that Russia is a big un. Are they?

I think that was a quote of a quote. Four Fans originally said the quote that was later quoted as a quote. Apologies for the quoting of a quote that was quoted.