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If you think the Air Force chooses senior leaders poorly, try working for state government. The USAF is inspired genius in comparison....

And IIRC it was Congress that forced the VTOL version to be part of the whole program (since they are tactical airpower experts and all <sarcasm>).

More analogous to a Christian wearing a crucifix or an Orthodox Jew wearing a yarmulke.

Meh, if the Chinese just wait a couple of years, we'll be so busy fighting amongst ourselves, nobody will even notice or care if they invade Taiwan.

Too bad DoD can't have an adult conversation about how the money is spent/split up. People lose their minds if you ask why we have Service Academies, two land armies (or why the Army is so big when its mission is to defend other people's border and not our own), 4 air forces, why the Army and Marines buy different tactical trucks, why we have so many camo uniforms, whether or not PME is money well spent, etc. I think DoD has plenty of money; what it lacks is the ability to prioritize (Congressional meddling throws a monkey wrench in there too). If it could, maybe the AF wouldn't be flying such old iron....

Nope, at least not in the county I teach in nor I have heard any of the AFJROTC instructors I know in SC mention it.

We don't have teachers' unions here in South Carolina and yet there is the same craziness. I would say that in addition to teachers' unions, teacher's colleges are as much of a problem.

Not sure what he is like is now or why he was fired but FWIW, I was in the 35 FS "The Pantons" at the same time as him in the mid '90s and he was a super good dude back then.

I think the Democrats have also forgotten that The Revolution always eats its own, always.

That and the glorious socialist revolution that many of them have dreamed since college was ever so close to coming to fruition before Trump and the flyover rubes came along and screwed it up. Now they realize it might not come to pass before they die and that has many of them in a panic.

My co-teacher is a foster parent and he gets calls from the state on a weekly basis asking him to take in kids as it would seem the number of kids needing a home outnumbers the amount foster parents available. I would think the whole adoption system is in dramatic need of reform as from the people I know who have adopted it sounds nightmarishly bureaucratic and expensive. Of course, abortion isn't the answer either. I don't get the outright fanaticism the "pro-choicers" have over this. It's almost like sex was banned with the way they act. FFS, the need for abortion is easily avoided via birth control or abstinence ( the difference between us and animals is we supposedly can control our urges). Oh wait, that would require responsibility and self-control, the anthesis of Leftism. Funny how they whine about personal choice and freedom for abortion but want to regulate and control EVERY other aspect of the average American's life.

For the record, I'm OK with abortion for rape, incest, life of the mother, severe birth defects, etc. But otherwise, maybe you shouldn't have sex unless you are prepared for the fact that you can become pregnant despite precautions. Sex isn't mandatory to live (despite what many think)... The right to abortion (except for the aforementioned exceptions) is like arguing for the right to be careless or irresponsible.

As a man, sometimes I don't feel like I have a dog in this fight but just maybe all of those people saying that abortion should be legal should avail themselves of the many safe, effective birth control methods out there. I mean if you are too damned lazy to use a condom or the Pill or whatever but going and getting an abortion is less of a hassle, WTF? Or maybe be just a tad bit more selective about when and with whom you have sex? I thought they wanted abortion to be safe, legal, and rare... If it were so, not so much pushback, eh?

Teachers aren't the main problem with our education system from what I've seen. Teaching AFJROTC at a high school now and a heck of lot of parents don't care one iota about their kid's education or whether Sally studies or Johnny turns in his homework. There is only so much a teacher can do to make a student take the class seriously, take notes, study, do the homework, etc. The parents need to make Johnny or Sally do that. Rant switch off...

The only nuclear plants under construction in the US, Plants Vogtle 3 & 4 in Georgia, were started in 2009 and will finish in late 2022 and 2023 respectively but they had a couple years of delay due to Westinghouse's bankruptcy. Pretty fascinating technology and way mis-reported in the media. I was the manager for the state nuclear response team for a couple years after AF retirement (cool job but the chain-of-command were f@cking morons, so I left).

Exactly. I doubt the Russians will do nothing to us in response to our sanctions and supplying weapons to Ukraine. They can cause us a helluva lot of pain in cyberspace for example. Imagine if we were fighting Mexico and the PRC sanctioned us and supplied weapons to Mexico...we wouldn't hit back at the Chinese somehow?

Somebody probably said this on here already, but why the hell are the Washington elite (from both parties) so worried about Ukraine's borders but don't give a rat's ass about our southern border?

Paul Harrell (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6QH13V2o68zynSa0hZy9uQ) is the most informative gun channel on Youtube IMHO, besides Forgotten Weapons.

Everybody is willing to fight to the last American....

Some of the folks from my CAP squadron who were on-scene said all the news articles about it were rife with errors. Not surprising given what passes for journalism these days. Anyways, condolences...

Teaching AFJROTC at a high school and it's been an interesting experience. I find it odd that despite the mountains of research into the psychology of how people learn best and the professionalization of the teaching profession (at least in an academic sense), we get much worse results than before all that started. I think part of it is that our culture doesn't value education and learning as much as it should. For example, in a Korean high school (my wife is Korean and I was an exchange officer at the ROKAF ACSC), the kid in the school with the best math grades is as popular for that as the star football player is in an American high school. I see a lot of parents of my students who don't seem to give a rat's ass about how their child is doing. And other teachers are surprised when I show up to talk to them about my daughter (easy because she is at the HS where I work) and even more shocked when I take their side and get on her about her grades. On the other hand, I'm not impressed with some of the teachers I work with (and my HS is in the top 10% in the state). They seem to wrap things up in a lot of educational jargon and fluff. COVID didn't help either. The 9th graders I have act like 7th graders because they spent almost 2 years out of school and their level of attention and discipline is significantly lower than my 10th graders. I can see why the turnover is so high in the teaching profession. I definitely have days when I wonder WTF was I thinking taking this job because of the behavior of the students. And ~95% of my students took it as an elective and want to be in the class. I can't imagine teaching math or English or something. PBAR

How the hell did we ever plan the Normandy invasion with slide rules, butcher block paper, and teletypes? Granted it was years in planning but still. So many books on generals/admirals but what I am really curious about is how their staffs operated. Despite all of our technology we seemed to be less competent at planning at the operational and strategic levels than we were in WW2 (with most of the officer corps being non-career types even).

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Seems to me the State Department has been on its own side for the last 40+ years and generally does a miserable job advancing US interests.

https://www.indianz.com/News/2015/017364.asp MGen Keltz from what I could tell was officer's officer, and he voluntarily stepped down, saying he didn't live up to his own high standards.