Blue

The way I read the last several posts, people expect mask mandates to be reinstituted sometime this fall or winter. Along with speculation about how the November elections play into the timing of reinstituting mask mandates. I think the unsaid implication is that Democrat politicians recognize they have an uphill battle in November, so they'll delay reinstituting mask mandates until after the election, since they know mask mandates are generally unpopular.

I didn't get that out of @GrndPndr's post at all.

Here in Chicagoland, our most recent indoor mask mandate ran from 17 Aug 21 to 28 Feb 22. It was lifted citing drops in "key metrics" including hospitalizations and case numbers. I assume mask mandates will return this winter. They'll want to wait until after the midterm elections on Nov 8, so I'd wager sometime around Thanksgiving. They seem to be paving the way already. Our "COVID-19 Community Level" was raised to "High" by the CDC on 27 May 22. As part of being rated "High," indoor mask wearing is "strongly recommended," but not required. However, the city has stated: "Major mitigation changes (e.g. citywide indoor mask mandates) will be made based specifically on City of Chicago's COVID-19 hospital burden rather than the federally defined Health Service Area." So, as soon as hospitalization rated tick up in the winter (as they have in the past), I assume indoor mask mandates will return. Not to worry, the city has provided handy guidance (copied below). Remember, it's important to get your vaccine. I mean booster. I mean second booster. I mean, just make sure you stay "up to date" on your vaccine........ Also, good news, vaccinations are available for Chicagoans as young as 6 months. Hurry up, Mom and Dad, get the kiddo out there to get their shots.........

For sure there are the true believers in all things Woke. The "useful idiots," as it were. Folks like Col Coyle though, I figure he's just taken stock of the situation, and realized what he's got to say and do to get promoted. Toe the party line, tout "Diversity is our strength" a couple hundred times, and maybe the Gods will shine down upon him and he'll get that first star. After all, what the hell else are you gonna do as an O-6 ABM?

Yeah, those of us ~40 and older have seen it happen before our eyes. It's interesting to watch the implosion of some of these "movements." What once was a real, meaningful cause evolves further and further into absurdity. LBG became LGBT in the '90s. I saw LGBTQIA+ for the first time the other day. I watched the military change from an outright ban on LGB members, to "Don't ask, don't tell," to "Ask, tell, we don't care." That should have been the pinnacle, an acknowledgement of how far we progressed as a society. Instead, now we have the never-ending focus on all things LGBTQIA+, along with arguments about absurdities such as "should transsexuals be allowed to serve, and which bathroom should they use?" The environmental movement was similar. We came such an incredibly long way from the bad old days of the 1970s. The modern automobile is a triumph of engineering. Modern industrial pollution controls are incredible. If anyone really gave a shit about the environment today, they'd put their focus on how emerging economies like China and India pollute in a fashion that's 100's of times worse than anything ever done in this country. Instead, we get people on an absurd quest to ban carbon dioxide emissions and forever shouting about the boogeyman of "global warming." The battle against racism is the same. So much progress in the US since the 1960s. However, it can't end, we need to continue to find more and different groups to battle for, leading to the most recent chimera of "AAPI hate," as in "Hate against Asian American Pacific Islander communities." If you haven't heard a whole lot about it, it might be because it turns out that scooping everything from the eastern boarder of Europe and Africa all the way to the West coast of the Americas into one giant catch-all racial category is regarded as a little difficult. Doesn't change the fact that when you google AAPI, you get a whole page about AAPI rights, AAPI discrimination, battling for AAPI equity, etc. It's a racial "group" that exists only to provide something for the Woke to battle for. If there is a glimmer of hope, it's that these movements will all grind to a halt and implode as a result of their own inner conflict, and attempts to "out-woke" each other. This recent Intercept article is timely: Elephant in the Zoom: Meltdowns Have Brought Progressive Advocacy Groups to a Standstill at a Critical Moment in World History. I'm not the world's biggest Bernie Sanders fan, but I'm not entirely a critic either. This quote kinda sums up the article (emphasis mine):

My conclusion after five years in the Air Force and six years at a defense contractor: The priorities of the military are as follows: 1.) Serve as a conduit for money into defense contractors 2.) Push woke agendas 3 through 353.) Other stuff 354.) Protect and defend the US. I think it's interesting and telling that the "WTF" thread so often ends up discussing all things Woke. Perhaps my tinfoil hat is too tight, but I really believe that the collection of increasingly absurd Woke movements is designed to keep people enraged and otherwise distracted from the real concerns in modern society. Everyone's mental bandwidth is taken up by trying to understand how trans rights and other absurdities appear to be the biggest news story of the day, while meanwhile the country descends further and further into a quasi-oligarchy. Half of the country is scratching their head and wondering if local libraries hosting Drag Queen Reading Hour is really a thing, while the other half is getting ready to go march in support of Drag Queen Reading Hour.

