Dear Europeans... Buck-ee's is just normal stuff to us. Yeah, sure, it's freakishly big, and has lots of cool stuff.
But "freakishly big and has lots of cool stuff" is also a pretty good way to describe America.
Why?
It's not because we're somehow genetically superior. We come from roughly the same genepool.
And it's not because we somehow looted the third world... you did a lot more empire-building than we ever did.
It's because of the difference between your politics and ours. And between your social mores and ours.
We have what we call a permissive environment.
That means that if someone sees a possibility, wants to solve a problem, comes up with a better way to do something, even something small...
He's encouraged to try.
The government won't make him fill out 67 thousand forms and make him wait five years for permission.
His neighbors won't sneer at him and say he's getting ideas above his station.
Investors will actually want to talk to him, and think seriously about whether they want in on the action.
We know this seems brash and arrogant and reckless to you. We know you think a lot of these ideas are stupid. Some of them are.
But every creative idea, even the best ones, seems really, really dumb when you first come up with it, haven't tried it out, haven't refined it into what it eventually needs to be.
"He shoots spiderwebs out of his hands? What kind of useless power is that?"
"They're wizards who fight with magic swords, but they fly around the galaxy in spaceships?"
"Nobody is going to want to buy books online! How are they supposed to thumb through them?"
"The best minds have been trying heavier-than-air flight for years and failing."
"Reusable rocket boosters are a pipe dream."
Name any good idea anyone has ever had, and I can describe it the way it might have looked to people of its time, which makes it sound dumb, or wicked, or hopeless, or reckless, or arrogant.
If Buck-ee's had occurred to a European, which it easily could have, he would have been laughed off the stage. Or unable to raise money to try it. Or regulated out of existence.
This is why you're poor.
It's not because you suck. You don't suck. But you are micromanaging yourselves and each other out of existence.
Your ancestors weren't like this. And you don't have to be.
“What’s my approval rating?”
- It’s bad Mr Prime Minister. It’s -43. It’s…it’s in the mud.
“Could it get lower?”
- I mean anything COULD happen but realistically-
“Kill the ponies.”
- Wha-
“The ponies. The cute little ponies. Kill them.”
- Sir, they’re endangered
“Fuck ‘em. Make the call.”
I'm going to be direct and blunt.
If I lose followers over this, remember: X doesn't pay my bills and I'm 100% unapologetically American as fuck.
I've served this country in three capacities, and in places most people only read about in National Geographic, just to secure a future for Americans who can't do the job.
I have zero filter when it comes to enemies, foreign or domestic because my role was never complicated. I started as a grunt. I'll always be a grunt. After 4 years, I became a PSC, pulling 7 years of contracts overseas.
After that, I came home, re-joined the Army, earned my tab at 38 and locked in with Biden’s DHS (long story there)
At no point did I swear an oath to "peace through cowardice." I signed that contract for one reason: to destroy the enemies that would threaten so quickly, what we hold precious in this country.
The Constitution itself recognizes domestic enemies. That language wasn't written in some age of widespread terrorism, it was put there because of British loyalists who were American citizens but chose to side against their own nation.
The warrior class has always existed to meet that threat with force when necessary, yet, somehow people expect soldiers and veterans to just absorb threats to the President, to our people, to the fabric of society and stay quiet and "proper" while civilians who couldn't win a fruit fight lecture us on restraint. That's absurd.
My job title, at its core, was death to the enemy. Period.
If you're an American who actively threatens the safety of other Americans, or you're a foreigner hell-bent on jihad and subversion, my purpose was and is still very clear: we will fucking destroy you and everything you would use to tear this country down.
I don't care who hears it. I'm prepared for the slap on the wrist.
The government has us swear an oath to the Constitution, yet a huge portion of the population, by word and deed, acts as the very domestic enemies that oath was meant to confront.
Turning the warrior class into a social experiment where we have to dance around that reality is insane. Criminals, corrupt elites, the activists and their handlers actively perverting our institutions, if your sole contribution is hatred for the foundations this country was built on, then you cannot coexist with it or within the society we secured for you. You are a well-fed liability to our republic and your purpose in that moment becomes simple: you will be stopped.
That's not incitement. That's the eternal reality of the soldier's oath.
God and Country, are worth fighting.
Therfore, all threats must be met with lethality because they understand nothing else.
People like this fuckstick in Iran, is about to get that memo from 35,000 feet.
For people pretending to be American, sympathize with the enemy, you are going to be treated as one.
Full stop.
The B-52 Stratofortress can fly for about 10.5 hours and cover over 8,800 miles (14,080 km) unrefueled.
With in-flight refueling, its endurance is theoretically limitless and relies mostly on crew fatigue, with some historical missions lasting over 45 hours.
The only nuclear ordnance the B-52 is authorized to carry is the AGM-86B Air-Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM)
Each one costs $1 million and carries a single W80 thermonuclear warhead with a yield of 5 or 150 kilotons.
It can carry 20 of them.
We’re getting new engines!!
The thrust in the new Rolls Royce engines is similar, but they are 20-30% more fuel efficient, allowing for longer flights between refueling
The original big reveal of Halo 2 (which was meant to be long enough that it also contained all of Halo 3) was the Arbiter opening up an ancient Forerunner sarcophagus and seeing a human skeleton inside