Karen Bartley

[Matt Van Swol @mattvanswol]

In 1988 Dolly Parton pulled every 7th and 8th grader in Sevier County into a room and told them to pick a buddy.

She made them sign a contract.. if BOTH graduate, she hands you both $500. One fails, nobody gets paid.

The county dropout rate went from 35% to 6%.

She handed out the checks herself.

In 1989 she offered $500 to every kid in the county who wanted to go to the local college.

When Gatlinburg burned in 2016, she sent 900 families $1,000 a month for six months.

You've probably heard that part.

Here's the part you haven't:

The fund raised more than expected, so she showed up in May and handed every one of those families another $5,000 on top.

Then she quietly put $3 million into the recovery group that handles the years after the news trucks leave.

She built her county an entire hospital.

She played a benefit concert in 2007, Dollywood and the Stampede matched it, and LeConte Medical Center opened in 2010 with a birthing unit and a women's center in it.

In 2022 she started covering 100% of tuition, books, and fees for Dollywood employees.

Full-time, part-time, AND seasonal.

In 1991 she paid for a bald eagle sanctuary because the birds couldn't be released back into the wild, no press release.

And when Hurricane Helene came through here in Western North Carolina, she wrote a personal check for $1 million and her companies matched it.

She didn't owe North Carolina anything, but she helped us anyway.

She started the Imagination Library because her daddy couldn't read or write. Before he passed, he told her it was the most important thing she ever did.

Rest in Peace, Dolly 🇺🇸

[60 Minutes @60Minutes]

Author Margaret Atwood joked about the signature red cloak and bonnet in "The Handmaid's Tale": "Well, if you have a cult, and if you have totalitarianism, you have to have outfits." https://t.co/uXVWNrFEiX

[Galactic Zoo @TonyMarrese]

#RupertLowe made a post today about petrol stations and why foreigners are often running them.
Here is my take, and it’s got a lot to do with the west having no good mentors for the young.
#MigrantLabourers

[John Crotty @itsjohncrotty]

5000 years ago - The Irish are building the largest reverential structures in Europe, if not the world.
They are masters of stone and sky, world leading in astronomical knowledge and architectural engineering.

4000 years ago - The Irish are producing world class metallurgy. 75% of all the gold lunulae found in Europe are from Ireland.

1500 years ago - Irish law is world leading. Advancements include some of Europe’s earliest humanitarian laws like ‘The Law of the Innocents’, 697AD, protecting women and children in time of war. A complex system of Brehon Laws include Animal welfare laws, property rights & even divorce.

1200 years ago - Gaelic Ireland is Europe’s intellectual and artistic powerhouse. It is producing the world’s most beautiful manuscripts and metalwork, its monks and scholars bringing sophisticated theology, philosophy, astronomy, computus and geography to Europe.

Hold your head high Gael

Small island - immense legacy

[ML Smith @maria48308]

Thank you Scotland!

[Olena Rohoza @OlenaRohoza]

🇺🇸🇺🇸🧐🤔“AND YOU STILL DARE TO OPEN YOUR MOUTH…”

Sasha Legerman: This is too accurate not to share.

This Australian’s response to Trump’s rant that “NATO does nothing for America” is absolutely devastating:

“Mate. You run a country where 600,000 homeless people will sleep on the streets tonight.

A country where 40% of adults can’t cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money.

A country where insulin costs more than a car payment, and people ration it just to stay alive.

A country where medical debt is the number one cause of bankruptcy.

A country where women die in hospital parking lots because doctors are too afraid of abortion laws to treat miscarriages.

You imprison more of your own citizens than any country on Earth.
More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea.

In the land of the free, 2 million people sit in cages, and a quarter of them haven’t even been convicted of anything.
They’re simply too poor to afford bail.

Your life expectancy is declining. You’re the only developed nation where that’s happening.

Your infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba’s.

Your children practice active shooter drills between math and English classes while you sell defense stocks to your friends.

Your minimum wage hasn’t changed in 15 years.

Your teachers work two jobs, your veterans sleep under bridges, and you just spent a trillion dollars flattening a country that never attacked you.

