l3ubba

Cool idea but as far as realistic prices that is very subjective. I know in Florida the last fine schedule had citations that were only $20-$50. If you got a $200 citation then you did something pretty serious. I think speeding citations were about $130 if I remember correctly.

Ford has revealed their new interceptor utility. Doesn't look that much different than the current one out now but I think I like it a little better. This still doesn't make up for the fact that the Crown Vic is gone, it is going to take awhile for me to get over that even though it has been almost 4 years now (they grow up so fast). But anyway... http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/2016-ford-police-interceptor-utility-official-pictures-and-specs/

It is the same point as any other drink. In that case what is the point of juice? At one time alcohol was the safest thing to drink because they didn't know how to get rid of the bacteria in water or milk.

Has nothing to do with being drunk. There are plenty of people who enjoy going out and having a few drinks and not getting shit faced. Although, I can tell you from personal experience some fun stories are made when you are really drunk. I don't usually go out and get drunk, but on special occasions I have gone drinking with friends and got pretty hammered. On topic, I personally enjoy Red Stripe and Yuengling, both of them are lagers and taste pretty good. I am not really into the hard liquor as the taste is pretty harsh in my opinion and it doesn't take very many of those drinks to make things not enjoyable anymore.

The people that committed most of these attacks did not rally behind an extremist group like many of the people today do, they were upset about what was going on and wanted to do something about it. Bottomline, destroying ISIS will do nothing to stop attacks against the US or any of our allies. And wasting time, money, and American lives in Iraq or Syria will not solve anything. The root of the problem lies within the population of those countries; they don't care about maintaining their country's security. Why should the US be responsible for constantly going into those countries and defending it if the problem is just going to come back in a couple years. I feel like history is just repeating itself, apparently nobody has learned any lessons from the last 2-3 times.

During your research did you happen to look at anything from the 1960s onwards. There were lots of attacks and hijackings back then. This kind of stuff isn't new, it has been going on for awhile. Only thing that has changed is some of the methods used to carry out attacks, has nothing to do with frequency.

No, the frequency was just as much as it is now. The only difference I can think of between then and now is that these attacks involve fewer and fewer people. Before a group of 5 or 6 people would get together and plan out an attack; now it is usually just one or two people.

That is not true at all. There have been plenty of attacks conducted since the 1960s. Just like there has been lots of "cop hating" since before 5 years ago and people did openly state how they felt about police and people did direct attacks toward police just for being police officers. What do you think the L.A. riots were about? The only difference between then and now is that either the media is covering it more and more and/or people are just don't know enough (or just forgot) about what has happened in the past. Through the investigations and intelligence that comes out. Leaders of groups such as ISIS and other violent extremist organizations (VEOs) encourage and praise lone wolf attacks, but they are too busy conducting larger operations in the middle east or where ever they are located to plan, finance, and execute small scale attacks especially when there are lots of people out there willing to do it on their own. This doesn't mean that killing leaders or completely destroying these VEOs will stop the lone wolf attacks. The ideology is already established and there will always be people upset about something. Unfortunately lone wolf attacks are difficult to predict and prevent, that is why they are becoming more and more popular. They are usually very simple to plan and conduct and can be done so in manners that are very hard to detect.

Actually you are wrong about that. While Boko Haram share the same beliefs they are completely separate groups. I am not sure where you heard that al-Qaeda and the Taliban are under the IS banner. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are actually fighting against IS. They broke away from al-Qaeda last year and al-Qaeda has been fighting them since because al-Qaeda even thinks they are too extreme. I don't know where you are getting information that they are providing leadership to all Islamic extremist groups but that couldn't be further from the truth. There are only a handful of extremist groups that want to associate with ISIS, most of them believe they are too extreme and have actually been fighting against ISIS. Referencing the American Revolution and Big Stick diplomacy is great but those were from a time when we fought actual countries with conventional armies. You can't exactly have diplomacy with a terrorist organization, they don't care about diplomacy. We went into Iraq and Afghanistan with big sticks and very little was accomplished. These attacks against the US, France, and other countries were carried out by lone wolves, they were not organized by any leadership from an extremist group. These kinds of attacks are extremely difficult to predict and prevent. We could go into the middle east and Africa and wipe out every last Islamic extremist group but there will always be individuals who are upset and want to take action against the west. Those are the people who will decide to grab a rifle and kill as many people as they can without warning. Those kinds of people might be inspired by groups such as ISIS but that doesn't mean killing ISIS will stop those attacks from happening.

