This video lacks a lot of salient details.

Yes, the F35 is aiming at the A10 because contractors want jobs (something to do).

However, the strength of the A10 is also its weakness. Low and slow also means that it takes you a long time to get to your troops. Fast jets arrive much sooner (significantly so). A combination of both would be ideal. F35 to get there ASAP, and A10 arriving later to take over.

It's not really worth debating the merit of new fighters. You don't wait for a war to start developing weapons.

Yes, our recent enemies are durkas with small arms, and you don't need an F35 to fight them - but you also don't even need to fight them to begin with - they aren't an existential threat. Terrorist attacks are emotionally charged (well, until they happen so often that you get used to hearing about them, and they stop affecting people), but they are nothing compared to say, a carpet bombing campaign.

The relevance of things like the F35 is to have weapons ready and able to face a large national power, should a nation v nation conflict arise with a significant other nation. In the event that such a conflict ever does, you don't want to be caught with your pants down.

Defense spending costs scale with oversight requirements.

Keep in mind that money pays people. Even materials are simply salaries of the material suppliers. The more people you put on a program, the more that program will cost.

Yes, big contractors make big profits - but the major chunk of their charges is still salaries.

Let me explain what is going on.

Remember the $100 hammers?
In fact, the hammer still cost a few bucks. What cost 100+ bucks was the total charges associated with acquiring a hammer.
Everything someone does in association with acquiring the hammer, gets charged to a charge code that's specific for that task.

Someone has to create a material request - $time.
Someone has to check contracts for whether or not it will be covered - $time.
Someone has to place the order - $time.
Someone has to receiver the package, inspect it, and put it into a received bin - $time.
Someone has to go through the received items and assign them property tags - $time.
Someone has to take the item to the department that needed it, and get someone to sign for it - $time.
Someone has to update the monthly contract report - $time.
Someone has to generate an entry in the process artifacts report, detailing the actions taken in order to acquire the hammer - $time.
Someone on the government side has to review the process artifacts report, and validate that proper process was followed (and if not, punish the company for skipping steps) - $time.

Add up all the minutes here and there that each person charged in association with getting a hammer, and it's $95 on top of a $5 hammer. Which is why little things cost so much.

You could say "Hey, why do all that? Just buy the hammer".
Well, if a company did that, it would be in trouble with govt. oversight folks because they violated the process.
If an employee bought a hammer of his own volition, he would be in trouble with his company for violating the process.
The steps are required, and if you don't follow them, and there is ever any problem/issue, your lack of process will be discovered on investigation, and you could face massive liability - even if it's not even relevant - because it points to careless company culture.

Complex systems like jet fighters necessarily have bugs to work out. When you start using the system, that's when you discover all the bits and pieces that nobody anticipated - and you fix them. That's fine. That's always been the case.



As an airplane example, imagine if there's an issue with a regulator that ultimately causes a system failure - but that issue is just some constant value in a piece of software that determines a duty cycle.

Say for example, that all it takes is changing 1 digit, and recompiling. Ez, right? NOPE!

An engineer can't simply provide a fix.

If something went wrong, even unrelated, but simply in the same general system, he could be personally liable for anything that happens.

On top of that, if there is no contract for work on that system, then an engineer providing a free fix is robbing the company of work, and he could get fired.

A company can't instruct an engineer to provide a fix for the same reasons that the engineer himself can't just do it.

So, the process kicks in.

Someone has to generate a trouble report - $time.
Someone has to identify a possible solution - $time.
Someone has to check contracts to see if work on that fix would be covered under current tasking - $time.
Say it's not covered (it's a previously closed [i.e. delivered] item), so you need a new charge code.
Someone has to write a proposal to fix the defect - $time.
Someone has to go deal with the government to get them to accept the proposal - $time.
(say it's accepted)
Someone has to write new contracts with the government for the new work - $time.
To know what to put into the contract, "requrements engineers" have to talk with the "software engineers" to get a list of action items, and incorporate them into the contract - $time.
(say the contract is accepted)
Finance in conjuration with Requirements engineers has to generate a list of charge codes for each action item - $time.
CM engineers have to update the CM system - $time.
Some manager has to coordinate this mess, and let folks know when to do what - $time.
Software engineer goes to work, changes 1 number, recompiles - $time.
Software engineer checks in new load into CM - $time.
CM engineer updates CM history report - $time.
Software engineer delivers new load to testing manger - $time.
Test manager gets crew of 30 test engineers to run the new load through testing in a SIL (systems integration lab) - $time.
Test engineers write report on results - $time.
If results are fine, Test manager has 30 test engineers run a test on real hardware - $time.
Test engineers write new report - $time.
(assuming all went well)
CM engineer gets resting results and pushes the task to deliverable - $time.
Management has a report written up to hand to the governemnt, covering all work done, and each action taken - documenting that proper process was followed - $time.
Folks writing document know nothing technical, so they get engineers to write sections covering actual work done, and mostly collate what other people send to them - $time.
Engineers write most the report - $time.
Company has new load delivered to government (sending a disk), along with the report/papers/documentation - $time.
Government reviews the report, but because the govt. employees are not technical and don't understand any of the technical data, they simply take the company's word for the results, and simply grade the company on how closely they followed process (the only thing they do understand) - $time.
Company sends engineer to government location to load the new software and help government side testing - $time.
Government runs independent acceptance tests on delivered load - $time.
(Say all goes well)
Government talks with company contracts people, and contract is brought to a close - $time.
CM / Requirements engineers close out the action item - $time.

