GENTLEMEN BEHOLD

When art imitates life…. 😂 #stargate

These fucking people are losing their shit because someone finally wants to put a barcode on a ballot envelope and actually count what the mail delivers. That’s it. That’s the entire crime. Schumer calls it voter suppression. Elias is throwing his usual tantrum in court like the professional obstructionist he is. Padilla is out here claiming millions of “eligible voters” will be magically disenfranchised because the Post Office might notice if ballots disappear. These are the same people who spent years building and cheering ballot tracking systems when they controlled the rules. Now that a uniform standard might actually work against them, it’s suddenly the end of democracy. They don’t want chain of custody. They don’t want sent-versus-returned reconciliation. They don’t want records that last five years and can be subpoenaed. They want the current sloppy, unaccountable mess exactly the way it is ... dirty rolls, ballots mailed to ghosts and double registrants, and no reliable way to prove how many actually came back. That’s the quiet part they’re screaming about. They built a system where fraud is difficult to catch on purpose, and now they’re panicking that someone might install the most basic fucking receipt the mail has ever used for anything else. The fact that they’re this hysterical over barcodes on envelopes tells you everything about how comfortable they got with the blind spots. These people don’t fear losing elections. They fear finally having to run them without the safety net of plausible deniability. And the louder they howl, the more obvious it becomes that the old way was working exactly how they wanted it to. (article below)

A lot of folks are silently fighting a life or death battle with the demons in their heads that you'll only discover when they lose that battle. RIP Claude Lemieux

Perfect spring evening before we get whacked with some much needed moisture 🤞 (also a lesson to never plant flowers prior to mothers day here)

🚨 This was the Artemis II crew's view this morning from 41,756 miles (67,200 km) up No human has seen a crescent Earth in full since 1972

Hello Mr. Evans, Today, War on the Rocks published a "rebuttal" which disclosed the real-life identity of @CynicalPublius . What the article did not mention: you had already posted his name on Bluesky before the WOTR piece published. The WOTR article cited his being “already known” as justification for printing his name. The person who made him “already known” was you. You manufactured the predicate for your own publication’s decision. You then blocked me. And then called me out. Repeatedly. You engaged me, mentioned me, tagged me — even said publicly that you were looking forward to what I had written about War on the Rocks. Blocking someone on a platform and then continuing to publicly engage them is not what a person who wants to be left alone does. It is what a person who wants the attention without the accountability does. You're framing your own just desserts as a “mass witch hunt” initiated by a Hello post I addressed to Brad Duplessis, your contributor, who named Cynical Publius in his debut WOTR piece without disclosing that Anderson’s recommendations for War College reform included eliminating the kind of permanent civilian faculty position Duplessis holds. You are being dunked on because of what you did to Cynical Publius, not because of anything I wrote. Blaming the letter for the blowback is like blaming the smoke alarm for the fire. Cynical Publius wrote that military institutions had drifted from their original professional mission toward ideological conformity and required reform. You responded by publishing his name. The question your letter to me does not answer — and the question a lot of people are now asking — is why an outlet that once existed to challenge that kind of institutional behavior became the one enforcing it. You yourself provide answers to that question. You launched War on the Rocks because you understood something true: the United States had spent two decades losing wars it shouldn't have lost. Twelve years later, when a pseudonymous retired Army officer argues that the War Colleges have drifted from warfighting competence toward ideological conformity, the platform you built publishes his name in the opening sentence. That is not an accident of character. It is how institutions stop being able to learn. Armies that cannot receive criticism cannot conduct honest after-action review. Institutions that cannot correct what they're getting wrong keep losing — and keep being surprised that they're losing, because the people tasked with explaining the failures are the same people defending the institutions that produced them. In short: Mr. Evans, you have been captured by the foreign policy expert class has presided over Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. And you don't even realize it. Wake up. And be on the lookout for a Substack article where I explain your history more thoroughly.

