Rank hath is privileges, and responsibilities. Also, PEW PEW PEW.

So when you get to a certain rank, there's things that are expected of you.  Such as, performing duties to run a range.

So it's long hours, and everybody shows up after you, and leaves before you.  But it's a range, and I get to shoot on the Army's dime.  You win some, you lose some.

Although I would like to know when the Army thought I'd turned in to a responsible adult.

The blogroll is over to the right.

When the band struggles to keep up with the banjo player

Folks, playing the banjo is hard.  Take whatever preconceptions you had about gap-toothed hillbillies and throw them out the window.  The banjo takes talent to play, and finger-picking is even harder.

So when a guy shows up and sets a tempo that the rest of the guys are visibly struggling to keep up with?  Hoooooo-boy!



Of course, it's Bela Fleck. 

The failed state of Mexico

The Drug Cartels are firmly in control of the Northern half of the country.

Armed with military-grade weapons and driving custom-built armored vehicles, cartel henchmen targeted security forces throughout Culiacan, launching more than one dozen separate attacks on Mexican security forces. They captured and held hostage eight soldiers, then kidnapped their families. Amid the fighting, an unknown number of inmates escaped from a nearby prison. At least eight people were killed and more than a dozen were injured. 

The eight-hour battle ended when government forces, outgunned and surrounded, without reinforcements or a way to retreat, received an order directly from Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to release their prisoner and surrender. Lopez Obrador later defended this decision, insisting that his security strategy is working and saying, “Many people were at risk and it was decided to protect people’s lives. I agreed with that, because we don’t do massacres, that’s over.”

Remember, every time the Left cries about allowing those poor widdle migrants across the border, they're putting money directly into the Cartels' pockets, because nobody just crosses our Southern border without paying one cartel or another to smuggle them across.

Oh, and this is also the same border that the Democrats want to abolish.  Because allowing drug cartels to control vast swaths of Mexico isn't enough, the Democrats want them to control vast swaths of America as well.

Read the whole thing.

Well, and there it is

The Left, who for three years has told us there is no Deep State, is now saying there IS a Deep State but it's for our own good.

In short, it's a load of bullshit, as usual, from the usual suspects.

You could believe the whole “protect[ing] the interests… of the American people” shtick if after all this time and the incalculable amount of energy and effort expended on bringing down the President, all those patriotic public servants have been able to show something – anything – for it. So instead of disinterested paragons of civic virtue, it increasingly looks like the federal bureaucracy is full of hard core progressives and liberals who can’t stomach a non-Democrat usurper who doesn’t share their values, ideas and objectives.

It doesn't take much to see that there IS a Deep State, and that it's hostile to Normal Americans.  All you have to do is keep your eyes open and not delude yourself.  In short, you have to be honest and face the facts.  These are two qualities that the Left couldn't do in their wildest dreams, because it would destroy their imaginary world that they've built up, and it would force them to face the fact that the ideology they follow is responsible for the murder of over 100,000,000 people in the last century, the destruction of multiple countries, and untold suffering world wide.

The Leftist Deep State tyrants-in-waiting think they're more intelligent than you, more educated than you, more deserving than you, and they want to make sure they rule you just as tyrants have ruled over subjects for centuries in the past because you just don't get it, you see?  Time and time again they've proven through their actions that they're nothing but a bunch of narcissistic, ignorant, grabasstic idiots who couldn't tell their ass from their elbow, and their vaunted evaluation of their performance and capabilities is nothing but a pipe dream reinforced through mass group-think.

I have a hard time trying to come up with one single thing, one single action, that was made better through government interference.  I guess the military, as most municipalities couldn't afford an Abrahams tank on their own.  But even in things like space travel, civilian companies are doing what the government has tried, and failed to do.  Under the government's "leadership", NASA went from putting a man on the moon, to sending men into space, to scrapping the Space Shuttle without any viable replacement, to doing weather reports and propagating the Climate Change hoax.

That right there is pretty much a good summation of the Government in action, isn't it?

There's no reason what so ever to allow those people to be in charge of anything, much less your life or your country.

This might be my last riding day for a while

Which makes me kind of sad.  As much as I'm not a Southern man, and suffered in the heat of the South, one of the benefits of living there is that you don't winterize your bike.  I rode all year round there.

But in Utah?  Not so much.  I'll ride today, and maybe more this week, but after this the temps drop even more, and the bike will stay in the garage until it warms up enough to take it back out again.

Although I've been told that there are riding days all throughout the year in Salt Lake City, just not once you leave the valley.  So we'll see.

Oh, just STFU already, you pathetic loser

So the NYT published an op-ed by retired admiral William H. McRaven (link goes to Instapundit, so it's safe).

But, if we don’t care about our values, if we don’t care about duty and honor, if we don’t help the weak and stand up against oppression and injustice — what will happen to the Kurds, the Iraqis, the Afghans, the Syrians, the Rohingyas, the South Sudanese and the millions of people under the boot of tyranny or left abandoned by their failing states?

Right now the last group of people I want to take any advice from is Naval leadership.  The headshed of the Navy haven't been covering themselves in glory anytime in recent history, and idiotic bullshit like this is just one reason why.  Admiral McRaven is all up in arms about the plight of just about every oppressed group in the world, but since when does the oath of enlistment, or the oath of commissioning, reference the rest of the world?

Hint:  It doesn't.  However, there is a little something that goes like this -

I swear to support and defend the CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Oh, and given that the Navy just tried to hang a SEAL out to dry for the horrible crimes of doing the job his superior officers ordered that he do, and that said hanging out was prevented in large part because President Trump took an interest in the sham of a trial where the prosecutorial misconduct was on display for all to see, just who do you think really cares about the troops right now, hmmmmm?

And don't think for one minute that we boots on the ground don't fucking know it.

Home again, home again, jiggity jig

Aaaaaaand it's a Monday.  Yep.  Says so right there on my computer thingy that calculates the date for me.

By the by, Kansas City has a World War One memorial and museum that is flat out awesome.  No, I don't have any pictures.  I didn't take my camera with me, as this was a work trip.

More to follow, later, once I've had my coffee and done the things.

One more Bluegrass/Celtic

Although this one is certainly more bluegrass, you can hear the celtic influence throughout.