Negatory

I appreciate your opinion and agree with a lot of it. We do need a debate in congress. We really need a coherent grand strategy, but we’ve never really had that outside the Cold War. My point is that the more isolationist we become, the less influence we ultimately will have. You can bet the Chinese will make decisions on Taiwan based on our response to this incursion.

Of course it’s factually correct, but there is little substance beyond that. Your point that Ukraine doesn’t perfectly mirror our nation is no argument that they are not worth protecting or bringing democracy to. Other nations that weren’t American style democracies: Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Lebanon, Cuba, Cambodia, Grenada, Libya, Panama, Iraq, Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria. Love it or hate it, engaging in the world for the last 70 years is what allowed us such an influence on it. What on earth is the justification to only protect democracies? We get to choose how to exert influence. It is our choice to expand and protect the free world and our sphere of influence or to allow functional autocrats like Putin and Xi to do it. It’s not easy to do that. Here’s an actual opinion. We should have peacekeeping troops protecting Kyiv and Southern Ukraine right now. It’s a question of whether we want to allow this behavior or not. There may be justification, no matter how shitty, for Russia to attempt reunification of the Eastern sects. Fine, whatever. There is no justification or for further aggression other than “we want a land bridge to Crimea and we will take what we want because we can threaten you with nukes and the US isn’t going to do anything about it.”

Also, anyone see how weak the American sanctions were? Literally just two regions in Eastern Ukraine. Hit em where it hurts, huh? "The order bars 'new investment, trade and financing by U.S. persons to, from, or in' the so-called Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic, located in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement."

Fox News in 2022 is amazing.

Hey @ViperMan, your quotes for me from 25 Dec onwards were trying to make it seem like I was insinuating the death rate of omicron was gonna be be 5-15% for certain portions of the population. Just wondering why you misrepresented my actual points on this forum? Is this a perception error because you aren’t actually reading what I’m saying? Or is it an execution error in that you’re arguing fallaciously? Did you miss two days prior where I said exactly what you’re arguing I didn’t say? Did you not understand that the estimates you quoted (5-15%) were in reference to historical data under an entirely different pretext? We were talking about what we would have done differently with foresight of historical data. The historical data - which is true - is for delta/previous variants. How can I make my opinions more clear so that you can stop misrepresenting them? I don’t need to engage in this echo chamber where you can only see it as simply you vs my entirely opposite views. I am glad that my predictions on 23 Dec (that the disease would have significantly lower hospitalizations and fatalities) based on scientific evidence (that I was the first to present on this forum) came true. I know you guys want to hate on people like me, pawnman, Prozac, etc. and find the bogeyman, but it’s not productive. I’m good not engaging with you in the future, as you’ve proven not to want to engage in a good faith discussion. Godspeed.

Although you are desperate for validation - craving the herd’s approval and being able to say “I told ya so” - you’re not gonna find it. I never said there was a guaranteed increase in deaths. I never said that omicron would have a death rate that was the same as delta or higher. I said there would likely be over a million cases a day, and we couldn’t know how that would impact the healthcare system. You said that there was no chance we could quadruple our maximum cases per day and were very wrong within just a couple weeks. Standard. Maybe you forget that I used exact quotes from you to prove how incorrect you were. In reality, I see that still bugs you. Glad the mortality of this virus was significantly lower for Omicron. I am and have been fully in support of removing all mask and vaccine mandates shortly after more data came out (but you don’t know or can’t accept this because you can’t debate a nuanced opinion). Go ahead, check my posts. This is not gonna be the “and then they clapped” moment you wish it would be.

Yep, better platform than a light fighter is required for things like this + power + real estate on the aircraft for apertures/radio connectivity. I agree 100%.

I fear that you actually are the one that doesn't get it. If you want, we can discuss the numerous nazi flags seen at the freedom convoy. But that, like much media coverage, probably isn't representative of the movement as a whole. Oh, wait. Question your political biases, slow the flow of information warfare into your veins.

This is the thing though. It was mostly peaceful, and your sentence intentionally misconstrues in a similar way to the opposite political side. Like >99% of protestors were peaceful. But you’re insinuating that is not accurate based on your political bias. For the record, I support the truckers protesting.

