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Flying at HRT the Navy pogues from Pcola and Whiting would always trash our pattern, sometimes four or five at a time. After the three times being told to extend my base while doing two engine training in order to accommodate a T-34, I cleaned up my Gunship and departed VFR to the west. A few minutes later I checked in with PCola and reported initial Runway 25...it was a fucking bomb burst of white jets trying to get out of the way. After a low approach I requested closed and the tower was fuming (do they have a SOF?) I then requested to go tower to tower at Whiting. They initially cleared me but the tower controller must have called Whiting and told them what I did so they told me they were "saturated and could not accommodate practice patterns." I got called up to the OG/CC's office the next morning and he asked what happened...apparently the Navy wasn't too happy. I told him it was a continuing theme with them dorking up our pattern and how they ruined three consecutive two engine approaches (two engine work was challenging and you had to be low on fuel to get to the training allowed weight so you didn't get a lot of second chances). He laughed and told me to have a great day. I didn't see another T-34 in our pattern for two months.

Awesomeness like this does not belong in the "What's wrong with the Air Force?" thread. 🥃

Florida Man harassed by the Man... I'm not a Libertarian but really what the hell does the state care if one guy chooses to modify his truck to drive in the water in a way that causes no discernable greater effect than a boat? Anyway, God bless weirdos, jackasses and free thinkers causing consternation to busy body, needling government bureaucrats and their minions.

I'm going to do it. After I left AD earlier this year I started working at a hospital and have been involved in COVID surge planning since the beginning. I would have been hesitant to get it if only political leaders gave it a thumbs up but with multiple sets of experts giving the go ahead getting it I feel ok about it. I expect my health system to receive one of the first rounds of the vaccine and my family will be authorized to get it then. I'm with @ThreeHoler in wanting to reduce my risk to COVID. Though the death rate for 35 year old healthy-ish men is low the randomness of the long term impacts and deaths concern me. 538, through their Podcast "PODCAST-19", did a great job explaining what we know about long COVID. Basically 20% of people who got SARS in 2013 still weren't at 100% two years later. We don't know if the same will hold for COVID but I really don't want to personally find out. My family has also canceled Thanksgiving. We moved across the country post AD to be closer to family but with my in-laws comorbidities and age if one of us has COVID they will probably catch it and die. It doesn't help that in Nebraska right now if you put 10 people in a room there is a 40% chance somebody has an active case of COVID. I feel comfortable managing risk but this juice doesn't seem worth the squeeze.

We had BE at at Eglin all the time...it was awesome. Could call the AC on his cell and work out whatever we wanted for the next day, rest of the week, etc. No bullshit, Bobs, etc. to get in the way of the mission.

That's because the MQ-9 fleet is not big enough to support that accident rate.

The long-term effects of this thing are quite nasty in many cases. I wouldn’t want to risk my flying career over something stupid like not wearing a mask and maintaining distance. I also wouldn’t want to risk it over purposely getting infected when there is very little data to support effective herd immunity from this virus. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

Understand your concern but that math doesn't follow your logic.I read an interesting study yesterday...short version = of the 238,000 U.S. deaths 9300 were normal healthy people that had no underlying health issues. The two most common causes of death due to a flu shot are anaphylaxis and Guillain-Barre Syndrome, and from the information given by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) it is possible to work out an approximate number. The CDC reports 1.31 cases of anaphylaxis per million flu shots given, so that would be about 183 cases per year in the US (on average, around 140 million Americans a year receive a flu shot). Anaphylaxis has a fatality rate of between 0.25% and 0.33%, so on average that would be one death every two or three years. Guillain-Barre Syndrome is a reaction of the central nervous system to bacterial or viral infection, most commonly food poisoning. It causes paralysis, usually temporary, and may result in a hospital stay of up to six weeks. A small number of people are permanently impaired, and approximately 3% -5% die. According to the CDC, only one or two people in a million will develop GBS as a result of the flu shot. That gives a range of between 4 (140 x 3%) and 14 (280 x 5%) deaths a year from flu-shot related GBS. Based on these calculations, the number of people dying from the flu shot in the US each year would be between 4 and 15, so probably an average of about 9, out of 140 million vaccines given, while anywhere from 12,000 to 56,000 die as a result of catching the flu, and the vast majority of flu-related deaths occur in people who are not vaccinated (CDC figures from 2010–11 through 2013–14). Compare that against a known 9300 COVID-19 deaths from a healthy population using social distancing, masks and lockdowns....seems like easy math even for a knucklehead gunship dude like me. Given all this I will 100% get it, especially the Moderna version that just finished Phase III Trials. As others have noted vaccination is not just about preventing you from getting the disease, it is also about protecting the herd. The U.S. government does have a specious record when it comes to experimenting on unknowing Americas but given the engagement by the entire scientific community on this problem, I seriously doubt anything nefarious has happened. Like a dork I read the Phase III report on the Monsanto vaccine and there were no fatalities or serious side effects in the 30,000 recipients. I believe there were 5 fatalities and 1 other serious illness in the test subjects, but all deaths were among people that received the placebo. Just my .02

