Kayann

[Kayann @Kayannd713]

@JFK_Jr_PRD A

[Kayann @Kayannd713]

@nature_viewss A

[Kayann @Kayannd713]

@ThrillaRilla369 Reveille the First Lady of Aggieland!

[Kayann @Kayannd713]

@MelGibson_2 A

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In Texas I was taken to a grocery store called H-E-B.

I asked what the letters stand for. My friend said, "Howard Edward Butt."

I waited for the rest of the name. There was no rest. The man built an empire on his actual name, and the empire did not flinch.

Inside, a woman in a red apron said, "Welcome! Finding everything okay?"

I had been inside for eleven seconds. I had found nothing. I had not begun to look.

"...I have only just arrived."

"Well, let me know if you need anything, sweetheart."

Sweetheart. From a stranger with a price gun. I held the cart handle with both hands and tried to proceed as a man who had not just been loved at the produce section.

The store was clean in a way that suggested someone cared about it the way my grandmother cared about her kitchen floor. Not for the guests. For the floor.

A man named Dale in the meat department was cutting brisket behind glass. I watched him work. He held the knife the way a calligrapher holds a brush. Each cut landed in the same place twice.

I bowed slightly. I could not help it.

Dale looked up. "You want a sample, boss?"

"...I was paying respects to your blade work."

He paused. Then he cut a piece, put it on a toothpick, and handed it over the counter.

"Well, that's a first. Most folks just ask if I got any ribs left."

I ate it. It was perfect. I told him it was perfect.

"Appreciate that. Twenty-six years behind this counter."

Twenty-six years. The same counter. The same knife. In my country we would call this man a living national treasure and put him on television. Here he wore a red apron and asked if I wanted it wrapped.

Then the storm came.

I do not mean this as a metaphor. A hurricane was approaching the coast, and I learned something about this grocery store that I did not believe until I saw it with my own eyes.

H-E-B has mobile kitchens. Disaster relief trucks. A full-time Director of Emergency Preparedness. Over a hundred and fifty thousand employees they call Partners, and when the wind starts to build, the Partners do not go home.

They drive toward it.

During Hurricane Harvey, this grocery store fed thousands. They sent trucks into flooded towns before the government arrived. Before the Red Cross set up. Before anyone asked.

A grocery store. With a meat counter and a bakery and a sign that says HERE EVERYTHING'S BETTER.

Texans have a name for H-E-B during hurricanes. They call it the FEMA of Texas. I have confirmed this. Multiple Texans said it to me without smiling, the way you state the name of a general who does not lose.

I asked Dale if he had worked during Harvey.

He stopped cutting. He set the knife down, which I had not seen him do.

"Drove in at four in the morning. Water was up to my truck doors. Store was the only thing open for nine miles. We made sandwiches till we ran out of bread. Then corporate sent more bread. Then we ran out again."

"...How long?"

"Sixteen days."

I stood there holding a package of brisket in both hands and tried to find the word.

"...You are not a butcher, Dale."

He picked up his knife. "Sure I am."

In my country, a man who feeds his village through a disaster is honored for the rest of his life. In Texas, he is called a butcher, and he goes back to the counter on Monday, and he does not mention it unless you ask, and even then he picks up his knife before he finishes the story, because the brisket is not going to cut itself.

The store was founded in 1905 by a woman named Florence Butt, who put sixty dollars' worth of groceries on a shelf on the ground floor of her family's home in a town called Kerrville. That was the whole store. One shelf. One room. Sixty dollars.

A hundred and twenty years later, the family still owns it.

I walked out with four bags. A boy in a red apron carried two of them to my car. I told him I could carry my own bags. He said, "I know you can. But I'm already here, so."

I did not tip him. He would not let me.

I drove home past the highway where the flood line was still visible on the guardrail, three feet up, and I thought about Dale, and the bread, and the knife, and the name Howard Edward Butt, who was not embarrassed by it, because the name is not the point.

The shelf is the point.

Florence Butt put sixty dollars on a shelf in 1905. A hundred and twenty years later, when the water rose and the power died, the shelf was still standing, and there was bread on it.

