sherpa

No offense intended, but this is an incorrect conclusion from the reality. It was a checkride. You don't "refuse" on a checkride. She simply didn't respond immediately. It was a stupid process, but the reason was the switch to a different runway and not holding the helo at that point, well out of the way. It wasn't "her."

Even that premise is ridiculous. The comment I made about enlistment rate trends being a positive were a direct and immediate response to someone claiming such a situation was a bad thing because it was budget busting, which is preposterous. After that, the pure fiction began.

So you invent quotes that were never said. Create viewpoints never expressed, and now demand responses, as if you have any qualification to do so. The point is I don't care about Hegseth. What I do care about is cabinet level influence at the Pentagon, which ultimately goes downstream to our services. I do care that the past four years were marked by political appointments that were identity driven and not positive nor effectual. Much the same as other gov institutions. If Hegseth can reverse that and redirect the focus on fighting wars instead of social experiments, I'm OK. If not, or if he proves to be a risk to that goal by lack if discipline or incompetence, fire him. Not complicated. I care as much about him as I do about you.

Add another to the list of things I've never said.

Stop the senseless judgement. You're wrong again.

We can be better "friends," once the gross abuse is addressed. If you are not aware of that, and I am, you seem quite happy to tolerate it as long as it doesn't effect you. Trump is calling a spade a spade, but like the frog in heated water, we have put up this this horsestuff for years. Whether it's trade, NATO or the UN, the American worker has been abused by these entities for years. I feel pretty good about how it will work out, but it absolutely needed to be addressed. Perhaps not in his tactless manner, but it needs to stop.

Not me. Not for a second, and I'm not a fan of Trump at all. The previous gov was clearly a Regency gov., and none knew who the Regents were. DOD was a mess. FAA was a mess. Hegseth cannot make another security misstep, but the plan underway, which is to return warfighting to DOD, is far better than the strategy to run it as a social program, appointing people nobody respected. As those are cleared out, there is bound to be the usual Washington blowback from those impacted.

Just bought a 100k CD for our vol fire dept. Six months. 4.1%. Yield curve still inverted. Nothing close to 5% available unless you go full lunatic, and even then, not available.

This is so typical of your stuff and the stuff that gets put out here all the time. This, or these, were strikes against a country which has no air defense. There is no evidence, anywhere, that such information effected anything. You have two carriers in the Red Sea. That's a pretty small body of water with a lot of ships and a few belligerents who could have clearly seen the arming and positioning for the strike. I'm not excusing the idiocy of putting this on unsecured social media. What I am saying is that it had no influence on anything. Comparing this to any serious strike against a target that had significant anti air defenses is silly. The guy screwed up. It amounted to nothing. I don't excuse him for that, but I think comparing it to anything of a serious nature is wacky politics at play, as always. If the second charge is true, and not accidental, get rid of him. If not, get over it and be glad that we are finally doing something that makes sense, saves airplanes, shipping and lives, which we absolutely weren't under the previous group of who knows who making decisions. And by the way, with all the crap thrown around here, I have never seen anybody, ever dispute what I have stated about the strategy involved, which is far more important than Hegseth's stuff. That is what matters. That is what I have posted on, repeatedly. Never seems to be an issue with folks here. It's all about getting political pound of flesh, and not what matters.

No. Wrong again. Hegseth gets no pass from me. The "grunts" as you call them don't need a SecDef as an example. They need to be trained, prepared, equipped and deployed capably and honestly. Most couldn't name the SecDef, and that is fine. I think you are amazingly naive about this. There are secrets and there are secrets. Your comparison of this to Mossad is ridiculous, and I guarantee you the SecDef is in possession of far more things that would climb the ladder to your analogy which he wouldn't disclose. Didn't happen. Again, I have no interest in defending the guy, and couldn't care less about him personally, but firing him? I say that with the caveat that I really don't know what the second circumstance was, and if he has a defense, I'm willing to listen rather than send him out to the firing squad because, be assured, there are entrenched individuals who will do whatever they can to avoid upsetting the status quo. Just like illegal immigration, DOD is an independent industry that seeks to maintain their current circumstance.

People in senior positions don't need to have an "example." Doing this, if he did it intentionally, and I think there is some question, is a stupid, irresponsible action, but these folks in senior positions don't need to be led by example. They kind of know what they're doing after 30 years. What they do need is sensible, rational policy, and choosing leaders based on record of performance instead of gender and ID politics.

It's been happening since war was invented. That is not to say it is OK, or should be tolerated, but if you fired everyone who shared info with a spouse you wouldn't have anybody left. Again, condemnable, but if it ends now, I'm over it as I think we have have far more serious things to worry about. The press loves the story because it's easy and requires no knowledge of actual import, but, if it was related to a strike where any level of capable integrated air defense was in opposition, I would be very disturbed.

