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Most will overlook the importance of what is happening here. The liberal press machine violated all ethical standards in order to weaponize itself against a President and control a negative narrative in order to remove him from power. I HATE defending Trump....he is a loud mouth narcissist but some of the things he did were very good...all that being said the machine which enjoys special protections under the Constitution ran off the rails. Trump said some shitty things that are on tape (comments on John McCain were horrific), and maybe that is enough to make you hate him...however, many of the "reported" things he said we completely fabricated but they were repeated over and over by the big hate networks as fact. What this retraction really shows is how far the press as an institution has fallen. In the past if there was a negative report the press had a DUTY to confirm the story and the source. It was part of their ethos. What is going on now and what happened here is the WASHPO had one source who passed along the comments. They did not bother to confirm...they other networks picked up the WASHPO story and they called the original source to confirm....and so on and so on and so on...The entire story was a fabrication from ONE person. The EXACT same thing happened with the story about Trump's comments on dead soldiers at Arlington. It was a fabrication from one source and when it was quietly retracted no one noticed and no one cared because the damage was done. Perhaps the biggest failure was the Steele Dossier...opposition research, paid for by Hillary's campaign, used not only politically but also criminally. The press ran with it and we had years of investigations. Years later we learned the FBI and Intel community went through the report line by line and found much of the report was a complete fabrication...damage was done. Again, maybe it doesn't make a difference with a President as divisive as Trump, but the bigger picture is the press which is supposed to the be 4th estate, neutral and in search of the truth, has been weaponized for one political party and that hasn't worked out very well in other countries.

Been doing this long enough now to see the slide from something I dreamed of doing all my life to something that is absolutely unbearable at times. Dad flew for 28 years before me and both of my grandfathers lived into their mid 90s. Both were WW2 vets and I knew them both well. I listened and learned from them and their stories. There’s a reason BO.net has seemingly endless threads with countless pages devoted to the self induced shenanigans of the military/AF. Truthfully, I wasn’t even sure which thread to post my response in. But, it’s the Tucker issue that has my attention so I’m posting here. Ben Shapiro has a really good take on the situation. Once again, he’s spot on. His point, as well as Tucker’s, is that the military has lost focus. The simple question is, what makes the military more lethal and more effective? There’s a reason we have standards. Those standards start at the very beginning of service. It actually starts in the selection process for service in the military and continues on through basic training. Those selection processes are designed to weed out people who are not fit for service. Am I saying that pregnant women should not serve? Of course not. But, I do agree with Tucker and Shapiro when they speak of this loss of focus - or misguided focus of our current military leadership. There’s a shitload of energy that is fired in the wrong direction by military leadership right now. I returned from my 6th deployment to the Middle East exactly 8 days ago. It was another 120 day deployment which is standard for my community. It was my 11th deployment if you consider other parts of the world. This time was much different though. I’m Guard so entitlements and pay matter. We didn’t get our tricare 6 months out. We didn’t get paid on time. We didn’t get hostile fire pay as we should have. The AF had NO consistent plan for dealing with COVID and how that related to getting to the theatre. There was a major battle between our home unit and the deployed wing commander as to who is responsible for the health of our folks and where they quarantine. We ended up quarantined for 2 weeks at an Army base. Other units didn’t have to. I could go on and on. And this was not on our local wing’s level of responsibility. This was absolutely the fault of big AF. Things were no better in theatre. Every mission we flew included issues with flight plans, local services (water, power), local pax services, local aerial port, local trans and the same could be said at EVERY stop we made around the theatre. It was a complete shit show from start to finish. Day after day after day. My point of all of this is not to sport bitch. It’s this. About a month into our deployment, the AF Chief of Staff, CMSgt of the AF and the Sec of the AF came to our base for a visit. I was one of the lucky ones who was invited to hear them speak. I couldn’t wait. I had many questions to ask based on the shit we’d been through leading up to the deployment and in the first month that we’d been there. There were about 5 questions asked that were pre screened. That was it. They spoke for about an hour. Only about 10 minutes of it were them talking about issues related to the theatre, procurement, budgets, manning etc. Nearly their entire speeches consisted of social justice issues. I was struck by the feeling of being preached to by two women and a black four star general about being held back. I really struggled. Everyone did. After a quiet ride back to the squadron we talked about it. I don’t see and have never seen issues that they spoke of. And their success proves we get it right as a whole. I get it. My view from a flying squadron isn’t the end all be all regarding issues in the military. I’m sure my squadron is very different than a ship in the Navy or a barracks full of 19 year old paratroopers in the Army. But, I am getting really tired of fixing big picture problems at the point of execution while being bitched at about things I don’t see my military having problems with. There is a lot of mis-directed energy in the military and our society. I think that was Tucker’s point. And I agree with him.

