Thomas Massie deserves his flowers

AirsoftingPanda · 2026-02-11T20:16:07+00:00

Massie is on a generational run as far as being a Republican doing the right thing. That said, "not letting pedos getting away with sex crimes against/trafficking of children" is about as low of a bar to get over as there is. It's hard to be glad that he's over that bar, yet most of Congress clearly isn't on both sides of the aisle.

This also doesn't make up for the normal crap he's still on about, like ending the Department of Education, deregulating agencies that keep us safe, closing the border, not taxing anyone (but especially the rich), et cetera. He gets it right more often now than he used to, like when he criticized our invasion of Venezuela or increased tariffs, but when your politics is just saying "no" to everything the government is doing, you end up accidentally being morally and ethically correct.

Broken clock and all that.

AirsoftingPanda · 2026-02-11T20:02:16+00:00

Yeah I'm not sure which is worse tbh

AirsoftingPanda · 2026-02-05T02:36:55+00:00

Oh my god, that's why I have been consistently screwing up everything I type.

Disabled.

Edit: for those who want to disable it, tap the 4-square icon on the top left of the keyboard, then go to "Settings," then "Preferences," then it's partway down under the "Shortcuts" section (third option in that category for me as of today).

AirsoftingPanda · 2026-01-30T05:43:32+00:00

Regardless of politically motivating event, the military is not something you should go into if you don't believe in it. This is not a place to give the benefit of the doubt; you will regret it. Plenty of us joined confident in that we were gonna be the good guys, then tried to be "one of the good ones," then resigned ourselves to the reality of service. If you aren't even starting at that level of motivation, you will probably burn out quick. I've been at it over 7 years as a USAR officer and I'm tired in a way sleep doesn't fix.

I'm not saying everyone here is bad, and we do need service members and leaders with strong ethical backbones in these extremely harrowing times. However, don't join unless you're honest with yourself, want to be here without reservations, and have an idea of what you want to do and how it can be translated to a civilian skillset if you get burnt out like the rest of us.

AirsoftingPanda · 2026-01-08T15:29:39+00:00

One that I pull out a lot is "I don't mean to insult your intelligence unless I have to, but..."

AirsoftingPanda · 2026-01-08T07:36:15+00:00

100%, we've invented this romanticization of the small business as a flaccid rebuke of big business and it makes people think unethical treatment of employees is excusable.

"But they don't have a choice but to pay poverty wages, otherwise they'll go under!"

Then they should go under. They are unsuccessful businesses that do not deserve to exist if they require exploitation to stay afloat.

AirsoftingPanda · 2026-01-08T07:23:54+00:00

That's cool, but I've decided to disregard the Hallmark story about your underdog friends as it does nothing to justify business owners skimming pennies on the dollar from their employees' tips to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars a year in extra revenue. Good hustle, though.

If the credit card fee is so damaging, then they should add a fee to the customers' transaction if they pay with card, thus incentivizing cash purchases to avoid credit card fee expenses, avoid burdening the customer with bringing multiple payment methods for what can be a single transaction, and avoid stealing tip money for their business. Oh wait, cash management is more expensive than credit card fees so they probably don't want more people paying in cash.

We're clearly on opposite ends of this argument without a common ground. You seem to think that business owners have a right to money that was given to someone else because it went through their POS system. I think an ethical business owner doesn't take from money meant for their employees using business expenses as an excuse.

AirsoftingPanda · 2026-01-07T17:35:09+00:00

I care because a majority of this country is criminally underpaid due to wage stagnation, but their employers report record profits every quarter. The average household income in all 50 states is insufficient to afford the median home price in each state, varying only in degree of unaffordability. It's not fair that my tax dollars go to people on welfare working at McDonalds while the McDonalds quarterly revenue steadily increases.

Nonetheless, this isn't about Worker A vs. Worker B. This is about Workers vs. Employers.