Perhaps you should stop telling people what to do. I don't know enough about the changes at DOD to do that, and I really doubt anyone here does either. I do know that the previous DOD and senior Pentagon people were not well thought of by the people in positions I am familiar with, and they had a bit of the Vietnam control from Washington going on, where there was significant disagreement between the guys with the triggers and the suits in DC, and that is never good. Hegseth was a strange and risky choice, but he expressed solidarity with Trump in getting the war fighting aspect back instead of this insane social experimentation that was going on in both training and appointees. It's too early for me to have an opinion on him, except to be displeased at these stupid mistakes that thankfully had no consequences.

You should apologize because you lied. I have never said anything close to the quote you invented. Further, nobody here has any "responsibility" to anyone else, except maybe to be honest and not lie about them or assign views. The Hegseth thing was really stupid. I'm not certain the truth about the second occurrence is really known yet. Still, the impact was zero, because the Houthis couldn't do anything about it. But it can't happen. The impact of actual insanity in handling our military is absolutely impactful though. To wit, the foolishness that Washington imposed on Red Sea carriers that were firing million dollar plus missiles against few hundred dollar drones. Seeking authorization to strike in Yemen, they were denied, except to attack sites that had just launched drones. The Houthi actions resulted in length deployment extensions for the Ford and Eisenhower task forces. These extensions really impact maintenance schedules and subsequent deployments. More importantly the dramatically impact retention rates, which are more important than recruitment goals. The US servicemen throughout the ranks operate very sophisticated systems that take years to master. Senior enlisted and junior officer retention is critical, and it is really harmed by continued extensions to scheduled deployments. You recruit the serviceperson, but you "retain" the family, and understanding that is crucial. In the last few months, the Pentagon has OK'ed offensive operations against Yemeni positions that support or supply the Houthis, and that is a logical, sense making approach compared to what we were doing under the previous admin. I don't care if the fire Hegseth or not. I care immensely that our military is deployed with purpose and intelligent response.

I'm not sure what this additional bullstuff means, and by the way I have never expressed any "lover for these idiots," to quote your additional lie.

I have not interest is addressing someone's invented fantasies, and I have never claimed anything remotely close to your invented quote: "Oh yeah, man, it's totally cool the guy was texting his mistress battle plans to show off." You made it up and assigned it. Total nonsense.

Absolute nonsense, and complete bullstuff. You invented this claim, and then further assigned it to someone. This happens way too frequently here, and it's deliberate deception. I commented on military recruitment, and the good news what it was up. I then argued why that was important given the mission and the status of our current capability. The claim you made is your pure fantasy, preposterous, impossible and a lie.

I am unfamiliar with this claim. Who did this?

Say whatever you want. I'm just stating how it is. Iran is way more dangerous than it was. Russia has started a war. China is very aggressive.

It doesn't matter how anybody rates the "relative peacefulness" of a president. What matters is what Congress has deemed the military mission to be, and what it takes to be able to provide that. Right now, the mission is to be able to wage full warfare on two fronts. One in the Middle East or Europe, and the other in the Pacific. That takes a certain amount of manpower and capability which we currently don't have. We are short about 1000 Air Force pilots. We have fewer and far older airplanes than in decades. We could not possibly handle the operational tasking we covered during Desert Storm. Not possible. We are short two carriers, a bunch of Naval Aviators, and we can't man the carriers we do have. Every carrier that has gone to CentCom, or the Med/Red Sea has been extended beyond reasonable time. That has a massive impact on retention. We are wearing out our airplanes, which have a defined service life, at an astounding rate. Far accelerated from the initial plan. Our ship building capacity is sorely lacking, but getting better. That's the way it is. Want to change that? Change the mission requirement. Either way, the bump in recruitment is the best news in years.

This makes absolutely no sense. The recruitment numbers, and trend changes are very good news. Undeniable.

There's a good deal of irony in this. Jesus was put to death by the Romans, because the Jews did not have that power under occupation. He was put to death on a made up charge of sedition, which was a capital offense under Roman rule. The Jewish church Pharisees and leaders pleaded with the Romans to do it, thought Pilate had no desire to do so. The reason they did it was because he was upsetting their nonsense Jewish law, which they had invented over the years, far away from what Moses was given. So, Jesus gets executed for going against non religious traditions. Everything posted in the claim of disparaging the Easter celebration is also a non religious human "tradition."

I used to go to Guayaquil and Quito a few times per year. I liked their coconut broth sea food dish called Encocado de Pescado. Very good because the fish used is covina, which is even better than Chilean Sea Bass. Kind of like halibut but a bit better. I always ordered ceviche, because that is my favorite food in the world, but it's better in Peru. I found the food in Guayaquil to be better, since it's a coastal town catering to tourists. The food in Quito was more traditional, but I still ordered the ceviche. But they sold roses for dollar per dozed, so I always bought a couple dozen home.

Unfortunately, that isn't currently possible. There is no such coalition available or foreseeable. The US Navy is the only force dealing with freedom of navigation in international waters, just as the US military is the only force behind NATO, and footing the bill, and just as the US industrial base is footing countless foreign tariffs aimed against us, by allies and enemies. That is the reality.

A common, and meaningless event. We do this same thing all the time.