Lord Ratner

That's fucking rich. Seriously, do you pause for even a second before stabbing your justice boner straight through your keyboard? Pathetic

Because as soon as the west loses interest, Ukraine is toast.

Two fundamental failures of the "elites" running the world: 1) They are generally some of the smartest people in the world, and a certain level of intellectualism has a profound effect on motivations and decision-making. In particular, the intellectual class are disproportionately agreeable and conscientious. They also generally believe that the rest of the population, given the proper resources and framing, will come to the same conclusions/actions they have. This is false. The "animals" kill for sport, and this is inconceivable to the intellectuals. They recognize the behavior, but they are incapable of predicting it. 2) They believe their intellect makes them immune to basic human nature. The best example of this is the endless stream of generals/politicians/celebrities/pastors who get caught cheating or otherwise engaging in unacceptable sexual behavior. But stealing, lying, and cheating (professionally) are other fine examples. So you have the vast majority of the academic and political sphere that doesn't understand the motivations of the proletariat they seek to rule, while overestimating their own capabilities. Then we wonder why they fail so consistently in their jobs/predictions.

There it is. If you disagree with me, it's a phobia. It calls into question everything else you say.

Ok, I see what your doing. Fair game.

For what?

You should worry because it represents the continuation of the AF's failure to handle retention. It's great if you're an aspiring CAIP, and I agree, they'll be fully capable of teaching the syllabus. But if you're in the uniform, you should be quite convinced at this point that it will only get worse from here, because no one in charge is seemingly capable of wrapping their head around retention. Making your life better will *always* be the last, and least acceptable option.

What did you expect from the same leadership caste that ran the service for the past 20 years? They were never good at leading or managing, they just relied on the patriotism of youth and the comfort-seeking of age (amplified by an uncertain economic environment) to solve their manning issues. Now the patriotism is diminishing in the next generation and the older pilots have realized that making 2-3x the pay for 16 days of easy work a month is worth the fear of change... So they are scrambling. Add on the insult that the O6-O10s had to eat a million shit sandwiches, leave their families behind, and repeatedly fight force reductions over their careers, but now they have to convince/beg/bribe a bunch of Millennials and Gen-Z to stay. Good luck.

How shocking, an organization that uses monetary policy as its sole tool to meddle with the economy releases research that absolves them from the obvious and measurable effects of their meddling. I look forward to NAMBLA's soon-to-be-released study that disproves the connection between pedophiles and childhood trauma in victims.

Is this some sort of Keynesian fever dream? You are taking government action in meddling with the economy, designed specifically so they can achieve ends that do not occur naturally in an unmolested economic system, and using the results of those actions as evidence that the outcome was inevitable. This is effectively why we are in the catastrophe we're in right now. The Fed completely and totally failed to achieve their 2% inflation target over a period of decades, and were unable to identify why. Then, when the massive deflationary forces of globalization were brought to an immediate halt by the pandemic, the extreme inflationary measures the FED had been taking for years were finally able to take effect, uncontested by the deflation that had been hiding the results of government spending. And when that started, the Fed spent a year outright denying it, then recharacterizing it, before finally admitting its existence and now claiming that the very same economic philosophies and policy tools that led to the disaster are somehow the solution. The entire field of advanced economics has devolved into a secular religion that requires absolute faith in a set of principles that are unsubstantiated and fail upon first contact with reality, every single time they are used. And it's even funnier when you realize it's just a bunch of political opportunists, steeped in worthless academia, who have been tasked with the unenviable chore of creating an intelligent sounding justification for what their political masters wish to do: spend more money than they have access to. And because of this, our entire banking industry has morphed into a one-way money siphon designed specifically to take advantage of these political cowards and their obviously absurd economic policies. If you can't beat 'em... But yeah, let's hear more about debt is actually good. Everything is going great.

Been involved in the union much? I've been blown away by how leaky *everyone* is. Once you get connected to the "swamp" within your union, you start getting texts anytime anything happens, v from multiple people. The gossip and whisper campaigns are amazing, all the way to the top.

Exactly.

That's about the quality of analysis I would expect when you ask a Polish 50-year-old contractor about a geopolitical dispute in a region his family has deep and emotional ties to.

Of course it can. It has been for decades. But the Air Force isn't suddenly interested in reevaluating that mix to see if there's a better distribution of sim and aircraft hours that will result in an acceptable product. They fucked up, they're out of specific resources, and they are going to mold the solution to fit the shortage, not the training/proficiency requirements. We all know the score. How many of these new methodologies include more time in aircraft? When all of your testing scenarios support a predefined conclusion, in this case, more same time will allow for less aircraft time, the result is predetermined. I wasn't around. Did we buy the T-1 because we determined that business jet-trained students do better in the MAF than pilots who successfully completed the T38 syllabus? I doubt it...

I agree with you entirely there. And I think it's an acceptable middle ground. I think the order is lawful, but exceptionally questionable. Questionable based on the direct impact of COVID to the military demographic (minimal) and the failure of the vaccines to prevent transmission.

