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I knew this would happen when I saw an influx of Mormon officers joining the ranks 15 year ago. They are all policy makers now! (just joking Mormons) Seriously? WTF is this AF coming to?! Are the WG/CCs really still wondering why the clubs are failing? Back when they were happening places, clubs were making the majority of their revenue on alcohol....period. Take that away, and don't be at all surprised that the clubs are going broke. Doesn't matter how many memberships you get...if you dry up the club, you can kiss the clubs goodbye. I remember a time when the overseas clubs (Spanghalem/Ramstein) were happening places. GoGo dancers. Shit, even when I was young LT at Vance, they were still letting the girls from downtown on base to partake in the club festivities. (I know, that isn't saying much, but as a single LT...booty is booty). Not only is this not my Dad's Air Force anymore...it is looking like it is not my AF anymore. Time to take my drinking problems somewhere else. Times a'changin fellas! Good luck everyone else...we're all counting on you!

Lift with your Airmen not with your back.

Guess their border plan is an unmitigated failure then. I eagerly await them to tear down their walls, fences, and checkpoints since they are obviously not doing anything to prevent illegal immigration...oh wait...

Or at least make sure it can't be replicated...

Sounds like he picked that battle..

Did you watch the video? Yea, she struggled but of course we're not going to stop funding the NSA. She's still an idiot. Posted from the NEW Baseops.net App!

No, because Joe and Jane Citizen have no idea this douche is a faker. Just like the recent pretend Marine who some NBA player traded seats with on an airplane and tweeted about it.

It should be legal for real vets to give these guys the ass beating they deserve.

I just love how there are zero repercussions for people dressing up as mil and representing themselves as much. It's illegal to dress up as a Cop...why is it legal for impersonate mil?

But not really

Got an email and then a call from the 122nd today. Pending some medical documents I am being considered! Friend of mine also got a call today. Congrats to anyone else who heard something

POLICE THAT MOOSTACHE!! He would be the cocksucker that did something like this: http://www.yumasun.com/news/former-marine-facing-child-molestation-charges/article_80a9d25c-1132-11e4-ba09-001a4bcf6878.html?mode=jqm

FIFY Posted from the NEW Baseops.net App!

I think it's because you like being around the company of pilots...don't worry about it, I was once the same way. Before I was a pilot, I looked up to and wanted to be in the company of military pilots. By the way, any pilot or flying questions you may have, just ask away!! You're welcome!!

Karl, I hear you. I don't see the exodus in my world yet, but I know it is out there and it will hurt. People are tired and they are sick of the bullshit. The culture of compliance, risk aversion (Korea alcohol ban), infatuation with glorifying support missions and ridiculous move towards complete centralized control are crushing us. There is no end to the deployments, ops tempo or chickenshit priorities, and the airlines are hiring and our skills are in high demand in many industries. Retention is a problem we need to get on now, and listening to those who are disgusted and separating is important. Now, I'm deployed again and life is good. Mission focus, no bullshit, killing the enemy, protecting the friendlies and the innocent. It is why I joined. Protecting what makes our AF great is why I'll continue to serve until asked to leave. If I knew how to put one of those beer mugs at the end I would do that here ___.

I stopped reading after seeing Cannon at #10.

Everything you said is true. However, you left out something a ton of my peers are doing- getting their ATPs, networking with guard/reserve units, polishing their airline apps, and counting down the days until they can leave this organization, all in part because of how we force people to check ridiculous boxes and cast them as pariahs if they dare to desire to fly for a career. To lots of people, going to school and working a joint staff job sounds absolutely miserable.

I may be going out on a limb here, but I don't think anyone actually calls it the Globemaster III. Especially the guys that fly them.

I say good for him, and I like to watch/DVR Stossel ('The Independents' on FBN is even better, and entertaining). I'm assuming it's cool with big blue, that or he just doesn't care anymore? I didn't agree with everything he has said (on here and other places) but I give the guy a lot of credit for standing up and taking the heat that comes with it. Most of us (whether in the military or not, and myself included) rarely take a stand on issues we feel strongly about, but he has done it, whether you agree with him on the issue/how he took it on, or not. It's easy to demonize the people that put themlseves out there, and again, that's because they're doing what the rest of us won't do. Could the guy have been less of an ass on here at times, yeah, most definitely, though I can say that about a few others on here, too. Maybe he learned a little in how to be better/more persuasive with his arguments.