And now a convicted criminal — found liable for sexual abuse, defending a pedophile, sleeping with a porn star, and running the biggest dumpster-fire campaign since the Taliban — is thanking you for yet another disaster.

And you call Greenland badly governed?

Greenland has universal healthcare. Free education. One of the lowest incarceration rates in the world.
Nobody there goes bankrupt because they got sick. Nobody dies in a waiting room because insurance refused treatment.

‘NATO wasn’t there when we needed them.’

When exactly was that, champ?
September 11?

Because NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in history FOR YOU.

Soldiers from dozens of countries deployed, fought, bled, and died in Afghanistan FOR YOU.

Australia wasn’t even in NATO, and we still showed up. For twenty years.

And then you left at 2 a.m. without telling anyone and left everybody else to clean up the mess.

You don’t care that a great nation is being terrorized by your friend, and you haven’t shown it a single ounce of sympathy.

So maybe before calling other countries badly governed, take a look at your own backyard, you aluminum siding salesman with a spray tan.

The only thing badly managed in this picture is your damn mouth.

And you still dare to lecture the rest of the world?”

[Informed Consent 💉💉💊💊 @Ireland2020]

@IrishInquiry Have a listen 👇

[Karen Bartley @Kazeebee66]

Show rightwing newspapers that actions have consequences. Add your name now https://t.co/DfHgn4Jp2f

[Karen Bartley @Kazeebee66]

@lovedropx We're gonna need a bigger boat!

[Voice of Rabbis @voiceofrabbis]

A video that Netanyahu does not want the world to see

Let the world know by sharing this

Tens of thousands of anti-Zionist rabbis gathered in the Barclays Center in New York City to say that the Zionist regime is a criminal and occupying gang and does not represent the Jews.

[Karen Bartley @Kazeebee66]

@HunterBiden Such a tough time ahead for you and your family. Sending you all much love. Stay strong Hunter 🩷

[Double Down News @DoubleDownNews]

I Questioned Israel: 48 Hours Later I Was Sacked @SangitaMyska

[Karen Bartley @Kazeebee66]

@Gini_220 1881

[breakingnews.ie @breakingnewsie]

Holly Willoughby admits to 'stalking' podcaster Joanne McNally on Instagram | BreakingNews https://t.co/C964EFTSU1

[BBC Sport @BBCSport]

Archie Goodburn has made an emotional plea to the prime minister.

The Scottish 50m breaststroke record holder was diagnosed with brain cancer two years ago.

[LubnanBoi🇵🇸🇱🇧 🇮🇷 @AgitatorAK]

Dear @JeremyClarkson I saw this on my feed on another platform and instantly thought you needed to see it.

"Jeremy Clarkson thinks people who receive benefits should have to send a weekly thank you email to a randomly chosen working person, explaining what they did with the money, or have their payments stopped.

So here is mine. If you’d like to give it a share to help Jeremy see it, that would be great.

Dear Jezza,

Thank you for your concern about my contribution to society.

I should say first that you were aiming this at young people you believe are sitting at home doing nothing.

But you wrote it as a blanket rule applying to everyone whose benefits are paid.

That includes more than thirteen million pensioners, millions of people who receive benefits while working, who may find themselves being ordered to thank another benefit claimant, and me.

I receive PIP.

That money goes towards the Motability car I use to travel to work.

It is not a free car. It is not even my car. I exchange the mobility part of my PIP to lease it.

The car takes the lot.

Which is awkward, because that same payment is also meant to help cover the additional costs of being disabled, including a wheelchair that is actually usable for my job and hearing aids that allow me to do it.

There is nothing left for either.

I chose the thing that gets me to work.

That car enables me to work and, because I can work, I now pay considerably more in tax than I have ever received in PIP.

But my contribution does not end with my own tax bill.

I have built programmes that hundreds of people now use to earn a living.

They pay tax too.

Those programmes have helped thousands of people overcome anxiety, return to their lives and, in many cases, return to work.

Then there are all the people supported by the coaches and practitioners I have trained.