The “nothing to see here” argument may work if it were not for the cumulative amount of hypocrisy and deceit being displayed today by the media and in politics. It is everywhere and people either willingly ignore it, are part of it or are misinformed by those who willingly ignore it or are part of it. I believe it’s also why Biden doesn’t take questions. His handlers know he’s not up to the task of answering for any of it without exposing the blatant hypocrisy. Transparency and the truth will send this house of cards crashing down. And that will be good for the majority of American citizens regardless of which side of the aisle you’re on.

How it matters, and the point I think Tucker Carlson was trying to make (poorly), is that our president made it a point to talk about pregnancy flight suits, which have zero-to-nearly-zero effect on our military readiness, while failing to talk about the litany of real military threats that face us. This is the go-to move of the political left these days. When you are failing to accomplish anything of substance, or in this case, failing to address a real and escalating immigration crisis at the border, do some low-impact SJW bullshit and know that your side will trip over their equity erections to attack the conservatives tripping over their social-collapse erections, and both sides (of voters) once again completely miss the chance to unite against our shared enemy, the politician class. Both the GOP and Dems had zero appetite for dealing with the most glaring threat facing us: China. Trump, in all his clownishness, saw it clear as day. Now he's gone and the politicians can get back to what they really care about: enriching their families. China has been great for that. Taiwan will be a great pawn in this. The US will "recognize" them in a variety of venues (a can of worms Trump opened), while doing nothing of substance to support them. China will feign outrage so our "leaders" can look like they're being tough on China, but as long as we don't actually do anything, China will be pleased, and the money can flow. You and I won't see any of it, of course, unless you happen to be invested in the same stocks.

Here's a stray thought that might be useful: If you are considering taking the mediocre man's money and going civil service, look at going NATO civilian. Not only do those cats work at NATO speed so there'll be plenty of time off, but they are in nice NATO places. There's even one office in the Norfolk area. And, you cannot be taxed on your retirement by any NATO member, including Uncle Sam. I have no idea what working at one of these would be like. Only a couple of illuminating conversations with a retired USAF and retired RAF dinner conversations while attending a NATO school a few years back. It is a MAAAASSIVE old boys' (in the who you know, not your gender context) network to get selected and get promoted, but it's doable if this is a thing for you.

Forgot one...

They didn't retract the story, it appears reading comprehension isn't strong among these commenters. They issued a correction which is substantially different. The story itself is materially the same: POTUS directly contacts a state elections official, urging them to scrutinize ballots in specific locations. Which is an absolutely mind blowing story by itself, and would only be acceptable in some banana republic. Now with the correction and the recovered recording, there's proof.

Washington Post retracts story claiming Trump told Georgia Secretary of State official to "find fraud." https://triblive.com/news/politics-election/the-washington-post-publishes-correction-on-trump-call-with-georgia-investigator/ The single anonymous source was the campaign manager for GA SecState. Who made it up. Proven by the finding, in a "delete" file, the actual recording of Trump to the investigating official. Multiple other news organizations, who claimed to have also verified the now debunked story, relied on this same single source. This story was used as "evidence" in the second impeachment proceeding. But totally worth it. There are no more mean tweets going out. Sometimes, the end justifies the means...

If it’s that dangerous, but we aren’t flying any significant combat Ops....why are the crews there in the first place? It’s only a big deal when you find out every E-3 in finance or EEO has their own room, and this is your 12th 90 day trip there in the last 8 years. Not a big deal, but it gets old.