A store is not its name. A store is whether the bread is there when you need it.

The bread was there.

[Selene Mariposa @Selene_Mariposa]

The World Cup ends today. One game left. By tomorrow most of you visitors will be packing up, heading to the airport, going home.

So before you go, let me say the thing I actually want to say.

A few weeks ago I wrote a silly post about all the things you were discovering here. Free refills. Free water. Ice like civilized people. Chips and salsa before you even order. Air conditioning that is a fact and not a moral debate. Drive-throughs. Ranch by the gallon. The Germans standing in the HEB meat aisle in reverent silence, finally understanding why we do not have trains. Buc-ee’s, for which there are still no words.

It blew up, because it was true, and because you were so delightfully stunned by all of it.

Even the Wall Street Journal caught on. Their headline this week: how the US lost the World Cup and won over the world. We did not lift the trophy. But apparently we lifted something else.

We even learned a few things about ourselves along the way. Like the fact that Elon Musk, the single richest man on the planet, shops at HEB. Just rolls in and queues up for fresh tortillas with everybody else. The man could buy the tortilla company, the state it is in, and the moon it sits under, and instead he is standing in line at the hot-tortilla counter like the rest of us, because that is where the good ones are. Only in America is the wealthiest human alive elbow to elbow with a mom of four at the salsa bar. That is the whole country in one aisle.

And here is the part I want every one of you to hear on your way out the door.

None of it was a show.

We did not roll all this out because you were coming. The ice was always there. The refills were always free. The grocery stores were always the size of aircraft hangars at ten on a Tuesday. The stranger who adopted your whole section, the guy who gave you a ride, the waitress who remembered your order, the family that invited you to the cookout, that is not World Cup America. That is just America. That is Tuesday.

We are exactly like this when nobody is visiting. Loud, generous, ridiculous, overfed, and genuinely thrilled you came. We will still be exactly like this tomorrow when the stands are empty and the flags come down.

So thank you. To everyone who came, who sang in our streets, who cleaned our stadiums, who turned our cities orange and filled our bars and taught us your chants. You were wonderful guests, and you made a country that just turned 250 feel young and seen and loved.

And to everyone who could not make it this time, the door does not close today. We meant all of it. Come whenever. The porch light stays on, the fridge stays full, and there is always room for one more at the table.

You found out who we are these last few weeks.

Good news. We are like this all the time.

Safe travels home.

Y’all come back now, you hear. 🦋

[Kayann @Kayannd713]

@LangmanVince 13+87=100

[Kayann @Kayannd713]

@TRUMPGIRL_STL Amen! 🙏

[Kayann @Kayannd713]

@MustangMan_TX May God bless these warriors and the United States of America!

[Mr PitBull Stories @MrPitbull07]

May 16, 1963. Gordon Cooper was orbiting Earth alone inside a capsule barely big enough to turn around in, moving at 17,500 miles per hour.
He had been up there for over a day.
Then the warnings started.
First a faulty sensor screaming that the ship was falling — it wasn't. He switched it off. Then something far worse: a short circuit knocked out the entire automated guidance system. The one that kept the capsule steady. The one that was supposed to bring him home.
Without it, reentry was nearly impossible.
Too shallow an angle and the capsule would bounce off the atmosphere back into space. Too steep and it would incinerate. The margin for error was razor thin — and every computer that was supposed to hit that margin was dead.
Down on the ground, NASA engineers watched the telemetry in silence. They could see everything going wrong. They could fix nothing.
Cooper didn't panic.
He uncapped a grease pencil and drew lines directly on the inside of his window to track the horizon. He looked up at the stars he had spent months memorizing and used their positions to orient the ship by eye. Then he set his wristwatch.
Because when you have no computers left, you become the computer.
At exactly the right moment — calculated in his head, confirmed by the stars outside — he fired the retrorockets. The capsule shook. The sky turned to fire. For several minutes, no one on Earth could reach him as plasma swallowed the ship whole.
Then the parachutes opened.
Faith 7 hit the water just four miles from the recovery ship — the single most accurate splashdown in the entire Mercury program.
The man with a wristwatch and a few pencil marks on a window had outperformed every automated system NASA had.
We talk a lot about technology saving us. And it often does.
But Cooper's story is a quiet reminder that behind every machine, there still has to be a human being who can look out the window, think clearly under pressure, and decide what to do next.
The final backup was never the software.
It was him.