No, Ryan. What you did to Cynical Publius wasn’t journalism, wasn’t courage, and sure as hell wasn’t “countering bullying.” It was a gutless, calculated doxxing of a combat veteran whose only crime was wielding a pseudonym to gut the sacred cows of your precious military-education cartel with more precision than your entire editorial staff could muster in a lifetime. You dragged his real name into the light like some cheap tabloid hitman, not because he posed a physical threat, but because his ideas...raw, unfiltered, and surgically lethal...threatened the cozy sinecures, the civilian faculty fiefdoms, and the intellectual rot you’ve spent years polishing into tenure-track respectability. This wasn’t about “accountability.” This was projection on steroids. You saw a man who refused to play your polite institutional game...a man who chose anonymity not out of cowardice but out of tactical necessity, the same way special operators don’t sign their real names on every after-action report...and you couldn’t stomach it. So you weaponized your platform to strip him bare, all while hiding behind the fig leaf of “he was going public anyway.” Bullshit. That’s the excuse of a bully who just got caught with his fist raised. You didn’t expose a threat; you exposed your own fragility. The second a pseudonymous voice started dismantling the war-college echo chamber with veteran credibility you’ll never match, your instinct wasn’t debate...it was destruction. Classic authoritarian reflex dressed up as professionalism. You don’t get to doxx veterans, Ryan. Not for political disagreement, not for “harassment” you conveniently redefine as anyone who makes your faculty friends squirm, and especially not when that veteran has bled for the same institutions you now gatekeep like a fucking hall monitor with a PhD. Cynical’s anonymity was his armor; you ripped it off not to protect anyone, but to punish dissent and send a message to every other independent mind: toe the line or we’ll burn your cover. That’s not defense of the realm. That’s the behavior of a man who’s internalized the very bureaucratic cancer he claims to oppose...petty, vindictive, and terrified of real scrutiny. You are the bully here, Ryan Evans. Full stop. The venom you injected into that article wasn’t righteous; it was the desperate hiss of a cornered insider watching his narrative monopoly crack. And the rest of us...veterans, reformers, anyone who still believes ideas should be fought with ideas, not personal destruction...see it for exactly what it is: a moral failure wrapped in editorial sanctimony. Next time you want to play tough guy, try it with your own name on the line instead of someone else’s blood-earned service record. Until then, spare us the lectures. Your mask just slipped, and the face underneath is pure, unadulterated institutional cowardice. 💀⚖️

What grinds my gears at the moment is I’m personally seeing more outrage over surf and turf than I ever saw for the Afghan withdrawal. Quite telling, isn’t it? Screaming for the career guillotine over chow. Completely mum on Abbey Gate though. We see you. Or at least I do.

👌instagram.com/reel/DVWmluWCJ…

Sixteen years ago today I was standing in this staging area with my fellow 1/6 Marines of Alpha Company as we prepared to invade the town of Marjah, Afghanistan. I’m further from that place now than I have ever been but in a lot of ways it still feels like yesterday. My second daughter had just been born days before & I feared I may never make it home to meet her. All I wanted was to make it home to my wife and two girls. We were all nervous and anxious as waited to enter the Taliban stronghold. None of us could have known then the impact this deployment would have on our lives and the world. All we knew for sure is that we could count on each other and Gunnery Sergeant Bryan Wallgren. His legacy and lore was a storied one. He came to Alpha Company during training at AP Hill and established a beachhead in the souls of every single Alpha Company Marine. His war fighting abilities were only surpassed by his ability to communicate & this was his finest hour. Whenever we needed it most he always answered the call. Even as I rewatch the video now as I do every year I’m taken back to the moment. I can feel the love and bonds that we shared for each other. A bond that was literally forged in the fires of combat and extends beyond the battlefield in to eternity. I was lucky enough to serve with the finest marines I have ever met. My brothers, my family now. We did it for each other. We lost so many amazing people that deployment. I know we all wonder why it was them not us. But they are the ones we kept pushing for, and they are the ones I now try to live my life in honor of now. Operation Moshtarak was one I will never forget as long as I live. Thank you to every one of you I was lucky enough to serve with. My brothers for life.