Wow, the 552nd Air Control Wing is the LGBTQ+ gift that keeps on giving..... Article link here. Some excerpts quoted below. Capt. Gregory St Clair's comment is especially interesting. I struggle to think of anyone in the entirety of the DoD who does not know the LGBTQ+ community exists. Indeed, one would have to be living in an underground bunker inside of a faraday cage to have missed the incessant amount of posturing the DoD does regarding LGBTQ+.....

I'm not savvy to the inner workings of labor negotiations at the airlines. If airline management is offering substandard contract terms, is that just a sign that they're anticipating a slowdown in the industry? And they're just trying to "run out the clock" until the economy cools, airline traffic decreases, and union members have less bargaining power? Is there any penalty for the airlines if they keep "kicking the can down the road" when it comes to signing a pilot contract?

Sounds like a good recommendation. Looks like it's available on Amazon, with the US title "Generation War." As a side note, it stars Volker Bruch, who also stars as Detective Gereon Rath in Babylon Berlin, a German neo-noir series that is still in production. It's set in the inter-war years in Germany, and also shows the country's slide towards WWII.

Yeah, people going off the rails on abortion being "banned," when the reality is more complex. The legality of abortion will be up to the states. There are various maps out there outlining the expected results state by state. My recollection is 26 states will leave abortion completely legal, a handful will outright ban abortions, and the rest will have a mix of bans after X amount of weeks. All subject to lawmaking in individual states, of course. And I think people may be surprised at how their state legislatures react. Almost 50 years since Roe was first passed, and many states have changed a lot in that time. Will be interesting to see if all the current marching in the street against the Supreme Court decision translates into people marching on their individual state houses. I'd like to think that would be the case, but for so many people, it seems their knowledge of the political process doesn't go beyond "My Team Good, Your Team Bad" and whatever clown show AOC is doing that week. I've heard the whole "abortions led to a decline in crime" idea before, but I've seen better arguments for the phase-out of lead gasoline leading to a decline in lead-related brain damage, and an associated drop in crime.

Yeah, I was scratching my head at Scott Kirby's recent Linkedin post heralding their "agreement" with ALPA.

Yeah, it does seem like a lot of grandstanding. I would have assumed just about any Congressman of note would receive at least a handful of similar letters every year. Lots of crazies out there, after all. Sure enough, from the article: 9000 potential threats, spread over 535 Congressmen and Senators. I assume Kinzinger probably has a selection of letters he could have chosen from when he published this one.

Two things can be true at the same time. Ashley Babbitt shouldn't have been where she was, but that doesn't completely exonerate the Capitol Police, or anyone else who was involved. I'd like to see a complete, non-partisan review of Jan 6th, but it seems that's never going to happen, given the current political climate.

I imagine the FAA Administrator is a tough job to staff. The population of people with aviation experience at an executive level (whether public or private) is pretty small. To add, the person you nominate has to want the job. With commercial aviation reeling from Covid, Boeing's shenanigans with the MAX and 787, etc, I'd think some qualified people would respond "thanks but no thanks." However, the reality is that, in the hierarchy of qualifications for these politically-appointed jobs, experience is pretty far down the list. It's Identity Politics above all, which means the number one criteria Democrats are looking for is that the nominee either be a woman or a "person of color." When you constrain the candidate pool that much, it's no surprise that you end up with candidates who have really thin qualifications.

Careful what you ask for. From the Seattle Times:

I saw the first Presidential Debate (Sept 29th, 2020) as a prime example of this. Trump could have "parked his ego in the corner" and just let Biden run his mouth. Biden has historically been a poor performer at debates, normally providing a steady stream of verbal gaffes. Instead, Trump came in with both guns blazing, all all Biden had to do was sit back and watch the night implode. Still shake my head at that whole debate.

Some recent rumblings about Biden being too old to run in 2024. The cynic in me thinks that these stories aren't simply plain old journalism, rather they've been timed appropriately to "test the waters" and gauge the public's reaction. From the NYT last week: Should Biden Run in 2024? Democratic Whispers of ‘No’ Start to Rise. In interviews, dozens of frustrated Democratic officials, members of Congress and voters expressed doubts about the president’s ability to rescue his reeling party and take the fight to Republicans. Related article in The Atlantic from yesterday: “It’s not the 82 that’s the problem. It’s the 86,” one swing voter said in a recent focus group, referring to the hypothetical age Biden would be at the end of that (very) hypothetical second term. The Chicago Tribune is going so far as to speculate that IL Governor JB Pritzker's recent trip to New Hampshire is signaling a "soft launch" of his presidential campaign. The guy has a net worth close to $4 billion, so would be interesting to see the impact of his money on the race.