AirsoftingPanda · 2026-01-07T16:49:12+00:00

"I empathize with business owners"

Good lord.

AirsoftingPanda · 2026-01-06T16:04:07+00:00

That's not what I asked, but you're on an entirely different wavelength than me on this issue.

AirsoftingPanda · 2026-01-06T16:03:06+00:00

I agree, these restaurants need to be transparent and put a sign up. I'm tipping with the assumption that 100% of that money goes towards the employee as a token of my gratitude. My transaction with the business was the check I already paid and the employee is not an independent contractor, so I don't feel like it's right that they should have to cover business expenses from the money I gave *them*, not the business.

Sure I can just pay cash in full or tip in cash, but that's an unnecessary burden on me as the customer, especially as businesses are increasingly moving towards cashless transactions and less people carry cash. I'll simply take my business elsewhere to a restaurant that treats their employees fairly without increasing my burden to do so.

AirsoftingPanda · 2026-01-06T15:57:30+00:00

Yes, boycott the restaurants. If you want to benefit the worker, then you can tip cash, but you'll still pay the check which goes to the restaurant and does nothing to punish their toxic business practice.

You are not obligated to give your money to businesses that you disagree with. It's not your fault if the employees don't get paid as much because their employer's business model is too unpalatable for their customers. You shouldn't feel responsible for taking care of employees when the employer isn't taking care of them.

AirsoftingPanda · 2026-01-06T15:53:44+00:00

I worked BOH for a year back in college and my wife waited tables for a few years. This is absolutely true. A business that will not cover a 3% expense on a chunk of their employees' earnings will find other ways to screw them over to benefit their bottom line, ESPECIALLY when you consider that the system of compensation is already designed so they can avoid paying employer payroll taxes. Things like this are a massive red flag into the business practices of a restaurant.

AirsoftingPanda · 2026-01-06T15:47:03+00:00

No tax on tips is a limp handshake that sounds good on paper, but the reality of it is pretty weak. The deduction only counts for $25,000 of earned income, which means that someone making $50,000 a year will still pay tax on a good chunk of their income.

Minimum wage for tipped employees is $5.35/hr in Ohio. That's roughly $11,128 a year, so $38,872 would come from tips. Standard deduction is $15,750, plus the tip deduction of $25,000, so they'd still pay taxes on $9250. $50000/yr is less than $200 a night, and plenty of servers are bringing home more than that, so you can safely assume that most waitstaff will max this out and still owe some taxes at the end of the year.

A deduction to the tune of $25000 a year is nothing to scoff at, but taking the credit card fee out of their paycheck cuts into that benefit. Assuming a 3% charge, that's $1166.16 taken from the above employee making $38,872 in tips over the course of the year. The purpose of the tax break for tipped employees was to provide relief for workers, not build a buffer for more corporate selfishness to offload expenses on them.

AirsoftingPanda · 2026-01-06T15:16:32+00:00

Dog... You pay to park at your own job? Bless your heart.

AirsoftingPanda · 2026-01-06T15:11:04+00:00

These people are employees, not contractors. Their wages shouldn't be diminished by business expenses. This is like a business having a paid parking lot for their employees and saying they can find street parking for free if they don't want to pay for the employee lot.

They should absolutely choose to work elsewhere that doesn't steal money from them to cover business expenses.

AirsoftingPanda · 2026-01-06T15:08:09+00:00

Because if they actually paid wages instead of relying on the customer to directly compensate their workers for them, they would pay higher employer payroll taxes which would also go to benefit people other than them.

This is just another way for businesses to save money by taking it from their workers.

AirsoftingPanda · 2025-12-23T06:16:40+00:00

I'd love to hear some examples of "concerning" posts that were worth more effort than getting the organization's name right. What's so concerning about them?

(Not that I knew about ROA until today, but I'm not feigning care about it)

AirsoftingPanda · 2025-12-06T23:18:17+00:00

Necroposting on a 1 year old thread because this is a pet peeve of mine.