And this is how a 1 line code change takes 6 months and 5 million dollars.

And this gets repeated for _everything_.

Then imagine if it is a hardware issue, and the only real fix is a change of hardware. For an airplane, just getting permission to plug anything that needs electricity into the airplanes power supply takes months of paper work and lab testing artifacts for approval. Try getting your testing done in that kind of environment.



Basically, the F35 could actually be fixed quickly and cheaply - but the system that is in place right now does not allow for it. And if you tried to circumvent that system, you would be in trouble. The system is required. It's how oversight works - to make sure everything is by the book, documented, reviewed, and approved - so no money gets wasted on any funny business.

Best part, if the government thinks that the program is costing too much, they put more oversight on it to watch for more waste.
Because apparently, when you pay more people to stare at something, the waste just runs away in fear.
Someone at the contractors has to write the reports that these oversight people are supposed to be reviewing - so when you go to a contractor and see a cube farm with 90 paper pushers and 10 'actual' engineers (not a joke), you start to wonder how anything gets done.

Once upon a time, during the cold war, we had an existential threat.
People took things seriously. There was no F'ing around with paperwork - people had to deliver hardware. The typical time elapsed from "idea" to "aircraft first flight" used to be 2 years. USSR went away, cold war ended, new hardware deliveries fell to a trickle - but the spending remained, and the money billed to an inflated process.

-scheherazade

"The rich keep you fed enough that you bark at the intruders." - Some youtuber.

Yes he's a little out of his depth and he's so desperate to try and get people to understand that he's hurrying and nervous. Well, he's a comedian, he isn't used to public speaking, he knows how to make people laugh not convince them in an argument. But he's out there, putting his neck on the line when he doesn't even NEED to - because as the tabloids (controlled by who?) enjoy pointing out he's rich. At least he got rich through his ability to make people laugh, rather than tricking people into voting for him because he'd act in their best interests then selling their decisions to the highest bidder.

We are seeing politicians scrambling for ANYTHING they can to hold power and keep making money for a little longer. That anything is immigration and they're quite happy to let people convince themselves its the immigrants. Even if we are slightly overcrowded for our infrastructure in Britain, we wouldn't be if the money in the system was active and being used to build and be productive instead of sitting in the pockets of people who have everything they want and 8 figure bank balances. These people in charge keep telling us they're going to tackle all these problems, but they never do anything to close the loopholes being used by all the huge corporations who have been paying NO TAX WHATSOEVER during the times of extreme wealth and growth. Is it any wonder our countries are in a dire condition? Our tax system has been starved of hundreds of billions, possibly trillions, who really knows!? And why weren't they closed? Just look at the links between big business and and politics, the only reason we aren't all saying "what the fuck is going on?" is because they can distract people through their control over the media and their convincing oratory skill into going "it's your neighbour.. it's his fault. was he born here? why is he using your hospital?", meanwhile we lose out of BILLIONS because the post office was sold off on the sly! Only to be told next election THAT WE ARE SHORT ON OUR FUCKING BUDGET. You're ok with that happening?! Why is it ok for them to keep coming back having lost our money and asking for more, but if it was a man who came directly to our door to collect our money in exchange for services, we'd tell him to piss off? It's EASIER to blame someone who looks and speaks differently rather than the clever bastard with a gleam in his eye sitting in the pub silver tonguing his constituents.

