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Fair enough—so why hasn’t AOC and Ilhan Omar been banned as well?

The lab leak theory would have been taken more seriously if the powers that be in the media, big tech, etc… didn’t have such an out of control case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. It doesn’t matter what dumb way Trump mouthed off about that; anyone with half a brain could put two and two together early in the Pandemic and realize that a lab leak, from a totalitarian nation with bio lab/research facility in that same city, was a legitimate possibility. Who cares how Trump phrased it, there are other adults in our political class that should have put their heads together and tried to find a way to get the world behind finding out the truth. Also the fact that talking about a lab leak was a silence-able offense and is now not just speaks to the MASSIVE hypocrisy many in positions of power have in this country. Big tech and political leaders went out of their way to silence legitimate discussion on the topic, but now that a certain orange man is out of power and Fauci’s emails have leaked, it’s okay to talk about again. Orwell much? Regardless we’ve probably lost any opportunity to actually find out the truth. Whatever way the virus came to be it sure as hell worked out in China’s favor.

Your fallacy here is that Trump was the original suppositor of the lab leak theory. He was not. If your measure for believing something is your political opposition to someone who repeats it, your filter is broken. Grown ups in media, politics, and science should be able to think about something even though someone they despise said it. And I'm tired of people (you, sure, but lots and lots of people) saying that the problem with Trump is that he lied all the time. No. The problem is that he was a bitter narcissist. He treated people around him poorly. He was ill informed on things he should have known. Trump did not lie more than the rest of the politicians. To say so is to demonstrate an almost unfathomable ignorance or bias... Or both. You probably can't even come up with a Trump lie that was unique to him as a president. Lying is not their job, it's just how they get it.

I will tell you the most interesting CTC I was ever in was the one where the White Cell actually limited logistics because the ground force just hand waived that part of the problem set. Suddenly you had OCs keeping extreme tabs on the ammo/fuel/water distribution and it was amazing to see leaders either adapt or fail miserably. “What do you mean we have 29 Hellfires in the AHA and that’s it?” Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I appreciate the answer. Others here have pointed out that Biden is taking credit for things that were in the works before he took office. Infrastructure has become the latest example of Dems manipulating language. They intentionally use the word infrastructure knowing that a majority of people would support fixing bridges, roads and airports. But, when you get into it, you hear about things like “human infrastructure”, “healthcare is infrastructure” and “child care is infrastructure”. It’s just another attempt to spend trillions of dollars on social projects paid for by tax increases on the wealthy. The goalposts are constantly shifting. It’s never enough. And it all starts with language. It’s being done with race. Notice how white males aren’t being called Nazi’s anymore? It moved on to white supremacists for a while. Now, just being white is the problem. It’s absurd. It’s been done with drugs. We are going to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes. Now, I can’t walk around downtown without smelling so much weed that I worry I’m going to pop hot on a drug test. It’s why I was opposed to the repeal of DOMA. It’s not because I have a problem with gay people. It was because I knew what would happen next. The end game was never about two gay people trying to live out a normal life through marriage. It was about the sliding scale of gender, trans, pronouns, etc. Look where we are now. It never stops and it’s never enough. There are plenty of other issues that we can not bend on knowing there is no end game. The goal posts will never stop shifting. Gun rights, abortion and climate change are a few that come to mind.

Exactly. We have the first amendment because the first thing authoritarians do with discourse they don't like is deem it "misinformation." Yet even now as the same players who fought *hard* to silence anyone who voiced the lab-leak theory admit there is something valid there, they are curiously silent on the idea that silencing voices you believe to be incorrect was a bad idea. I can't wait for the same awkward shuffling and changing of subject over global warming. An entire industry of "experts" addicted to government grants told us the world would be literally doomed if we didn't follow their edicts within a few years, and for decades their models and predictions failed while the theory adapted to the very data that disproved it. You should trust experts for an explanation of what something *is* But there is no such thing as an expert on what you (we) should *do*

POTUS signed Juneteenth into law as a federal holiday that falls on 19 June. Since that is a Saturday, OPM announced that it will be observed Friday, 18 June.

