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Today, a good friend and I flew formation. It was the first time in 34 years that two A-37's flew in formation in North America. Took them from Boise to St George VFR. And yes... it was a blast.

So let me get this straight, 20 million illegal immigrants coming into the country is better than a small number of constitutional violations that are being resolved in the courts? That's the math. I don't work in the Congress, so I don't get to pick a made-up third option where the border is closed and there are no violations of constitutional rights. I have a choice between a candidate that made everything worse, dramatically, and a candidate who single-handedly reduced illegal immigration to near zero, while fucking up in some edge cases. That's pretty easy math to me. No one is denying the constitutional violations, though I suspect you would view far more of the deportation activity as a violation than I would. But even if I agreed with you on every single case, the alternative was a slow rolling catastrophe for my country and the country my children will inherit. Caveats are part of living in the real world. I will be very black and white in this point. If this is a literal statement, then you are a hack. And while I could put together a rather extensive list of individual things he has done that are quite easy for me or any other conservative-minded person to support, and I can even make a smaller list of things that any fair-minded liberal would support, if you can't do that on your own, then you are simply beyond any position that is worth engaging with. In that case, TDS is a fair label.

missed an incredible opportunity to call it the HAWK-TUA (transport, unmanned aircraft)

1. Russians are definitely the bad guys, but they’re on the other side of the world and have zero impact on my life; whereas progressives are banning free speech and trying to trans my kids. It’s not even close which of those two are my opponents. 2. Everyone criminally associated with Epstein and pedophilia in general should be beaten to death with hammers. If you have proof Trump is guilty of something let’s hear it, but the man had every possible avenue of prosecution against him explored and the D controlled DOJ didn’t link him to Epstein so…. Shenanigans.

Dude. Put down the big media talking points that say this is a binary problem created by republicans. It takes both sides and no one cares about Epstein, that scumbag and all the people who visited him from both parties are nothing more then chaff. The shutdown is the result of both parties being populated by raging narcissists who haven't breathed the same air as the average citizen for decades. They want you pissed at "the other side" so you don't do anything relevant to remove incumbents from power. Aim your ire at the real culprits: the people you voted for.

But only ones that didn't used to be dudes.

ADMIN NOTE: Thanks, I wasn't tracking until you mentioned it; then I looked at his posts and all followed the same style. I admit I use AI to grab info, but all of his responses look like they are completely AI generated. lilyelliott4, your account is locked. PM me if you aren't a bot and I will consider unlocking it. Otherwise, it'll be deleted shortly. p.s., I also removed the Thai fitness webpage link. Sorry guys, but there wasn't anything interesting on there! I had to check for the good of BaseOps! 😁😁

No, the A-37 sounds like a T-38. it doesn't make the dog whistle of the T-37's J-69. The J-85 in the Super Tweet puts out as much in Mil as a T-38A puts out in Max.

That sign better end up in a squadron bar

Socialism is merely a stepping stone to communism, Marx said that (paraphrasing). Yeah they’re technically different in some ways, but they’re also very intertwined. Frankly who gives a shit, they’re both bad - people try to use the technical distinctions as a “look how smart I am/dumb you are,” but reality is they’re not that smart and “you” aren’t that dumb. Bottom line - both bad, capitalism better (despite the problems that capitalism has), history has proven that for 100% of the earth’s existence since these systems originated.

Zeroed in my MPX yesterday, this thing drives nails at 50M.

That picture causes tinnitus.

UAL 737 has same number of kills as the F-22.

My favorite part of a government shutdown are the news mashups showing every politician from both sides taking the exact opposite position during the previous shutdown when it was the other team leading it.

It's more likely that he was here under a different username. That seems to be another Hallmark of his type. They say enough stupid things they no longer want to be associated with, so they hit the reset button. It's ironic, because they just end up posting the same stupid shit anyways. 🤷🏻‍♂️

F/A-10

I'm here for all the firings. The government is bloated and ineffectual anyway. May as well stop paying for it. It's ugly, but finally someone is holding the line vs the insane out-of-control dem spending that has been unaccountable (literally) for years.

