Lord Ratner

Additionally, I would be shocked if they had a nuke and Israel didn't know about it. That's not an easy thing to keep under wraps, and the Israelis haven't had much of a problem in the past finding out about, and impeding Iran's nuclear ambitions. For all the shit he gets, Netanyahu is not some belligerent warmonger. If he thought Iran had a nuke and there was any chance of that type of escalation, they wouldn't be hitting them so hard. Especially when your most important ally (USA) is having an identity crisis and you honestly can't tell whether or not they have your back.

I doubt it. The whole purpose of a nuke for them would be deterrence, so keeping a secret wouldn't make much sense. The only wrinkle to that would be if they truly cared more about annihilating Israel, in which case the secret would help them smuggle it in. But I have a hard time believing that. The Iranians have demonstrated consistently over the decades that they want to stay in power more than they want to fulfill whatever Allah has planned.

It's interesting, the narrative on housing seems to have flipped a few weeks ago, lots of talk of falling prices and soaring inventory. Florida and Texas especially. Are the AirBNB hosts starting to see values drop? Those who own the houses should feel great right now. Those with mortgages might be starting to sweat. Now suddenly we went from no landing to an "emergency landing" in a week. The Japanese carry trade is dying, and suddenly everyone is taking about an "AI" bubble. Plus, with the election coming up it's almost certain that any sort of sudden crash in the market will not be rescued by fiscal policy. I assume the Republicans would love a "Biden/Harris recession" going into November. Just another blip, or are we finally about to pay pay for the absolutely Insanity of the past 5 years?

I didn't say it wasn't retarded. Try reading the post a little slower for comprehension.

This just doesn't make sense when you say it out loud. What could be a *more* correct tool for an evaluator to evaluate the performance and compliance of an aviator than... an evaluation ride? If the Form 8 is being used as a career trajectory proxy, that's not on the evaluator, that's on leadership. Look, I get it, no one likes being the bad guy and putting a mark on someone's record. But the CAF mentality of saving all evaluation downgrades for the debrief instead of the form 8 is in itself invalidating the entire concept of the form 8 evaluation, and thus allowing it to be used for non-evaluation purposes. It also ensures that there's no way for someone looking over the records to effectively stratify pilots based on their actual ability in the cockpit. And this also ignores the very obvious assumption that in skitzo's example, the squadron was operating under the construct that you are suggesting (debrief, don't document), and yet were not following the regulations to the point that pilots weren't even following them with a majcom evaluator. The bro Network has limitations, and predictable outcomes. The problem in AMC was not that evaluators gave out Q2/Q3s when pilots were deficient during an evaluation. Believe me, the fighter pilots might forget that they are getting the top students from most pilot training classes, but in the KC-135 we absolutely were not. So you have far more deficient airmanship to deal with, and the evaluation is exactly where you would like to see that documented. The problem in AMC was commanders using Q3s in order to punish pilots for things they were doing, unintentionally and normally, on regular flights. But saying that the form 8 checkride isn't the right spot to document someone failing to follow the regs during an evaluation seems a little... forced. Especially when the squadron was warned ahead of time about the emphasis item, and the pilot in question was supposed to be the apex squadron instructor.

Sorry, just to add, this is incorrect. The FAA and the majcom evaluators exist for effectively the same function. To ensure the smooth operation of the civil/military aviation Enterprise, and to protect the organization from mishaps and liability. Sometimes an adversarial relationship is simply a required component for compliance. Human nature. Hang out at any grocery store until you see some little puke screaming at his parents because he wants a candy bar, and you'll see exactly why a purely cooperative existence is rarely desirable or effective.

Yeah, great in theory, except in practice what you are describing is how complacency festers. There's always an excuse for why this rule isn't that important or you don't really have to follow that reg, or yeah maybe you're supposed to do it that way but does it really matter? Complacent squadrons with mishaps don't consciously create an environment that is ripe for catastrophe. There isn't some dipshit who walks in saying "I can't wait to break the rules and eventually lead to calamity." I don't say this as some evaluator who had a boner for downgrading people. I say this as someone who is reflexively anti-authoritarian and always looking for a reason to do something differently. And that little shit adds up in your brain and builds the habit pattern of excusing regulatory deviance. Then when something goes wrong, or you screw something up, or something unplanned puts you in a position where the easier answer is to violate or keep violating the regulation, that habit pattern kicks in. It only has to kick in for a few minutes or seconds to put you in a position you would have assumed prior to the flight you wouldn't find yourself in. I remember this conflict when stabilized approach criteria came out. Maybe you've been able to shake the bonds of human nature, but the rest of us mortals are very much susceptible to all the things that created the need for these regulations in the first place. It is the literal function of the evaluator to enforce the regulations as they are written, and as we all remember from training, these regulations are written in blood. Including the blood of whatever dipshit had his finger degloved because he was wearing a wedding ring. Expecting the evaluators to have a secondary set of unwritten regulations that discriminate between "queep" rules and the ones that actually matter is easy to say with a beer in your hand, but very difficult to do when you're the one enforcing the standards. When I got downgraded on my T-6 instructor check ride for taking my mask off right after takeoff, it wasn't the evaluator's fault. I was the dummy. Does that mean guys should be sent to an FEB for wearing a wedding ring on a regular flight? Obviously not, considering I don't think pilots should be punished for uncharacteristic mistakes that might result in damage to the aircraft or person either. Sometimes you just have a hard landing. If it's not a trend, just debrief it. But if you can't play the game with an evaluator then it's very difficult to imagine that same person isn't applying their own layer of judgment subconsciously to all sorts of regulations day-to-day. Again, I speak from experience, not as the judge and jury. And it's not a moral judgment on that person. There are stupid rules. The real question is, are you violating the rule because it's keeping you from accomplishing the mission, or just because you think it's dumb/inconvenient? In my experience 99.9% of the time it's the latter, and while that may absolutely be true, the obvious follow-up question is "why not just take the fucking ring off?" It's funny, as I get dangerously close to 40 I finally understand why the majors and lieutenant colonels in the squadron all wore the damn reflective belt when we were on the flight line in Bagram. When I was younger and dumber and always looking for a fight I just thought they were sellouts or too afraid of getting in trouble. Now I realize that as you get older and more boring, which I absolutely am, you simply perform a more logical calculation: Is the reflective belt actually stopping me from doing anything in any way? No? *shrug* I guess I'll wear it then, not my circus, not my clowns. Anyway that's a really long-winded way of saying that the purpose of a majcom evaluator is literally to make sure *all* of the rules are being followed, and anybody flying with them should be smart enough to know that. And if you can't understand that, it's not the evaluator with their head up their ass. It's the job of the DO, the squadron evaluator, and the instructor pilots to determine whether or not a pilot is failing at the actual "important" shit. If you're waiting for a majcom evaluator to make sure you can perform the basic squadron mission, things have already gotten pretty bad.