John Ekdahl was my best friend. He died today of cancer, at 47. I know that some of you knew and loved John, so I thought I’d let you all know. I have set up a GoFundMe for his family, which is linked in this tweet. John and I “met” on Twitter about 13 years ago, and then, a couple of years later, met in person at the 2014 NRA Convention in Indianapolis. We quickly realized that we had a lot of the same interests—technology, amusement parks, baseball (we were both Yankees fans)—and soon started texting about everything and nothing. In 2015, when I published my book, the first stop on my promotional tour was in Jacksonville, where John lived. I asked him which hotel I should stay at, and he said that, instead, I should stay with him and his family. So I did. From that moment on, he and his wife (and their two kids—one of whom had just been born) became my closest friends. When, in 2017, my wife and I decided to move to Florida, John barraged me with propaganda about Jacksonville, and invited us to stay for a few days so that he and his wife could show us around. We were sold. John was like that. For the first few years after I moved to the United States, I wasn’t into the NFL. In 2016, this started to change, so John began a remote campaign to turn me into a Jaguars fan. “Jags are on,” he’d text apropos of nothing on a Sunday, even though he knew that, from Connecticut, the chance of my getting the game was close to zero. As part of this effort, I got weekly AFC South updates, a series of memes about Blake Bortles, and an introduction to the perfidious cabaret act that is the Tennessee Titans. John even invited me down to see a game against the Colts—which the Jaguars won 30-10. In my first real season as a fan, the Jaguars made the AFC Championship game, and were minutes away from making their first Super Bowl. After I moved down to Florida, John and I bought season tickets together, which we kept until the end. I had hoped devoutly that the Jaguars would make the Super Bowl this season—which was destined to be John’s last. During the pandemic, John and I started a business together that, relative to our expectations, did pretty well for a while. As is typical, most of our ideas didn’t pan out, but that didn’t matter. We had fun coming up with them at the bar, adding “just one more drink” to the tab to make sure that we hadn’t missed an angle or forgotten to write something crucial down on the back of an increasingly ragged napkin. I am 41-years-old and, with the exception of my wife, I’ve never met anyone who was easier to talk to than John. If we went for lunch, we’d go for hours, chatting about sports and rollercoasters and our kids and the new iPhone and the unforgivable changes that Disney made to Epcot in 1999. I shall miss that immensely. There was one thing we didn’t talk about: At no point since his diagnosis, did John and I ever acknowledge with each other how serious his condition was, or that, all things being equal, it was likely to take him before his time. From the start, it seemed that John silently picked me to be the person with whom he could pretend that everything was normal, and I fulfilled this role until the last. Even when things were clearly terrible, we’d make plans—to take a trip to New Hampshire with our families and friends; to ride the new rollercoaster at Epic Universe; to go to opening day at the new Jaguars Stadium in 2028; and more. The last time I saw him, I said the same thing as I said every time I'd chatted with him over the last 11 years: "Talk to you in a bit." gofund.me/20cbdce0f

Well isn't this convenient... Sen. John Hickenlooper bought ~$100k of Eaton Corp $ETN on Jan 14th Eaton is an electrical equipment manufacturer Sen. Hickenlooper sits on the Senate Committee on Energy A few days ago Eaton secured up to $8B in funding for expansion from multiple credit facilities Today the stock reached ATH Our beloved Senator is now up 20% in less than a month

A DougCo man & a Denver woman have been charged separately w/health care fraud. The indictments, based on FBI Denver investigations, allege fraud schemes involving rides to appts for Medicaid beneficiaries -- including $165,000 for a dead person. News release: ow.ly/J6JK50YcBfz

Turns out I don't have ADHD--i just need everything explained to me via 2000s emo music

