This Memorial Day I’d like to remember my friend LTC Rocky Baragona.
Rocky was a West Point grad, an Ordnance/Logistics officer, a paratrooper and a profoundly gifted logistician. I served with him in the 82nd when we were both majors, he was the best airborne logistician I ever met, and he was always patient in training the new guy (me).
He was not tall, he never married, his uniform was often wrinkled, his boots were muddy in garrison and his incredibly dry sense of humor threw a lot of people.
But he would do anything before he let the paratroopers he supported go without food, water, ammo, serviceable gear or Level II+ medical/surgical care, right on the drop zone.
If you are a logistician in the 82nd, you train to jump into an airfield seizure with what we called the “Alpha Echelon.” Enough brigade-level supplies for 48 hours get heavy-dropped or CDSed in with you, along with a surgical team and surgical equipment suite. You can make fun of us loggies all you want, but in the 82nd we were right there in the dirt with the 11Bs, and Rocky was the best at it I ever knew.
Rocky’s battalion command was not in the 82nd, it was in a corps-level maintenance battalion.
Rocky died in Iraq, early on in OIF, not from enemy action, but from a contracted Kuwaiti 18 wheeler running over his command HMMWV while he was in it.
I highlight Rocky today not just because he was a friend, not just because he was awesome, but to also remind everyone that the military is a dangerous business no matter what you are doing, and dead is dead.
Rest in peace Rocky. All the way. Airborne. And thanks for the mentorship.
Oh man, why did they take my blue check? Is that normal? @DataRepublican are the UNELECTED coming for us again? 🤟🤪🇺🇸 thank her and @JoshuaLisec for more info about the corruption here 👀https://t.co/VKBmfvtUAt
@data_republican Applied intellect in the face of, first, challenges and then animosity. Godspeed.
Thanks for small r, a true warrior and patriot. 🫡🙏🏼✨✊🏽💪🏽⚖️🇺🇸. @DataRepublican@DataInterpretr
Ohmygoodness!!!! That sounds perfect for us!! #FIREYPASSION Thank you to @wasatchdotco, high-five to the Sasquatch! So excited to try it with my fiance and @DataRepublican!!
@SKDoubleDub33@PSPod25 It works great with your favorite fruit, but I like it with passion fruit and an working on a signature cocktail for @DataInterpretr's wedding I'm calling the Fiery Passion (coming soon to a Thirsty Thursday).
This article is smaller in scope than usual, but I was genuinely curious about why the usual pro-democracy groups were involved in Block the Merger campaign.
This Thirsty Thursday I was instructed by @DataRepublican to create this cocktail dubbed The Meltdown. This is the updated version correcting my typo of Lime... The drink was still well received dispite the spelling error.
Part 2 is up.
The democracy ecosystem claims $33 billion a year and employs hundreds of thousands of people. There is no puppet master. They converge through constant conventions.... meeting, aligning on priorities, and deploying.
Now imagine MAGA with $33 billion and 200,000 full-time staff whose entire job is to meet, agree, knock on doors, train judiciary, instill journalists, recruit candidates, and get out the vote.
Although the subscribers are interesting, the launch partners also stand out.
We have @kurtbardella, @MarkRuffalo, Amanda McGonigle, Blaire Postman, Robby Roadsteamer, Larry Krasner, Camaron Stevenson, Xander Schultz, and Rook T. Winchester.
Yo Reese, Ranger Tab holder here (as if I give a f*ck about it). When we want your opinion on Infantry qualifications, we'll give them to you. Right now your opinion is "I don't have an opinion because I'm not in the Infantry."
F*ck are you talking about? When Hegseth came up, do you know what the #1 thing on everyone's mind was? WAR. But you wouldn't know that would you, because you clearly like saying things without thinking first.
I came up during that time too. Do you know what we were doing at Fort Benning? Funneling people as fast as possible to the fight. When I graduated IOBC, NO NATIONAL GUARD GUYS were allowed to go to Ranger School. The slots were reserved for Active Duty.
And even then, everyone didn't get in. If you went to a mechanized unit, you could come back later unless you were high on the graduation OML. Priority went to light units. AND EVEN THEN, you had one chance to get through.
Luckily I went straight through and got the tab, but I didn't even have airborne wings yet. So I was a leg Ranger student. The sh*t was all messed up back then for Infantry officers.
I got rushed to my unit and found out both my CO and XO were KIA. So again, tell me, what's your understanding of Infantry career progression back then? Because my situation wasn't unique. We had to fill f*****g battlefield billets and didn't have time to worry about pieces of uniform flair.
So maybe stop asking your Infantry "friends" with less than 5 minutes in the Army how sh*t worked back in the early 2000s. Since they were probably watching f*****g Blues Clues and sh**ting themselves on commercial breaks.
Go find a coloring book. Fill it in between the lines. Try not to eat the crayons. You're not a Marine either.
Let that sink in for a second.
Miles Taylor served as DHS deputy chief of staff and senior advisor to John Kelly. He later served as chief of staff of DHS….under Donald Trump.
Taylor led sensitive counterterrorism activities at DHS, including work to disrupt terrorist plots "that spanned multiple cells, multiple countries, and multiple attack vectors."
And now, he’s creating websites where people are sending messages with threats on President Trump.👇🏼
No security on the endpoint.
And this wasn’t some mystery database Miles had no visibility into.
He signed up before launch.
His co-founder signed up before launch.
They knew what this site collected because they were literally in it.
Names. Emails. Messages, including death threats.