Georgia Rai

Lover of lyrics, bad tv, RINOs, nachos, justice, fuzzy slippers, redemption, cheesy movies, civility and grandbabies. Not necessarily in that order.

[Spencer Pratt @spencerpratt]

You can tell a lot about a person by how they react when someone dies.

[Scott Thompson @sthompsonauthor]

“Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.” ― Louis L'Amour

[1776 Live @250YearsAgoLive]

The first public reading of the Declaration of Independence takes place in Philadelphia, summoned by the ringing of the Liberty Bell.

John Nixon conducts the reading.

[Justine Bateman @JustineBateman]

America is a place, merged with an idea. Americans are those here who agree to this idea. The idea is that anything is possible and that you can live your life the way you want, so long as that way does not impinge on others’ ability to live the way they want.
As the current custodians of America, we will keep this idea sacred, so that it is healthy and alive for those who come after us. Just like those of the past 250 years did for us. Happy 4th of July.

[Secretary Marco Rubio @SecRubio]

For 250 years, America has been the greatest nation on Earth — and with God’s grace, it will be for 250 more.

Happy Independence Day!

[Dakota News Now @dakotanews_now]

DeLon Mork Madison Dairy Queen sells more than 40,000 Blizzards on Miracle Treat Day and has raised more than $1 million for the Children’s Miracle Network. That's why he's this week's "Someone You Should Know".

Story >> https://t.co/mnLBpn07sD

[1776 Live @250YearsAgoLive]

The New York Provincial Congress evacuates New York City as British forces approach.

Yesterday, General Washington learned of 45 Royal Navy ships bearing down on New York from Sandy Hook. The situation looks dire.

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

250 years ago today, on June 29, 1776, New Yorkers looked out at the water and saw a nightmare on the horizon. The British fleet had arrived, and so many ships filled the bay that witnesses said the masts looked like "a forest of pine trees" growing out of the sea. The timing could not have been more brutal.

This was the empire's answer to the rebellion, and it was overwhelming. The first wave of around 45 warships and transports dropped anchor off Sandy Hook and Staten Island carrying General William Howe and roughly 10,000 troops. Within days it kept growing. Then his brother Admiral Richard Howe arrived with more. It would eventually swell into one of the largest seaborne invasion forces of the entire 18th century, hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of professional soldiers and German mercenaries, aimed at one city.

Now sit with the timing. While that forest of masts was filling the harbor, delegates down in Philadelphia were in the final days of debating whether to declare independence. They voted for it on July 2 and signed off on the wording on July 4. So at the exact moment America was being born on paper, the most powerful military on earth was already anchored off its coast, getting ready to strangle it in the cradle.

The people of New York understood exactly what they were seeing. Alarm bells rang, panic spread through the streets, and soldiers sprinted to their posts to stare at a force they had almost no hope of matching. Washington's army was outnumbered, outgunned, and about to get badly beaten in the battles for New York that followed.

That's the part that gets lost in the fireworks every Fourth of July. Independence wasn't declared from a position of strength. It was declared with an enemy armada already sitting on the doorstep, knowing full well what was coming. They signed their names anyway.

[Federalist Society @FedSoc]

One vote stood between America and independence. The man who had to cast it was 80 miles away, battling cancer, as a violent thunderstorm raged. His name was Caesar Rodney.

A lesser-known founder of the American Revolution, Rodney rode overnight on horseback from Delaware to Philadelphia, arriving just in time to cast the deciding vote for independence and sign the Declaration of Independence. 🇺🇲

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. A breakfast counter. The waitress recommended the biscuits and gravy, and when the plate arrived, I thought something had gone wrong in the kitchen.

I say this with shame. The dish looked like a construction site after rain. Pale mounds. Gray ladle-fall. Speckles I could not identify.

In my land, the eye eats first. A meal is arranged like a garden. This meal was arranged like weather.

"Is it… finished?" I asked, carefully.

"Honey, that's what it looks like."

The man beside me was already eating his. He did not look up. "Just try it."

I am a man who has charged hillsides at dawn. I raised the fork. I tried it.

I must now formally apologize to the biscuits, the gravy, the waitress, the kitchen, and the entire breakfast tradition of the American South.

It was magnificent. Warm. Peppered. The biscuit drank the gravy the way a field drinks rain — THAT is why it is shaped like that, you fool — and every mound I had insulted was a soft fold of comfort that my homeland, in eight hundred years, never once thought to invent.