Dude, I’m sorry, but your whole post is evidence that your entire justification for the silencing of legitimate discussion of COVID origins is based on your own personal views on Trump. You couldn’t even help yourself. Sadly the entire media, tech, and to some extent Democrat complex felt the same way. Not a single person in here was complaining that Trump wasn’t taken seriously, or even defending him. The problem is that rational discussion was silenced due to a hatred of Trump; so much so that not even common sense minded, middle of the road individuals could mention the possibility of a lab leak without risking being canceled, banned, called a racist, etc… Just re-read your post man. You even included “Xenaphobic” like you’re still reading from sort of April 2020 playbook.

The guy with the highest rated “cable news program” doesn’t sit in the White House press corps, doesn’t get briefings from the Secretary of State, doesn’t have dozens of upper echelon contacts from years of working in the field to use as a vetting source for the truth. EVERY one of those dipsticks sat around and took the information not just from Trump but from Pompeo and other members of the administration and went “yeah it’s a conspiracy America, don’t listen to this, in fact we will turn it off for you.” Then the talking heads from whatever network they work for worked overtime to shut down any story involving the Wuhan lab when it came out of the mouths of people that receive Senate Intelligence briefings. The media narrative has in one coordinated effort, killed any real chance of holding China accountable for their actions throughout this whole ordeal. And they did it because for them it was more important to blame Trump for it than to actually stop, examine, vet, and report the truth of the matter. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

You know what’s going to win the next war? The “correct” patches worn on the “correct” days. The commies will be shitting their pants when they hear of such discipline!

In the last few days under the Biden/Harris Administration and a Democrat-controlled legislative branch: - a federal judge ruled Biden's cash for only farmers of color is unconstitutional. Something about any race being singled out for special treatment or something... - another federal judge struck down the Biden EO stopping the development of already sold gas/oil leases on federal lands. Something about contracts being honored or something... - President Biden was corrected, publicly, several times by the Prime Minister of the UK over names of various G7 guests and topics. Guess the picture of the First Lady "prepping for the G7" should've been taken seriously and had her answer instead of Jello Pudding Pop guy... - President Biden said "Libya" instead of "Syria" three separate times, despite being, gently corrected after the first gaffe, in discussions about Syria at the G7 summit. - President Biden nodded directly and affirmatively when asked by a reporter if he trusted Putin prior to the on-going US/Russia meeting. The White House Press Office issued a correction, "The POTUS wasn't answering that or any other specific question when he nodded." - Inflation is equaling that of the late 1970s. Good and hard. I hope those that voted for this current debacle get it thusly.

When officers who have never been a UPT IP are assigned senior leadership roles at UPT bases, dumb shit will happen and morale will suffer.

That is of course, after "they" tell him what progress he wants. We're getting a good preview of the idiocy that will be.

Just bumping my own assessment #nailedit *I did miss the DepSecDef date, which was 8 Jun

O-5 board updated. Public release established as 23 Jun. I would assume notifications were supposed to start tomorrow and will get going in earnest on Monday. Edit: The results will be released 90~ days from the date the board adjourned (23 March to 23 June). I Don't think I have seen an O-5 board move that fast in 5 years I have been meeting them.

This is correct. Your 1 APZ after your IPZ is considered “twice passed” over. For those in that unfortunate class, you should find out immediately from your CC is continuation is being offered. However, with the new 5 year look, I’m not familiar with how that actually will work…

I think 2x passed over is your IPZ look and 1xAPZ look. Not sure what they will call it when they change to the 5 total looks...Maybe something like, "I'm on my X look for promotion"?