We’ve gone full retard.

I agree with your points. Everything should be somewhat attritable. I guess the biggest issues with little fighter like that are that they won’t the power, cooling, or apertures to make datalinks effective from a long range. And they won’t have the legs to not require tankers everywhere. It’s a tough problem.

If it’s just going to be a stand off datalink enabler, I struggle to see why it should be manned whatsoever, at least for the peer fight. SAMs have made it too threatening to have a 4th Gen or less fighter like platform just chilling outside. Why not just go the other way and use a platform like a repurposed B-1/B-21/KC-46. Yes, all of those platforms have issues, but my point is having a larger aircraft that actually doesn’t require 15 air refuelings to get towards the fight could be beneficial. Plus, larger airplane = more cooling, electricity, payload, apertures, and options. There are still niches for fighters, I think. The niche is direct platform confrontation with enemy fighters. If you’re just trying to fight a j-20, don’t hand me an unmanned aircraft until AI is ready. But if you’re confident in the abilities of the unmanned platforms, the only thing the mothership needs is fuel and connectivity - not to have afterburners or be single seat. What the author proposes would be useful in the N Korea/S America/Iran/etc confrontation. But we really need to get ourselves to focus on what we want to succeed at. Trying to be the service that can simultaneously effectively fight terrorism and 5th Gen fighters is a large contributor to why we feel less ahead than we have in the past. Get a friggin acquisition strategy together and don’t walk the line balancing both priorities!

Light fighters can’t get to the South China Sea. On top of that they aren’t survivable at all. For the peer threat, I see no niche. Also, MUMT is the AI of the 2010s. It’s getting funding, but good luck making it economically scalable.

Humans are prone to conspiracy theories. Even more so when they align with views that would bring them kudos in their tribe.

The mark of an educated man that is confident in his beliefs.

Embrace the us vs them; You are trying way too hard to make everything Biden’s fault. A potentially coherent argument started falling off the tracks as soon as you tried to pin inflation purely on the Biden admin. Last time I checked, the highest amount of quantitative easing ever along with the highest unemployment rate in recent history occurred in 2020. Oh, and the first President to give out economic stimulus checks… And supporting the filibuster is inane. There are actually no coherent reasons for it - it entirely “cheats” the planned way government legislation is supposed to work and forces supermajorities when they never were supposed to be required. The only argument is “hurr, durr, it’s been this way for a while.” Oh, and it typically helps conservatives more than liberals.

I guess it’s not as bad as I initially thought. 3 AD, 1 guard, 1 foreign.

Wow, no more fighters I guess

Whether you like it or not, ROE lims will exist. Bet we aren’t gonna be allowed to use tactical nukes unless very specific circumstances are met. And I bet most of us are fine with that. If anything, those wars you listed should have taught us that military action alone is incapable of solving complex geopolitical disagreements effectively. We have basically lost, from a national objectives standpoint, nearly every single kinetic war since WWII. Our greatest success was likely the Cold War, which ironically effectively used diplomacy, information, and economic warfare successfully, but almost no direct military response.

Selection bias is rife. Yesterday’s conspiracy theories have often been actually conspiracy theories. See how COVID was over in Apr 2020, then Aug 2020, then Apr 2021, then… or how hydroxychloriquine was a miracle drug… etc. Im just posting data. You guys can get offended at data if you like, but we’re at the point of no more rational discourse if that’s the case.

If you think the fact that we have multiple orders of magnitude more people on ventilators for respiratory distress than previous years is due largely to hospitals forcing otherwise healthy people to be intubated, then I’ve got nothing for you. We can discuss data at face value, or we can be skeptical of literally everything. I’m not gonna engage with super conspiracy theories with almost no evidence.

Yeah, it’s generally less severe than the already non-severe for our demographic delta. But it’s significantly more transmissible. John’s Hopkins, the CDC, and the NYT are tracking hospitalizations in that ballpark. But maybe that’s not confirmed enough.

Sure. If you can show me that a cold causes 150k concurrent hospitalizations, I’ll agree with you.

Ah. Do you see something in the article that is not corroborated by the study? Or is there something in the study that is intentionally left out of the article. I guess I don’t see the issue if it generally accurately portrays the main points of the study.