“Do you understand your rights, Specialist Collard?” It’s amazing what you remember when you are barely listening to what someone says, like your significant other rambling on about their day until you get to the part about dinner. Yes, I understood my rights, and somehow I picked out something that I probably wasn’t meant to notice. With all the legal mumbo-jumbo being thrown at me, … Continue reading Don’t admit to anything (3/3)

Contrary to what most people thought would occur, Russia decided to expand it’s control of Ukrainian territory with a full blown military invasion exactly fourteen days prior to this being published. To those who have studied Russia’s geopolitical aims for more than five minutes, this was consider a likely outcome after the repeated escalation and de-escalation of Russian military units along the Ukrainian border for … Continue reading D-Day + 14

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few months, Russia is getting squirrely in Eastern Europe again. It’s pretty obvious to anyone paying attention that this is the most precarious situation that Europe and the United States have found ourselves in since the Cuban Missile Crisis. While a Russian invasion of Ukraine does not mean that open warfare between the US/NATO … Continue reading The Coming Conflict

The LT took the paperwork he fetched off the printer into the CO’s office and motioned for me to come inside. I got sent to the principals office a lot when I was in school, hell I even spent some time in front of a county judge, but this was different. He is going to read you your rights. Fuck. This was as close as … Continue reading Don’t admit to anything (2/3)

I fucked up. This time, it wasn’t a normal fuck up, you know, one where I could say it was all my fault. This was more of a “someone did something shitty, I documented it, and now my ass is in more trouble than the guy who did something shitty because he outranks me” kind of thing. I didn’t think it was big deal, I … Continue reading Don’t admit to anything (1/3)

I pulled into a poorly lit parking lot on the southeast side of Portland, close enough to the business at the east end to make it appear that what was about to happen was a lot less seedy than it actually was. I turned my lights off and sat in the dark, until my phone vibrated and the message I was waiting for flashed on … Continue reading I have a problem

So obviously everyone and their mother has an opinion on the whole Kyle Rittenhouse controversy and is most likely either celebrating his freedom or livid that he is free of the consequences of his actions. However, it seems that the lessons learned from this whole ordeal are being lost in the shuffle of social media virtue signaling by politicians and peasants, including yours truly. I’m … Continue reading Reflections on Kenosha

First off, let us define extremism according to Oxford. ex·trem·ism/ikˈstrēˌmizəm/ the holding of extreme political or religious views; fanaticism. This baseline definition is fairly broad, and can be applied to many mainstream political beliefs in the Trump Era of American politics. What’s worse, is that the application of this definition can skew based on the ideology of the person applying it. Personally, I feel that … Continue reading On Extremism in the Military

Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I love guns. You can’t have a conversation with me without mentioning one project or another, a new wildcat I found, or some companies’ entrance to some military acquisition program. This fascination used to get me in trouble as a kid, because I was always carrying around a copy of Shotgun News or a book on the … Continue reading Building For Long Range

Fuck, man. This was a shit situation. On one hand, the kid is seen as a murderer. On the other, he is a folk hero. I can’t say I agree with either point of view, no matter how you spin either one. At what point do you ask, why the fuck did he even go down there? Where were his parents? What motivated him to … Continue reading Kyle Rittenhouse