This thread was producing a lot of good discussion, and then the Climate Change grenade got thrown into the room, sending us into a whole page of nonsense back and forth. Don't feed the troll.

It's really stunning the amount of infrastructure that has been dismantled or otherwise hobbled in the pursuit of so-called "green" agendas.

The Air Force Intern program always seemed like a good deal if you were fresh out of school and considering a career in civilian service. Knew a couple of engineers who did it. The starting pay was low, but you were escalated pretty quick, and you had a relatively defined career path. That said, the whole program was designed around engineering, cyber, intel, etc. The fact that they're trying to shoehorn T-6 IPs into the AF Intern program is suspect. If they really wanted civilian T-6 IPs, there is a path to creating and staffing GS billets. If you don't have the time and/or horsepower to create civilian billets, the normal path is to hire contractors. Smells like someone got a visit from the Good Idea Fairy, and came up with the idea of civilian T-6 IPs. Getting GS billets or contractors was to tough a mountain to climb, but they found that the AF Intern program could be used as a workaround. Also, the "pamphlet" thing in the first post, the upper right hand corner reads "Positions available in the follow field." Shouldn't that be "following?" The whole thing just seemed half-assed. If they actually did hire folks, watch them all be quietly dropped once the CSAF or someone moved on (like enlisted UAV pilots).

Yeah, from the outside looking in, it seems like this is just a play to reduce the number of AF pilots needed to man AF planes. Freeing up pilots to go work staff. Since, if you're gonna send someone through the above training, it would seem to make sense to tack on a couple months (or whatever it is) at OTS and make these civilians into Air Force officers.

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) was founded in 2008. Over the past 14 years, did their work drive any meaningful change? Their reports were regularly quoted in the press. It seems like they did good work. But, the most recent reports sound as depressing as their early reports. Since 2008, the reports always seemed to take on an almost absurdist tone, and never seemed to show that we actually learned anything.

Have some loose ties to the Northern NJ area. Seen it more than once: Boomers who started out in the 80s in NYC. Rode the stock market up, and moved out to the open spaces of Northern NJ when they started families. Built big, beautiful houses. Now, 40 years later, those boomers are retiring. The areas they moved into in the 80s have gone from open fields and quaint little towns to the land of endless big houses and continuous strip malls. Some of those boomers want to sell their houses and cash-in/downsize, but they're finding "Dang millennials just don't want these big houses." While it's probably more accurate to say "Those dang millennials can't afford to buy your house, much less pay the taxes and upkeep required." I think we're seeing the end of the most recent "gilded age" in the US. Not just an inevitable ebb in the ebb and flow of the economy, but a real, sustained period of excessive pain for everyone but those at the top.

I find it hard to believe that anyone with any level of intelligence would think the US could put the genies of abortion or birth control back in the bottle. High net worth or not. I always assumed the "solution" was being carried out in our existing immigration "policies." As in, regardless of what we say, the real policy is that the US will do next to nothing to stop illegal immigration, because the people with money and power don't want to take their hit to the balance sheet.

In the context of linked article I discussed, the author makes an entirely different point. It's not left vs right. Both "sides" are pushing for larger and larger intervention in Ukraine, and if you buy into the typical "my political party vs your political party" argument, then you're a fool. Our current efforts in Ukraine are clearly another proxy war. Which, hell, I'm not even against it. I wish Putin wouldn't have invaded, but now that he has, I see the arguments for giving various forms of support to Zelensky (military, financial, logistical, humanitarian, etc) Where does it end though? If you're keeping score, we have a bad track record at proxy wars: Korea - 1950-1953. We're still there. Vietnam: 15 years of pouring blood and treasure into a country, then left. Afghanistan: We supported the mujahedeen against the Soviets - where the fuck did that get us? An invite back to the country for 20 years of pain and a Global War on Terror. Various involvement in Central and South American proxy wars during the 80s: Not too bad for the average American. Left those poor countries in shambles, though. Would love to see us support Zelensky in his push to get the Russians out of Ukraine. I'd cheer along with him as the last Russian troop walks back across the border, without his weapon. I'd hope Biden and his team have a nice celebration in the Situation Room when that happens. But then what? My fear is we end up doing the same thing in Ukraine that we've done everywhere else. We stay, and continue to pour a bunch of our national treasure into a rat hole. Eventually we start spilling American blood there, too.