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pbar

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Posts posted by pbar

  1. 9 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

    And yet, his actions selected him for a position of immense power. It's not a fluke, all the nonsense feel-good speeches from guys like Mosely and Welsh and Goldfein we're just fluff. The military is an organization that lacks/avoids any metric for success (profit, customer satisfaction, productivity, reduced casualties, successful pullout from Afghanistan, etc) and therefore the least valuable on the outside will become the most successful on the inside.

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

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  2. On 10/1/2022 at 6:50 AM, dream big said:

    The H model has become a dump can. 1950s technology with at the most 1970s avionics. It is way passed its prime. The Air Force has got to stop prolonging these aircraft to the point of failure. Same for the B-1s, KC-135s, Buffs, etc.  

    Hard to listen to the CSAF lecture about accelerate change or lose when our Air Force Life Cycle Management is utter trash. 

    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....

    • Like 3
  3. 17 hours ago, HeloDude said:

    There aren’t teachers’ unions in South Carolina?  

    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. 

  4. 1 hour ago, brabus said:

    Teacher unions are at the heart of everything that’s wrong with the public education system. Dismantle all of them - nothing will fix this problem outside of complete “burn it to the ground” and rebuild from the ashes. I feel bad for all the good teachers caught in the crossfire. 

    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. 

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  5. On 7/1/2022 at 7:57 PM, Majestik Møøse said:

    This is a sweeping generalization: 50s Baby Boomers > 60s protestors > 70s decadents > 80s yuppies > today’s old liberals.  They never lived up to their WW2 vet parents’ accomplishments, so they’ve always felt the need to “do something” even if there’s nothing to do. Combine that with the white guilt from becoming millionaires for doing nothing other than buying a house in the 80s and living off the economic foundations built by the Greatest Generation, and you get a lot of the current Democrat politicians that are striving to accomplish something before they die.

    For boomers like Warren, Sanders, Biden, etc, the overturning of Roe v Wade - the single most important social political issue - is absolutely devastating to their self-perceived legacy. From their viewpoint, after a lifetime of comfortable counter-culturalism, seeing the world turning back to that of their war-winning, company-founding, golf-playing dads is absolutely devastating.

    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. 

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  6. 11 minutes ago, HeloDude said:

    Why would many of these kids be “unwanted”?  Are you suggesting that there is a shortage of families wanting to adopt babies given up for adoption?

    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. 

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  7. 18 hours ago, Day Man said:

    there are plenty of stories of IUD babies, pill babies, condom babies, vasectomy babies...accidents happen despite precautions. in 2020 there were 400k+ in foster care...that number, or women's deaths due to inaccessible health care, will only go up.

    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. 

  8. 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?

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  9. On 3/11/2022 at 10:36 AM, Prosuper said:

    <snipped> Just think of the lower-class kids receiving a great education by well-paid and respected teachers, the horror.

    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...

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  10. 2 hours ago, HeloDude said:

    Paper from Stanford written in 2018 says about 10 years.  No time like the present to start.

    http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/park-k2/

    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). 

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  11. 2 minutes ago, ClearedHot said:

    If Putin starts slinging arty and FAE's into urban areas will the world still sit idly by?  There are an estimated 3 million people still in Kyiv.  There is even concern Putin will resort to tactical nukes given his fumbling army, what happens then?

    This sad story is FAR from over and it could get MUCH worse.

    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?  

  12. 8 hours ago, brickhistory said:

    a. If the countries actually near-by aren't willing to stand up against The Bear, why is it on us?  Germany, France, et al, you lead.  We'll follow the sounds of crickets to find the your NATO fight and join in.  That is, of course, assuming you have the cojones to ignore the lack of gas that Russia isn't sending your way and you are shivering in the dark.

    b. Big China can and will assimilate Little China eventually; likely within Xi's lifetime (aka Winne the Pooh).  And we won't do a thing.  Regardless of Administration, but especially under this one, by the time we could get there in any meaningful way, it's a done deal.  CCP is willing to take the casualties; I'm not sure Taiwan is prepared to.  I know we aren't.  Nor would we trade Shanghai for L.A. in any large-scale exchange.

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

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  13. 1 hour ago, hindsight2020 said:

    The article lists the accident aircraft as a PA-28R-300. That is a niche low-volume one-off export-licensed military trainer called the Pillán. (PA-32 fuselage based, tandem seating trainer, much in the same way as the T-34 was based on the BE-33/35 Bonanza airframe). So likely a typo. They probably meant PA-32R-300, aka Piper Lance. Retract version of the cherokee Six.

    Condolences to the family.

    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...

  14. On 10/12/2021 at 9:13 AM, bfargin said:

    It is many times, the bottom of the academic barrel who become teachers (I know there are exceptions). I'm constantly amazed at the unmotivated and/or substandard students who fail out of one of our business majors here at school who then goes over to the College of Education and gets a teaching degree. If pay is raised we might get better talent headed towards teaching K-12 as well.

    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

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  15. 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).  

  16. 23 hours ago, Danger41 said:

    I’m confident we’re  done with the “M” portion of DIME over there for awhile. I’m sure there are some guarantees to the Taliban about how they protected the airport and we won’t bomb them back the Stone Age. And since our State Department did such a bang up job last time, it’s good to know they’re in the lead.

    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.  

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