Men's Lifestyle June 25, 2026 0 Comments

Pentagon Drops Flu-Shot Mandate—Now a Military Base Is Battling a Sudden Outbreak: What Went Wrong?

Alright, buckle up—because if you think democracy is some clean, polished machine smoothly running in the background, think again. This week in our grand “laboratories of democracy,” the states are throwing curveballs that would challenge even the toughest. Texas is wrestling with what’s been cheekily dubbed the “Hegseth Flu,” an outbreak so fierce that it’s making commanders rethink their playbook after scrapping vaccine mandates. Montana’s ranchers? They’re staring down an environmental apocalypse, battling the toxic aftermath of coal mining that’s turning their soil to salt flats—not exactly the health tonic you’d expect from “clean coal.” And Oklahoma? Well, that state’s playing a covert ops game with secrecy pledges that could make a spy thriller blush. Makes you wonder—is this really democracy at work, or just a high-stakes game of political survival where the riverboat captain definitely knows your fate? Stick around—this four-minute read will wrench a few thoughts outta you. LEARN MORE

4 min read

This Week in the Laboratories of Democracy

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment to This Post)

Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what’s goin’ down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin’ gets done and where the riverboat captain knows your fate.

Let’s start off in Texas, where the Hegseth Flu is still raging at Lackland Air Force base. From the San Antonio Express-News:

The number of flu cases at a San Antonio military base is rising quickly. Now, fears are mounting about a very rare early-season outbreak as commanding officers and support staff commute to and from the base, increasing the risk of spread beyond the military compound. However, local health leaders paint a picture of hope should flu season come months early.

… “After Secretary [of War Pete] Hegseth scrapped the military’s flu vaccine mandate, it was only a matter of time before an outbreak occurred,” U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-San Antonio) said in a statement as news broke of the climbing flu numbers at JBSA-Lackland in San Antonio. “It was a reckless decision that put troops in harm’s way and undermined military readiness.”

And now it’s time to get back to what voodoo doctors do so well. From The Guardian:

The Pentagon has said that boot camps for all the military services are once again requiring the flu vaccination for all recruits after the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, made the shot optional for the military at the end of April.

We are going to be lucky to live through this.

We move along to Montana, where some local farmers and ranchers are living through an environmental postapocalypse. From the Montana Free Press:

The Tongue River, cottonwood-lined and flush with snowmelt on this mid-May day, has supplied five generations of Hayes’ family with stockwater for cattle and irrigation water for forage. Hayes and his children use the same water rights his grandfather secured nearly 140 years ago to irrigate the hay critical to Brown Cattle Company, which once boasted a herd of 15,000–20,000 head—too many, he says, to count.

In 1972, when Decker first proposed mining for coal a stone’s throw from the Tongue River Reservoir, Hayes was concerned that mining would bring mercury, a toxic heavy metal, to the 12-mile-long manmade lake. Later reports highlighted a different water-quality issue, which has since come to pass: Mining has brought sodium-infused groundwater to the surface. Hayes contends that the most critical resource ranchers like him have—clean and plentiful water—is deteriorating due to coal mining and methane drilling. “They issued a bunch of discharge permits for the coal companies [and] fed the farmers a bunch of bull,” Hayes says of Montana’s environmental regulators. “We’re paying the price, and we’ve got to pay it a long time.”

Beautiful, clean coal.

The groundwater that came up with the coal Decker shipped to power plants in the Midwest has high electrical conductivity—a measure of dissolved solids used to approximate the water’s saltiness. The water is corrosive to the metal innards of the Tongue River dam and hell on the hay crops local producers grow to feed their cattle. In places, what used to be productive soil has turned into a mucky goo—or firm, pale salt flats. Hayes and others suspect that decades of mining for coal and drilling for coalbed methane, or CBM, are linked to the near-disappearance of three species of fish from the Tongue River Reservoir, the largest state-managed water project in Montana.

One of the long-term environmental crises exacerbated by the present know-nothing regime is that programs meant to alleviate the problems caused by past human activities—uncapped gas wells, etc.—largely have been gutted. We have adopted the environmental approaches common to locusts.

And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, whence Blog Official Mussel Beach Lifeguard Friedman of the Algarve brings us a saga of covert operations. From the Frontier:

The City of Sand Springs annexed 827 acres of ranch land near Schmidt’s home in June 2025. The city didn’t tell residents that the property was being eyed by Google. The city manager later signed a nondisclosure agreement in October, agreeing not to talk about the project. The property owners asked Sand Springs for the annexation, and the city wasn’t legally required to notify neighboring property owners. Schmidt said he found out about the annexation the day after the council approved it. Months later, the application to build a data center, called Project Spring, became public. The Sand Springs City Council approved the project in February.

Long before a new data center is publicly announced, local officials work behind the scenes to aid developers in determining whether the location is a good fit. But to protect the companies involved, public officials have often been sworn to secrecy. Officials in other cities like Coweta, Claremore, Luther, Yukon, and Stillwater also signed nondisclosure agreements with data center developers in the past two years. Though the language of the agreements vary, some require that public officials not reveal that any discussions with developers are occurring, that any confidential information has been received, or even that a non-disclosure agreement exists.

This is the same kind of skullduggery practiced in Nebraska by the people behind the Keystone XL pipeline. Farmers like my friend Randy Thompson would look out their kitchen window and see some strangers surveying their land. The tactic is meant to provide a fait accompli against anyone who might object to the project. Trusting any American corporation is a sucker’s game.

This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.