That checks with almost everyone I know that went through the process. Myself included. It sucks that it's just one wait after another, but I doubt they're going to streamline the process at this point haha. Sent from my SM-N975U using Baseops Network mobile app

@JabroniWizard The other hire on my board went back to work at our squadron for 5 or 6 months after she was cross-commissioned. It's worth asking your POC after you successfully pass MEPs and do your FC1. Congrats on the hire!

Off the street Guard/Fighter Board: November 2020 Hired: November 2020 MEPS: December 2020 FC1: April 2021 OTS: ??? UPT: ??? FTU: ???

Simply pointing out that executive branch members, including military officers, serve "at the pleasure of the President." He/she can hire/fire anyone he/she wants anytime he/she wants. It's not unprecedented, a threat to the republic, or a fraying of the national fabric. Unless Trump does it, of course. Then each and every one is nefarious.

Wow, a political appointee fired by a politician. Shocked, I tell you. Shocked. v/r, Gerald Walpin

That's too bad. Dude is legit in the cyber community. He knew what he was doing, and really turned that org around and got it working well with industry and community.

Gee.. it's almost like there's a partisan reason it didn't happen this time instead of the past. Good to know the upstanding Republicans have really been interested in cleaning up this issue for years. ""Out of balance" poll books were also found in the August primary and the 2016 general election results, but the Wayne County board still had voted to certify the election, per the News...Detroit's poll books were found to be 72% out of balance in the August primary. Also, in 2016, vote totals for 59% of the Detroit precincts could not be reconciled, mostly because of finding too many had voted, per the News." It goes to the next board up, then Sec State apparently according to that article. @Sim yea...I'm not going to trust @trumprulzz for my latest/greatest news. Here's an interesting question, why couldn't you link the tweet this bot account linked? Why are you not just referencing the Newsmax tweet? As for Heather Mullins, why does every "Real America's Voice" news article link to https://justthenews.com for the article text? That's super legit for a trusted reporting sources. Why does she only have 2 tagged video articles from earlier this year, and 4 other ones that come up on site search. Again, totally normal for a professional news organization. You click on "News" on their site, and it's their War Room podcast, which looks like it has Bannon on it a lot. You legit think this site, and it's "reporters," are a credible source of news? She doesn't even have a link to the site in her Twitter Bio. None of that is suspicious to you, but CNN, Fox, DailyWire...hell, the Washington Examiner, are too MSM for you to trust. Damn...you're straight "Email Forwards from Grandma." Let me know when your Nigerian Prince is ready to send you the money he promised.

Another angle to help understand the impact of COVID when it comes to death rates is to look at the potential adjustment to the 2020 US life expectancy due to COVID-19. These life expectancy downward adjustments may be heavily localized - "see NYC as an example". Here's some data on this subject: - "Using data reported by the New York City Health Department through May 14, 2020, we estimated that the excess deaths to date due to COVID-19 caused a drop in life expectancy of 5 years (95% CI: 4.8 – 5.2 years)." - "Reductions in 2020 US life expectancy due to COVID-19 and the disproportionate impact on the Black and Latino populations": (Source - NIH/long/complicated/etc). "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7523145/

Was that alien @Seadogs down-voting every comment that isn't @Guardian or @Sim?

Putting out a lot of smoke, noise, and bombast via Twitter, and then subsequently walking it back is kinda Trump 101. Early on, it did seem like there were a lot of legitimate questions about the election. Indeed, most of those have not stood up to any level of scrutiny. I anticipate Trump and his team will continue to push back until the Electoral College formally casts their ballots on 14 Dec. There is some precedent after all; Bush v Gore wasn't decided until 12 Dec. Assuming there isn't some kind of last minute "Hollywood-style reveal" of damning evidence in the next four weeks, I assume Trump and his team will start executing a more or less orderly exit after the Electoral College casts their vote. I'm sure there will be all kinds of media speculation about Trump refusing to leave, which will all turn out to be false. As much as Trump gets vilified, I sincerely doubt he'll barricade himself inside the Oval Office as some seem to think. I would have liked to see someone in power use this moment to advocate for a more confidence-inspiring federal election process. Would have loved to see Joe Biden stand up the morning of 4 November and state his full support for Trump utilizing all legal means to verify a fair election. Alas, that didn't happen. We have such a vast array of technology and wealth at our disposal, and yet we continue to look like a banana republic when the elections end up being close. Would love to see something change. Instead though, the memories of the 2020 election will start to fade, and we'll do it all over again another 4/8/12 years down the road.

