Both the Army and Marines operate their own rotary wing aircraft, but only the Marines operate their own fixed wing aircraft too

It should be noted that every time the Army tried to get its own fixed wing aircraft for ground support, the Air Force blocked the move.

And the only reason the Air Force doesn't do the same to the Marines is that the Marines are NAVY. And the Navy never let the Air Force camel's nose into their tent.

For those who aren't big on inter-service rivalry history, this all grew out of the squabbling between the Bomber Generals and everyone else in the WW2 Army Air Corps.

The Bomber Generals believed that the Army (and Navy) were no longer necessary, because any enemy could be defeated by just bombing him into oblivion. They didn't even see a burning need for fighters, since the massed bombers could defend themselves nicely.

After WW2, when the Army Air Corps started pushing for their own branch of service (US Air Force), they very conveniently overlooked things like the Schweinfurt Raid (bombers only, no fighter escort, since the P47 and P51 weren't ready, lots of bombers didn't come home. Not quite a majority didn't come home, but it was close), and demanded control of ALL fixed-wing aviation. The Navy told them to f**k off, but the Army was forced to give it all up.

Since then, every time something new that could fly came along, the Air Force has tried their best to make sure it was forbidden to the Army. They failed with helicopters, but they've always succeeded with armed fixed wing planes....

The Air Force doesn't want to keep the A10.

Alas, the A10 suffers one irredeemable fault - its only function is to support the Army.

Which function the Air Force disapproves of on a visceral level.

A multi-function aircraft, while it is handicapped by being ABLE to support the Army, has the virtue of being able to NOT support the Army. Hence the F16, F35, etc.

Two things:

1) Causality isn't necessarily a law of nature, so much as "the way our senses are wired to see things".

2) It is unlikely that tachyons have brakes. Cars have brakes, even bicycles have brakes. But probably not tachyons.

But that said, some people are morning people. They are weird but they exist. They get up by their own preference at like 5:30 am

***raises hand***

That's me, folks. However, a qualifier must be added. I didn't start behaving that way till I stopped ALL caffeine intake. Back when I did coffee/pepsi, getting me out of bed before noon involved liberal use of dynamite. A couple decades back, for reasons I no longer recall, I decided to stop with the caffeine. And since then, waking up is like flipping a light switch - fully asleep to fully awake in a second, ready to get up and do things at oh-dark-hundred...

Drives my wife crazy, btw.

It doesn't take many electric cars to kill 1% of oil demand and cut $40 to $50 per barrel off the top price for a barrel of oil.

I hope you weren't being silly enough to suggest that electric cars are what caused oil/gasoline prices to collapse recently?

Authoritarians have infiltrated both the Republican and Democratic parties,

Got bad news for you - this is the norm.

You don't spend gobs of money and time running for office if you don't want to tell people what to do.

You may tell yourself that telling them what to do is "for their own good", but it's really about the rush you get when large numbers of people do what you say.

In other words, there is no "infiltrate", there is only "that's the whole point of politics"....

it is doubtful that the wrench was used a the sole tool for some important fix.

Given that the "wrench" was really a socket driver (or so it appears from the pic), no, it wasn't the sole tool - the socket must've been up there.

Note the label on the driver, by the by 3 inch-pounds torque. It's a wrench for a very delicate piece of equipment, looks like.

Oh, and I can well believe they didn't have a torque wrench on hand for something like that. Not like you need a 3 inch-pound wrench all that often....

Presumably, it was enough of a selective factor among mastodon hunters that they tended to breed people tough enough to be stepped on by a mastodon and live to tell the tale?

Thought not.

Not enough people get into auto accidents, much less die of them, to have much impact on whatever traits are being selected for via natural selection.

Anyway, the US amendments can be amended at any time, or totally removed. The clue is in the name, "amendment".

Yeppers.

Of course, it requires the vote of 2/3 of the House of Representatives, plus 2/3 of the Senate. Then it requires 38 States to approve the change.

Good luck on getting 2/3 of Congress to approve of toilet paper, much less repealing the First Amendment.

And we're likelier to see another Civil War than we are to see 38 States approve such a thing.....

In general NORAD tracking of Santa is a gimmick to help bring up good will towards the organization.

Saw an article last week (early this week?) discussing the origin of the whole business.

Apparently, it got started with a Sears ad with a typo - the ad included a number to "call Santa", but a misprint gave a number to a NORAD watch officer (from TFA, the phone number was supposed to be known only to the watch officer and the duty general in the Pentagon),

Anyways, long story shortened, some kids called the number, NORAD guys went slightly apeshit that their secret phone was on a Sears ad, but they decided to play along with it, and since then, NORAD has been "tracking Santa"....

So, why does someone think we needed to be reminded of this?

It's not like even the news is particularly bad recently - no major wars, famines, etc. Even the Ebola outbreak only managed to do in 7000 people this year - once upon a time, we could expect a famine in Africa that did worse every few years.

Are we really reaching the point where we consider a few police shootings to be a sign of the end times?

Which ICBM capabilities are those? Earlier this year, they claimed to be nearly ready to TEST an ICBM.

Even assuming that the test went perfectly, and they could turn the ICBM factory to full production the next day, they'd be a looooong way from having "ICBM capabilities".

Especially since there's no indication they can actually build a nuclear weapon that would fit on one. So far, they've done a couple of test nukes, none of which would've matched Little Boy. And Little Boy and Fat Man were better than a decade of intensive R&D and continuous testing away from "ICBM capable"....