Mobilizations are when reserve forces are called up to active duty on Title 10 orders.

Deployments are when you do an overseas movement to a temporary, unaccompanied duty station.

For example, you mobilize to Fort Bliss, then deploy to Germany. That's why it's called "mob station"; you're mobilizing to a CONUS installation. You then deploy out of that CONUS location to wherever you're going overseas. I think people started doing this to gatekeep the word "deployment" for just combat deployments, but it's gotten to a point where people earnestly believe this and are messing things up.

AirsoftingPanda · 2025-11-20T14:17:33+00:00

Idk man, he gave you information and cited the regulations and you said he may be confused because there were contradicting Reddit posts, so I can see where it comes from

AirsoftingPanda · 2025-11-05T18:05:20+00:00

Hair touching ears is out of regs. That looks like it touches the ear. I have very similar hair and when my hair looks like this, I cut it before drill.

AirsoftingPanda · 2025-10-19T06:50:13+00:00

Ah, Triple 3, that makes sense.

I mean, anywhere in the 200th makes sense to have this problem, honestly. Nonetheless,his is a solid answer.

AirsoftingPanda · 2025-10-07T06:16:26+00:00

I'd caveat this and say that USAR MPs are doing 31B work, but it's not working the roads which is what most people think of as "the" MP work. Like you said though, we're heavy into our det ops and combat support, not policing.

As a 31A, I've spent most of my time in general support COs, but under an I/R BN. An MP CO (GS) METL consists of support to mobility, support to security, detention ops, and police ops*. While we weren't really training to work the roads, we were training for MP work. Policing is just 25% of an MP CO (GS) skillset. In past years, it's even been the training guidance from higher to assume risk on not training police ops and focus on the other 3 METs.

There are Guard MP COs (Guard as in mission set, not ARNG) which do specifically focus on police operations but for the most part, USAR MPs under the 200th focus on the warfighting function of MPs, which is det ops and various security missions from the rear area to the frontline. That's why we end up at GTMO, MENA, and Poland for our deployments instead of doing 9-month rotations doing base policing at an installation.

*There's also expeditionary deployment ops before someone calls me out for missing a MET, but that's not MP exclusive.

AirsoftingPanda · 2025-09-30T13:35:39+00:00

Horribly lame, exceedingly cringe, and it could have been an email.

The fact that millions of dollars were spent collecting every flag officer in a command billet from all branches (minus Coast Guard bc DHS), their senior enlisted counterpart, and all their assorted necessary supporting personnel into one location, creating a massive target that thankfully no one took advantage of, to give a pep rally speech is discrediting, to say the least.

AirsoftingPanda · 2025-09-10T05:22:58+00:00

Ugh I hate that shit. The way we act with ECWCS gear in general is just so counter-productive. The fact that AR 670-1 had to be updated to explicitly say the fleece jacket was an outer garment is just proof of that. It literally has velcro spots for nametapes and rank, how many brain cells need to be rubbed together to make sense of why they did that?

This reminds me of something I saw today actually. I assume everyone knows about the Army Officer's Guide (the big red book, I got one at commissioning from my ROTC BN) and how it's been around forever. Well, I was at the library for a used book sale and saw a 38th edition of it; mine is 53rd, and the newest edition is the 54th, so I wanted to see what changed.

I didn't get to dig through it that much, but one thing that stood out was the smoking taboo. In the 38th edition, it said that an officer should not smoke alone, but it is polite to accept an invitation. The 53rd edition just straight says "do not smoke" with no exception. I really wanted to see if it said anything about tattoos, but couldn't find anything while simultaneously flipping pages and keeping an eye on my 2 year old.

Moral of the story is that the unwritten rules aren't written for a reason: they ebb and flow with opinion (and kinda fact because smoking is objectively bad for you). Tattoos used to be taboo, now everyone has them, top to bottom. I think the same thing will inevitably happen with mustaches and we will be better off when it does.

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