Are you F’ing kidding. The media claims to be the arbitration element of governance but has basically given itself a pass on what they were doing a year ago. This is there “we don’t have to apologize even though it was deliberate” message https://apple.news/AQ28_k7_pR46x8Kzjf89QOw They didn’t care what or where this thing came from, just in preventing Trump from shifting the focus of all the negative out of it. It had nothing to do with the validity of intelligence (which hadn’t changed since some of us started reading the lab theory stuff all over SIPR around April of last year). The media had more than just Trump to look at and confirm of this theory had legs. All those anonymous sources for every other story apparently didn’t exist on this one subject. It’s absolute proof they were in the bag for a particular side and came out and exercised every form of censorship and de-platforming anybody that didn’t tow the line. Meanwhile now it’s such a possibility Jon Stewart is free to joke about it on late night TV and it’s a god damned comedy trope. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Heard rumors notifications are starting

One of the all time most brilliant business moves I've ever heard of: https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2021/06/16/patriarchal-sexist-victorias-secret-replacing-the-angels-with-soccer-star-megan-rapinoe-and-the-rest-of-the-vs-collective/ No doubt they'll soon be replacing silk bras and thongs with flannel shirts and hiking boots. "Hello, LL Bean? I'd like to place an order..."

Your second paragraph explains the first.

Well you've proven that your issue is with Trump (surprise surprise) and not the fact that the entire media, big tech, and democrat party complex tried to silence discussion on something that had a legitimate possibility of being true. That was the entire point of my post. The media, tech, democrats, etc... allowed zero discussion of the lab leak, even from commoners on Facebook, simply because the lab leak theory had a slight stain of orange on it. You could even be called racist if you so much as dared to insinuate such a thing was possible. Sorry, but its not the outlandish statements of Trump that stopped discussion of a totally possible theory, its the Orwellian efforts of those sitting on the left side of the aisle, using fear, threats, and actual force (technological force of platform bans) to have a narrative fit the only one they wanted at the time.

No. It does matter. The president of the United States cannot continuously spew garbage and then magically expect everyone to take him super duper serious when one tiny portion of what he's saying turns out to be true. Trump is like a right wing idiot's Nostradamus. They think he's a genius and make constant excuses for him because he's right occasionally, while conveniently ignoring the mountain of chaff and nonsense. I agree that trump derangement syndrome is a thing and the media was looking for reasons to discount or oppose anything trump said. But two things can be true at once. The media needs to uphold better journalistic standards and trump needed to uphold basic standards of truth and honesty as the president of the United States.

These problems are complex without perfect solutions right now. I'm glad smart people are working on them. Hopefully what everyone at all levels (to include Congressional) starts to realize is that there isn't enough capacity in any fleet. We are ready to start strapping fires capability on to airlift platforms, who knows, maybe we can sling some under the wings of tankers and big wing ISR after that. Because this will help solve the capacity problem inherent in the CAF world. But then we run in to the loss of airlift capacity available to the Joint force which has a follow on effect of affecting logistics capacity to enable Joint fires. Some of us who are weary about the idea of dedicating airlift (especially strat airlift like a C-17) to fires missions is because we've sat in too many discussions where when operating at 100% efficiency, we are still only able to present 50% (+/- 10%) of required airlift to the JFACC. And so lots of things are already cut and delayed which would enable maneuvers and fires. In theater level exercises this is always hand-waived with magic fairy dust, "Well, white cell has allowed us to move those pieces where we need them to be so we can move towards the next objective." Sometimes I fear that our leaders who grew up in that world have actually learned that there is indeed infinite airlift and air refueling capacity. It would be nice to return to a world where we have 550 C-130s, 200 C-5s, 400 C-17s, and the CRAF available. The ever increasing march towards efficiency and minimizing excess peacetime capacity has left us all hoping to rob Peter to pay Paul. But then we walk in to the room with the Army and they object because it doesn't work with their scheme of maneuver. Luckily this is all exercise and design problems right now.

But how will he have time to do the rest, he’ll be too busy making sure the pilots are checking ATIS and adjusting the heading bug properly.

https://youtu.be/sSfejgwbDQ8 Jon Stewart on the lab leak theory. Absolute gold. A few thoughts in no particular order: -I really miss Jon Stewart on tv and his show was genuinely the last time a parody news show was funny. Definitely didn't agree with him all the time but you could tell he thought critically about things and formed his own opinions. -Pretty wild that the lab leak theory is now mainstream after being a cancellable offense only a few weeks ago. -Maybe the lab leak would have been taken more seriously by everyone involved if trump and fringe right wingers hadn't immediately equated it with an intentional release of a bioweapon. That was one of trumps biggest weaknesses. He said plenty of true things but most of them were buried under a mountain of horsesh!t and/or packaged in the dumbest way imaginable.

