nsplayr

I never got why these exist below O6 and Chief. Below those ranks, absolutely no one else cares what rank you retire as, but it’s insulting to the service member to be “demoted” in retirement. The whole thing seems dumb to me.

You realize there were no major federal income tax changes from 2021 to 2022, right? If anything things got more favorable for most people with the standard deduction going up and brackets shifting a bit due to inflation ie more of your money is taxed at a lower rate. So congrats on making more money this past year, drinks on you 🍻

The issue isn’t with posting a video of Biden, it’s that you’re just googling and posting the first thing that confirms your priors, or it seems that way. You can’t just link to some wild bullshit and expect people to filter that out and understand your point. Either stick to credible sources and make a logical argument, or just save us all the time. If you want to say the US blew up the pipeline, fine, good luck, but my argument to you is there’s no evidence for that and the sources you’re citing are not credible, which makes me pretty much dismiss whatever else you’re wanting to say.

Jesus dude you need a remedial course in sorting good information out from total dumpster fire trash. Some Twitter rando with the handle LetsGoBrandon45 is not a credible source. Shit, in his feed he’s also claiming that maybe “the globalists” causes the earthquake in Turkey. https://twitter.com/LetsGoBrando45/status/1623727567625756679?s=20&t=kTXcm8n6-OVNShY0BAYz6w GTFO with this level of pure uncut bullshit.

Dude there’s a difference between something being possible and likely. Is it possible we blew up the pipeline…sure! But I find it unlikely. Is it possible we faked the moon landing…again, sure, but not likely. You presented a story casting some mighty inflammatory accusations, written by a known crank, that has zero hard evidence in it and relies on “unnamed senior administration officials.” Then you either expected people to change their minds or at least take you seriously. I’m not sure why you thought that was going to work out well. If you want to have an unconventional take and be respected for it, you’re gonna have to do more than that. If there is hard evidence that the US blew up the pipeline I’m all ears! It not an impossible thing to imagine, but again, I don’t think that’s very likely what happened. I’m open to being wrong, but those making the accusations bear the burden of proof.

My thoughts are my own but clearly shared by others. Maybe they’re reasonable! Russia is a known malign actor in Europe, they recently started an aggressive war against their neighbor, and the country is run by an asshole dictator who has wantonly murdered civilians and ordered his forces to commit a variety of war crimes. In the absence of evidence that someone else did it, I’m inclined to believe it was them. I’m all ears for actual, real evidence to the contrary, feel free to post some!

No. I do have a life sometimes despite my posting history 😅 Yea sure, intentionally destroying things is bad. Hell, war is a policy failure at its core because you’re destroying rather than building and killing rather than flourishing. Not sure what you’re looking to have me say here or why my opinion matters that much to you. 🤷‍♂️

I’m just heavily anti-conspiracy as a person. Saying everything is a conspiracy is like saying the stock market is about to crash it it’s about to rain. I mean, technically you’re right sometimes, but not enough to be believed all the time. Yes, the Russian government is controlled by assholes. Yes, they are at war in Europe after invading Ukraine. Simplest explanation is they did it. Not to totally rule out anything else, but in the absence of exculpatory evidence, that’s what I think happened. Hanging your hat on one guy who has peddled false conspiracies before, sourcing an anonymous “senior official” without anything else concrete is…not what I think anyone should do.

Here’s how I see it: Occam’s razor, Russia did it because they are giant assholes and at war in Europe currently. If Hersh has evidence the US did it, counter to the simplest explanation above, publish the actual hard evidence and the name of the source. Hell, there should be a plethora of sources for something this big. Go public! What a groundbreaking story that would be! Probably could get another Pulitzer. You can’t just say “an anonymous senior official blah blah blah” and then fill in whatever else you want after that and be believed. Especially given his history making up other stuff re: bin Laden raid and etc. Until that happens he’s just some guy online with an opinion, and opinions are like assholes; we all have them and they all stink.

AFAIK yes, and it was the 2021 NDAA, not even the 2022 one. The DoD has slowrolled a required report the law states was needed before the pay started, and in effect has indefinitely delayed actually implementing the law as written. Members of Congress from both parties are pissed and trying to get it fixed apparently. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/10/26/delay-incentive-pay-boost-guard-and-reserves-draws-rebuke-lawmakers.html

From the linked story, “…according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.” The source:

I think it’s specifically the idea that if you work even one day of orders, or just come to drill, that you would be entitled to the entire month’s worth of flight pay, per the normal brackets for what that pays. So come to drill, earn $1K in flight pay, not 4/30ths of $1K.