We are not fucking short on productivity - how many people do you know that think they have a lot of spare time and freedom from work? But that productivity is not being directed appropriately, and if you don't believe that then you need to get outside and talk to people who are less fortunate than you... benefit of the doubt, maybe you just haven't had to see it. But all the money that went on bonuses could be going into improving schools, police, hospitals, public transport and roads and god knows what else. A bunch of people would go without a brand new range rover sport or yacht or champagne holiday for 30... in contrast, thousands less people would die - think of the old people dying in the cold each winter? or hospital beds and treatments for those with cancer or anything that the NHS can't afford to treat? All the freshly educated nurses and doctors thanks to our universities being given cash to improve their facilities and training.

The theory behind all this was trickle-down-wealth, the money will be distributed through society by paying those at the top a lot of money. It CLEARLY does not work, and anyone who suggests otherwise would surely be considered insane. It's not working, we see it not working, so why aren't we fixing it or getting angry and making those in charge fix it?

If Brand is advocating anarchy (and i'd like to know your argument for saying that, i could stand to be convinced), it's because he's exasperated at our inaction and wants to try and stir people to act. We're currently at the other extreme - watching it happen. People are criticising the crowd for being too into brand, too "leftist" or some nonsense. But those are the people that are having their lives drained by these leeches at the top, of course they're only going to come and cheer if someone is going to say what needs to be said. Any other night, it's just drones debating different ways to stack the odds against everyone.

Edited: Tried to make it nicer, more readable, sorry for the long post but he's really really got a great point and i can't understand why we are all ignoring what's going on. We seem to accept that big business WILL get away with not paying billions in tax like that's fine.. but it's not, we can change it, we just have to stop fucking ignoring it and hold these twats to account like Brand is trying to do. It's not like he's suggesting some wild and risky change, he's just saying STOP LETTING AND HELPING PEOPLE STEAL MONEY FROM US. They won't, and watch Farage go bright red when brand talks about his scandals and rich business partners. If they won't, we need to get rid of them. You may not like his demeanour but he is expressing democratic and egalitarian points.

Some system where the wealth of the lowest paid worker was linked to the companies net profit would be nice. If their going to argue that whole "trickle down" thing they can only complain so much when we legally manacle them to their staff!

Or perhaps a national minimum wage based on a fraction of the highest earners.

Or going really crazy perhaps outlaw anything but co-operatives/shared ownership with staff. (that one is probably too complicated and problematic to be practical I fear)

I might suggest a similar system for politicians too i.e. they get paid as much as their poorest citizens, or some sensible fraction of that number. (including private assets to discourage corruption)

Maybe even go the whole hog and make politicians and high ranking civil servants utterly dependant on the state i.e. no significant private property and a state issued lifestyle which matches that of the poorest.

Too Extreme perhaps but if we meet them somewhere in the middle...

The Libertarians and Anarcho-Capitalists would probably go mental, but then how would we tell?

Well, she's right that Trickle-down Economics doesn't work but with this clip being trimmed before and after, I really have no idea what her point was.
She could be going on to say anything at all..

If you have no reason to believe they may be corrupt, then you simply haven't been paying attention.
For the action of the cop to be self defense, you must take his word as truth and ignore the witnesses (granted, they have not been consistent) and you must accept that it's the right method to attempt to manhandle a person for jaywalking (the reason for the stop in the first place) and that it's the right thing to do to escalate a confrontation from a fist fight directly to firearms, ignoring the other options made available like pepper spray, tasers, batons, and backup. If the officer was truly in fear, he only needed to shut and lock his door to be safe, how is that hard?

Your reading comprehension is terrible. He said clearly that it's NOT reasonable or condonable, but is understandable as a misguided attempt to 'lash out' at the system that keeps you down.

I saw lots of white people on TV rioting and looting too, but they don't count because they don't further your (seemingly racist) theories, right?

It seems you've ignored the majority of the protests that have been responsible, civil, and peaceful in favor of focusing on the minority of trouble makers (that insert themselves into ANY mass protest these days) and blame their actions on the entire community (while knowing that most of the rioters are not from the community but have traveled there in order to riot and loot).

As the one's in 'charge', is it not the police that have the responsibility to display 'responsible behavior'? I thought it was your position that behavior works on a trickle down system, where the behavior of the top is emulated all the way down...does that not make this the police chief's fault?

the situation in st louis did not just pop up out of thin air overnight.the tensions between the poor community (mostly black) and the police has been a festering pressure cooker for almost 15 years.

a particularly venal chapter in the st louis police archives is the RNC of 2008,for anybody to absorb some context on the militarization of a police force.

the tinder has been accumulating just waiting for the match.
mike brown WAS that match.
this is not new nor original.
it has happened before.

and as @lantern53 has pointed out:it is the chain of command that sets the tone of how that police force performs their duties.so if those in charge are authoritarian douche nozzles,that attitude tends to trickle down to the everyday cop on the street.

