sherpa

Nobody "tough" or in the least intelligent, allowed themself to be drafted then. A number of fakes, John Kerry comes to mind, served as officers for their own personal reasons, but nobody allowed themselves to be drafted, and serve as enlisted, unless they had no option or were crazy.

Say what you want about Trump, but everybody who could, dodged the draft during the mandatory draft period of Vietnam run by LBJ. Everyone. Completely different world. To not acknowledge that is pure ignorance.

I get what you're saying but the intel sharing between the Israelis and the rest of the world, since the early 80's has been the same. They simply don't reveal what they are going to do except for AWACs noticeable flights, and they don't reveal the actual mission of those flights. The US and the UN in particular, which is nothing more than a US funded spy haven, are not good at keeping secrets. Everybody knows it, and plans accordingly.

The Israelis never inform the US or anyone else on their super secret ops. Never told us about the operations regarding taking out Iraq or the Syrian nuc plants. They don't trust the US ability to not leak. Completely justified. What they do is tell us about air activities that the US would notice anyway, as we have AWAC coverage and would spot, so as not to surprise. Very smart to withhold this info until completed. The US is an intel sieve.

That's what happens when one group builds a successful democracy and the other spends billions building tunnels to support an attack on your neighbor, and does nothing else. Let's see. Hamas has done nothing and waged the most barbaric attack in recent decades. Hezbollah is another non state entity that possesses more missiles than Germany and France combined, at leas before the massive recent launches, solely designed to attack Israel. Israel also faces attacks from Syria, the Houthis and Iran, constantly. Israel has offered a Palestinian state more than once and always rejected. No other Arab state will support accommodating the Palestinians. Not a single entity who insists on a Palestinian state offers up any realistic leadership that does not want Israel eliminated. Israel faces hundreds or missiles every day. Sure, people in the United States have any standing for condemnation.

Or have them all killed, as has been tried many times, and is the stated goal now, though they settled in this land owned by them, by international agreement, successfully developed by them, creating a democratic culture and economy not ever approximated by those who are trying to exterminate them, with nobody to "negotiate" with who has not publicly expressed a goal to kill them all. Sure..They're the problem.

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here, but having 8000 missiles fired at your civilian population in the past year, by an entity that has expressed a desire to kill every single one of you, wherever you live, might alter your view.

Nonsense. It is a country who has carved incredible success for its people in an area where that has not existed, and is under daily attack on three fronts, being supported by a distant enemy ever single freakin' day. There is no entity, anywhere, who deserves our or other's support more. Period. The Palestinian thing is nonsense. Turkey was the Palestinian state. Arafat tried to overthrow Hussein, the decent Hussein. Got thrown out and moved to Lebanon, where he destroyed that country and became incredibly wealthy in the process.

Disagree. A philosophical discussion of bailouts was not an issue then. A collapse of the capital markets was, and it would have been a far worse economic catastrophe. Some were allowed to fail, some were propped, and it worked. Libertarian philosophy is desirable and valuable, but there are times when defending the core that supports everything is the right thing to do, then clean up afterword.

Fully disagree. There is a time when things get so dangerous that the need is preserve the system. Our entire system could have collapsed then, with no guarantee of outcome, and it would have been worse for the world beyond our shores. Your last two paragraphs, suggesting the "gov" should have had anything to do with restructuring is a position I could not disagree more with. The gov is horrible at this, and there wasn't/isn't any agency who was in position to do this. The system needed to be saved. They did it.

I have absolutely no problem with monetary policy. I think it saved us in 2008 and again during covid. I am not concerned with what has happened or assigning some political component to Fed policy. I think the independent Fed has been brilliant. The problem is with fiscal policy designed to buy votes, and we are in the "silly season," between the announcing of the candidates and their attempt to win an election. Promises made during this sill season are nearly always bad policy.

No. The US Central Bank was not the only one printing money. Covid related price increases were real, but should have been short term unless there was another factor. The other factor was the massive printing of money without similar increases in production.

Tariffs nor tax cuts are an inflation fix. They have their own reasons for efficacy. Inflation is solved by sound fiscal and monetary policy. Certainly, the absolute dumbest ideas come from those trying to buy votes ie., a $25k "award" to first time home buyers, or forgiving student loans. Those are idiotic. The way you "fix" inflation," which is nothing more complicated than a diminishing of the currency value vis a vis a product, is to stop printing money at ridiculous rates, or upsetting market dynamics by throwing money at "preferred" products.

Please. The recent bout of inflation, about 20% since 2020 was due to over stimulus excused by covid. It was necessary to stimulate, but the last one was ill advised. Much more money chasing the same production results in higher prices, and a good deal of that money has entered capital and stock markets, as always. The argument that it was due to supply shock is specious. That black swan existed for a bit, but having returned to normal, if that was the case prices would lower as supply chain issues resolved. Same thing happens in the energy market all the time. Hurricanes, refinery issues, middle east turmoil etc cause a brief spike in prices. Once those individual issues are resolved, prices fall to normal supply/demand levels. The point is that the inflation we are now paying for was do to over supply of money and bad fiscal policy. Not supply chain problems which, largely, no longer exist.

The Cowboys. Undeserved sense of royalty. When I was but a pup I got an electric football game for Christmas. I ordered Bills and Cowboy jersey decals and put them on. Time after time in my games the Bills destroyed them Then........weird situation that I won't go into, but it involved over confidence, the person I was playing against won it for the Cowboys, though it was really my fault. Anyway, theses players/figures were made out of plastic. The next day I melted the Cowboy figure who scored for their win.