At least now we know what the bargain was to get the qataris to abandon Hamas and force the ceasefire. This might be another bit of 4d chess on behalf of the Trump administration. Giving the qataris a no shit facility in the United States is going to tie them to us in a much more concrete way than simply having a base in their country. My suspicion is that the Trump administration has decided that we are going to buy the qataris away from the Chinese and the Iranians. And we're going to lock them in with a deeply integrated military, similar to how we have locked in the Saudis. Obviously the 4D chess bit is tongue in cheek, but it's just another example of the Trump administration making a decision and buying into it 100%. In an era where the dreams of a cosmopolitan worldwide alliance have fallen apart, if the Republicans commit themselves to the concept of a Balkanized world again, we can start making moves to make sure that our sphere of influence is the more powerful one. The real problem of course will be the the pseudo-utopians on the far right and the far left that have turned into New age isolationists. They'll bitch and moan about the duplicitous nature of the Qatari regime as though that's not an inescapable facet of international relations. It's got to be a rough time to be a libertarian.

Disagree. We've had plenty of defense secretaries with zero military experience/only bureaucratic experience, and they weren't all idiots. The military is the primary form of defense, yet they'd never been in the military and some did fine. Bondi was actually an AG in Florida, so her not being a US attorney seems irrelevant. You know, kinda like Obama was a community organizer before he was a senator. What I'm saying is, disagree with her politics all you want, just come up with a less stupid analogy.

Disgruntledemployee, Perhaps if you view Trump as a non-politician, it may help you warm up to him. He isn’t a politician, he’s not a smooth talker, he’s blunt, says what’s on his mind and often gets in a lot of trouble for it. But he’s a damned effective leader, rough around the edges for sure, but he gets things done! I’m sure. He’s also beholden to no man, doesn’t need money, and loves America. I can think of a lot worse people. George Marshall was a very good soldier, leader, and undoubtably an effective politician to earn all those stars.

No, but he did call dibs.

I learned in a Supercub that had a 135HP Lycoming...it was a beast and I thought normal ops for a Cub. There is NOTHING like slipping a Cub (or other taildragger), over the tree to a greaser one wheel landing on the grass....best if done at Sunset. I am currently shopping airpark runway options. I looked at a 5280' grass strip on 80 acres two weeks ago. Looking at 361 acres this week.

As I expected…

Sorry about the FB link https://www.facebook.com/reel/1331132237948069

I am a weather geek and always wondered what it would be like to be a Hurricane Hunter. For those who followed Hurricane Melissa which is the third strongest hurricane on record (892MB and still intensifying at landfall), the NOAA and USAFR Hurricane Hunters had a constant presence as the storm built and hit Jamaica and Cuba. USAFR flies a fleet of 10 WC-130Js and NOAA operates two PC-3's. One of the P-3s (named Kermit), was flying a mission during the rapid intensification. As they departed the eye and flew into the eyewall they encountered what looks to me like extreme turbulence. Ultimately they elected to depart the storm because of the turbulence ..something that rarely happens. Video below shows what must have been a tense ride. Note the engineer working the throttles...or trying to while getting tossed around. AQP1zLdnXrSgI_2_OBE_F0hhLxJeGO4jFK1eae_iKwtS_ust8aU-GrgMjUvsO9FJVYVRDFgG7Q7fe2AYKxCS-1egSOsuHaBH7rl8OO9TGvWqRQ.mp4

Too much effort is spent justifying upholding the law. Just call them criminals and keep arresting them. The people who don't want us to follow the laws are never going to be convinced no matter how many high-level whatevers you catch, and the people who are already supporters are just going to be turned off if you're caught in a lie. There's never going to be an administration in the history of the country that loses an election for upholding immigration laws. Plenty have lost elections for over-promising and under-delivering.

