John Bandy

@airbournej @Chieftain_armor H-fuckin Minus! I forgot how sharp that looked!

@Chieftain_armor I got you! 🤣🤣🤷‍♂️

I guess i didn't end up needing these. Found in a little opened box in the garage. We still refer to them in routine conversation, but most people these days had no idea what the origin of the term is.

This “controversy” over the administration’s No Fat Soldiers at the UFC policy is comedy. Not only should they not be given free tickets to a global event, they should be locked in the barracks for forced PT while 2 NCOs knife hand them into OBLIVION.

@KTB_500 @CasualArtyFan Got props from Geronimo 9 for ill shenanigans. LASSO swarms and tail-piping BMD’s with Goose and AT-4’s in a ground mech fight left the JAV’s on the back burner. FPV and one-way loiter are only going to trend and scale.

Nailed it @CasualArtyFan, I will take it a step further and say that the resistance to acknowledgement that these enablers have changed the battlefield geometry (deeper more lethal), we must adapt!

@David_Hambling @RHietpas @ColbyBadhwar We are already deploying one way loiter in ways superior to the Jav and CLU. You are absolutely correct.

@RHietpas @ColbyBadhwar No, I’m 100% confident it will be completely different. I’m also 100% confident that the drones are not going to go away.

The reusable unit for firing Javelin anti-tank missiles costs just over $300k. A top-tier setup for FPV control costs around $3k. This is the difference that economies of scale make from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of units.

@CynicalPublius @LanceEdward369 @SunTzusWar H-Minus

@LanceEdward369 @SunTzusWar Airborne!

So today I had a retired US Navy three-star admiral accuse me of being a bot and having never served in the US military. I posted a rebuttal, which basically caused this Democrat admiral to get swarmed by a social media army of veterans (and patriotic non-veterans too). I truly appreciate the outpouring of support, but I am also quite interested in what this says about the mindset of America’s veteran community in 2026, writ large. Most of us? We served in the GWOT and are still angry about it. We are angry that we were sent to do impossible missions of building liberal institutions in 8th Century tribal societies. We’re angry about ridiculously restrictive ROE that got our friends killed. We are angry that for much of the wars we were inadequately resourced, driving soft-skinned HMMWVs down IED Alley. We are angry that we spent all those years to have, in the end, accomplished very little. We are angry at how the VA treated us when we got out. Most of all, we are angry about watching our friends get killed or maimed (or kill themselves when they got home), seemingly all for naught. And guess what? We are REALLY angry at the senior generals and admirals who led us down this path and never had the cajones to tell the civilian elected leadership what the real deal was. (We’re not angry at Pete Hegseth’s team—we’re angry at the generals and admirals who caused the problems he and his team are trying to fix.) That admiral who came at me today? He was one of those GWOT senior leaders. What you saw today was much less an outpouring of support for me and much more an outpouring of righteous anger at a righteous target. Just wanted to share my thoughts on this, it’s an interesting phenomenon.

AOC is now being mocked by SEC fans. Enjoy.

@DebbieM26863727 @FrankenforIowa Goddamn. This is the best post of the day.

@FrankenforIowa Whg pay for it when you can get it for free?

No women on the Navy flag selection list this year. Sixteen % of the service zeroed out by weak civilian leadership. This will take years to recover.

@ernie2451 @TheBuddyCSM Muqdadiyah was home. I was there twice in my three tours to Iraq. One of those bases where you had to be there to understand. The breadbasket, Dali Abbas, five bridges, the quarry, RPG alley. We should’ve burnt Baqubah to the ground from day 1.

@TheBuddyCSM Diyala was a IED haven lost a lot of buddies out of Normandy god bless the boys

I love adding context to these types of posts. When I was a private, Ibach was a squad leader in B Co 1/75. He was the epitome of a Ranger. It was no surprise when he was selected for SFOD. Probably on the same deployment on which this picture was taken, Ibach was severely wounded in an IED. Several other members of the unit were killed. Ibach barely survived medical transport, but he made it.

@SetantaADV @TheBuddyCSM @osully1369 Should be a national holiday.

