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jice

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Posts posted by jice

  1. 13 minutes ago, fire4effect said:

    Force Multiplier.

    Had this discussion years ago with a former military member who was a cop and that's what he called it. Few wanting to fund the cost was and is the issue. Avoid a few multi-million-dollar payouts and I say it's paid for itself. Of course, sophisticated/expensive unmanned systems are another though potentially reasonable discussion. When word gets out you can't outrun it you also have a potential deterrent effect to not run in the first place.

    image.jpeg.ec4a76b9d9b69d4af58733ede9b29d85.jpeg

    $18 million on a specialized helicopter ...

    Exactly. And in cases where this isn’t available… get a warrant and serve it. 

  2. 6 hours ago, ViperMan said:

    Wait, who put who at risk? The cops are always going to escalate. That's what they're paid for. All three of those guys have killed people. They didn't run because they thought they were getting busted for a minor drug charge. Don't be so naive.

    The suspects who ran on a busy highway put people at risk. The police who continued the pursuit on a busy highway decided to continue putting people at risk. “Protecting and serving” is one way to say what they’re paid for… this is not that. 

    Nobody involved except the suspects knew why they ran, but unless they’re actively murdering somebody in there, that amount of risk for bystanders is unwarranted.

    Naive? Copy. Don’t be a bootlicker.

  3. 53 minutes ago, M2 said:

    Do you thing those being chased simply shoplifted at a Walmart?

    People don't get pursued like that unless they've committed a serious crime and are a threat to society.  It was proportional to the situation. 

    Had your family member been their victim, or would be a victim after the police let them get away, you'd feel a lot different about it!

    The stupid ones are those that flee, not the cops chasing them!  It's their decision to endanger everyone on the road, not the police's.

    Well… according to the info on the YouTube post, these guys were being chased because they failed to pull over for a traffic stop… initiated to investigate drug possession.

    So yeah, the folks in the truck are idiots because they chose to run… but putting innocent bystanders at risk to conduct an investigation of a non-violent crime police THINK is occurring: that’s not proportional. That’s fucking dumb.

    • Upvote 1
  4. 14 hours ago, Danger41 said:

    Any updates on this? Saw it on the VML. I was curious if it has changed with the Raptor FTU moving out to Langley.

    Talked to a couple of their dudes recently. They love it; high QOL, enthusiastic young’uns, and lots of flying to be had.

  5. On 4/12/2024 at 3:47 PM, busdriver said:

    The dumber point of this is that higher costs to oil and natural gas on federal land will predominantly affect offshore production.  And the rapid expansion capability within the US system is private land fracking.  

    So this move is really just incentivizing increased investment into/growth of fracking.

    The royalties may mean actual money… everything else is budget dust to budget dust. The lease bond is returned after conclusion of the lease, unless there’s an issue—then it becomes budget dust on the insurer’s books.

    Probably won’t make gas cheaper, but once the dust settles it likely won’t have a meaningful impact.

    Except, as bus driver pointed out: Incentivizing extracting the same product in places where the Public has less of a stake.

    This is a nothingburger. 

  6. 2 hours ago, stract said:

    The "why" was pretty apparent from the article.  Re-read the second paragraph.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-jets-intercept-4-russian-warplanes-near-alaska-norad/

    Thanks. No questions; cleared off.
     

    Anybody *with SA* on the actual advantages to designation as a FIS? (as opposed to a fighter squadron or aggressor squadron that conducts air defense missions, which was a relatively regular occurrence).
     

    Put another way: what follows with the name change in terms of budgets, manning, etc.? Why FIS rather than Fighter Squadron (wrt resourcing, etc.)? 

  7. 1 hour ago, disgruntledemployee said:

    So apparently a billionaire that got rich off high interest payday loans put up the bond for Trump, calling it a business deal.  Isn't that a red flag for holding a security clearance, ie, beholden to an individual for a large sum of money and thus corruptible?

    Neat fact: the President doesn’t require a security investigation or formal clearance while in office. 

  8. 8 minutes ago, HeyEng said:

    After being retired from the USAF, a handful of aircraft were donated to NASA for use in atmospheric research. 

     

     

     

    One of the coolest jets around. Slight correction: remain on loan to NASA from the USAF. No danger of them coming back though; it’s manned and therefore cannot possibly be useful for recce in the modern world. /s

  9. 4 hours ago, yellerfever said:

    The Air Force is once again showing disdain for their hardest working, highest performing people…that have the most options on the outside.

    IMG_0436.webp

    Gotta figure out some way to pay for the $50k bonuses we tricked a bunch of 27-year-old-second-assignment-no-ground-duties bros into taking.

     Anybody have previous years’ increments handy?

  10. 10 hours ago, brabus said:

    Anyone know if a temporary change to your exemptions and/or W4 will reduce bonus taxes? My idea is adjust those for the month of the bonus payout, then adjust them back to standard afterwards - goal is not give the govt an interest free loan. If this isn’t going to work, any other ideas?

    Not a professional; consult one…

    Not directly. The payout will be withheld as a bonus, but remember: it’s taxed the same as any normal income. If that withholding is at a significantly higher rate than the rest of your income (unlikely, I’d guess), you COULD adjust to “flatten” that bubble over the rest of the year to hit 0(ish).

    Consult a pro & don’t dork up the math. Not worth the pain or risk of messing it up without realizing it… IMHO. 

