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"Medicare, welfare, obamacare are unearned entitlements. Tax and social security are cash-out-of-pocket. Military retirement is an earned benefit. See the difference yet? Yes, we have "a leg to stand on," and no, they can not touch my earned retirement without opposition. And who gives two fucks about BSMs and TIB? Yes, it could be much worse, and that is what we'd like to prevent. You suck at "playing devil's advocate" because your arguments are irrelevant. I advocate scrapping the whole thing. Yes, I want to go through another year of "reduced" readiness, flying hour cuts, no TDYs, cx'd Red Flags/WICs, etc. The gov't is wasteful, and the USAF is not immune. We have a metric shit-ton of waste that can be slashed. To include many of the pieces you mentioned. We are not good at "thinking outside of the box", no matter how much we pride ourselves in our ability to do so. But we are stocked with an equivalent metric shit-ton of talent and really fucking smart people. We just have to use it. As the age-old saying goes, "necessity is the mother of invention." I, for one, am not completely opposed to sequestration. The impacts have been and will be felt, but we will weather it, and we will come out leaner. That, IMHO, is better than giving up my retirement to continue to fund our wasteful enterprise. ETA: I'm drunk and fired up.

I side with you. I want to do our fair share but I don't feel like anyone else is willing to do so. They don't have the proper frame of reference. We have a force used to being used/abused more so than any other generation. On the same hand we have a general population that is completely out of phase with us. Even if the COLA reduction could be used to prevent further reduction in military ability I don't trust it will be used that way. The different pot of money argument runs out at this point. What if the earned income tax credit were reduced by 500? How much would we save? At the end of the day we need a budget. The COLA argument is fair but until everyone in this country can stand up and do their fair share I won't agree. What exactly is a fair share? I don't know but I feel like my short tour return date earns me exactly the retirement we have now... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Fix to fix's aren't even authorized in the NAS anymore. Good riddance.

As a result of some of the recent forum updates, youtube embedding is now very simple. Copy and paste the link from the video into your post. Doesn't matter if it's https or http. Trash on the end of the link should be automatically removed by the forum software. No need to use the media button or any other button. Also, you should be able to auto-fast-forward to a specific time by copying the link from the "share" button within a youtube video (top right corner) and choosing to copy a link for a specific time in the video. Questions?

The irony.

So the way I'm reading this is if you're a Major between 15-18 years in non-critically manned career field the Air Force is willing to give you a golden ticket to get out the door early. However if you have the same number of years and just so happen to be in a critically manned career field then you are subject to the RIF. In essense: We don't need you, here's a paycheck for life and a cadillac healthcare plan. We need you but you came up a little short, f--- of and die.

Blah, Blah.....go guard.

I don't see a problem with that. It is PILOT training.

Perhaps those at the GS level schould endure the same cuts to their retirement as well .

It seems most of us are willing to do our share to come up with savings during these tight fiscal times. However, if each retiree is absorbing tens of thousands of dollars of these cuts (over $100K for a retired O-5), we are making a sacrifice wildly disproportionate to our numbers in the US population. Skitzo suggests cutting EITC by $500. Hell, even the $20 suggested by the Chief will get us to the same place. Even though this one may inevitably pass, if we allow it to do so silently, it will only hasten further cuts. Make Congress and the President work for this. MOAA has it set up to quickly and easily be able to send a note to your senators: https://www.capwiz.com/moaa/issues/alert/?alertid=63026006 If you're a retiree or planning to retire from the military and do not take a few minutes to act on this, you are wrong.

As GHeart would say: "FTFA! Fly the fucking airplane, Lieutenant!"

You really think that this will keep "flying hour cuts, no TDYs, cancelled Red Flags/WIC classes, and other serious cuts to O&M accounts" from happening again? The roughly $6B proposed savings is a mere drop in the bucket. If we take this with no pushback do you really think that a further erosion of our benefits will not continue? This one is just the tip of the iceberg if it passes.

Thanks, just reiterates the fact for me at least that we schould have gotten the hell out of there long ago,like maybe 5 years ago.

. The fed has quietly dipped into TSP funds several times in order to stay under the debt ceiling. They're using your retirement funds to float their overspending. Of course they promise to pay it all back. Do not, under any circumstance, trust the government with handling money intelligently. If your retirement plan relies on any form of government money, you're wrong.

*UPDATE* I have done a restore on a lot of threads that were erroneously deleted. Unfortunately, I cannot tell what was erroneous and what was legit. SO, if a thread showed up that was supposed to be dead, PM me ASAP. Otherwise WYSIWYG, meaning if a thread didn't come back from the dead, it can't.

