Lord Ratner

It feels like we're talking about two different things here. You concede that airmanship is better. So then... What exactly is your point? Being a tactical God is largely irrelevant if you crash the airplane at the end of the day. It seems like the way you're framing this is exactly how we (not "we," I'm long since separated) ended up in this clusterfuck... Trying to distill aviation down to the "tactical abilities" so that they can be focused on exclusively to the detriment of "airmanship" is how you end up with a bunch of inexperienced pilots flying planes into the ground. Obviously I would rather have another hundred hours of upt training with military instructor pilots, but that wasn't the suggestion or the conversation. The suggestion was that if we are going to farm out military training to civilian institutions, we might as well max-perform the civilian training opportunities in the hopes that a broader experience will make up for a diminished training program. UPT was never about creating tactical abilities. That's for iff and later. It was about creating pilots (airmanship). Trying to trick fuck your way around that process will yield predictable results.

Ok this also sounds like non-pilot talk. Understandable. The point is airmanship. Its the same reason we had future tanker pilots flying 90-degree wing work in UPT. Same reason we had formation takeoffs and landings. And NDB approaches when everyone knew NDBs were on the way out. Flying is not an assembly-line task. You don't just "do flying" a million times until you're an expert. It's a series of physical and mental tasks that are supported by a greater series of physical and mental abilities. The current pilot training crisis is purely a function of the Air Force wanting to buy more than they can afford, and trying to move the resources from pilot training to other things. To make this work they have taken the same approach you have of looking for only directly-applicable skills, training those, and cutting everything else out. It's not going great, based on this thread. It's very simple. You want the best pilots in the world, you need the best training in the world. "Best" means not just neat planes and repetition of core tasks. It means broad exposure to the widest range of flying regimes and decision-making scenarios. "Experience." If you don't think seaplanes and tail draggers and STOL/bush flying have anything to offer a pilot, then you are either A) not a pilot, or B) not a particularly experienced one. I'm sure one exists, but I have yet to meet the pilot with the above three quals who felt like they were no better after the training than before. EDIT: I think you're a pilot, but I don't think you have a particularly broad experience. I could be wrong, so if you have tail-dragger, STOL, and sea plane quals, my apologies. But the entire concept of directly-applicable training is a failing strategy with obvious outcomes.

Just trying to establish if you're speaking from a position of experience, or pontificating from the bleachers. Seems like we have our answer.

Are you a pilot?

If you're going to use an inferior training program, and civilian flight school is absolutely (by necessity) inferior, then it's not crazy to just dump all the different qualifications in there to create a broad sense of airmanship. And it would still be much cheaper. But you'll get what you pay for.

Island of white people surprised to find out they have a white military. Ridiculous

It's pretty wild being on the outside looking in, as a previous t6 instructor, and seeing that the *Air Force* somehow managed to completely implode the simplest flying program in the entire service. Wild

You shouldn't be this obsessed with politics. and You believed an obviously misleading political story. You can't add those together in your head?

Death Chamber? Sorry amigo, your arguments simply aren't interesting/thoughtful enough to spend more time on.

Yeah Bud, compared to your non-stop emotional hyperventilating, I'm the love child of Gandhi and Buddha. I doubt I'd like you, but I am worried about you lately. Hospice is great. Fully on board. Dialysis for a 95 year old who can barely move? Cancer treatments that cost hundreds of thousands for octogenarians? Pretty much everything you write indicates you have no practical experience, but I've watched loved ones rot away under the endless generosity of the American taxpayer. There's nothing dignified about an industry that revolves around collecting more government dollars if they can justify more "life prolonging" care. Go sit in an emergency room for a day and watch. Or better yet, go to the emergency room next time you need some after hours care and watch how much your insurance charges you for the ridiculously expensive doctor's visit where you don't even see a real doctor. You might notice that everyone else in the emergency room is poor or homeless, and not even remotely in a life-threatening situation. Yet because Medicare indiscriminately pays for these emergency room visits, there's no incentive to seek more affordable, practical care. If people with insurance and jobs have to be discriminate about where they seek medical attention, it's not too much to expect the poor and unemployed to do the same. This is cute. So the boomers thought their kids would take care of them, yet as a generation they didn't have enough kids to fund the social security system that they are relying on. That was part of the deal and they failed, so I don't have much sympathy for them expecting that we will continue to fund a program that they did not concern themselves with at all until it mattered to them. Once again, just seems like an area that you just don't have any practical experience with. I have multiple family members who haven't saved a dime their entire life specifically because they believed that social security would just take care of them. The ones who are still living have drawn so much more from the system that they ever put in it would make your head spin. But of course if you ask them, they believe they earned it. Hell my own father honestly believed that he paid in more in social security taxes than he's drawing, even though he literally didn't pay taxes for a decade and ended up settling with the IRS to never pay them. Behavior is influenced, and creating a retirement system that was mathematically impossible decades ago only prevented people from preparing for their own future. Brother I don't have to help you Google what happens to countries when they're sovereign debt is no longer accepted by the rest of the world. If you don't understand that basic and repeated fundamental of history, it explains why so much of the drivel you post here makes no sense.

Middle class people aren't getting shit from the government. Lower class people don't need 2 TVs and iPhones. And overwhelmingly our money is being spent on keeping old people alive for longer than we should, giving poor people the most inefficient healthcare possible, and rewarding retirees for not saving for their retirement. These things are not needed to live prosperous, dignified lives, and they are directly stealing from future generations who *will* suffer if we don't control our debt accumulation. The financial handicapping of the youngest generation has nothing to do with a lack of government support. It's the boomers using the printing press to inflate their assets and compensate for their failed retirement preparation, making everything too expensive for young people to afford. *More* spending is not the solution to problems created by too much spending.

