Trump

[mgreenspan]

Man. I'm confused on how they aren't paying for the travel and lodging. All the AF reserve guys I've seen get paid for everything travel related. Is that an Army thing?

 

[The_Vermonster]

Is it safe to assume by that you are touting the military industrial complex and the idea of war for the sake of profit? Some of that is tough to deny, a lot of that notion is also simplistic and fails to take into account a number of factors (for example, strategic rivalry between countries has, in the span of history, always helped both countries grow economically so long as it was absent major conflict. Since we haven't had a major conflict since WWII...but have had unprecedented growth compared to the scope of human history...anyway).

Yeah it was partially tongue in cheek. Many, but not all, of our current problems stem from someone decades ago making a decision that personally benefited them and trying to cover it up. Some people just capitalize on the mistakes of others. The Dick Cheney, Halliburton connection definitely sticks out in my mind.

That doesn't make engineers necessarily predisposed to terror.

That assumption will be your downfall.

 

[Ray_G]

Yeah it was partially tongue in cheek. Many, but not all, of our current problems stem from someone decades ago making a decision that personally benefited them and trying to cover it up. Some people just capitalize on the mistakes of others. The Dick Cheney, Halliburton connection definitely sticks out in my mind.


That assumption will be your downfall.

Without a doubt many of the issues we have today are due to personally benefitting decisions, but I'd say more frequently they are due to personal bias, naivete, and/or ignorance.

That said, in the grand scheme of things the issues we have today aren't all that significant. Many don't seem quite willing or capable of digesting that. While we live in a confusing multipolar world, the international institutions and financial order created during and after WWII have helped more than they've hurt. That assistance, to the globe, is uneven of course but nonetheless wars are smaller despite populations growing.

The attention paid by a media that doesn't put things in context, and perhaps more importantly the inability for people to fathom that which they haven't experienced coupled with the desire to believe they live in critical moments in time (despite how rare that it is) conspires.

The most insidious conspiracy is the eroision of confidence in those aforementioned institutions (which are one in the same with the so called mil-ind complex). That erosion will eventually give us the chance to see what our forefathers did so we too can experience what mankind is capable of.

Since this thread is about Trump; see also Bannon/4th Turning...b/c that jackass wants that reckoning.

Cheers!
r-
Ray

 

[chris snell]

Man. I'm confused on how they aren't paying for the travel and lodging. All the AF reserve guys I've seen get paid for everything travel related. Is that an Army thing?

If you're on TDY, you're getting paid for lodging and your per-diem. Drill/battle assembly isn't TDY, though. You get paid drill pay for every four-hour MUTA block that you sign in for but that's really it. Sometimes there is lodging-in-kind (LIK) for people driving in but the funding for this is always a clusterfuck. Invariably, multiple Soldiers and officers are shacking up together in a single hotel room. The travel pay was purely at commander's discretion and only if there was funding. It was something I was offered when I got the recruiting email for the job but it ended up being a fantasy once I made the trip to Hawaii.