A twenty first century version of the old Trojan Horse operation. Bravo. Well done.

Another in the seemingly unending chain nonsense of energy market understanding.

I get it. But the original in Top Gun is what it's really like. The music score is perfect. The buildup you feel prior to launch is captured. The steam. The deck guys, "shirts" as we knew them and respected them by, is so accurate. Any scene that effects my metabolism is one that I will note, and this onw always has.

I was a check captain on the 757/767, qualling a new copilot. Left JFK for San Francisco on 9-10. Left San Francisco for the return a 6am west coast time. After level off, made the usual seat belt PA. Got a message on our cockpit printer from the company: "Numerous cockpit incursions. Do not allow anyone in the cockpit." I thought that was weird, so didn't mention it to the new copilot. A few minutes later, we were north of Las Vegas and got another message. "Numerous cockpit incursions. Do not allow the door to be opened. Defend the cockpit at all cost. Suggest diversion." These are not normal comms. There was an extra guy in the cockpit, an old Navy bud who was going to New York, and I invited him up to catch up. We had the capability to pick up AM radio, though we never did, so I asked him to listen to an am station and he told me about the breaking news. We were the only ones on the ATC frequency, so not any info, so I told the controllers I was turning back to San Francisco. Pushed it up to max mach and started back. As a west coast Naval Aviator, I knew all the civilian and military runways that could handle us, so I was prepared to drop in if anything happened. Had the flight attendants build a mini barricade in from of the cockpit door, manned by our three, of eight, male flight attendants. Never said a word to the passengers until well into the descent. The company kept bothering me with messages to verify i still had the cockpit. Eventually they asked me to verify by sending a password that nobody when you selected it, was told nobody would ever see as as a check airman, it gets you into really back door stuff. I sent it. A few days later I asked how they knew it. The guy said, " We didn't, but we typed in your employee number and it worked, so we knew it was you." Bay approach control cleared me for a noise abatement approach called the "Quiet Bridge," which avoids high density areas of the east bay and comes over the San Mateo Bridge, but is longer. By now, knowing my company had lost planes and with no idea what was to happen, I told them I was not going to fly any noise abatement approach, but was going to point the thing at the approach end of 28R, the closest runway, and land it. I also added, and if someone tries to get through our door I'm going to put this ***** thing in the Bay, and you better come get us. Using profanity is not legal, so during the pause in his response, I thought he may not have liked that. Anyway, after a pause he said" If you put it in the Bay we'll get you." Landed, followed by about 30 vehicles with armed folks. Called home to have the Mrs. tell the kids I was OK, as they knew I was flying transcons from NY to the west coast that week on my airline which was involved. Found out who had been killed. Having flown 77 from Dulles to LA for the previous two years I knew those people. Did a conference call with the FBI that afternoon and told them saw nothing in the exiting passengers, and also told them they were off before I ever got to the door because I was busy shutting the airplane down. Simply horrible.

I'm not sure people know this, but on a widebody airliner you cannot see your wingtips from the cockpit. It is never wise to assume some other airplane will not stop, but if you do assume that and keep moving this can happen. Never, ever a good idea to stop at a taxiway intersection. Always pull away from the intersection, and then stop. Free widebody taxiing advice to stick in your quiver. Where you gonna get that 'cept here?

Funny you should mention that movie. The "shooter," who is the officer that presses the catapult launch button once everything is OK, was my flight instructor during advanced Navy jet training. Good guy and still a friend. That movie had quite a bit of collateral damage. There's an F-14 that does an extremely low to the water pull out. The guy who did it was trying to make it cooler than he should have. Overstressed the airplane. A senior officer doing liaison with the studio got caught with his hand in the cookie jar and lost his career. Top Gun was much more scrutinized as the result, and had no such issues, although famous civilian acrobatics pilot was killed during filming of a spin scene.

Depends on who the advisors are. She has never demonstrated any skill in anything, and also has a history of significant staff problems. Trump is Trump. I think they have a much deeper bench in both economic and foreign policy areas, and if he is elected, I hope he has learned a bit from his first term chaos. Her......I have no hope. I think she is the worst candidate for national office that I have ever seen, and evidently most of the country agreed with that point until she was installed. Either way, barring some black swan event, one of them gets elected and we hope for rational candidates in four years.

I don't know. What I do suggest is that she has absolutely no experience in this, is not a smart individual so will not enjoy a steep learning cure, and being a San Francisco Dem has a very bad, actually nonexistent, connection to any of this. The reality is that she seems to be completely dependent on advice instead of knowledge, experience or core values, so whatever she thinks this week is from advisors that I have no idea of, and quite different from her past. I have no idea who we are electing if she wins, but she seems to not not have the skills needed to do this, so we would be electing another group of back room Dem Party folks like have been running Biden for the last two + years.

The woman actually advocated for US taxpayer funding of transgender surgery for illegals. Goodness, how crazy is that. Now she's suddenly changed? As Bernie Sanders implied, it's simply to win an election. She is crazy and has always been.

Compared to Harris? Absolutely they'd prefer Trump. I don't think Harris could spell military. Trump has said remarkably stupid things, ie. "I know more than the ..." but the bottom line is that he comes down on their side. It's what he always does across so many subjects. Says really stupid things, then chooses the correct course. I have no list of who this "list" of people who said he was a threat to national security is, and I'd like to see it, but i really don't get interested in those things as there are so many agendas. Trump's wines are quite good. The group that runs the place is very good, and has nothing to do with him. The place has an interesting history, nothing to do with him, but I am quite familiar. Gorgeous place, but many around here are. They're about fifteen mins from me and we run into them at various events.