I must say that I agree with the libertarian wing here, for all the bullshit people spew about competition and the free market, when their own economic security is threatened, they become protectionist as hell. It's like "the free market is best as long as everyone but me suffers the drawbacks". This, on a forum full of people who have jobs and extremely specialized skill sets that no poor immigrant could ever dream to have without a miracle. Simply put, immigrants make it cheaper to live in the states. Not only that, but they make our lives more productive. Time is money, and I am far more productive doing my highly paid job I have been trained for, than I am at doing unpaid manual labor tasks. So instead, I employ illegal immigrants to do the things I don't want to do, either directly, (like housekeeping, gardening, etc), or indirectly (buying their fruit, vegetables, purchasing goods/services from firms that hire illegals). I can take that money and spend it on things like services, consumer goods, or financial instruments, which is where the bulk of our economy is really geared towards. I want to create jobs for Americans just as much as the next guy, but creating shitty minimum wage work doesn't help us as a nation. It ironically makes us more likely to backslide into socialism, once wage workers realize that relying on the government is by far their best option. Illegal immigration is a fucking tidal wave of human effort and desperation over an impossibly long stretch of land. Nobody is going to pay for the military to patrol the border. Politicians will promise it and then never do it because it's fucking retarded, and it gets cheap, easy votes from people too naive and ignorant to know what is going on. Even if you had the manpower to detect border crossers, there's not enough manpower to round up every one of them, and it costs an illegal nothing to get across (except maybe paying a coyote), and it costs us far more to stop them. Which means they'll just try again in a couple days. A fence is just a dumb, ineffective waste of time and money. It makes for a good talking point to get cheap political support, though. The only realistic, feasible solution is to get out ahead of this thing and harness it for our economic advantage. Let the free market rule on this one.

Your concept of economics is weird. If you have a cheap source of labor that is fulfilling needs and winning in competition with higher paid legal sources, then that is the free market at work. If the black market fulfills things the legal market cannot, then, like air and water, people will seek the path of least resistance. As it stands, people choose to employ millions upon millions of illegal immigrants despite your moral objections. This is America, and money talks -- people will flock to the cheaper option given a similar result/product. IMO, you simply haven't made the case to justify crushing the federal budget with even more expense just to fix this problem with solutions that most likely won't work. Nothing short of a literal genocide on the Rio Grande will fix the problem. Vertigo's suggestions just seem far more plausible.

So...you're saying by making it easier for people to gain access to the US, it will become harder to gain access to the US? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Karl, don't be so dramatic. Nobody forces anybody to check boxes or get AAD/PME done. And we don't make pariahs out of someone who just wants to fly. They just don't tend to get promoted. I had plenty of passed over, continued Capts, Majors and Lt Cols in my units who were outstanding pilots, navs, and officers. They volunteered to deploy multiple times, worked long hours, and were incredible mentors for the young flyers. Some did not want to be promoted and did not do those things that clearly made them competitive amongst their peers. Some accepted continuation, some retired, some separated when the time was right for them. Many regretted not getting the things done (PME/AAD) to be competitive and mentored young officers to just do it. If you only want to fly the line like a Lt or Capt, and don't want to broaden your experiences and skills with education and non-flying jobs, why would you expect to be promoted into ranks and positions of different responsibility and authority that require joint PME, education and staff experience? Granted, as a passed over officer, wanting to fly for the rest of your career, you may be separated to make room (flying time) for younger Lts and Capts. There are no guarantees for flying positions in the service, we all know that. Force structure, funding, requirements, retention and force management policies all change. If you are not suited for advancement or promotion, for whatever reason, the service should consider whether it is best for the service for you to stay, or go. When airlines are hiring and retention is low, continued officers can usually stay as long as they want to. When there are more young pilots then we have flying time to sustain, continued officers will normally be separated (the 157). By law, 100% promotion is not permitted for FGOs. Unless retention is severely low, people will get passed over. No hard feelings, just the law or the reality of resource constraints. Some people over-inflate their own value to the service when the reality is their mediocre record of performance, limited experience and low potential to perform at the higher grades make them less valuable than other officers being considered. In my experience, the promotion board to Maj and Lt Col usually gets it right and promotes the most deserving. I've studied the records of those above and below the line, and I've compared many records to my assessment of their job performance and promotion potential. I've personally counseled dozens of passed over officers about what was weak in their record and explained why they were not competitive. YMMV, and sometimes we tend to value the wrong things (AAD at Major being go-no-go) but I think it is a decent system that usually gets it right. CSAF is fixing some shortcomings now. It is a good thing we are letting people separate who actually want to separate, even with ADSCs, since we need to reduce the force. The airlines and ARC will be better off with this talented hiring pool. For the sake of the AF's future, they should not pollute too many young minds on their way out. We need talented and dedicated active duty officers of all ranks to fly our aircraft and fight our wars.

Let's try to keep this convo on topic and avoid thread trolling due to weird unexplained internet grudges. I didn't mean to imply anything was racist, it was simply a metaphor. I would just hope that the character of this nation would be above that of the actions that you typically see from prisons and third world autocratic dictatorships. Casual disregard of human life seems commonplace when it comes to finding a permanent "solution" to the Mexican "problem".

Considered for tryouts....dont step on your dick.

As entertaining as this thread is, the casual suggestions jokingly thrown about where we just simply start killing illegal border crossers doesn't seem so joking and casual when it comes up like 10 different times. It's like being around a bunch of guys who start making a few too many racial jokes and you start to wonder about the quality of the company you keep.

Actually, I didn't bring race into it. I used a metaphor. At no point did I ever come close to implying that the xenophobia was racially based. I was actually using the example to compare a similar level of discomfort with thinly veiled xenophobia. Would a metaphor using antisemitism, sexism, or homophobia be more to your liking?