So to be honest I don't support the CVID strategy. However, one major concern with anything short of CVID is NPT strength. Once you start allowing states like Iran and North Korea to possess nuclear weapons the NPT is effectively meaningless and compliance is no longer required by anyone. That is a risky road to step down and we already started it with Pakistan/India. Tolerating North Korea and Iran, which are likely the next two steps, will likely mean a collapse of the NPT and the rapid acquisition of nuclear arms by several other states we would prefer to not have them. The US is not alone in this endeavor. Russia, France, Great Britain and China all have interest in preventing anymore nuclear powers. There is a very legitimate and real fear that once some of these smaller states with high corruption, low security, begin obtaining nuclear arms, the probably of a nuclear incident increases dramatically. Edit: This is a good video where former secretary Perry describes the nature of nuclear strategy in the four hot spots of the world. Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.

Pointy nose Fighter/Attack quit long ago. Real Attack still does them to this day.

Doesn't make me feel anything. He likely wanted to know what the US military options/plans against a belligerent Iran were before he announces complete withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq, given the strategic nature of those two border states in context to Iran. That would be something important to know before you permanently take that option away from your generals forever.

You suck at details dude. Almost like it's willfull ignorance...weird. It wasn't 2600 ballots with Trump votes, it was 2600 ballots. The third sentence in your own source says it's presumed to result in approximately +800 differential in favor of Trump. So you'd actually need 17 more counties with similar issues to make a difference, not 4. Except that Floyd County is among the largest counties in Georgia that leans heavily Republican. So in reality, you'd probably need similar issues in ~30 Republican counties to make a difference. This is all assuming that your audit finds 30 discrepancies that result in +Trump differential, and none that result in +Biden differential. 0% chance of that happening. What exactly is your issue? Georgia self-initiated a hand recount/audit to make sure they got things right. They found a discrepancy and they corrected it. What more could you ask for? When was the last time you sorted 5 million items into 2 categories and didn't make a single error? Not to mention that the audit is part of the counting process, so to call it an 'error' isn't correct. It's only an error if it's found after the vote count is certified. Not to mention even if Georgia flipped, which it won't, it changes nothing. Move on with your life.

Those are fair points. It still surprised me, however, how absolutely anti-masker some of my friends are. Like End-of-the-Republic serious about it. Yeah, I’m sure China and Russia are not fully reporting their cases, but that is not relevant to the failed leadership the USA has demonstrated on the issue in our own country.

Shaazam, did you used to write for "Dear Penthouse Forum"?

I'm still in the outer reaches of AMC (aka PACAF), so I have somewhat low SA on life at the super bases, but from my perspective it hasn't changed that much over the past five years or so. As an IP, I try to fly about one ~50 hour trip every 3-4 months and one ~4 hour local per week. That means I probably spend one month a year on the road... a far cry from the 300 days a year some people were logging 10-15 years ago. That being said, I think a lot of the "ops tempo" grind for our younger folks comes from other TDYs not necessarily related to mission employment. Once you're done with your 5 trips to Altus (for airdroppers), SOS, CATS/MECOC, AIS, etc., you've eliminated a lot of the things that pull you away from home. It also helps that we only deploy a handful of copilots and ACs from the PACAF squadrons, so the threat of deployments is extremely low out here. I haven't seen one in over 4 years, but of course, YMMV.

You've made 8000 posts in this thread. At one point last week you were averaging one post every 18 seconds. Your position is well established. Everybody including yourself knows why you chose to present this specific story in a long line of similarly themed things you've pointed towards over the last few weeks. Feigning offense at the fact that I 'assumed' something because it wasn't explicitly contained within a paticular post won't get you anywhere with me. It's time to face reality. They said it couldn't be done, but George Soros and the New World Order organized the most complex conspiracy in the history of the world, infiltrated Dominion, and unleashed cutting edge CIA technology called Hammer and Scorecoard to surrupticiously steal the election without leaving a trace. An entity capable of pulling that off isn't going to have left enough untied loose ends (like 2600 uncounted ballots in 30+ counties) lying around to make a difference. It's over. They won this battle. Gotta reconstitute for the next one so you can win the war.

Cough....the 20th. At noon. After that he becomes a trespasser in the WH. #NotOneExtraDay

Relax, this is his game. You're just playing into his hands. I did for way too long. Not worth the time, I'm just trying to save yours. He'll continue to post stuff without explicitly saying what he really means, then attack you with all the immaturity he'll later accuse you of. Go back and look at his stuff. From time to time he says something intelligent, then attacks like a kid again. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Lol, Wayne county didn't certify their results. Whoops, there goes MI. Isn't that a little bit strange?