We have had significant presence in Africa before and still do now to a certain extent. We were in Somalia for a few years, we have been involved in lots of anti-piracy operations off the east cost of Africa, the US Air Force and Navy sent a pretty decent size contingent during the conflict in Libya to set up no fly zones and launch cruise missiles, and we have sent lots of troops to several countries in Africa to help train their military. The Marines and Army Special Forces have both spent lots of time in Africa training several different countries over there. Granted our presence in Africa hasn't been as significant as it has been in the middle east but most people don't know how much we actually do over there, and not because its classified or anything just because the media doesn't focus on it. The DoD actually created Africa Command (AFRICOM) a few years ago because operations there are starting to pick up. *Unrelated note* For those of you who don't know, each region of the world has a geographic command associated with it (NORTHCOM, SOUTHCOM, EUCOM, AFRICOM, CENTCOM, and PACOM) which are responsible for everything in their area of responsibility (AOR). Africa didn't get its own command until 2007, prior to that Africa was split between European Command (EUCOM), Central Command (CENTCOM), and Pacific Command (PACOM). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Combatant_Command

I know changing continents doesn't change the crew or training, my point being that you are putting pieces together that aren't there. None of those incidents you listed have anything in common. Yes, Asia is seeing a rapid growth in air travel and it is possible that to meet demands they are not training pilots the correct way but to say "well I'm going to assume its pilot error" because of a bunch of other well publicized crashes in that region within 24 hours of the incident with next to no reports coming out of it is premature to say the least. Half of those incidents that you are basing your pattern off of aren't even fully investigated yet. You can't really put together a pattern when the information isn't there yet.

You are constantly downplaying Boko Haram when in reality they are not that different from ISIS. They are just as dangerous and have the same goals. What makes you think destroying ISIS leadership will make them crumble. Last I checked we took out a lot of al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership and there are still plenty of them running around too. The founder of Boko Haram (Mohammed Yusuf) was captured and executed back in 2009 and a new leader stepped up. I would say that Boko Haram has become even more dangerous since their founder was killed. While I don't think we should just sit back and watch I also don't think sending troops back into Iraq will accomplish anything in the long run, it will just be another waste of American money and lives.

Out of those three incidents you listed only one of them has a complete investigation. The storm clouds that AirAsia flight ran into could also extend horizontally. So would you say it would have been a mistake to try and fly around them too? The fact the aircraft is only ten months old doesn't rule out the possibility of mechanical failure. The DC-10 and 737s both had issues when they were first introduced and on most of these aircraft there have been faults found in aircraft later in its production life that hadn't been discovered before. Just because an aircraft is brand new and has been in production for a certain amount of time doesn't mean it is exempt from new mechanical errors. I also spend a lot of time involved with aviation but that doesn't mean I can come up with a hypothesis based on no evidence. The "evidence" you are claiming to have is all based off of incidents from separate airlines, separate aircraft, and separate countries (Asiana 214 didn't even occur on the same continent). These airlines aren't even from the same countries; Asiana is from South Korea, AirAsia is from Indonesia, and TransAsia is from Taiwan. The only thing these incidents have in common is that the airlines were based in the same region of the world. Here is an article saying the pilots had radioed a distress call saying they had an engine flameout. There were three people in the cockpit with about 28,000 combined flight hours. http://avherald.com/h?article=48145bb3&opt=0

The pilots can still be good and make an error. Nobody is perfect. I am assuming either of you guys are absolutely perfect at something and will never make a mistake? "until more information comes out...I'm going to continue to believe pilot error." That doesn't make any sense, we don't know anything about the crash and the investigation just started but you are going to automatically assume it was pilot error? What evidence is this based on? All of this media coverage on aviation accidents lately has apparently made everyone experts in that field.