My theory on this is that I was hired for my pilot skills, not my IT skills, because I suck at troubleshooting computer problems. I can solve the "where the jet is going" problem a lot faster than I can solve the "why is it doing something that I do not understand" problem. But that is resorting back to basic flying skills which makes me wonder what kind of training or mindset would allow both pilots on a wide body airliner to acknowledge that they thought there was a problem with the throttles because the throttles were not controlling airspeed yet DID NOTHING to fix the problem....like push the throttles up. Apparently the FAA is looking at the accidents at Buffalo, SFO, and the Air France crash and thinking the same thing. I did the first of two sims last night for our 9 month recurrent training and we did an approach, departure, and a FL350 stall. Stabilize the picture, pull the power to idle and hold the picture, let the airplane run out of flying speed, and then recover. First time I have ever done those in 14 years with the airlines. Last time I did those in a jet was as a T-38 IP.

Yet the news is celebrating the passage of this bill in the House as a hallmark of cooperation.

November 2014 I'm voting against every single incumbent. 33 Senators and 435 Representatives will be up for re-election, and the American public needs to un-sheep themselves and send a message. “The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - President George Washington It disgusts me to see our Congress failing to lead by example. Austerity regarding their own benefits and salaries, regardless of how minor the effect would be on the overall fiscal picture, would at least be a start. This Congress continues to ask for more austerity from its citizens without accepting or sharing any of that burden itself. I'm beginning to wonder who works for who.

Hoss, another good post. That said, we in AMC have been briefed multiple times by the O-6s that "some people (inferred the SRs and board members) are considering date of completion in addition to yes/no. Our leadership are perpetuating these rumors. It is tough to distinguish truth from reality out here.

Google the video "children of the magenta line" and watch it on YouTube.

The whole system doesn't make sense if you ask me. BPZ and APZ are less than 1%, so essentially you have one chance to get promoted. Each Wing CC gets one BPZ DP to give, they should do the same for APZ as well. Having worked in the front office at the Group, Wing and on GO's Staff, every single time I was there for a board there was an O-6 or GO scratching his head wondering how the hell at least one person didn't get selected. You know they aren't going to use a DP on an APZ guy (extremely rare) and statistically you have a 0% chance of making O-5 with a P APZ... so what is the incentive for a pilot passed over as a Major to do anything but breathe and log IP time for the next 6+ years? I don't mean to cross threads here, but if you look at the new pay scale for the US Air/AA merger in 2017 you can START at $93K as a first year FO! Is that check of the month club worth sticking around to lose 6+ yrs of seniority when you can switch patches and pin on O-5 within 2 yrs across the street at the Res or Guard Sq? I know several of the 157 from a few years ago... every one of them is now an O-5 and many of them just got the call from SWA or United (some from both) in the past month. The pendulum is swinging very quickly back in favor of the pilots... too bad the shoes and the box checking Yes Men have their faces too buried in the Power Point slides for "Pride Month" to figure it out. Talking to my old boss who is now a 1 Star and has sat on a few promotion boards; sending up a blank PRF and an APZ PRF with just a P is the same thing... they essentially go into a separate pile and are not even considered. For the past 10+ yrs Big Blue just assumed that they had these folks (pilots) until 20 either way (and they were right)... that may not be a good assumption anymore.

Wow. Okay, here's everything you wanted to know about Mandela but were afraid to ask.

https://www.policymic.com/articles/76375/8-photos-you-didn-t-see-from-obama-s-trip-to-south-africa Always knew that the press reported their spin on the news but this puts it into a better perspective on what really happens and isn't shown....

^^ How so? I'm genuinely curious as to why you think that.

Bush 41 never attended soldier's funerals... What a disgusting human being he must be! I'm sure you'll agree, right?

out of curiousity, how many people on here are actually advocating scrapping the entire budget deal because of the COLA reduction? i'm not happy about it either, and i totally understand the outrage/feeling that there are many other ways to drum up the cash that it will save, but do you really want to go through another year or more of reduced (or "tiered") readiness, flying hour cuts, no TDYs, cancelled Red Flags/WIC classes, and other serious cuts to O&M accounts? i would love to see the Senate amend the proposal but if it comes down to yes/no on this, i will take what i consider to be a relatively minor hit to ensure our readiness. it sucks, but life's not fair. i will certainly ask my representatives to modify this at a later date and try to restore the funding, but i'm not willing to fall on a sword that's going to cut DEEP into readiness b/c of a 1% COLA cut to a pension i won't see for another 10 years, if i even stay that long. just curious how the rest feel...