@TheBuddyCSM @osully1369 This is the photo they sent back from the Zarqawi strike. My guys printed it and we were dropping this that same period of darkness, after the President was notified. This is how AQ found out their boy was kaput.

@OfAthenry @HankVenture5 @RadioFreeTom

@KTB_500 @KirkpatrickMike @CynicalPublius I know we’re doing similar with our MFRC team. Trying to attrit with the absolute smallest element possible under constant drone canopy.

@JohnBandyC137 @KirkpatrickMike @CynicalPublius We've loaded ours with EW suite to make it resemble the EW signature of an entire BN. Our others have retrans, and ISR suites.

@KirkpatrickMike @KTB_500 @CynicalPublius That’s EXACTLY what we’re getting after! APOBS from the SMET. I love where we are with the transformation in contact.

@KTB_500 @JohnBandyC137 @CynicalPublius 3/10MTN (3-71CAV) did this in 2011 in RC-S off the SMET predecessor, the SMSS. Also configured APOBS off them and the Bobcat Mineflail - worked well, saved lives, enabled maneuver.

@KTB_500 @CynicalPublius We’re lobbing MCLIC’s on an SMET at Geronimo in a couple weeks. I’ll let you know how we do sir!

@CynicalPublius Its just honesty and a burning desire to strengthen our warfighters and defend what we have raised our right hand to do.

@KTB_500 @CynicalPublius Hell yes sir.

@infantrydort @juliaioffe Damn sir.

@juliaioffe Sounds like a viral response to the immune system doing its job.

NEW: Gen. LaNeve has been the one Army general rising through the ranks as Hegseth purges all the superstars. He's also used his proximity to Hegseth to settle old scores and taking out rivals. Now, he's trying to lure one of them back. My latest. puck.news/general-christ…

@BskiMike22802 @SenWarren My favorite new follow. Thank you 🙏

Dear Sen. Warren, "Packed with Trump-appointed judges." Case No. 26-30203. Panel: Southwick, Duncan, Engelhardt. Judge Leslie Southwick is a GEORGE W. BUSH appointee. You could not even identify the judges correctly in the ruling you are raging about. You can lead a person to Congress, but you apparently cannot make them read. All foam, no beer. Let me fill in the substance. What the court ACTUALLY ruled -- since you clearly did not open the 18 pages: This is an ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURE ACT challenge to Biden's Autopen's 2023 rule change that allowed mifepristone to be prescribed online and MAILED without any in-person medical visit. The drug is not banned. Not criminalized. Not pulled from shelves. The court temporarily reinstated the pre-2023 in-person dispensing requirement while the case proceeds. That is the ruling you called an "extremist playbook." In a battle of wits, Senator, you showed up unarmed. Now here is where this gets genuinely embarrassing for you. The FDA -- Biden's Autopen's OWN agency -- admitted in writing that its prior approvals had "procedural deficits" and a "lack of adequate consideration." The FDA conceded it had FAILED to adequately study whether remote mailing dispensing is safe. Then -- and this is the part that is almost too good -- the FDA ELIMINATED adverse event reporting requirements for mifepristone and subsequently used the resulting ABSENCE of adverse event data as justification for relaxing the safety rules. The court correctly identified that as textbook ARBITRARY AND CAPRICIOUS agency action. They deleted the grade book. Then bragged about having zero failing grades. More famous than wise does not begin to cover it. You say the drug is "safe and effective." Mifepristone has been FDA-approved since 2000 -- I do not dispute that. What the court ruled on -- and what Biden's Autopen's own FDA ADMITTED was never adequately studied -- is whether MAILING it without in-person oversight carries the same safety profile. That is a completely different scientific claim. The distinction between those two things is apparently the blatherskite version of advanced calculus for you. Here is what the actual record shows: FDA's own label reports 2.9 to 4.6 percent of women prescribed mifepristone in-person will require emergency care. The court found mailing it without any clinical oversight only increases those risks. Louisiana documented $92,000 in Medicaid emergency costs from mifepristone complications in 2025 alone -- real women, real emergency rooms, real costs. Nearly 1,000 illegal abortions per month were being facilitated in Louisiana by a federal rule that the FDA itself now admits it did not properly study. One more thing. Biden's Autopen issued Executive Order 14076 after Dobbs, directing federal agencies to "expand access to medication abortion" as a POLITICAL directive. The 2023 REMS was not science-driven -- it was politically ordered and then dressed in regulatory clothing. The court just noticed. If ignorance is bliss, Senator, you must be the happiest person in Washington right now. Quinn's Law #26: "Liberals like the courts unless the decision doesn't go their way." Quinn's Law #6: "Facts are the enemy of liberalism." One tweet. Both laws. Efficient. Light travels faster than sound -- which is why Sen. Warren appears informed until she speaks. But what do I know -- I am only a science teacher who actually READ Case 26-30203 before forming an opinion about it, which is apparently not a prerequisite for sitting on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. IF you agree: LIKE this post so the algorithm shows it to people who need to read it. SHARE this COMMENT below -- should senators tweet about rulings they demonstrably did not read? Tell me. JOIN Bski's Classroom community on X or YouTube. @JoJoFromJerz @GuntherEagleman @catturd2 #MAGA #Veterans #Trump