cops by their very nature are authoritarian due to their vocational choice.they respect the chain of command and the authority it represents.to follow orders is to be a "good" cop.

so i do not understand the ridicule that lantern is receiving.he is offering his perspective AS an actual police officer.i am not suggesting that he is right NOR that his opinion somehow exonerates the st louis cop JUST because he is a cop but rather we should listen to someone who actual IS a cop.

there is absolutely ZERO evidence that lantern is a bad cop.we simply do not know how well,or poorly,lantern is at his job.

there IS evidence,however,that lantern tends be a tad racist,authoritarian and contradictory.lantern may be a poor debater but that does not make him a bad cop.

though his defense of zimmerman does reveal an extremely poor judge of character.(seriously lantern?that dude is a full fledged cunt).

but i get it @VoodooV,
lantern is easy pickings.
a right wing authoritarian conservative commenting on a mostly secular left site?
its like shooting fish in a barrel.

sometimes lantern brings it on himself...i know.
his poor debating skills coupled with an almost embarrassing understanding of history and government makes him catnip to someone like you.

its
just
so
easy

i disagree with lantern,pretty much always and i agree that sometimes his biased rhetoric should be taken to task,if only to clear up the bullshit.

but you take it to whole new levels voodoo.
you follow him from thread to thread and chastise and belittle him and THEN act all hurt and shocked when he lashes out at you!

seriously?thats like poking a grizzly bear in the face and then crying when it rips half your face off.

you use the exact same tactics choggie used,but at least he was entertaining.

you are just a bully.
a hypocritical,sanctimonious bully.hiding behind the skirts of others who may find lanterns comments distasteful (which they certainly can be).this is a cowards path and just like all bullies,you rely on the silence of others to continue your persecution of someone who does not have the support of an entire site.

i find your lack of humanity disturbing.
and i will not be silent.
your actions do not deserve respect but rather ridicule.

And there was Nascar driver Dick Trickle.

You people are all believers in euthanasia, aren't you

and euthanasia in what case ??

if you are terminal and are of somewhat age to understand what is going on why not ?? you seem to lump in the definition to killing children based on a parents response. that is just ludicrous an you know it.

people who get to a point where they want to die based on whatever personal troubles that I can not adaquatly list here, they should have that option. I would assume that you belive suicides go to hell. .. . that is their decision, if a mortal body that is conscious and wants to die but can not do it by their own means, should have that option. it is inhuman not to allow that in my opintion.

really all I have been responding to is the other side of the fences argument, which seems to trickles through the fence as ideology/bible/jesus/god/ that sort.

How can you justify your position, you seem to have one but you never actually list any scripture, so is it all based on bible or was this how you are raised ? people do not just come into that style or sort of belief. You want answers from others, I would not mind understanding you a bit more, I am somewhat confused now.

In my eyes you deny people, in my understanding you see them as not worthy of second though or rights.. but based on what ?

I understand that, but criminals are not usually acting criminal 100% of the time either, yet they are treated as if they are by police, prosecuted and imprisoned, and ostracized and 'dehumanized' after release by having most of their rights as a citizen removed. It seems that the reality is that we act like once you've committed (or are convicted of) a crime, you ARE a 'criminal' 100% of the time. If it's proper to do that to ordinary citizens because of temporary criminal activity, why not police?
OR...a murderer doesn't murder most of the time, that doesn't mean it should be ignored when they do...especially not because of their 'job'. If a cop is crooked once, he's a crooked cop. Period. (to me)
To your second point, that illustrates my original point exactly. If they (or you) believe it's proper to lie 'in the furtherance of their duties', why on earth would any reasonable person think that would stop on the stand? Since it's unreasonable to believe they would lie right up to that point, but not on the stand, one can not trust anything an officer says on the stand. That's going to be my position until it's made illegal for them to lie to a citizen, at any time. Even then, it's going to take a while for the 'culture' of lying to change.
EDIT: In your example, of finding severed heads in a trunk, you seem to imply that you think it would be the right thing to do to 'placate the judge' by committing the crime of perjury and saying it was a legal search even if it wasn't...If so, why should your testimony ever be given any weight if you think it's OK to just lie in court? If I misunderstood, forgive me.

You say you and your local force doesn't act this way, but I would ask...do/have you lied to/intentionally misled 'suspects' in order to get them to admit what they did? If so, I'm afraid I see you as part of the problem.
I fully agree with you on one thing, I feel this 'culture' trickles down from the top.