Depends on what you want. If you want something on the cutting edge of technology, there's a lot of risk maturing technologies for production. Requirements creep also doesn't help, especially when it starts to push boundaries on what is capable. Another major problem is software. The more complex it becomes, the longer it takes (and throwing money or extra developers may not make development go faster). Sure, you can go faster with incremental releases, and fix bugs on the fly. This works for many commercial applications, but not so much in safety critical systems. Acquisitions may get a lot of the spears, but many times A5 is just as guilty (or more so) of causing things to drag out.

@Lord Ratner "trip over their equity erections to attack the conservatives tripping over their social-collapse erections" probably the most accurate description of modern political discourse I've ever seen

1. Our society and the greater whole of western nations have an extremely short memory on anything, much less the will to actual do something about changing our relationship with China. 2. When the original evidence to this theory propped up last year (checkout the SIPR side of things) it was widely criticized as nothing more than a Republican fabricated ploy to wag the dog and distract. So yes the critics and talking heads that kept up that narrative need to be held to task on them spinning it as a narrative. We have more than enough people involved in fixing the problem, we don’t need to solely focus on that and let China exercise their soft power influence in the WHO and scrub/secures any existing evidence while we diddle and wait. If this is indeed what happened what they did makes the Soviets and Chernobyl look like not a big deal.

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/illinois-playbook/2021/03/15/remap-not-trump-may-oust-kinzinger-executive-orders-challenged-why-foxx-felt-triggered-492108 As I noted, it just appears that the incumbent knows the gig is up and is positioning himself for other venues. No ill-intention towards him. Just seen this play before.

The color home movies of a B-17 unit flight doc from the European Theater, WWII. Long, but lots of amazing things captured here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMLC1_qqgU8

A correction to a news story has traditionally been along the lines of "We said that Bob had brown hair. In fact, he has blonde hair. We regret the error." This "correction" negates the entire story. It's a big deal. Along with the many media outlets that also said they independently verified the story. Every single one of those outlets used the same anonymous source. One source connected to an important player in the story. Basic integrity would seem to question the bias of that source and that other sources or facts need to be checked in order to have confidence in the original source. But "Orange Man bad" was enough validity. It directly corroborates the disbelief in journalism that exists. If they'd lie, my word/"correct," your word this, what else have they reported on previously, or will in the future, that relies on such a single source? Funny, the infamous Hunter Biden laptop story was suppressed because it was fake news - despite on the record sources, documentation of the FBI seizing said laptop, etc, etc, etc. Yet this one anonymous source got front page/lead stories from the usual suspects and it's all good. I believe some truth teller has the mantra "Democracy dies in darkness" boldly attached to their frontpage. But nothing about truth. Ok, the rules are known now. And, Fatboy Slim aka "I coulda been Defense Minister" Vindmann wants to determine who can have access to information sources and decide for themselves: https://www.lawfareblog.com/can-litigation-help-deradicalize-right-wing-media Deciding what is good for people to know/have access to/make their own determination is a good gig if you can get it.

If you can't see the difference, no need to continue the debate.

Don't let your bias cloud the facts. Urging them to scrutinize ballots in certain locations is not illegal...the optics of how those votes came is was odd to some but they were ultimately validated and true votes...the LIE was saying the Trump said to "FIND THE FRAUD"...which is far closer to a crime but a complete fabrication.

Is it bad I got really excited when I initially thought you were talking about Dodge bringing it back to compete with the C8? Guess I've been out of the fighter game too long.

An absolute shit ton of networked hypersonic missiles launched by non-stealth fighters with big ass radars helps the mass problem. If it helps the marketing, sell them as “single-use, highly maneuverable, AI-enabled UAVs” that are “controlled by a man on the loop.”

I don't think it's been forgotten, just approached differently. Instead of massing large quantities of forces, we mass capabilities and effects. Technology can improve capabilities platforms bring to the fight, and increase the effect individual platforms bring. Problem is that it makes each individual platform now is delivering multiple effects and more valuable, so any losses hurt more. So that pushes is into things like stealth to minimize losses. But that technology is expensive to develop/operate/maintain, so too get the most bang for your buck, you roll in more capabilities to justify the high cost, creating a vicious cycle.

Mass is a principle of war the AF completely forgot in it's crazed technophelia. 100% agree with you.