BREAKING: A conservative court packed with Trump-appointed judges just ruled to ROLL BACK access to the abortion pill. This is a page straight out of extremist Republicans’ anti-abortion playbook. Let me be clear: the abortion pill is safe and effective. We must fight back.

I am a senior coordinating producer for the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. I have worked eleven of these. I was backstage at the Washington Hilton when the shots were fired. The first thing I heard was not the gunfire. It was glass. A champagne flute hit the floor of the International Ballroom at approximately 9:47 PM. Then a second. Then the sound that I have since been told was a 12-gauge shotgun, which from inside the ballroom sounded like a heavy door slamming in a parking garage. Then the Secret Service moved. They moved the President, the Vice President, the First Lady through the east corridor in under ninety seconds, which is protocol, which is practiced, which is the one part of the evening that worked exactly as it was designed. Everything else was improvised. I know this because I ordered the wine. 94 tables. Two bottles per table. 188 bottles of a Willamette Valley pinot noir that the Association selected in February after a tasting committee spent three meetings debating between Oregon and Burgundy. Oregon won. The budget was $14,200. I signed the invoice. I can tell you the vintage. I can tell you the distributor. I can tell you the per-bottle cost because I negotiated it down from $89 to $76. What I cannot tell you is how 147 of those bottles left the building during an active shooter evacuation. I can tell you what I saw. A correspondent from a network I will not name picked up two bottles on her way to the east exit. Full bottles. One in each hand. She was wearing heels and she did not spill. A man in a tuxedo tucked one inside his jacket the way you'd shoplift a paperback at an airport bookstore. A woman picked up a bottle, looked at the label, put it back, and took a different one. She checked the vintage. During an evacuation. That's editorial judgment under pressure. The theme of the dinner was "A Free Press for a Free People." The banners were still hanging when the evacuation began. I know because I hung them. Twenty-three banners, navy blue, gold serif lettering, $11,400 for the set. They were still hanging when 2,600 guests were directed to the exits by Secret Service agents, one of whom had just taken a shotgun round in his ballistic vest and walked to the ambulance on his own feet. The agent's vest costs approximately $800. The wine that left the building was worth $11,172 at Association cost. At restaurant markup, roughly $29,000. The guests saved more in wine than the vest that saved the agent. That's priority. The video went viral by 10:15 PM. Not the video of the evacuation. Not the Secret Service response. The wine. Three guests in formalwear grabbing bottles off white tablecloths while being told to move toward the exits, while a man with a shotgun stood in the same motor entrance where John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan 45 years ago. A woman near the service entrance was crying. She said "I just wanna go home." She was not holding wine. She was holding her phone. She was the only person I saw that night who looked afraid rather than inconvenienced. That's the distinction. The rest of the ballroom did not look afraid. They looked interrupted. An active shooter at the WHCD is a logistical problem. The dinner was disrupted. The timeline was off. The after-party at the French Ambassador's residence would need to be rescheduled. These are contingency matters. Contingency matters have solutions. Fear is for people who attend events without security details. I have produced eleven of these dinners. I have managed seating charts that require diplomatic-grade negotiations. I have handled comedians, cabinet secretaries, network anchors, and the editor of a major newspaper who once threatened to leave because his table was behind a column. I have never, in eleven years, seen a guest leave a $76 bottle on the table during an evacuation. I have also never seen a guest check the label first. Both observations are consistent. The bottle is worth taking. The evacuation is worth surviving. The instinct is to do both simultaneously. 188 bottles placed. 41 recovered. 147 unaccounted for. One agent shot. Zero guests injured. Zero bottles broken. A free press for a free people. The press is free. The wine was $76 a bottle. They took it anyway.