Hold up... Define efficacy. Because it was once postulated that the vaccine stopped hospitalizations, deaths, and transmission. In fact when everyone was high on the nearly release vaccine euphoria, 99% effective was often cited. We now know the vaccine has very limited ability to reduce transmission. And the protection against Alpha and Delta have not carried over to omicron in the same way. So yeah, it works, so long as you redefine "works" in a way that no longer has much to do with military necessity.

Yet there are many serious climate scientists going down this path. They are so convinced that greenhouse gases are going to destroy the species they haven't stopped to consider the possibility they, like every other catastrophy theorist, are wrong. It's not an evil plan, it's a misguided belief that humanity is doomed. You have to put yourself in *that* mindset to understand the crazy conclusions otherwise rational people can come to. There has always been an obsession within scientific and political circles with end-of-world threats.

Indeed. I was (voluntarily) vaccinated with Pfizer on Jun/Jul of last year. Right now I have COVID for the second time, and it's been full COVID, like a bad flu. But this was never about science.

Yup. This covers it. We are talking about removing *basic* flying instruction. The whole reason sims work for planes like the KC-135 and 767 is because the foundation was laid in smaller planes, in the real world. And even then, guys don't go from the sim to the real plane without xx hours of supervision with a CKA. I'm surprised that anyone who actually taught phase 2 would think this was a good idea. Any time there was bad weather or MX issues that kept a student out of the jet for a week, they suffered greatly no matter how many intervening Sims they had. Hell, many were barely capable with the hours they had. Fewer now?

Wasn't Eisenhower a republican? Everything goes in waves.

Having now done all manner of sim- and aircraft-training, there's simply no comparing the two in the early phases of training. Hell, one of the biggest weaknesses in MAF was the lack of raw stick-and-rudder flying ability. That comes from the smaller planes that don't translate well in Sims. We should also dispense with the "modernizing" argument. Today's sim technology has been around for decades, and the AF didn't decide to "modernize" until a manning and resource shortage. This is about cutting costs, and the results will be predictable.

Uh, I might not be a statistician, but I think it's more like 87% true... Not 100%. But I'm colorblind, so... 🤷🏻‍♂️

Your fact is that an IUD destroys a fertilized egg, which is you learned, only happens if the primary mechanism of the IUD fails. Every woman I know stopped having periods on they IUD, so your scenario is not common enough to be an unqualified fact. And given the way you phrased it I'm pretty sure you had no idea how an IUD works in 2022. But, let's take your "fact" without any context. IUDs destroy fertilized eggs (which they mostly don't). That's supposed to be the same as abortion. But that's like saying a husband beating his wife to death is the same as a grunt shooting an insurgent. Murder is murder, right? I hope those drone operators realize they are no better than the Nazis who were herding gypsies and Jews into the gas showers. It would also be similar to saying an abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy is the same as a partial birth abortion. Sure... Technically. There are some people of course who do believe those things. But they don't represent the entirety of the pro life crowd, or even the fervent pro-life crowd, because people live in a nuanced world. And it certainly isn't the case that the anti-abortion folks here have all expressed an absolute objection to all abortions for any reasons, rape and incest, for example. But your post, ironically posted after you expressed fears about the potentially divisive nature of the ruling, is exactly the mentality that is dividing the country. If you don't agree with me you're a hypocrite. A wise man once told me there's a better way of communicating with people... But he was an idiot, so... 🤷🏻‍♂️

Or, hear me out, people don't see it your way. See that's why I called you and idiot. Not because the point is invalid, but because you somehow think it's much stronger than it is, to the point you ridiculed those who disagree. Yup. Yes, as I've said many times, this was never an issue for the courts to decide. Bad law. I'm fine with that, if it is the will of the people as expressed through their representation. I disagree, but that's a feature of democracy, not a bug. Correct. And no such protections exist for abortion in the constitution. Disagree all you like, but make an actual argument for how Roe was good case law. It's not about undoing a past wrong, though that will happen too. It's about the entire concept of a judiciary. They must never create laws, even if you like them. It undermines everything. Roe was not the first absurd ruling, nor the first to be undone. If you are unfamiliar with SCOTUS proceedings, or law in general, I can see how you would think that. But they made no such promise. Plessy was "settled law" as well. These are not stupid people, and they said what they said very intentionally. I strongly recommend you listen too the linked "Honestly" podcast. Hugely informative. Read the ruling. It explicitly protects against that fear, for good reason. Also, gay marriage is an equality issue, not a privacy issue, as abortion was framed. No way. You won't get Gorsuch (who added trans you the civil rights act) or Kavanaugh (who was a Kennedy disciple) to go for that. Buy I'll happily take the bet. I want tequila though 😂🤣 Yeah no clue. Doesn't pass my sniff test. But that too should be subject to the will of the people. No reason States couldn't have different laws for that.

Be fair, I totally called him an idiot.