[Lj Priest (Trader Jill) @RealTraderJill]

When an American soldier passes in service to our nation, Melania Trump sits down at her desk and handwrites a personal letter to that soldier’s MOTHER.

Not typed by White House staff. Not a printed template where she just adds her signature. Melania’s OWN HANDWRITING. Every. Single. Word. Personal messages about the soldier’s sacrifice, about eternal gratitude, about a mother’s unbearable loss, about America never forgetting. Each letter takes HOURS to write. Not minutes. HOURS. Because Melania writes slowly, carefully, choosing every word perfectly - because she KNOWS this grieving mother will read this letter over and over and over for the rest of her life.

Since 2017, Melania has written HUNDREDS of these letters. One for EVERY fallen soldier. Hundreds of hours of her personal time. And here’s what absolutely destroys me: Gold Star mothers across America have Melania’s handwritten letters FRAMED on their living room walls. Melania could SO EASILY have staff type beautiful letters and she could just sign them.

Would save HUNDREDS of hours. But she REFUSES. “These mothers lost their ENTIRE WORLD. The absolute LEAST I can do is give them HOURS of my time writing in my own hand to honor their loss personally.” While the world obsesses over Melania’s public silence, they completely MISS her loudest service: hundreds upon hundreds of hours spent alone at a desk, writing to grieving mothers in careful handwriting.

Here’s the truth: Melania’s pen honors fallen soldiers one mother, one letter, one HOUR at a time.

*Idk who these beautiful words came from, but I thought they should be shared so the world knows the heart of our beautiful First Lady @MELANIATRUMP.

[Sheila of the Most High @sheilatebra]

Anonymous

Took my mom out for dinner last night. Her birthday. Nice restaurant. She's 68. Hasn't had an easy life.
We're looking at menus. She keeps checking prices. Picking cheaper things.
"Mom, it's your birthday. Order whatever you want."
"I know, honey. But the salmon is $34. I don't need salmon."
This broke my heart. My whole childhood, she went without so I could have things. Now she's still doing it.
Waiter came over. I ordered first. "I'll have the steak. And my mom will have the salmon. And the lobster bisque to start. And bring us your best bottle of wine under $100."
My mom's face. She looked scared. "Honey, that's too much"
"Mom. You raised me on $30,000 a year. You never bought yourself anything. You wore the same coat for 15 years so I could have new shoes. Tonight, you're having salmon. And lobster soup. And wine. And I don't want to hear another word about prices."
She started crying at the table.
The waiter came back with the wine. Poured it. Walked away.
My mom raised her glass. "You didn't have to do this."
"Yeah, I did. You spent 20 years making sure I never went without. This is just one dinner. I owe you about 7,000 more."
The bill came. $340. I paid it without looking twice.
My mom hugged me in the parking lot. "This was the best birthday I've ever had."
Not because of the salmon. Not because of the wine.
Because for one night, I got to give her what she spent a lifetime giving me: the feeling of being worth it. 🤍

PS,Happy international Women's Day to all women

[Juanita Broaddrick @atensnut]

Think about this for a minute! 🤬

[Vince Langman @LangmanVince]

Must Watch! Budweiser just released its new Super Bowl LX commercial!

It's amazing and patriotic! 🇺🇸

It's gonna drive the America hating left batshit crazy!

[The Husky @Mr_Husky1]

Today I was pulled over by police. I had a loaded and concealed handgun on me at the time. Please keep in mind that my actions were completely voluntary for one simple reason. This is what happened.

He approached the drivers side and asked if I knew why he stopped me and I said I did not. He said my registration expired June 30 of 2016. He asked to see my drivers license, registration, and insurance card. As I kept my hands firmly locked at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel I immediately stated.....