@theP3Leader @SecArmy

I have two stacks on my desk. The left stack is financial disclosure forms from members of Congress. The right stack is waivers for members who filed their financial disclosures late. The right stack is always taller. On Wednesday morning, I watched a soldier get arrested on CNN. I am a Disclosure Analyst for the House Ethics Committee. I have held this position for eleven years. My job is to receive the forms, verify their completeness, and file them. I do not investigate. I do not flag. I do not refer. I file. I have a lanyard. The lanyard says ETHICS. The soldier's name is Gannon Ken Van Dyke. He is thirty-eight years old. He was stationed at Fort Bragg. He was Special Forces. In December, he created an account on a prediction market called Polymarket. On January 2nd, he bet $32,500 that the president of Venezuela would be removed from power. On January 3rd, he helped remove the president of Venezuela from power. He collected $409,881. He has been charged with five federal crimes. Commodities fraud. Wire fraud. Unlawful use of confidential government information. Theft of nonpublic government information. Unlawful monetary transaction. The Department of Justice called it "the first-ever insider trading prosecution on event contracts." I watched this on the television in our break room. Then I walked back to my desk and processed a late financial disclosure from a member of the House Financial Services Committee who purchased $250,000 in bank stocks eleven days before his subcommittee held a closed-door hearing on proposed capital reserve changes. The filing was forty-seven days late. The STOCK Act requires disclosure within forty-five days. The penalty for late filing is $200. I waived it. I waive most of them. In 2021, fifty-four members of Congress and senior staff violated the reporting rules. The fines were minimal. Most were waived. I have a form for the waiver. The form has a box that says "Reason." I write "administrative delay." In ethics, "administrative delay" means the member's office forgot and then remembered when a reporter called. My approval rate is one hundred percent. In any other field, that number would trigger an audit. In mine, it is called thoroughness. Let me show you what I processed this year. January. A senator on the Armed Services Committee sold defense contractor shares worth $1.2 million. Three days later, his committee received a classified briefing that the Iran campaign had exceeded its projected cost by 340%. The stock dropped 8%. He filed the disclosure sixty-one days late. I calculated the fine. $200. His chief of staff asked if it could be waived. He did not ask what the senator traded on. Nobody asks that. The form does not have a field for it. I waived the fine. The senator's portfolio returned 23.4% in 2025. The S&P 500 returned 16.8%. February. A representative on the Energy and Commerce Committee bought pharmaceutical stocks worth $400,000. Two weeks later, her committee advanced a bill that would extend patent exclusivity for the exact drug class she purchased. The stocks rose 14%. She filed on time. There was no fine. There was no investigation. There was nothing to investigate because buying stocks in companies regulated by your own committee is not illegal. It is legal. The STOCK Act made it legal by making it disclosed. In Congress, disclosed means legal. In my office, legal means filed. March. A member whose spouse manages a portfolio worth $9.2 million reported forty-three separate transactions in a single quarter. Twelve of them were in sectors directly affected by legislation the member co-sponsored. The timing on eight of those twelve was within a two-week window of committee action. I logged all forty-three. None were flagged. We do not flag. We file. I asked my supervisor once what would happen if I flagged a filing. She said we do not have a form for that. I never asked again. In 2020, I processed 847 disclosures. In 2023, 1,211. In 2025, 1,614. The number of enforcement actions in each of those years was zero. The numerator changes. The denominator does not. I want to tell you about the soldier again. He made $409,881. He tried to delete his Polymarket account by calling customer service and saying he lost access to his email. He moved his profits into a foreign cryptocurrency vault and then into a new brokerage account. He used his real identity. He placed thirteen bets. Every single one was connected to an operation he personally participated in. In my eleven years, I have processed disclosures from members of Congress who traded on: Pending FDA approvals they learned about in committee. Defense appropriations they voted on. Trade policy they negotiated. Pandemic response measures they drafted. Interest rate decisions they were briefed on before the public. None of them have been charged. None of them have been investigated