No need to play stupid. Everyone knows who he is talking about and it is just trolling. Don't need to go into more detail about it because it is not related to this topic. If we do what you suggest then we will never leave the middle east. No matter what we do there will always be groups over there that hate us and want to kill us. I feel like nobody has learned anything about the last 14 years. 8 year in Iraq and this is the result. Why is the result going to be any different the next time? In the end it comes down to the population of those countries, they allowed it to happen. All of this time and money we spent training the Iraqi Security Forces and they got rolled over by the same people they were fighting when we were there. The War on Terror is just like the War on Drugs, they are both never ending. I say instead of wasting all this manpower and money on fighting over pieces of land that nobody cares about (even the people that live there apparently) we should invest in better security measures and new technology to prevent attacks because that will keep us safer than fighting a never ending war. How is going after Boko Haram futile but going after IS is not. Is it because another person will take over and continue Boko Haram's mission? Why would that be any different than organizations like al-Qaeda or IS? They will just have another person step up and take over.

The Japanese are not that interested in building up a large army. They have a defense force that is sufficient enough to protect themselves and they also have a huge backing from the U.S. so they are doing pretty well for themselves actually. Again, how is this different than what is going on in Africa. There are U.S. citizens getting killed in Africa and just like there are US citizens joining ISIS there are also US citizens going to Africa to fight there too. The only difference is that the media doesn't talk about it so few people know what is going on. Boko Haram is also growing in power and influence but I don't see anyone saying we need to go into West Africa and stop them. Boko Haram controls large parts of Nigeria and Niger, they also have ties to ISIS and al-Qaida and they have been around a lot longer than ISIS.

Yes and no. There are some unique issues in Africa that don't exactly translate to the issues in the middle east however for the most part they are the same. Who do you think drew the borders in the middle east? The U.S. and Britain. Just like in Africa the borders were not drawn with consideration of different tribes (Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria).

I am very confident that Ford will bring back the Crown Vic eventually just like Chevy brough back the Caprice (even though it wasn't ever completely gone). I'm just hoping it will be as good as the CVPI is. Normally I hate it when people say "if it ain't broke don't fix it" because that is such a redneck and stupid thing to say but I feel it actually applies to this situation.

It is more complicated than the media outlets would have you believe. Not to mention shit like this has been going on for decades and nobody has gave a shit. Plenty of genocide going on in Africa and the US and other western countries, for the most part, do little to nothing about it. I don't believe we should have to be the world police. We spent over 10 years in the middle east trying to fix things and look what we accomplished. Does anyone seriously think that going back again will accomplish something different? The people of that region don't care enough to do anything about these things, that is why insurgents and terrorists operate in those regions because they know the people won't fight back as much. If those people don't care enough to stand up for themselves why should we send our people there to defend them? We can't have soldiers constantly guarding them from everything, at some point they have to grow a pair of balls and do it themselves. If you don't care about your country then why should I? Lets pretend that the US decides to go back into Iraq and annihilate ISIS. Another group will just pop up, there will always be a bunch of pissed off people (of all religions) that hate the U.S. and its allies. Are we going to constantly run all over the world pursuing them? That will be a never ending cycle that will cost us billions and billions of dollars.

Don't really care what Ford puts out anymore. Still don't understand why they downgraded from the CVPI to the Taurus based model. The only other police car that I can think of that could compete with the greatness of the CVPI is the Chevy Caprice from the 80s and 90s, I have heard some good stories about those from older officers.

Stuttgart. Yes, I enjoy being stationed here. It is a great country and the people are usually friendly to Americans. I love being able to be in 3 different countries in 2 hours driving time if I want to be (France, Switzerland, or Austria). There is so much to do and see here that I have trouble picking what I want to do each weekend.

They just lowered it to E-2 now. Right after I joined they JROTC only got you E-2. Some of the people in my basic training got E-3 and other got E-2 depending on when they signed the contract so for you it will probably be E-2.

It will depend on your MOS and what unit you go to. Overall deployments are becoming fewer and fewer because we aren't as heavily involved (for the lack of a better term) as we used to be. And if you mean anywhere out of the U.S. (like Europe or Asia) then the chances are a little greater. I recently read something that said there will be more rotations to Europe coming up however those aren't the same thing as deployments. There are lots of units from the states that come over here and train for a few months, so stuff like that is always possible but again those are temporary duty assignments (TDY). If your MOS has lots of airborne slots open then you can get airborne school in your contract (what I did) or volunteer for it during AIT and that will narrow down where you will get assigned because there are only so many places with airborne units. I would recommend trying to get as much college as you can before you join as it will help you get more rank. I was in college before I joined and between my credits from my university and the police academy I was able to come in as an E-3 (PFC) which definitely helps.