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Royalfan5

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by Royalfan5

  1. 20 minutes ago, TXSG8R said:

    Did you read the linked article?  It goes into a lot of details on what was wrong. This paper was written by a boots on the ground commander and is a pretty good forecast on what was coming if/when we pulled out. This is all specific to Afghanistan, so if you’re looking for some blanket template to apply to all future nation building, it’s not helpful. I think that’s largely our problem. We try to apply a generic freedom/democracy templates to complicated ethnic and cultural issues and expect to money whip the outliers into place. In case you are a TLDR guy, the highlights I took from it were:

    - A laughable 8 week training course to train illiterate poppy farmers to become the entire structure of their military, including NCOs. We purposely denied entry for the mujaheddin, which starved the new fighting force of what little functional fighters the country had, and handed them to the Taliban. 
    - Trying to force diversity to unit structure in a ham fisted attempt to overcome centuries of ethnic and cultural issues. This further broke unit cohesion and also starved units of qualified bodies because guys from the north couldn’t even speak to guys in the south, too many of one tribe volunteered so they sat unused because unit x already had met that quota, etc. 
    - Never addressing infrastructure beyond the big cities. Volunteers struggled to get to training centers. Trained soldiers struggled to get home on their vacations, so they just went home and never bothered to come back. Supplies and facilities in the remote areas (the places where the taliban was) were starved of resources, which led to further attrition. 
    - Grossly overpaying volunteers in an effort to juice recruitment to achieve goals, despite the Afghan gov’t telling the US not to do it because they would never be able to maintain it. Coupled with the above it became a “go to a training center for 8 weeks and get a fat check” program that didn’t remotely impact retention. Guys got paid and went AWOL. 
    - Providing resources that the illiterate army could never hope to maintain, which meant they had to rely on contractors to keep their army running. Of course, those contractors will GTFO the second the US pulls up their stakes, so this well trained, well equipped army was dead from the jump. 

    While there are a lot of failures here, is it even possible to build a cohesive armed force there? If you did the exact opposite of the above deals, I don't think you necessarily end of closer to a useful national army. 

  2. 1 minute ago, Nicole44 said:

    They already did their part. China. This virus will continue to mutate and be vaccine resistant. I could give a fuck if the government’s of China or Russia were wiped out. No fucks given. We know where their nukes are located. 

    Knowing where they’re at is a lot different than being able to not end up glowing in the dark. 

  3. 2 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

    Can all of those western liberal democracies handle the kind of price shocks that would go with a trade war with China?

    Because if anything this pandemic has showed us is that people here will quietly tolerate shortages and inconvenience as part of a perceived greater good, right? 

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  4. Just now, David Dennison said:

    I honestly don't care where or how it started.

    I’m really only concerned about how we deal with the situation at hand, and given that we can’t stop stepping on our collective dicks on that front, and I can’t imagine how spending a bunch of time trying find something to blame is going to a constructive use of time. 

    • Hook 'Em 6
  5. 3 minutes ago, pyrohornIII said:

    We have a large Kubota dealer in the area, and he usually has well stocked yards and he finances them himself, not under an inventory program.   His stock has dwindled considerably, like from 50 to 5 on pretty much all models and implements.   Not sure if he is scaling back on purpose because he's not getting the sales, or he's having trouble getting stock.  Possibly a combination.   But scarcity of materials is definitely a consequence of this.   

    Pretty much anything ordered now has to be pre-sold by the dealer before it goes out by everyone in Ag or ag adjacent. Until it slacks off no one is going to get anything for stocks until trade. I know of 1 Agco dealer that has basically 3 weeks of full plant production of the big tracked tractors and HHP models already on the books for fall. 

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  6. 3 minutes ago, 27-25 said:

    Stuff like this baffles me.  They use a phrase like 97 percent survival rate and think that means it's all much ado about nothing.  If they believe that number to be true and we all skip vaccines then we'd lose about 10 million people in this country?  And that's OK?  Really?

    I'm sure in their mind the 97% survival rate just means THEY will almost certainly be OK in the end.  And that's all that really matters.

    One of the things working in the commodity business has taught me is that a 3% miss on something like corn yields, or sow farrowings turnings into 30% moves in other areas really quick. I don't think that is something that is grasped by the public at large very well. Also that if you get behind, it's hard as hell to catch up, so you have to stay ahead of things, and the cult of cost cutting is bring that home in a lot of lower end retail business now. Locally we just had a Family Dollar have all their staff quit, near the Burger King where all the staff quit after both places tried to run who they had into the ground. 