(I posted this yesterday on FB, but some dumbass was just crying about how we need to go shoot feds on behalf of commies, so here's my opinion on this nonsense) I've got to address some dumb gun misconceptions about the latest Minnesota shooting that I'm seeing all over the internet. Despite Noem/Patel's spin, having a pistol like that wasn't particularly weird, and half the people who voted for Trump carry everywhere. "Combat" is a marketing term. There's nothing particularly special about a 9mm with 18-21 capacity. There is nothing special at all about a threaded barrel. That's just for attaching a suppressor or a comp, and the guy had neither as far as I know. Red dot sights are completely normal now. Nothing unique there. I'm seeing that he was carrying in a Small of the Back Holster (SoB) which my regulars know makes me laugh, because I Told You So. 📷 (they are the dumbest way to carry) Having two extra mags? Meh. Not really indicative of anything by itself. Is that excessive? Maybe. But a lot of people carry daily with extra mags. If I was going to blunder around the lawless commie shithole that is modern day Minneapolis I'd probably carry some spare mags too (though I wouldn't pick pointless stupid fights with feds, but I'll get to that!) and I'm also not going back there because fuck that city, I'm still annoyed those assholes burned down my favorite bookstore during their last big democrat temper tantrum. My wild ass guess? With absolutely zero evidence? I've got an AXG Legion myself. I believe it came with 3 mags. Him using a Sig with a Sig optic, I wouldn't be surprised if he just took everything that came in the box with him and that's all the mags he owns. No way of knowing, but fairly standard non-gun nut behavior. (and if he was using a SoB as reported indicative of somebody who didn't know what the fuck he was doing but had enough money to buy a recognizable brand name) So the whole narrative about carrying a pistol to protest being an indicator that the guy was a terrorist is bunk. Now, I'm not saying its not indicative of him being a complete dumb ass playing with fire who wound up as a useful idiot sacrifice for a bunch of slimy commies, because that's how it's looking. That whole Noem/Patel narrative is bunk. Lots of Americans exercise their 2nd Amendment rights in public, even when there's some dumb ass "protest" going on. What law abiding gun carriers DON'T DO however is fuck around with cops while armed, and if they do willfully fuck around with cops, getting arrested or shot shouldn't come as a huge surprise to anyone. A big part of every CCW class is about what to do when dealing with law enforcement, and none of that involves following them around, tailing their cars, honking horns in their ears, throwing shit, breaking shit, meddling in their arrests, "directing traffic", obstructing traffic, biting people's fingers off, or just being general fucking weirdo nuisance temper tantrum throwers to provide cover for illegal alien rapists as a diversion because your democrat governor just got caught giving billions of tax dollars to imaginary Somali children and the democrats really want to win the midterms so they can get back to destroying America forever. That was a run on sentence, but these people are really fucking stupid. And it appears that they've had a Signal chat for MN government officials to coordinate this fuckery with the useful idiots too. Did this particular dude do all that? No. Did he do some of that? Yes. So again, getting shot is a bummer, but not at all shocking. If you want to see who is honest and who is a lying partisan hack dipshit in situations like this, watch for the people who ignore all the context, history, and events which set the stage for a particular incident, who then focus instead on minutia and playing back video frame by frame in ultra slow mo. Like I said yesterday, just off math and basic probability, if you provoke chaotic encounters against the same bunch of feds, day in and day out, over and over, hoping for a violent altercation, eventually you're going to get a violent altercation. Duh. It's got fuck all to do with "well trained". If the goal is to provoke a violent altercation and you're starting shit with fallible human beings required to make fast decisions under stress, eventually you're gonna get your wish. Crying about it afterwards is just embarrassing. This is why all CCW classes have a portion about avoiding those kinds of situations with cops while we're armed. We're also supposed to obey all the ancillary laws, like having our permit on us while we're armed in states where that is required. "So what you're saying is that PAPERS PLEASE/COMPLY OR ELSE?!? BOOOTLICKER!" No, stupid, that is clearly not what I'm saying. The 2nd Amendment is a right which we need to exercise responsibly because the irresponsible exercise of it endangers others. If you do dumb shit while armed, people are gonna react to your dumb shit first and immediately, which may include you getting shot if the situation is dumb enough. If you make the situation dumber, that's on your dumb ass. And it doesn't matter if a bunch of lolberts (and libs who hated the 2nd Amendment until they got their new NPC download yesterday) argue the philosophical ramifications on the internet after, you're still fucking dead. So not having your ID shouldn't be a death sentence, but combined with the other dumbassery and being a willing contestant in the Useful Idiot Olympics, doesn't exactly aid your case. Next, it was a Sig 320 variant, and I'm seeing non-gun people who didn't know what that gun is until this week going on and on about how that's a pistol that goes off by itself all the time. Without going too far into the weeds, that's one of the most common pistols in the world with millions in circulation for a decade. Has there been reports (and video!) of some of them allegedly going off by themselves in holsters? Yes. However, to the best of my knowledge there's like maybe two dozen(?) reports like that. So could this guy's 320 have gone off all by itself? Eh... Maybe? But the odds of that would be like winning the shitty version of Powerball. If that pistol went off the far more likely odds are it is because the fed grabbed the trigger while snatching it away (but on that note, the 320 has got a light, short trigger, so it is not forgiving of sloppy handling). Which is again, another reason every CCW class yells at us not to wrestle with cops. Accidents happen. Accidents in dumb ass situations spiral out of control real fast, so people who aren't useful idiots try to avoid dumb ass situations. And I'm sorry, useful idiots, but harassing feds for your inalienable right to leave all the illegal alien serial rapists in your neighborhood is fucking dumb. You rolling the dice until you finally get shot is profoundly fucking stupid. But Tim Walz, the DNC, and a whole bunch of Somalis thank you for your sacrifice.

Eric Cartman from South Park as Glenn Danzig, playing ‘Mother’…the internet creates wonderful combinations!🤣 Well done to Fernando Ufret for this!

I'm Mike Vining, SGM USA (Retired). Welcome to my official X account. In the next several months, I'll share EOD and Delta Force memories. And I'll offer info on moral injury and PTSD. I'm calling this account "Blasting Through," because that's the title of my book, a memoir, due for release in August 2026.