33 years ago today, on October 3, 1993, during the Battle of Mogadishu, Delta Force operators Gary Gordon and Randy Shughart were flying over the city in a Black Hawk, providing cover for Task Force Ranger.
After one helicopter was shot down, a second, Super 64, with CWO Mike Durant at the controls, was hit by an RPG and crashed in a neighborhood swarming with militia. Ground forces could not reach the site. Gordon and Shughart asked three times to be inserted, and permission was finally given.
They fast-roped in roughly 100 meters from the wreck, armed with sniper rifles and sidearms, and fought their way to the crash. They pulled the badly injured Durant from the cockpit, set up a perimeter, and held off a much larger force until their ammunition ran out. Both were killed. Durant was captured and later released, and without them, he almost certainly would have died in the wreckage.
On May 23, 1994, they became the first Medal of Honor recipients since the Vietnam War, and the only soldiers from Operation Gothic Serpent to receive it. Their citations record actions above and beyond the call of duty under intense enemy fire, and a choice to go in when no one else could.
They would not leave a comrade behind, and 33 years later, that choice is still the standard.
Never forgotten.
F***.
ANOTHER ONE.
Seian-ji, Yamaguchi. Standing since 931. Ash by dinner.
ELEVEN temples this year. ELEVEN.
"Cause unknown." Every. F***ing. Time.
No wiring. No flame. Burns itself down? Eleven times? Do you think we're stupid?
Somebody is burning our country and the answer is a shrug.
I'm crying at my screen and I want NAMES. NOW.
Charlie being murdered didn’t shock the nation as much as the left’s reaction to it
Lindsay Clancy killing her children didn’t shock the nation as much as leftist women’s reaction to it
We should probably stop being shocked by leftists celebrating murders and minimizing victims
Below, I have collected every bad faith argument in favor of the surveillance state, handed out to influencers during this paid op, and why each one is retarded. I put my heart and soul into this. Please enjoy.
1.) “If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear”
•This is retarded because it continues to treat a nationwide, searchable movement log as harmless even after officers have used it to stalk ex-girlfriends and the system has produced armed stops of innocent drivers.
2.) “They only catch criminals and find stolen cars or missing kids”
•This is retarded because it ignores that the default is photographing every passing vehicle, not a targeted warrant, and that alerts have already sent police after the wrong people.
3.) “Cameras are already everywhere so Flock is no different”
•This is retarded because it pretends a privately operated, AI-searchable national network with inter-agency lookup that bypasses due process, is the same as a local traffic cam or your neighbor’s doorbell.
4.) “Cities own the data and Flock is just a vendor”
This is retarded because audits showed federal agencies searching local plate data and Flock toggling national lookup without cities knowing.
5.) “Audit logs and purpose fields prevent abuse”
This is retarded because it is offered as a complete answer after officers typed “investigation” and still ran plates of girlfriends, and after the company itself later added tools because the old ones failed. The “safeguards” are just mandatory discipline for making their tyranny look bad.
6.) “It’s just a snapshot at a fixed point, not tracking”
•This is retarded because it is the legal talking point even though the product stitches those snapshots into paths, heat maps, and person-level files. It is warrantless dragnet, and it’s been unconstitutional for 60 years.
7.) “Critics just want to defund the police or normalize lawlessness”
•This is retarded because it recasts bipartisan privacy pushback and contract cancellations as a partisan conspiracy instead of answering for the actual access and misuse record.
8.) “Retention is only a few days and we don’t sell data”
•This is retarded because the selling point of the product is a shared national lookup of those same records and any civilian can walk off the street and get a job with access to that data.
9.) “It doesn’t collect personally identifiable information”
•This is retarded because not only were plates matched to owners, but the company built tools to jump from LPR to person.
10.) “It isn’t a search because it doesn’t open your door”
•This is retarded because logging every car into a queryable database is the modern version of a general warrant: rummage first, invent a reason later, and the 4th amendment was the answer to general warrants.
11.) “Phones already track you so Flock is fine”
•This is retarded because the state building a warrantless dragnet is not excused by the existence of private, voluntary apps and contracts that you can refuse or self regulate.
“12.) “It’s constitutional because courts like ALPRs”
•This is retarded because warrantless dragnet is not constitutional.
13.) “Flock just helps catch real criminals”
•This is retarded because selling a total location archive as enforcement is how you launder a dragnet. It’s trading our essential liberty for temporary security without our consent.
14.) “Opponents are just being dramatic or paid to hate tech and America and missing kids.”
This is retarded because the coordinated “Flock op” of identical accounts is insisting a warrantless catalog of every vehicle is the same thing as voluntary cameras while appealing to emotion, and that is anti-American redcoat shit.
To people who call Japanese manners “oppression”:
No. It’s just how we live here.
We sort our trash. We keep our voices down on trains. We take our shoes off inside. We try not to bother the people around us.
Nobody made these rules to hurt your feelings. Most of us don’t even think about them. We grew up with them.
Japan has a lot of people living in a pretty small space. Things work because people understand that public space doesn’t belong to them alone.
You don’t have to like every custom here. That’s fine.
But if being expected to respect the people around you feels like “oppression,” maybe Japan just isn’t for you.
Japan is a country, not your personal stage.
I used to think Japan's left was a Galapagos species, uniquely evolved and found nowhere else.
Then I looked overseas.
The same species, everywhere.
They mock their own culture, side with everyone but their own citizens, and call it "progress."
What I thought was a local disease turned out to be a global pandemic.
@mattvanswol Years ago I did a teaching on this topic (having had my own struggles with doubt) and tried to bring a helpful, Bible-based response.
I hope you find it helpful if you have the time for it.
https://t.co/VS4e8rIUDd
@infantrydort …or as I like to refer to it, “A culture of untruth”
Ref. A: https://t.co/mJQ0dj4HwL
Ref. B: https://t.co/Bj4e6MlrTa
Ref. C: https://t.co/A7IRk8RfQF
Ref. D: https://t.co/duT7fZK4uR
@infantrydort There was an entire white paper written about this back in 2015:
Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession.
https://t.co/uZvOHaiRNR
I saw news about Democratic lawmakers celebrating enthusiastically over allowing pregnant women to get abortions right up until just before birth.
In Japan, people believe that babies communicate with their mothers while still in the womb and even have memories from that time.
It reminds me of stories about child soldiers in African wars. It is said that brainwashed child soldiers who had lost their minds played a game of cutting open pregnant women's bellies to guess the baby's gender.
Instead of calling themselves the Democratic Party, how about changing their name to the "Demons Descended Party"?
Or even something like the "We Love Discrimination and Social Destruction as Long as It Makes Us Feel Good Party" would work fine too.
I was reliably told my coffee would never be available via walmart.
Full inventory available in less than 2 weeks.
Next up Target & World Market & Local Grocery Chain
Staying on that grind.
A year ago today, the Army released a video about my service for my 75th birthday. Today, on my 76th birthday, I decided to share it again. My life in service to my country has been a blast.
@lolkms247 I've never abused anyone. Lady, this is straight from the NHS. Feel free to fact check. I will never mistreat or abuse anyone because they're gay. If it's a child though, I will seriously question what the adults were doing around that child. Go do research on your own.
@TheQuartering Hope it gets better, Jeremy. The enemy is on the move now more than ever. Keep the faith and keep trusting Jesus. No weapon formed against you shall prosper. In Jesus name.