@bobknight33 it seems your viewpoint rests on the fact that minimum wage should be an "entry level wage where one can better oneself [..] to ask for a higher wage."

At least in my country, a lot of the time the vast majority of jobs vacancies are in places that deal with minimum wage - fast food, supermarkets, that kind of thing - because they usually deal with the "basics" that people can't do without. Hence basic, menial and minimum wage for minimum stress at work.

The people who are in better jobs over here have seen a lot of similarly positioned people get sacked so they know they've got to keep hold of their job. Everyone's been cutting back, there's less jobs, and those jobs are tightly held by people with better experience. And then, when better jobs become available, you have lots and lots of low experienced workers applying alongside a select few who used to work - who's more likely to get the job?

Finer points aside, i'd love everyone in the thread to agree that there are a whole bunch of people spending a whole lot of money at walmart - and every other scary-large company. If that money is not cycling around between people then it's stagnating somewhere and doing nobody any good.

Take soccer here in england for example. Soccer players are paid something like £20 000 per week at every top team. A lot of them are actually between £40 000 and £120 000 per week but let's talk approximate. Now look, we should all be able to see that a person couldn't possibly hope to spend that much money. If you want to go to a match, let's call it £40, 60 000 people are giving £40 to go and watch, so that's £2 400 000 and let's say it all goes on wages. Well what's happening is this entire wad of cash is ending up sitting in a bank account somewhere, because this guy can't physically go out and redistribute this cash, spending his money in the normal way and keeping the economy moving and the money spreading.

It's not just footballers and i'm sure we can agree to some extent that this can be seen in a lot of places - a select few are in positions allowing them to amass huge fortunes they can't possibly use.

"Trickle-down" has not worked, it isn't trickling anywhere, they've got the cracks sealed up. Maybe we should be thinking about "trickle up" - if cost us less to watch a soccer match, metaphorically speaking (as in cheaper bills, higher wages, less stagnation at the top), maybe people might feel less stressed, less scared, more generous, more free, the world might be a better place so that services would be better, people would be more dedicated at their job to improve because they stand to earn more, less stress less violence, more money less crime, etc. Is there something to that perhaps?

The problem is it's hard to interject whilst it's all ongoing and say "you're taking this cut, you're taking this cut, all this money is going here, just trust us the world will be a better place." It's not fair to suddenly tell people what they do is only worth half of what it was yesterday. But between the top and the bottom what you have is a rich billionaire smoking a cigar whilst some child in the poorest neighbourhood is sat in 5th-hand-me-downs on a filthy carpet listening to his mother selling her body? That's a guess, i don't know how to best represent poverty, but take any example you like. If the rich person was stood directly next to the baby he'd probably feel outraged and help, but there's a lot of smoke and mirrors that stand between him helping every baby that is every born in the future, because warlmart suddenly can afford to double their lowest wages by halving some of their highest.

To conclude - i don't think minimum wage is as you suggest.

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The stone conservatory is a drooling idiot, the window slit is the idiot mouth, the weather stains are the drool... not a slow trickle, just the hanging saliva. The weather stains are water, but standing in for saliva as the window is standing in for the mouth.

I wish I'd started off by quoting Poetry, I didn't like my first response

Ahh but don't you see? Even in the poem you quoted, what's more likely the meaning of that line?

"The weather-stains for the dribble"

Is it
"The weather-stains for the saliva"

Or?
"The weather-stains for the slow trickle"

Does the author intend to mean the weather that day is made of saliva or simply water?

I understand the difference is subtle, but that's the reason for a DIFFERENT word.

Keep in mind that Jinx described his own meaning as human saliva.

Meh. The noun form is the one that's really important because that's how it was used in the sentence.

What he said was:
"...it's already lost in a sea of dribble"
What that means is:
"...it's already lost in a sea of the act of dribbling"
or
"...it's already lost in a sea of a small quantity"
or
"...it's already lost in a sea of a slow trickle"

--------------------

The real issue here is the snide response I didn't like and the unwillingness of people to admit they're wrong and correct a mistake.

Ironically, by saying "it's already lost in a sea of dribble," then defending the misuse of that word @Jinx was adding to the drivel on the internet without realizing it.

See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Hmm... we could both have to hand in our pedant cards after this.

The important part of the definition for this discussion is, as a noun, an act or instance of dribbling. The verb means to allow saliva to trickle from the mouth, and the synonyms are:

drool, drivel, slaver, slobber, drip, spit, saliva.

If you say someone had dribble on their face, or had dribbled on their face, you don't need to qualify it with saliva as the meaning is already implied.

You know, it's not too late to ninja-edit both our comments and pretend none of this ever happened...