A judge in Michigan ruled that the election rules there were not properly followed. Too late obviously. A judge in Georgia is contemplating unsealing absentee ballots there for review. https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2021/03/17/oh-so-now-the-courts-say-michigans-secretary-of-state-violated-the-law-with-absentee-ballot-change-n2586381

Amen... Sent from my iPad using Baseops Network mobile app

The best combo I know of is your SQ/CC and any 2 TPS grads you can find. Even better if you can get to know them well, but you are already on the clock for this year. Line IPs, Group/CC, Wing/CC, etc don’t mean much unless they are known by someone on the board. I know TPS grads that used a Professor. But it should be an Aero, Mech, or EE professor to carry much weight. Better if that professor has successfully recommended folks for TPS before. Don’t fudge or get cute about hours. You have what you have. They only care about hours after UPT. Just fill out the form following the instructions in a way that won’t get scoffed at by O-5s and O-6s who are really smart at sniffing out BS. If they want you to have more hours before TPS they will put you in the later Alpha class as opposed to the earlier Bravo class. This works out to 16-18 months from when you hit send until showing up at Edwards to rack up more hours. Also, if you have GRE scores and DLAB scores put them on the form and check all the boxes associated with them. You might just get a good deal, and it looks better (more motivated) than white space and empty boxes.

This sounds awesome, so I doubt this is the correct answer.

Or maybe just an acknowledgement of material reality vs. cost of stealth systems? Do we need an all-stealth force to effect deterrence?

As someone who ran the hiring of a volunteer-only USAF flying unit, I would like to recommend to you that questions that are this important to the success of your application be asked directly to the officers that are the Gatekeepers. I can think of a few additional things you should do... but just start there for now.

https://babylonbee.com/news/heroic-secret-service-agent-dives-in-front-of-biden-as-reporter-tries-to-ask-a-question?fbclid=IwAR3JH0kpCfv_sEHyHu6Z4mQ3dsuoFCHxFjucbZSKsi-ZLyHmmg9LwD2KYFo

Love the comment!

"Skip class or slack off?" I majored in that @ U of Hawaii.

Never hurts to have a fixed-wing background. This coming from a regional airline pilot that never thought he'd want to fly anything except Black Hawks. Soak up all the hours you can get on Uncle Sam's dime.

God damn, there’s a lot of butt hurt in a topic making fun of people for getting butt hurt. Let them have their reading room. You all have more important things to worry about. Now let me get back to editing this PowerPoint presentation.

Got my assignment notification for UCT today, 10 May RNLTD

Usually the guard/reserve usually have pre-coordinated training dates based on hire date/commissioning date. I haven’t personally heard of anything about the helo only track. I would recommend doing the T-6s. Airmanship in any aircraft makes you a better crew member. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

ANG is 100% processing AGE waivers.

Freely admit to not being in the loop on Illinois politics, so no, I have not seen different. However, if losing a seat due to declining population (why is that, but that's another thread), and the legislature is overwhelmingly Democrat, then the state GOP party might be more inclined to horsetrade about how to redraw the districts and who the most likely representative losing his/her seat will be. Right now, the congressman under discussion has raised a pretty high profile within the state. A lot may want to get rid of him for those actions. At least two counties with a not insignificant portion of his voting totals voted overwhelmingly of their disapproval of his actions. A lot may not including the Democrats if he can be used to further damage the Republicans. I have no way of knowing, but wouldn't be surprised.

Not this specifically... but I've never walked away from a conversation about the Academy thinking, "man, I sure wish I'd gone there".

But 51% has. Interesting times ahead.

Correct, the "find the fraud" statement was verified not to have been said. Again though, the story wasn't retracted (as has been incorrectly and repeatedly stated in many posts above this one). Because the substance of the story is largely unchanged! Even if it's a minority of Americans, how have this many of us been conditioned to be ok with POTUS contacting elections officials? The best of us are rightly horrified by this, as we would be if Hillary, Romney, McCain, Gore, or any other loser of the general election were to do the same. Nevermind that it was POTUS. Sources can be wrong and/or mislead. Newspapers print corrections as needed. This correction here isn't some shocking indictment on print journalism.