Ain't that the truth. Some of the best life advice I've ever received.

I guess I’m not tracking. FWIW, when it stops being in our national interest we should stop sending weapons to Ukraine. Same as anywhere else. But IMHO they’re clearly in the right here having been invaded by our long term adversary, so there’s miles of runway before I think our national interest would run out. They’re using those weapons to defend their country and smash a ton of Russian mil capability and that’s an unambiguous win. Even better would be if the Russians got rid of Putin, ended the war, returned home and peacefully joined the rest of Europe, but until that happens I’m happy for them to suffer militarily for their ill-conceived adventure.

The biggest straw man is your assertion that there is a “blank check” for Ukraine. There’s not! There’s calculated material and intelligence support to help them defend themselves, aligned with our national interests. The reason folks including me are dunking is this seems like one of the biggest, clearest wins in terms of use of US dollars and effort to for what we’re getting in terms of a major opponent crippling themselves.

Russia actually had, IMHO, more impressive power projection in Syria that I thought they could pull off long-term. Totally unrelated to NATO expansion or whatever other excuse you want to make for Putin’s aggressive, expansionist wars. If you think the Ukrainians are the bad guys and Putin is the innocent victim here who is only, “reacting defensively” in the war with Ukraine…phew boy that’s quite the POV to walk around with all day.

Live look at filthy rn. There is no shortage of argument as to why helping the Ukrainians defend themselves against a Russian invasion is the right thing to do and in our interest as the United States. UTFSF in this very thread! No more feeding the troll for me. There is zero chance this guy is real, serious, and in possession of all his marbles.

Agreed! Diamond Dave is a legend. I casually use several phrases from that video in normal conversation and it's funny when some young zoomer kid who hasn't seen it looks at me like, "WTF are you talking about?" Relevant because the R9X has some ninjy-swords that pop out and cut things to pieces at impact vice exploding. Sounds about perfect for separating a payload from a sneaky Chicom balloon. Now I just gotta figure out how to get my Reaper up to FL 690 to take the shot...

I volunteer to down a balloon with an AGM-114R9X. Ninjy stars!

🤷‍♂️ despite our flaws I think our country is great, I’m hopeful for the future, and I want our military to remain strong and our opponents to remain weak. Not sure why that’s really a controversial opinion.

I mean it was a bit tongue in cheek, but yea, I mean Hitler offed himself in a bunker like a coward and the Japanese emperor got down off his throne and surrendered onboard the Missouri. If they didn’t like it they should have been better at war Some of y’all are really down some weird rabbit holes about how America sucks and is the bad guy and it’s all a conspiracy and “they” want you to believe this or that. It’s just really strange on a board supposedly populated mostly by military aviators…

😂 Dude, I work for the government. I’m in the vault watching stuff happen, sometimes live. I am the “they.” Are you? Or were you? Go with quals. I will again remind everyone that you come off as a fundamentally unserious person. Ps what caused that bender you went on the other night?? Ambien and whiskey are a hell of a combination from what I understand! ”…they could tell you that we need to have effects in the HOA” MFer we DID have very noticeable “effects” in the HOA last week and let’s just say I’m extremely familiar with the purpose for the operation and the results of it. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/26/us/politics/isis-leader-us-somalia-raid.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Spot the lie though. Yea, lots of screw ups when we feel squirrelly and go on adventures (Vietnam & OIF primarily IMHO), but did we not go from mid to global hegemon for nearly 80 years running? I’d rather be us than anyone else by far, and that has been the case for my entire life plus the entire lives of my parents as well. Again, not bad!

I mean it kind of has? We went from among the world powers but not the leader to the unquestioned #1, enemies cowering at our knees as we occupied their countries. Then we made staunch allies out of our former enemies (German, Japan & Italy) and helped unite Europe and essentially end great power conflict on the continent until last year. Russia rose and fell mostly without a shot and they’re an asspain now but as we’re seeing a bit of a paper tiger. China has grown up tremendously but they’re not there yet. BLUF: we’re still #1 almost 80 years later. We’re economically, culturally, and militarily the world’s most important nation. Not bad IMHO!

To you, it means nothing to you. Luckily you have a very significant minority opinion among regular Americans. Even better, thankfully you and people like you aren't in charge of our foreign policy, because you'd just hang a country and it's people out to dry in order to be violently invaded by it's neighbor & one of our chief geopolitical foes. How about instead we do what we've been doing, support the Ukrainian people, kneecap the Russian military and Putin's dreams of a renewed Russian Empire, and safeguard a democratic and peaceful Europe once the Russian's inevitably slink back home bloodied and defeated.