CJ4700

I grew up on a ranch in the NE corner of WY, part of it is actually in MT. It’s 70 miles from town. To put that in perspective, we used to get picked up by the bus for school @ 545am when school started at 730. Most of us were able to get what’s called a hardship drivers license when we were 14 or 15.

I can answer this from another cattle rancher in WY perspective. The tariffs haven’t affected us much but what has is the removal of the country of origin labels. Beef used to come with a label that showed where it came from and that’s good because many people won’t buy the cheap, less healthy, and maybe not even “beef” that other countries export. Removing that label along with other things have caused the price of beef to drop and made it harder to break even or turn a profit from cattle sales alone (we’ve gotten creative with airBnB to supplement). For the most part, this state loves Trump as you can imagine, but not everything....

Edit: effect vs affect

70 miles of driving, 18 on gravel and the rest is paved. You can do it in 1 hour if you’re alone but on a bus with stops it felt like forever...I remember sleeping and how great it was to finally be able to drive.

I was talking to a friend of mine who’s an active duty MAJ and stationed at Ft Sill. He’s been jerked around and abused and taken for granted so many times, prevented from seeing his daughters 8 hrs away during Covid restrictions, and will now spend a year in Korea that will likely end his marriage. The guy has been ravaged by Lyme disease he caught in the field in Germany and it really changed his personality, but emotionally he’s been barely hanging on for years now. I’m sure it’s worse at Wainwright, but every time I talk to him I’m reminded how thankful I am that I left active duty as a captain years ago.

The Army has been trying to address this suicide problem for almost 20 years, but the inherent conflict is the military organization will ultimately be okay getting you killed because that’s what militaries are, and I don’t think they’re capable of caring about suicide but also viewing you as a bullet catcher. Do you have any thoughts on the conflict of interests (IMO) of the military?

Same here...just another instance of me being impressed AF by Ice Cube