  11. 8 hours ago, brabus said:

    That’ll change once they realize how much fatass America is tanking their revenue. What a stupid idea. 

    Maybe not as dumb as it looks…

    It’s Southwest. Open seating; those seats go unfilled anyway 97% of the time, since you can’t physically put somebody there and nobody’s going to insist on lifting a love handle to take their seat. I guarantee you that fat, cheap people aren’t buying two seats en masse with southwest now.

    This way they can charge a fee to process the refund (or keep the cash in exchange for travel credit) and they get to put the cash to work between purchase and refund. At an airline committed to open seating, this is how you create a surcharge while winning a PR victory in the community you’re extracting dollars from  

     

  12. 58 minutes ago, raimius said:

    If someone says "United States" do you think "POTUS, SCOTUS, and Congress" IS the United States of America?  I hope we can define it a little bit larger than just that, otherwise "we the people" have literally become irrelevant.

    Yeah man, I think that’s obvious.

    I’m saying it’s a complicated topic that people have been trying to figure out for thousands and thousands of years. I’m not able to add anything… We’re all about 60 lifetimes of reading behind as is. 

    For the purpose of this discussion, re: ‘will to fight’ it’s the folks who have the credible and enforceable authority to order forces to fight on behalf of a state.
     

    Also for the purposes of this discussion, it obviously varies by how you bound things in time (among a billion other ways to frame). For example, in our system the ‘will of the state’ comes down to exactly one human at a singular point in the first few minutes of a full-scale nuclear exchange… but you can zoom out from there to all the factors that put the button in his hand, and farther to the system in which that button exists, ad infinitum. 

    • Like 1
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  13. 4 hours ago, tac airlifter said:

     

    Does the logic work both ways?  Would you also say Russia has the will to fight despite their forced conscription?  Because I hear a lot about Russian forced conscription being symptomatic of imminent defeat, which seems like selective bias.

    Yes. Yes. The people who say that are  conflating a state’s intent to fight with the consequences of the policies it uses to do so. Those are related concepts but not the same, regardless of form of government.

     

    • Thanks 1
  14. 4 hours ago, tac airlifter said:

    I'm not sure forced conscription counts as "the will to fight."

    Is there something I’m missing that makes the Ukrainian draft unethical/illegal? Or are they just drafting people because… Russia invaded them (again)?

    Or, in insanity land… you’re right, that greatest generation had no spine because conscription provided 10 million personnel. 

    • Like 1
    • Upvote 1
  15. 5 minutes ago, hindsight2020 said:

    Indeed I have, as well.

    The irony of course, when it comes to that insufferable "your entire livelihood...is just my motherhood" attitude,  is that the plurality of that demographic's personnel losses rests squarely at the hands of the very mOthErHooD they deride as scutwork. Miscontrol/Loss of control in IMC, spatial-D causal.

    Statistically far and beyond mechanical causals, to say nothing of a galaxy's worth of separation from anything resembling enemy action causal. But you can't talk about fight club with that crowd without being shouted down with appeal to authority fallacies. Arrogance is made of such ways, wcyd.

    Which demographic are you talking about?

  16. 54 minutes ago, Biff_T said:

    My son will fight terrorists like his father.  Shit, I bet my grandkids will be fighting in that shit hole called the Middle East.  SWA (south west asia) for life!   

    I would have rather fought in SEA or Europe.  I missed out on the good wars.  

    1) I’m proud of you for not ‘laughing out loud’ for a whole post, Biff. Well done. 
     

    2) There’s still a chance!.. depending on how froggy this (and the rest of the world) gets. 
     

    …lol

    • Haha 2
  17. 14 minutes ago, HeloDude said:

    Nah…you just can’t have a conversation outside of your own emotions.  I used to be that way a long time ago.  How was that steak dinner or chicken sandwich the other day?

    .

    Lighten up. 
     

    Delicious? I don’t share your belief; don’t see your point. 
     

    Like I said, weird hill. If that’s the one you choose to look down on us from, I don’t think many will bother to charge it. 
     

    Cheers. 

  18. 59 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

    If you want to have a philosophical discussion, just say so. You aren't coming off as obvious as you think you are.

     

    So... is there a difference between killing a human in a war and killing them to steal their car? Why

     

    Is there a moral difference between killing a deer for food, and drowning a cat in a pond because you like the sounds they make as they die? Why?

    Homeslice just wants to drink a beer, fvck his horse, and catch an episode of “will it euthanize.”

    Why are we picking on him?
     

     

    • Haha 1
  19. 9 hours ago, HeloDude said:

    It’s pretty easy—there’s no such thing as “animal rights”, so if you can kill an animal for fun, then why should it be illegal to allow them to fight each other if they’re your animals?  I’m not discussing morals whatsoever…if that were the case, whose morals, and what is ok morally and no ok?  I think it’s much worse to abort an unborn child 2 months before birth than to take two dogs you own and have them fight (even though I think that’s also immoral and sick).  It’s called hypocrisy if you support the ability to do one and not the other.

    So I think I understand you to mean: You strongly believe that animals do not have rights. Therefore, laws that treat animals differently are hypocrisy.  For example, if a person supports shooting a coyote (and leaving it to rot, I guess?) but not fighting dogs, that they’re a hypocrite. Therefore your preference is that dog fighting be legal to avoid hypocrisy?

    Does this attachment to the idea that animals don’t have rights make your life so much easier to live that you’d prefer a world in which dog fighting is legal? 
     

    It’s a strange hill, bro. 

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