by the Department of Justice. None of them have been referred to the SEC. The STOCK Act has produced zero prosecutions since it was signed on April 4th, 2012. Fourteen years. Five hundred and thirty-five members. $635 million in trades last year alone. Zero cases. My daughter asked me once what happens when someone breaks the rules. I told her we write it down. She asked what happens after that. I said it depends. She was nine. She is twenty now. It does not depend. Nothing happens after that. The soldier made $409,881 and faces decades in prison. Nancy Pelosi entered Congress in 1987 with a portfolio worth approximately $785,000. It is now worth $133.7 million. That is a return of 16,930%. The Dow Jones returned 2,300% over the same period. Professional fund managers who beat the market for three consecutive years are considered exceptional. She has beaten it for thirty-seven. If a hedge fund produced those returns, the SEC would subpoena the records on a Thursday. She produced them from a building with a chapel and a gift shop. She announced her retirement last year. No investigation was opened. No disclosure was flagged. Her filings were on time. In my office, on time means compliant. Compliant means closed. I want to tell you about the fine. $200. That is the maximum penalty for violating the STOCK Act's disclosure requirements. $200 for a member of Congress whose portfolio gained $4.7 million in a single quarter. I calculated what $200 represents as a percentage of $4.7 million. It is 0.004%. I could not find a comparison that made it meaningful. It is less than the price of the parking pass in the Rayburn garage. It is less than lunch at the members' dining room if you order the crab cakes, which I am told are excellent though I eat at my desk. Since 2012, thirty-one bills have been introduced to restrict congressional trading. I keep a list. The list is longer than the STOCK Act itself. On March 5th, 2026, a representative from Michigan introduced the thirty-second. He called it the "No Getting Rich in Congress Act." The bill would prohibit the President, Vice President, members of Congress, and their spouses from trading individual stocks, cryptocurrency, futures, and commodities while in office. The bill was referred to committee. The committee has not scheduled a hearing. The committee is chaired by a member whose spouse executed $2.1 million in trades last year. The bill will be reviewed. In my office, reviewed means read. Read means acknowledged. Acknowledged means a status has been assigned. A status is the absence of an action that has been given a name so it looks like one. The soldier used classified information to make $409,881 on a prediction market. He has been charged with five federal crimes. The Department of Justice announced the case on the same day I processed three disclosures from members who traded on committee knowledge worth a combined $3.8 million. The difference between the soldier and the members is not what they did. It is the building they did it in. He did it from Fort Bragg. They did it from the Capitol. He used a prediction market. They used the New York Stock Exchange. He bet on a military operation. They bet on the legislation they write. He did not write the law. They did. They wrote the STOCK Act. Then they funded its enforcement at zero dollars. Then they set its maximum penalty at $200. Then they gave my office the authority to waive it. Then they traded $635 million. The soldier flew to Caracas. He breached a compound. He put his body between a mission and a bullet. The people who ordered the operation were in a building with a credenza and sparkling water. They did not go to Caracas. They went to their brokerage accounts. The soldier made $409,881 and is now in federal custody. The people who knew what he was going to do before he did it made more and filed less. His prosecution is not a failure of the system. It is the system. One conviction per decade, at the lowest level, so the briefing slides can say enforcement exists. The $409,881 is not the crime. It is the cost of making $635 million look supervised. In my field, we call this self-regulation. The soldier's Polymarket account has been frozen. His military career is over. He will spend years in federal prison. My office will process every congressional disclosure filed this year. Every trade logged. Every $200 fine calculated and waived. The system is immaculate. Fourteen years. Zero prosecutions. $635 million a year. A 16,930% return. I have not leaked a document. I have not filed a complaint. I have not deviated from the process one single time. The process was written by the people whose forms I process. As long as the disclosures go up and the cases don't, my performance review says I am meeting expectations. My lanyard still says ETHICS. In eleven years, nobody has asked me to define the word.