Umm...you’re pretty off base on this one. First, the whole point of the State Department is to lobby and be lobbied in the interest of mutual benefit. Second, this isn’t a fiscal issue, it’s a foreign policy issue, so Congress does NOT run the show. This is about approving the sale by a commercial company to a foreign…

Yeah...it’s never been about moral supremacy. That’s just bullshit for the plebes. The US sells to the countries it feels it would be beneficial to sell to, when it’s beneficial to do it. It’s not even about the country itself. Kuwait has been a steadfast ally since we liberated it, but there’s no way we’d (for…

Yeah...I didn’t word that well. The US has shared nuclear secrets with pretty much the UK only. The US has offered uncompromised stealth aircraft to pretty much the UK, Canada and possibly Australia. Everyone else will receive slightly compromised F-35’s.

Actually, there are restrictions (see ITAR, EAR) on just about every country. There’s just varying degrees. NATO members, Japan, Australia, NZ, Korea and Israel can buy almost anything (nuclear secrets and stealth aircraft/weapons are restricted even to the UK and Canada only). Everyone else? Better look it up.

I wouldn’t call the F-22 an anachronism (to paraphrase and summarize your point). It’s a specialist air-to-air fighter. That’s something nice to have. The problem is that the F-22 is a not a good air-to-ground fighter. It’s strike payload is equivalent to the F-35B, but it the F-22 only has about 75% of the radius…

You might be confused by whinging, but your posts is a great example of people “complaining about things they don’t understand”. F-15E != F-22A. You can’t just hang a bunch of bombs off of a Raptor and call it a heavy strike plane. That is not what makes the Strike Eagle effective. It’s also a good way to ruin…

Well, it would have cost about 50% more due to higher procurement and maintenance costs.

Many LED lights have adjustable color temperatures. The entry-level stuff doesn’t, but the it’s common enough in midrange products.

It wouldn’t be outpacing if it wasn’t a better use of resources.

The wheels were coming off WHILE he was writing The Dark Knight Returns. I came to comics later in life, and like the neckbeards always tell one to do, I read TDKR before reading lots of other material.

Better PSA: Don’t use fucking Facebook to send people money.

IF BC tries to fuck your mom, it’ll easily succeed.

LOL. You’re down to that? You’re disputing the truth that wind and gas installs are outpacing nuclear?

Yeah...if BC tries to succeed, the US is grabbing it faster than Putin and Crimea. It’s got oil, a land connection to Alaska, and we become the gatekeeper for Canada-China trade.

You’re being anachronistic again. It’s already settled that it’s cheaper to handle renewable intermittancy with gas peakers and more robust networks.

“Gas and wind turbines are less complex and easier to mass produce.” Yes. Why would you have a problem with that? In fact, tell me why anyone would want to go with an option that are more complex and harder to reproduce when the alternative is easier and will STILL get you what you need?

Well that’s just wrong. F-22 flyaway was around $138 million, and that’s buying a 2011 aircraft in 2011 dollars (~145 million in 2015$). So that number doesn’t include the upgrades made to the fleet since then. Of course, reopening the line would cost a lot more.

What about Delta III & IV as well as Atlas V?

Nope. When a project flies this far out from estimates, it’s not just teething issues. It’s either gross mismanagement (unlikely with multiple independent projects) or someone made cartoonishly optimistic assumptions to start with.

Also, how much latitude does this thing have? Even if it catches a runtime error, I don’t necessarily want it to do the same thing as some other program runs across the same conditions.