"Well?" the waitress asked.

"I judged it," I confessed. "By its appearance. I am ashamed."

"Everybody does, hon."

Everybody does. A national dish that forgives you for doubting it. It expects the doubt. It waits for you on the other side of it.

Do not judge the gravy by its face. Judge yourself, for hesitating.

I order it every Saturday now. I no longer see the construction site. I see only the garden.

It was a garden the whole time. The eye must be trained.

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

General Omar Bradley called it the most dangerous mission of D-Day. He was not wrong.

At 6:30am on June 6, 1944, 225 Army Rangers approached a 100-foot sheer cliff face on the Normandy coast called Pointe du Hoc.

Their mission: climb it.

The cliff was vertical. The Germans were at the top with full visibility of everyone below. As the Rangers fired grappling hooks upward, the Germans cut the ropes. Shot the men hanging on them. Dropped grenades over the edge onto the climbers beneath.

The Rangers kept climbing.

It took roughly 40 minutes. Men fell. Men were shot off the ropes. The ones behind them grabbed the ropes and kept going.

They reached the top.

Then came the gut punch: the massive 155mm artillery guns they had been sent to destroy were gone. The Germans had moved them inland before the invasion. The entire mission had been sent to destroy guns that weren't there.

Most commanders would have regrouped and called it done.

The Rangers fanned out. Two miles inland, they found the guns, hidden in an orchard, already aimed at Utah Beach and loaded to fire. They destroyed every one with thermite grenades.

Then they dug in. Cut off, with almost no ammunition, no reinforcements, and no resupply, 225 men held Pointe du Hoc against relentless German counterattacks for two full days.

When relief finally arrived, only 90 Rangers could still stand and fight.

Their names are carved on a memorial in Normandy. Most Americans today cannot name a single one.

[Georgia Rai @Georgia_Rai]

@48hours @CrimeCon @EFMoriarty Jeffrey MacDonald

[SharrellAnne @SharrellAnne2]

Memorial Day will always mean more to our family than cookouts or a long weekend.

It’s the sound of boots on concrete.
The weight of a folded flag in shaking hands.
Three children growing up with memories instead of a father.
A headstone in Section 60 with a date that changed the course of all our lives forever.

SSG Alan W. Shaw, was killed in Iraq on February 9, 2007. He was 31 years old. He didn’t get the chance to come home, grow old, meet grandchildren, or live the quiet life so many of us take for granted.

That’s what Memorial Day means to us.
It’s not abstract. It’s not political. It’s personal.

But over the years, I’ve also realized something else. The men we honor today did not give everything so America would sit in mourning forever. They believed in life. In freedom. In family. In backyard barbecues, ballgames, loud laughter, and the simple privilege of being home.

So yes, remember them. Speak their names. Teach your children who they were. Fly the flag. Visit the cemetery.

And then live.

Live in a way worthy of what they gave up for the rest of us. Because they are never truly gone as long as somebody is still speaking about them. 🇺🇸

[Guy Benson @guypbenson]

Read the replies ❤️

[Natalie F Danelishen @Chesschick01]

I always think of this quote on memorial weekend.

[Justine Bateman @JustineBateman]

You’re under no obligation to be unhappy.

[Georgia Rai @Georgia_Rai]

@countyhwy Stood alone on a mountain top, staring out at the Great Divide
I could go east, I could go west-it was all up to me to decide
Just then I saw a young hawk flying & my soul began to rise
And pretty soon, my heart was singing...

Bob Seger - Roll Me Away

[🇺🇸⚓️U.S.S. Arizona “Operation 85”⚓️🇺🇸 @ussarizona85]

🇺🇸UNKNOWN NO MORE🇺🇸
For 85 years, they were buried as UNKNOWN.
For the past 3 years, Operation 85 fought to give them their names back.
Today, DPAA officially confirmed the DNA threshold has been met to begin the identification process for 141 U.S.S. Arizona unknowns buried in commingled graves at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, HI.
FOLLOW US along this journey.
For more info: https://t.co/UR8YJCN7W1

[U.S. Senator John Fetterman @SenFettermanPA]

This is incredibly generous.

TSA agents across the country are relying on food pantries and community donations just to get by.

I remain the lone Dem to vote with my Republican colleagues to fully fund DHS and get people paid.

It should never come to this point.