This is the part that I find so funny. People act like these programs have existed for thousands of years and are the sole reason why humanity has survived. Who gives a shit if we over correct? If the alternative is fixing nothing, I would rather zero the budget out entirely and rebuild from scratch then guarantee my children and my grandchildren will live in a financially collapsing empire. People all over the world are living in much worse conditions than we are. We can survive a reduction in government provided quality of life, for a decade or so.

Sigh. Okay, I'll pretend you guys are as dumb as you're pretending to be. Right. So, from the article posted: This is what we call "lying." The official knows damn well that the database hasn't been finalized, because everyone (yes, including you) knows that pictures of the Enola Gay aren't going to be deleted (intentionally). However, a stupid person might not engage their frontal lobe and realize that if you are on a quest to purge the DOD of a decade or so of intersectional nonsense, and you were going to do it in 2025 when you have this neat technology called a "search engine," you would probably search for key words that are heavily associated with DEI initiatives, collect the results into a "database," then go through the database to pick the content that will in fact be deleted. A military officer with the cognitive capacity of a rhesus monkey would realize that the people in charge of this process would definitely search for the word "gay" and get a bunch of DEI nonsense, with, you guessed it, some pictures of the Enola GAY mixed in. But of course, "the official said it’s not clear if the database has been finalized," so until the Enola Gay is actually deleted from the DOD history books, why don't you guys stop acting even dumber than you are and just chill the fuck out. Nah babygirl, you're just so lost in the media-induced desolation over the surprise-domination of the Trump candidacy that you are clinging to anything that feeds your intense desire to have your fears justified. And what would be a more justified fear than watching the history of WWII erased? But just like the Russian pee tape, the not-a-chinese-lab origin of COVID, the Hunter's-laptop-is-fake story, and so many other too-good-to-be-true progressive fever dreams, this one was obviously a nonsense story put out by a desperate journalist feeling completely helpless to stop the erasure of the last 20 years of progressive change. You aren't out, and we both know it. You need this place because you need somewhere to scream into the abyss, but you don't want anyone to know it's you when you do it. It's not a coincidence that all the progressives/liberals/never-trumpers are coming back now that the Boogey Man is back in office.

Imagine pretending like you care that a bunch of government social media posts are going to be deleted. Seriously guys, if you really cared this much you'd be doing a hell of a lot more than posting about it online. It just feels better to be angry that your team lost instead of sad that your team lost. Take a breather. Go pet a cat, or enjoy a sunrise. These people aren't spending one second thinking about you, stop spending so much of your precious time thinking about them.

I just emailed them to ask. Nothing like turning a $1500 overpriced rifle into a $2000 overpriced rifle 😅

Dang, those are nice, but not made for the 1894. I wonder if the stocks from the 1894 and 1895 are interchangable

That's exactly what I'm leaning towards right now. I like the length, the action is smooth, and the large loop feels good. I just wish they made the Trapper with woodgrain furniture instead of black. Also, that's the SBL, not the Trapper, right? The trapper doesn't have the pic rail.

Yeah I already have a revolver in 357, so that's what the lever gun will be chambered in. I also want it threaded since 357 is rather quiet through a can.

Lever guns, whaddya guys got? I'm looking for something in .357/.38. I'm leaning towards the Ruger Marlin 1894 Trapper, but it's so dang expensive I'm also thinking about some of the Turkish guns that have decent reviews like G-Force. Just looks like fun to shoot, and something a little different from the click click click of firing a semi-auto.

@Sua Sponte I know you, dude, and I know you're one of the good guys. I do sincerely hope that you aren't fired and caught up in this churn.

From the CBO: "Benefits also constituted a larger share of total compensation for federal workers (40 percent) than for workers in the private sector (30 percent)." https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60235 So $106,382 = Total Compensation x .60 Total compensation = $177,303 So I undershot the actual number by $50,000 🤣😂. My bad. So we really only need to lose 3k employees to make up the $10M "wasted" on this assignment.

Assuming $125,000 per year as the average cost of a federal employee (which seems low with all the available benefits and potential retirements, only a ~4,200 reduction in the workforce would make up the $10M/week

Implying that the government civilian workforce is working so thoroughly and efficiently that there is not 10 minutes per week in their schedule to add a simple repetitive task is quite the assumption. Some are. Most are not.

Or, arguing with you is like playing chess with a pigeon. You just knock over all the pieces, shit on the board, and strut around like you won the match. There are more interesting people to converse with here. Though you are occasionally amusing.

The one Zelensky fucked up? I'm one of the more pro-funding-Ukraine people here, but that was an absolute dumpster fire. What did he think his job at that meeting was? Just because your flag is raised to the same height doesn't make you peers with the US. He knew the starting positions of Trump and Vance, and he should have known Trump's disposition towards flatter, and he decided to press. I'm not saying he's factually wrong, but his job at that meeting wasn't to be the debate champion. I wish this was just Trump playing 4D chess to get the Europeans to take over funding Ukraine, but it's not. Trump's first impeachment made Zelensky the enemy, and he's looking for any reason to embarrass him. Zelensky failed the test. However the end result may still be that the Europeans finally take ownership of their sphere of influence.