That is what disability support can do when it is designed to enable people rather than humiliate them.

My PIP did not disappear into some great benefits black hole.

It helped provide the transport that allowed me to work, build a business, create opportunities for other people and contribute far more than I could ever have done without it.

But as we are exchanging thank you letters, perhaps you could send me one too.

I paid my television licence throughout the years the BBC gave you the platform that made you famous.

I now pay for Amazon Prime, which helps fund the television programme about your farm.

I do not choose to watch it.

But that is how society works, Jeremy.

We all contribute towards things we may never personally use because the entire country would fall apart if every payment had to provide us with an individual benefit.

Perhaps you could also thank the taxpayers whose public services and infrastructure support your businesses.

And while you have the stationery out, perhaps you could explain the farm.

In 2021, you told The Times that avoiding inheritance tax was “the critical thing” in your decision to buy land.

In 2024, when that became rather inconvenient, you said it had never been true. You claimed you had actually bought the farm because you wanted somewhere to shoot and that tax avoidance had simply sounded like a better story at the time.

I am not sure which version helps your argument.

It is funny how public support and clever tax arrangements are treated as perfectly respectable when they benefit wealthy people.

Yet when a disabled person receives help to leave the house, go to work and participate in society, you think they should be made to perform gratitude.

So thank you for your concern, Jezza.

I hope my licence fee, Amazon subscription, taxes and contribution to the economy have all been gratefully received.

Please send your thank you letter weekly, along with a full breakdown of how you spent the money.

If it is not sufficiently fulsome and effusive, I assume your income will be stopped.

That is only fair."

[Purplereign @Angiemut]

GOOD POINT👇👇👇
To all the Supermarkets and big commercial stores that operate 'Self Check-outs'....... You are heading towards almost exclusively self-checkout now. Yesterday I went shopping at one such store and the lady checking receipts at the exit was stopping everyone.
I didn't choose to participate in that nonsense, I had already filled my trolly, emptied my trolly and scanned the items, refilled my trolly and so I just skipped the exit line and left.
I heard her saying "Umm - Excuse me “ as I kept walking and raised the receipt above my head, leaving the store.
You can either trust me to do self-checkout, or you can put your cashiers back in place like it used to be.
• I'm not interested in proving that I did your job for you.
• If you want me to be a cashier with no training then that's your problem not mine.
• Keep employing young people and give them job opportunities.
YOU DON'T PAY ME TO SCAN MY OWN SHOPPING.
YOU DON’T GIVE ME STAFF DISCOUNT FOR WORKING FOR YOU.
Signed ......All of us
People we need to share this statement its basically about PROFIT to the stores AND putting People out of a JOB....!!!

[Karen Bartley @Kazeebee66]

@ThisIsIreland3 Oh my god. I can't believe it. What a terrible shock for all of his loved ones. So sorry for their loss. 💚

[Chris Packham @ChrisGPackham]

A renegade polymath with binoculars and a beard , Bill was invariably funny and occasionally furious . He loved birds and loathed those who harmed them . He was delightfully unpredictable , sparky , smart and at times a bit spiky . Critically he really knew his stuff , and his passion was true - he didn’t just pick up his binoculars on telly , he went birding whenever he could . So he was genuine and that’s why we loved him , he never needed a script , and took scant interest in any he was given . He didn’t like rules and often neglected to play by them . This may have frustrated the serious and the worthy but it always amused his audience - he was an utter joy to be with . I recall finding a Black Woodpecker in a damp Dutch park with him once , he gazed at it intently , sighed , put down his bins , turned to me and just smiled . A massive grin . No words , just a beautiful childlike bliss . That says all you need to know about Bill Oddie .

Sadly we’ve not only lost a goodie , we’ve lost one of the besties .

[Saul Staniforth @SaulStaniforth]

"Is it difficult coming back?"

Surgeon professor Nizam Mamode, who was working in Gaza a few weeks ago: "Yes"

"How do you feel when you return?"

"I feel quite angry that this country.. is letting this genocide go by and doing nothing about it"