"For your safety and mine sir I would like to inform you that I am a legally armed citizen. I have a concealed carry permit in my wallet. I don't want to get my registration and insurance card because I have my pistol in the same compartment as my documents. The pistol is in the small compartment under the cup holder. Please be careful, there is a round in the chamber, the thumb safety is on, and there's an extra magazine with it."

He asked that I keep my hands on the wheel like they were and asked again where my handgun was. He asked where my wallet was with my permit card. I answered and then said.....

" I would like you to take possession of the handgun. I'll get out of the truck if you want me to while you get it." He told me that would be great and thanked me for my cooperation.

When I got out of the truck he wouldn't turn his back to me. I asked if he would like to search me for any other weapons so he knew I wasn't a threat. He said....

"If you don't mind that would be great. Do you have any other firearms or weapons on you or in the truck?" I replied that I did not.

The police officer searched me and retrieved my handgun from the compartment with my documents and asked permission to retrieve my drivers license and conceal carry permit from my wallet. I gladly gave him permission to get what he needed. I also gave him permission to search the rest of my truck if he wanted to if he felt it necessary. The officer declined the consent I gave him to search.

After all the formalities the cop brought my pistol back to me and I said "If you want you can just lay everything on the drivers seat and I'll get it when we're done."

I thanked him for being as calm as he was especially dealing with someone that had a handgun that was legally carried. The cop thanked me for my cooperation. He asked me to sign the warning ticket and to make sure to get my registration taken care of ASAP.

I thanked him and the back up officer for their service and told them to be safe, especially nowadays with all the crazy shit that was going on. I told them that was the reason I carry a handgun myself. I shook both of their hands. He handed me my warning and I went on my way.

After the cold blooded terrorist attack and hate crime in #Dallas and that day learning about #BatonRouge where the blood spilled still fresh in the minds of every American I chose to do what I thought was right.

The moral of the story.

It's about everyone's safety.

It's about respect.

When you treat people with civility you get treated with civility.

Thank you Altoona Police Department for having professional law enforcement officers representing your department and protecting the well being of the city."

Credit: Matt Powers

[Kayann @Kayannd713]

@Mr_Husky1 Priscilla

[Kayann @Kayannd713]

@RightPulseNewss 👍

[Mike Netter @nettermike]

Trey Gowdy , South Carolina Congressman, recently responded to a reporter about the military in response to a question from a CNN reporter about the DoD ban of transgenders from joining the U.S. armed forces. As Trey typically does so very well, he nailed it rather succinctly.

Question: How can President Trump claim to represent all U.S citizens, regardless of sexual orientation, when he banned transgenders from joining the military? Isn't that discrimination?

Trey Gowdy's Response: " Nobody has a right to serve in the Military. Nobody! What makes you people think the Military is an equal opportunity employer? It is very far from it - and for good reasons - let me cite a few."

"The Military uses prejudice regularly and consistently to deny citizens from joining for being too old or too young, too fat or too skinny, too tall or too short. Citizens are denied for having flat feet, or for missing or additional fingers." he went on to explain: "By the way, poor eyesight will disqualify you, as well as bad teeth. Malnourished? Drug addiction? Bad back? Criminal history? Low IQ? Anxiety? Phobias? Hearing damage? Six arms? Hear voices in your head? Self-identification as a Unicorn? Need a special access ramp for your wheelchair?"

"Can't run the required course in the required time? Can't do the required number of push-ups? Not really a morning person? and refuse to get out of bed before noon? All can be legitimate reasons for denial"

"The Military has one job: Winning War. Anything else is a distraction and a liability. Did someone just scream? That isn't Fair? War is VERY unfair, there are no exceptions made for being special or challenged or socially wonderful"

"YOU must change yourself to meet Military standards and not the other way around."

"I say again: You don't change the Military - you must change yourself. The Military is not about being fair, it is about taking advantage of others and about winning.

The Military doesn't need to accommodate anyone with special issues. The Military needs to Win Wars and keep our Country safe - PERIOD!"

"If any of your personal issues are a liability that detract from readiness or lethality... Thank you for applying and good luck in future endeavors."

"...any other questions?"