Sorry dude, but there's a difference between being sniped by an evaluator in your squadron on a daily flight and flying with a majcom evaluator. Not knowing when to play the game is a foul in itself. And this absolutely translates to the airlines. There are all sorts of regulations and directives that are bent or ignored based on the aircrew's experienced understanding of what rules are and are not critical. But when you have an FAA jumpseater, you better believe we follow every damn rule in the book. Those who don't are rightfully punished, if not for violating the rules, then for violating the rules of common sense.

Trump started to make this argument, that he stuck with mostly normal policy decisions as examples. If they really focus on highlighting the insanity of the progressive movement, with Kamala as its greatest champion, they can take back the narrative.

Is this going to be like the secret Russian pipeline maintenance bombs that "government sources" were seeding as the the cause of the Nordstream explosions?

Create an organization that has no true measurable metric for success. Then imagine the types of officers who are going to excel and advance within that type of organization. Finally, consider the types of decisions that sort of leader will make. It's the inevitable trajectory until there is once again a measurable metric for success.

Imagine for one second *wanting* to be like the Army or Marines. Yikes.

Obviously Biden hasn't been fit to serve, but he didn't say he was dropping out for health reasons. That was very tactical and obvious. Nobody on the Democratic side, and hopefully the Republican side, wants him to drop out because no one wants President Harris. No part of that would be good for this country, and she is not going to be an improvement over the Obama staffers that have been running the White House for 4 years now. Yeah, the will of the people has been subverted, but we can go another few months and get an elected president with the capacity to fulfill the duties of the office. The last thing we need is President Harris with only 4 months to perform as many executive actions as possible to justify her presidency and position as the incumbent.

What? Maduro goes when he is killed. The Venezuelans should get on it. I get what you're saying, but if they don't get rid of him, he will be replaced by another "not going anywhere" dictator. Kinda how he replaced Chavez...

Who's job is it to fix Venezuela if not the Venezuelans? Zero asylum for adults males and childless females.

The real power move would have been "that's what your Dad says."

AA won't now either. They got spooked by some guy who is threatening to sue and even doing an embry riddle study for evidence, so they standardized everything against beards to cover their bases

Seriously, my five o'clock shadow looks like 5 days of growth for some of these children we are hiring 😂

Found the guy who can't grow a beard 😂🤣

I have a theory that the people who are against beards are the same people who can't grow a good looking beard. I'm happy to be proven wrong if someone wants to post a selfie, but anecdotally it's been a pretty consistent coincidence. I also find it hilarious when people argue that beards don't look professional. The period of time where professionals were clean shaven is quite minimal compared to the period of time where the baddest motherfuckers on the planet all have beards. And in fact, even in this era the real badasses still have beards. Of course there are a subset of men who are not blessed with follicle dominance, yet still insist on foisting their inferior peach fuzz lady-beards on society. But I suspect the involuntary celibacy associated with such shameful, demeaning displays of facial inadequacy will purge them from the gene pool fast enough.

I've flown with a couple. He is not popular.

No one thought DEI would get a president killed. If Trump hadn't turned his head, that's exactly where we'd be. You already get the B team when you're a former president. The number of women in charge of organizations that are massively skewed towards male participation, including the military, is statistical proof that we are selecting weaker leaders to promote a progressive vision of the world. We all knew this already, but now we're at the point in the story where the consequences start to manifest. Shapiro had a great point on this. Why are all the agents immediately around Trump smaller than him?

There are a lot of people on the fence. They don't like the man, but they don't like what's happening around them more. This will be the final straw for many. Elon Musk is a good example. I expect more famous people to suddenly find their courage after this.

That guy looks... Challenged. I hope nobody is expecting some sort of clear-cut ideology from this dude. The people crazy enough to do something like this, the same type of people who usually have some sort of manifesto, are rarely as political as they are just outright crazy. But this might be the best thing I could have ever happened to Trump. That's absolutely the photograph of the century, so far.

This. Rhetoric has consequences.