Yes, of course, my barely there reticence towards DeSantis is melting away, but not a puddle of water yet. Call me a cynic.

From a former Petty Officer 2nd Class, Electronics Technician, ET2, USN. Got medals from the Gulf War and the War on Terror. I had a split enlistment meaning I served in the early 1990s, left, then served again after 9-11.

For what it’s worth, I played football in high school with who is now Master Chief Petty Officer, SEAL, Stephen White. He was friends with Army Ranger Pat Tillman. Pat Tillman gave away potentially millions of income from the NFL to serve his country after 9-11.

At the time I did not know he was friends with Tillman. I did know he specifically gave to the public the 1st official explanation of Tillman’s death. I did not know White was lied to by our government.

One day, I was flipping channels and came across a US Navy Seal Chief Petty Officer in full dress uniform giving testimony to Congress. I recognized my former high school teammate and watched as he explained why he told, I think it was ESPN, the first official reason for Tillman’s death.

Yeah, Tillman didn’t die from enemy fire, but by us, fratricide.

LGF, Charles Johnson, heh, I forgot his name earlier, was definitely not conservative and had views on both sides that went both ways, maybe more left than not.

Ironically, Trump is similar, but with views more right than not, maybe by a sliver. Same with me. I am not a doctrinaire conservative.

My main remembrance was LGF et all having a conniption when it got out that the invasion of Iraq by W was not on sound grounds. W’s admin blamed it on faulty intelligence, the intelligence community pushed back or at least there were articles stating that.

Yes, I voted for W, yet I do regret that and it has not one thing to do about Trump. Problem is, the Democrats were not a sound option to me at the time and even now I believe that to be true even though I have serious issues with the Republicans, W, especially.

I defended the No Child Left behind. Then I had two elementary aged children hide under tables and in their rooms due to the anxiety placed upon them by that act as proscribed by Texas. Sure, they passed, but really?

One of my children that did that in elementary was in middle school when he was told, along with us, his parents, that he passed the math portion, but his trend line was going down and he had to take extra tutoring. My wife and I pushed back having several meetings with the district’s administration. My wife and I were asked by one assistant whatever in the administration about my son’s STEM prospects if this trend continues. I was dumbfounded, truly. I told him that no one, not one that hires in any job gives a flip about any test in middle school, state test or otherwise. I further stated that I was a software developer in the 1990s during the dot com wave and no one asked about any grades in middle school. The only job that even glanced at my public school grades was my first one out of college and that was just more of a did you graduate kind of thing.

Oh, my son and our family, along with many others, were used in testimony at the capitol in Texas as to why this thing was bad.

It didn’t matter. I hate W for that.

The other issue I have with W is the Patriot Act. Again, I publicly defended it, but it’s critics, as crazy as many of them were … were correct. It has led to this point in time in which our government is not representing the population. Sure, there are other reasons why we are here, many decades long in the making, but the Patriot Act gave it a strong hand to do as they please.

But Charles Johnson was convinced that they were neo-Nazis and said, basically, that anyone having anything to do with them was in league with Nazis. When people refused to do his bidding and disown them, that created a huge rift and he turned on many people he had formerly seen as allies, and changed the thrust and orientation of his blog. He also lost a lot of traffic, for what that’s worth.

An understanding of personal agency is not your strong suit.

If you’re counting the first Gulf War as an ‘invasion’ of Iraq, your memory is shot. There was no invasion of Iraq in 1990-91; Iraqi forces were ejected from Kuwait and a no-fly zone and blockade imposed on Iraq. As for Charles Johnson, his blowup with starboard bloggers began in 2007, three years after the reports on WMD in Iraq.