Jeebus, why? We’re so dumb. What if O-6s could decide which of their guys get paid more. Like the entire rest of the world.

Been a year since we lost Kage. I didn't chime in last June due to being directly involved in the search operations and felt it wasn't right to talk about it then. That said, it was a long day for all involved with some really terrible weather down low. My aircrew and STS PJs performed admirably and we had some great support from some UK standby support vessels from the oil industry. Unlike the AIB mentioned, American aircrews found him, not the Royal Navy (they were not even there, so not a dig on them). I am glad we were able to help give closure to his wife, family, and squadron mates. To Kage, Nickle on the grass.

Sorry for what I’m sure is a duplicate question, but I couldn’t find it. If I’m on a bonus but want to pursue Palace Chase, what would happen to the remainder of that bonus? E.G. I’m on a 3 year bonus and if I were to get a 1 year PC, what’s the math on that?

So...things that Trump did, but Biden gets credit for? Aside from the Paris Accords, I suppose.

We would have been out of Afghanistan last month, had congressional Democrats and Trumps few republican opponents not written it into Law that he couldn’t be the one to pull the plug on this waste. Congrats Joe, you ended the war by literally letting us sit on our asses for 7 extra months before the C-17s started moving. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Leadership comes and goes. As a faip, you’ll outlast them.

Or do something really stupid in the first year. Everyone will know your name. By the third year, nobody will remember why they know your name …. But they’ll still know your name.

As much as I don’t want to underestimate the power of a ambitious captain to “accelerate change.” What we really need is the MAF to get on board to give us the tools to actually participate in the high end fight. You know what the next C-17 block adds to the jet? Better VNAV to help comply with STARs, a HUD whose primary addition is to make those ILSs even easier, a software improvement to eek out a little more efficiency in the autothrottles. You know what it doesn’t have? the ability to build a threat ring on the glass with less than 36 keystrokes, the ability to display the jets bullseye location without mental gymnastics. RWR? Pleaze. Any datalink? Forget about it. So I have to tell our enterprising young copilots that training to fight near peer adversary means improving techniques to mark up their crappy bullseye chart. I can understand why some get skeptical and want to primarily train in the jets core competency that AMC actually invests in.

Valid question, for 130s absolutely. Not saying you need to be a patch to foster valid training but generally a couple motivated WOs who seek out the training, users, range times etc can really make a difference. The problem, and my beef is with AMC as a whole. AMC preaches agile combat employment and full spectrum readiness yet still maintains their risk averse construct. ACE will never be successful if the AMC 0-6s / GOs (AOC airlift directors) don’t delegate that authority. I can make my copilots as ready as possible for LFE type scenarios or ACE, but I can’t tell the 0-6 to delegate his approval to someone lower. Also, doesn’t help when we have toxic senior IPs who scoff the WIC, or anything more challenging that a 1-1-1. Separate but related, actually fund datalink upgrades. The J model (not 8.1) is operating on 90s technology and doesn’t work half the time, in training. No way it works when we need it. Finally, 130s generally do red flag / WSINT and we get a lot out of them..but MG was a solution to an airlift specific LFE where the DLOs are specific to MAF.

It's almost like the president of the United States, who has the highest access to intelligence reports of any human being on earth, could have....... set the story straight. but instead we got: "it's not a big deal it'll go away soon OH WAIT actually it's a huge deal and probably a Chinese bioweapon OH WAIT take this hydroxychloroquine drug and shine a flashlight up your ass OH WAIT masking is a fundamental violation of your rights." Again, for the one millionth time, of course the media is biased. Of course they hated trump. And of course they wanted to do everything in their power to trash him. But at a certain point even they are limited by the bounds of reality. If trump came out and made responsible, cogent, fact-based points based on quality intelligence he had pertaining to the origins of the virus, that would be very difficult to discount. Instead he spewed xenophobic, scientifically illiterate mixed messaging like the absolute clown that he is. He is not a serious person, so stop complaining that he wasn't taken seriously.