Good a place as any for this.... Time to cut down on uniform flair? https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/overdue-for-de-norkification-of-our

Hey all, What I’m about to share, take with a very large grain of salt. I have a friend who applied and their commander was actually on the board this year and just based on a conversation we were having, although the government is shutdown, results are still being processed and potentially at final adjudication. Final adjudication means that the selection list is making its way up the chain for final approval before being released by AFPC. To me it would make no sense that the Air Force would leave a board like this up to soley gov civilians to process. There had to have been a contingency plan in place. But again, after over a decade in the Air Force, I can maybe count on one how many things have been done that makes sense lol. However, with this news and my friend actually being stationed at Randolph extremely close to AFPC, I am hopeful for results in the coming weeks.

Not surprisingly, that's a USN Sea Hawk (SH-60/MH-60). Typical Navy infatuation with the phallus! That aside, for eight bucks, you can own the UH-60 Dick Hawk patch that glows in the dark! 🫡 https://www.twotofly.net/products/dickhawk-pvc-patch

I hear you, but the time to use a scalpel was about 25-30 years ago. Now, our government his hard-broke, and there ain't no gaining of compromise with the other side to agree to cut spending. Exhibit #1 = our current government shutdown over public healthcare accounting. So blasting caps and chainsaws it is. I don't like it - and I know you don't - but it's the inevitability of having grown complacent at the trough for far too long. So feel free to direct your ire towards past decisions. I hope you take a proper lesson from them going forward. The deficit spending has to end, or getting people back who are "actually needed" (as you say) is going to seem a quaint problem when we achieve total system collapse because the rest of the world tells us to fuck off with our BS debt issuance grift. So right now, this is what a hard choice looks like. The path you suggest is allowing the tidal wave to continue building. Hard no from me on that.

username does fit. try being less grumpy

Bought some toys to make range day a lot more fun: https://ar500targetsolutions.com/product/12x20-ar550-reactive-hostage-target-system-1-2/ And this fancy bit of kit: https://shootingtargets7.com/products/dueling-tree-target I'll report back in a couple weeks with the review

Yes, Congress has always appropriated money to make up for the pay lost during a shutdown, at least since the 1980s. Also, the number of people and programs that are still receiving money despite the shutdown has increased dramatically over my experience. What's different this time is Trump & Co firing 4,000 more GS. A district judge has halted that, but I expect that to be overturned eventually. I'm finding out about lots of obsure agencies and offices that do weird stuff that, to me, isn't a government function.

Naw man. You won the nickname. Good job. That name will stick like Barney.

My guess is Israel will not follow the historical US path, which is leave/stop conducting kinetic ops in place X, allowing the vacuum of “peace” to fill right back in with whatever terrorist orgs were there previously. If they do follow suit, then give it a couple years and Hamas will be right back to a meaningful force strength. The peace deal is historic, but it’s naive to think any peace deal made with Islamic terrorists is going to last. My bet is Israel realizes that and will act accordingly.

Boeing brought in @HuggyU2 to test out the new cockpit entry system…

Norvell isn’t the guy. The Coliseum was incredible. My daughter wasn’t thrilled when we had to leave early due to my unruly son. I’ve only been to the Rose Bowl once - 2013 National Championship. Hell of a game.

One ping only, Dmitri... (is all it takes).

DOJ dropped the ball on not having a perp walk for Comey. Was satisfying seeing the mugshot. Now, let's see this hippo get perped walked and a mugshot. New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James indicted on fraud charge, source says

I know, I know, it's your username, if you weren't miserable about literally everything in the world, what else would you do? But it's pretty amazing to see people defending the *generals* against the first secdef in my lifetime that is telling them they have to live by the same standards they enforce.

Dibs ... Again

One of my last CC calls was pretty gnarly. We all got introduced to a new transexual squadron member. He/she was probably the worst pilot I ever flew with.

Sure. You're a bad-faith debate participant who's gotten addicted to political news theater. Even Boomer could keep focused long enough to read that.