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  7. 2 minutes ago, Pancho said:

    And they informed us today that masks are not required at PBA.  I should wear my Longhorn mask just because…

    The Mayor and Chancellor Green have pretty much washed their hands of trying to do anything proactive after dumbfuck Ricketts and Governor Candidate and current Regent Pillen have been trying to kneecap them on everything. 

    • Rage+1 1
  8. 13 minutes ago, Pancho said:

    Defended my dissertation last year, but Nebraska didn’t hold graduation due to COVID.  They invited us back for graduation along with the Class of 2021 grad students, and that graduation is scheduled for next week.  My parents (early 60s) are insisting they go because they really want to watch me get hooded.  With the rise in these new cases, combined with the state of Nebraska not giving 2 shits about COVID combined with my dad’s dad pretty much being on his deathbed right now (and my dad going to visit him near daily), I’ve been trying to put my foot down on them not going and they can just watch me online. 

    Holy fuck are they fighting me on this.  They will not win though. 

    The speed that stuff has fallen apart here in Lincoln has been shocking even with pretty decent vax rates in Lancaster Co. The Garth Brooks Stadium concert is cruising ahead for next week to supercharge things too. 

  9. 1 hour ago, Judge Roybeanbag said:

    Curious if any of you who had covid and lost your sense of smell/taste have recovered it.  My best friend had covid back in late February.  Lost most smell/taste.  He recovered, then got vaxed in April.  He still doesn't have a normal sense smell and taste.

    I got COVID immediately after getting my first Moderna shot. I got symptoms on Sunday, and could taste and smell again by Friday

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  10. I've always loved the Olympics. All of it comes from being raised in a sports loving family that had a bunch of success in wrestling and T and F, along with my Grandma being around at the dawn of Women's sports. (She was in tennis exhibitions vs. the US open champ in the late 40's, and MVP of the Navy's women's basketball team) So this was always something we took seriously, and then getting engaged to a T and F coach/D2 All-Conference athlete enhanced that. I've donated money to the USOC to the athlete funds for year, and will probably continue to do so. While the games have been weird this year, I've found plenty to enjoy, and will probably continue to do so in the future. I'll echo the sentiments that I could give a shit about the nationalism angle, and just want to see athletes doing cool shit, regardless of their flag, and my understanding of their sport. The IOC is corrupt as fuck, and bidding for games is fucked up, but what country does a good job wringing graft out of mega projects? I don't feel worse about watching it that I do any NCAA stuff. And if an athlete wants to use the podium to promote a cause, I say more power to them, because I'm not into needing to police shit because folks can't handle that things are messy, and I don't think the athletes owe me shit. 

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  11. 8 minutes ago, Esque said:

    What are you blabbering about?

    No, I don't want to see - as you put it - "the best in the world regardless of how they get there."  I want to see the best each country has to offer compete under their own flag against other countries.  I would guess that overwhelming majority fall in line with that thought process.  If everyone really wanted to see the best in the world, they'd watch the WCA - and who in the hell watches that?  People watch the Olympics because it is an international event where countries are represented, not because we go to bed at night wondering who can run the 200M hurdle the fastest.

    So you want the US to give up our imports? Shit countries have fought wars with plenty of hired soldiers, why should the Olympics be any different? Why get hung up on blood and soil nationalism now? 

  12. 3 hours ago, Esque said:

    She withdrew from a number of events.  I think people are giving her too hard of a time.  She basically had a mix of vertigo and the yips.  Seems perfectly reasonable to withdraw from events where you're running at high speeds, launching yourself into the air, and twisting and turning based hoping to land based on instinct.  Whereas the balance beam is less of that.

     

    Separately, what's up with all of these Americans competing under other flags?  As others have pointed out, Camacho-Quinn who was born and raised in the United States competed under the Puerto Rico flag.  There have also been two others who's names escape me - one competed for Israel and the other for Jamaica.  May be an unpopular opinion, but that's kind of bush league.

    The US Military literally has a program to recruit Olympic Athletes from other countries. Do you want to see the best in the world regardless of how they get there, or are you someone who jacks off to petty rules bullshit?

  13. 7 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:

    I’m beginning to believe lawmakers have been briefed on how bad this is about to get again and they’re freaked out. And may have leaked it to the Fox News folks too.
     

    They're starting to find out that they were going to be finding out real soon. 

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