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A Field Guide to Rhetorical Deflection by @Lord Ratner Step 1. Dismiss evidence that contradicts your biases without addressing its substance. Step 2. Label ethical concerns as "childish" when unable to refute them on merit. Step 3. Resort to personal attacks rather than engaging with documented historical context. Step 4. Invoke military experience to shield weak arguments from scrutiny. Step 5. Use condescension as a substitute for substantive counterpoints. Step 6. Characterize principled consistency ("killing civilians is bad") as naive rather than acknowledging ethical complexity.

You're right, incoherent was not the right word to use. Childish, ignorant, meaningless... Those would have been better descriptors. It is fascinating to see someone in the military make such a vapid comment, considering their profession has and always will understand the (bad) necessity of killing civilians. In fact, it is precisely the banality associated with your statement that has led to Hamas hiding behind civilians as their primary strategy. The Useful Fools are multiplying. I expect it from a college campus, not from supposed educated service members. Oh well.

OMG…I meant Pretty! I guess I was drunk last night!

you sure that's what you said? why would you want to 'drink em ugly'?

Ok perhaps you’d like these sources more. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-qatar-money-prop-up-hamas.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/amp/ https://www.thenation.com/article/world/why-netanyahu-bolstered-hamas/tnamp/ I’m sure these are somehow also bad and not worth consideration because how could Israel do anything bad right? But to your broader point, my position is actually really coherent. And very simple: killing civilians is bad. I don’t buy the BS justifications when Hamas does it and I don’t buy the BS justifications when Israel does it.

So... They hide behind civilians, which gets the civilians bombed, and because they implement the strategy consistently and effectively you no longer believe it? Copy. What's hilarious and sad is that Hamas is not even particularly shy about this, admitting their strategy openly over the years. Ah, there it is. So strange to have someone who is/was in the military have such a morally confused position. Your geopolitical philosophy is ultimately incoherent and incompatible with the realities of human nature, so the things you must believe (and refuse to believe) will be increasingly unhinged as the inconsistencies build. Edit: Also, holy shit dude, *that's* the source you want to post 😂🤣. This is like asking a Boeing lobbyist for dispassionate facts about the 737 Max crashes. For anyone interested, check out their statement of "journalistic" integrity: https://www.972mag.com/about-journalism-israel-palestinian/

I'm not suggesting equivalence. Israel kills civilians in far higher numbers and with far more efficiency than hamas could ever dream of. I used to buy the Daily Wire line of thinking too but after the 40th hospital/school/refugee camp got bombed I stopped buying the "they hide behind the civilian population" line. I won't tell you guys what to think but when I took off the "Israel good, palestinians bad" blinders it became easy to see that an atrocity of historic magnitude is happening right now. Also, a lot of your arguments are undercut by years of Netanyahu's covert strategy of indirect support for hamas to ensure the Palestinian government remained divided and dysfunctional. It also likely contributed to October 7th. https://www.972mag.com/netanyahu-hamas-october-7-adam-raz/

I call bullshit. Zero percent chance a helo driver passes on a lifetime of threesomes, even if it's a couple legs short.

Before most of you were born … we said… “You can drink em ugly, but ya can’t drink em thin”.

Leave the Qatari jet as is plus security upgrades, give to First Lady for her official transportation He’ll win husband of the century and go up 15 points with soccer moms Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Wait there's more: Not as bad as the Siamese twins (no Dibs for sure) but I still ask myself WTF?

Well, that's enough internet for me today.

Third time's a charm! Brandon Rogers 3.mp4

As is this... Brandon Rogers 2.mp4

Don't judge, this is some fucked up shit! Brandon Rogers 1.mp4

Free, is too expensive

Use the Qatari 747 for training Tell Boeing to move all of the people to one aircraft in San Antonio. And get one done as soon as possible Once both of them are flying. Take the Qatari aircraft apart for spares

Perhaps you're right. The follow-on Boeing gigs have really sharpened up that company...getting that talent even earlier ought to really pay off for the civilian sector. Same folks who've "led" for Iraq, Afghanistan, Houti bombings I, managing the procurement of a new AF1, T-7, M10 "Booker" not a tank tank, LCS class ships, Boeing space capsule, no food at US Army posts, black mold in barracks, so much time on DEI, renaming installations, etc, etc, etc. Finest kind, I believe is the phrase.

I suppose that's better than scoring A2A kills outside DCA

Definitely agree! But you know as well as I we aren't going to do that.

Getting back to what we have… VC-25B was selected for 4-engine redundancy, it was a program requirement for systems and survivability reasons. Electrical generation is a part of the requirement as well. As such that narrows the program down to some variation of the 747, or the A380 or Il-96 and obviously those two aren’t happening. The two aircraft in the process of conversion right now, are both used airframes that were leased to a Russian airline (Transaero?) briefly, but I’m not sure if they ever took delivery/saw service beyond storage at VCV or MZJ. Make whatever jokes you want about Boeing, or the absolute shit state of the DoD acquisitions process (turn DoGE loose there, geez), but there’s a reason that conversion takes a very long time and Boeing is losing substantial money since it was negotiated as a fixed-price contract…not that I feel sorry for them. It’ll be ready when it’s ready, and it’ll be interesting to see how Sierra Nevada fares with converting their acquired second-hand 747-8i airframes as the E-4B replacements as they have similar EMP shielding/power generation/communications requirements. So getting to this Qatari FreeCee-25…yes it’s another low-time 747-8i, this one a BBJ from the outset rather than a conversion, but other than luxurious interior appointments it lacks much of what makes up a VC-25, converted properly to US Head of State requirements it will take just as long as the other two already purchased. So even if it indeed is ‘free’ there’s substantial cost still involved, and oh btw you do need two of them operationally so other than being a third airframe for use, having just one really doesn’t help. Yes the 742s are very long in the tooth, there’s a reason the replacement process has been in motion for like 10 years now (and the E-4 program now as well), but this is just further appeals to impatience and vanity and ego for the gold toilet guy. Or it’s yet another red herring.

Any update on the -135/-46? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk