Ret. teacher, mom, admirer of other's talent, pet lover, environmentalist, seeker of justice & empowerment, Person of faith. Pol cartoon fan. Opinions R mine.
Dear @SecRollins: You keep getting fact checked for your lies. It’s your Administration that cut the Screwworm programs.
Also, the life cycle of a Screwworm is 14 to 54 days. The trump Administration has been in office over 500 days.
If you can’t stop lying, you need to resign.
I met with President of Finland @alexstubb and Prime Minister of Norway @jonasgahrstore. I informed them about contacts at the leaders’ level in the E3–Ukraine format as well as our contacts with the American side.
Right now, all our partners note that Ukraine’s positions on the frontline are significantly stronger, and therefore the approaches in diplomacy, which we are now working to reinvigorate, must be based precisely on this. Unfortunately, Russia is trying to compensate for its enormous losses on the battlefield with strikes on our cities and communities, on civilian infrastructure. That is why air defense missiles are our top priority. And we discussed how to secure additional supplies for Ukraine right now, as well as efforts to develop a European anti-ballistic missile system.
I am grateful to Alex and Jonas, and to the people of Finland and Norway, for their steadfast assistance and support. We appreciate that our agreements are being implemented.
His friends told him to run. He ran the wrong way—toward the danger, not away from it. Aitzaz Hasan was 15 years old. He saved hundreds of children. He never came home.
January 6, 2014. Hangu district, Pakistan.
It was an ordinary morning.
Aitzaz was walking to school with his friends, the same walk he had taken hundreds of times before. The school gates were ahead. Inside, thousands of students and teachers had already begun another ordinary day of classes.
Then Aitzaz noticed something wrong.
A man was approaching the school gates. Something about him wasn't right—his movement, his behavior, the way he was heading toward a building full of children.
Aitzaz understood what he was seeing.
His friends saw it too.
They told him to stay back. To run. To get away. To let someone else—an adult, a guard, anyone—handle it.
Aitzaz had already started moving.
Not away from the school.
Toward it.
Toward the man.
He was fifteen years old with no weapons, no training, and no protection. He had his hands and his legs and the few seconds between that moment and catastrophe.
He used all of them.
He reached the attacker before the man reached the gates. He confronted him. He put himself physically between the bomber and the hundreds of lives inside that building.
The struggle lasted only seconds.
The attacker detonated the explosives.
Aitzaz Hasan was killed instantly.
The bomb went off outside the school gates.
The building stood.
Everyone inside went home that afternoon.
The news traveled across Pakistan within hours and across the world within days. People reached for words and found them inadequate. A fifteen-year-old boy with nothing but courage had run toward a suicide bomber to protect children he didn't know, and had given everything he had in the attempt.
What do you call that?
His family was asked to speak.
His father—carrying a grief that no parent should ever have to carry, a loss so enormous it has no proper name—found words that traveled further than any headline.
He said:
"My son made his mother cry, but he saved hundreds of mothers from crying for their children."
Read that again.
No bitterness. No anger at the world. No demand for explanations that wouldn't come.
Just a father, in the worst moment of his life, finding the meaning inside the devastation.
One family's tears so that hundreds of families would not have to weep.
One mother's grief so that hundreds of mothers could hold their children that night.
Those words broke people who had never met Aitzaz Hasan and never would.
Because in them was something we recognize even when we can't name it—the understanding that love sometimes costs everything, and that the people who pay that cost do so not for recognition or reward but simply because they cannot do otherwise.
Pakistan honored Aitzaz formally. Schools named programs after him. The government recognized his courage. Tributes came from around the world—from people in countries whose names Aitzaz might never have learned, people who had never seen his face before that week and would never forget it after.
Many people called him a hero.
Many people called him a superhero.
It is easy to understand why.
Because what we mean when we say "superhero" is not someone with extraordinary powers.
It is someone who uses whatever they have—however little, however ordinary—to protect others when the cost of doing so is everything.
Aitzaz Hasan had no extraordinary powers.
He had what every fifteen-year-old has.
Two hands. Two legs. A few seconds. And the choice—made in the time it takes to breathe—of which direction to run.
He chose toward the danger.
Not because someone told him to.
Not because he had been trained to.
Because children were inside that building.
And he could not look away.
Hundreds of children went home that afternoon and ate dinner with their families and did their homework and went to sleep in their own beds.
Because a fifteen-year-old boy decided that their lives were worth more than his safety.
His name was Aitzaz Hasan.
He was a student. A son. A friend who walked to school every morning with the people he loved.
He was fifteen years old.
And he was the bravest person in that street.
With everywhere I’ve been on this planet and above it, nothing compares to being by your side. Happy birthday, @GabbyGiffords. You make every day a beautiful day.
Just some Black Bears eating some apples in the woods
Black bears often take advantage of seasonal fruit crops, packing in calories before winter arrives
Je venais tout juste de m'installer sur le lit quand soudain ma chatte est entrée dans la pièce en miaulant bruyamment…
Elle courait dans tous les sens comme une folle…
Comme si quelque chose de très grave s'était passé…
Au début, j'ai pensé qu'elle voulait peut-être juste manger…
Parce que parfois elle en fait tout un cinéma… 😅
Mais cette nuit-là, c'était différent…
Je ne l'avais jamais vue aussi paniquée… 💔
Pour la calmer, je me suis levée…
Et je suis allée remplir sa gamelle dans la cuisine…
Mais au lieu de rester là, elle a immédiatement filé vers le bureau…
Et continuait de se retourner pour regarder…
Comme pour s'assurer que je la suivais… 😢
Un peu inquiète, je l'ai accompagnée jusqu'au bureau…
Quand j'y suis arrivée…
Mon cœur s'est serré…
Des étincelles jaillissaient du tableau électrique…
Et en quelques secondes, un incendie s'est déclaré…
Grâce à mon chat, j'ai pu couper le disjoncteur principal à temps…
Et éteindre le feu avant qu'il ne se propage… ❤️
Si j'avais dormi à ce moment-là…
Tout aurait pu partir en fumée…
Je suis un dormeur très profond…
Une fois, j'ai même dormi à travers la puissante alarme incendie d'un hôtel… 😢
Mais cette fois, le danger était bien réel…
Et les instincts de mon chat nous ont sauvé la vie à tous les deux
Trump has just destroyed the US beef industry. No country in their right mind is going to import US beef.
After Trump cut funding for Screwworm monitoring programs, the dangerous flesh-eating parasite has been found in US cattle for the first time since 1966.
BREAKING: Pete Buttigieg was just announced as the featured speaker at the Iowa Democratic Party’s Liberty & Justice dinner. This comes as Democrats look increasingly likely to oust Republicans at both the Senate and Gubernatorial level. Let’s go.
My father dedicated himself to the cause of justice. He stood with the people, all people, and he refused to accept that the way things were was the way they had to stay. He carried titles that history remembers, but the ones he held closest were that of husband and father.
What I miss most is not the public man. It is the one who came home at the end of a long day, who wanted to know what we thought and why, who pushed us to be curious, generous, and unafraid of hard questions. Daddy did not lecture us about his values. He lived them, and that is how they became ours.
I think of him often now, when so much of what he believed in and worked to uphold is being trampled by those in power. His legacy of championing justice, democracy, and freedom has been passed to each of us.
Pay attention to who is willing to break the law for Trump as we head into the midterms—because his end goal is to create a system where others will break the law for him. It's about building a custom where it's normal to break the law for a person. The big case is the military
Mama Possum looks utterly exhausted. A storm is approaching, so she had to lead her babies to take shelter on our porch. They’re building a Google Data Center right in our area and have already cleared thousands of trees. It’s clear that Mama Possum has lost her original home and is desperately looking for a new, safer place 😭
The people of Normandy showing up for our World War II veterans! What an honor it was to be there with them today! Thank you to the Best Defense Foundation for all you do for our Greatest Generation 🙏🇺🇸
I remember the first time I cooked beans in Haiti. It was 2010, right after the earthquake. I thought I knew what I was doing…Spanish-style, the way I always had.
The women cooking in the camp stopped me. They showed me their way. Slow-cooked…mashed into a purée…served over rice.
In that moment, I learned what it really means to help after a disaster. You don't come with your own recipes. You listen. You follow. You learn.
16 years later, that lesson is still the foundation of everything @wckitchen does in Haiti. Our local teams and @HASHaiti partners are cooking that same recipe - the right recipe - for families displaced by violence. And this past year, comforting food like those beans, that purée, that bowl of rice have added up to 10 million meals.
#ChefsForHaiti
This is really stupid, and it’s not getting enough attention.
The Trump administration is pulling a working $368 million ocean monitoring system out of the water, equipment taxpayers already bought, built, and sank into the deep ocean.
And they are doing it right when the oceans are behaving in ways that alarm the scientists who study them.
Record-breaking temperatures.
A system of Atlantic currents that may be lurching toward collapse.
The response?
Yank out the instruments and walk away.
That is not budgeting. That is smashing the gauges while the engine is on fire and calling it efficiency.
For what? The Trump administration dressed it up as a “nimbler approach” and “smart lifecycle management,” which is fancy nonsense for “we shut it off and hoped nobody would ask why.” There is no return-on-investment analysis. They cannot show taxpayers save a dime, because the gear is already paid for and the science it produces protects real money and real lives.
The kicker: the same people killing the monitors want to mine the deep sea for minerals. So they are destroying the only tools that could measure what that mining does. That is not an accident.
That is the point. You cannot see the damage if you break the instruments first.
https://t.co/MzE4AW1QBv
His little boy, Noah, was only three years old when cancer stopped the world from turning.
In 2016, Michael Bublé was at the height of his career — sold-out arenas, hit records, millions of fans around the world.
Then, moments before a concert in London, his phone lit up with a message from his wife, Luisana:
“Something’s wrong.”
Doctors first thought Noah had mumps.
It wasn’t mumps.
It was hepatoblastoma — a rare and aggressive liver cancer that affects only a handful of children each year.
Noah was three.
“My whole life ended,” Bublé later said. “My son’s cancer diagnosis rocked my world.”
The tours stopped immediately.
The fame stopped mattering.
Michael and Luisana moved their family to Los Angeles and spent the next seven months living in hospitals, surrounded by chemotherapy, surgeries, scans, fear, and hope.
Concert halls became hospital corridors.
Applause became the sound of monitors beeping through the night.
Michael tried to stay strong for everyone.
“I much rather would have it have been me,” he admitted later.
For months, they lived hour to hour.
Then came the moment they had prayed for.
Spring 2017.
The doctors told them:
“He’s okay.”
Remission.
After holding his family together for months, Michael finally broke down.
“I fell,” he said quietly. “My wife picked me up.”
The experience changed him forever.
He stopped caring about charts, fame, critics, and celebrity life.
“I will never be carefree again,” he said. “And that’s okay. It is a privilege for me to exist.”
Later that same year, the family welcomed a daughter.
They named her Vida.
In Spanish, it means “life.”
When Bublé returned to the stage in 2018, fans noticed something different in his voice.
Not weakness.
Depth.
Gratitude.
A man who had almost lost everything and now understood exactly what mattered.
Today, Noah is healthy. He loves music. He plays piano with his father.
Sometimes, Michael watches him play and quietly cries.
Not because of sadness.
Because his son is alive.
Because they made it through.
And because some people spend their whole lives chasing success, only to discover that the most beautiful sound in the world is hearing the people you love still breathing beside you.
BOOM! Jamie Raskin is UNSTOPPABLE: Constitutional scholar, lawyer, and competent congressman Jamie Raskin is looking healthier and more energized than ever.
He just drew a moral line on the House floor that the GOP can't cross: "We draw a line against the rape and sexual violation of children."
He named the banks that bankrolled Epstein's billion-dollar trafficking ring: JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, and Bank of New York Mellon.
He named Alex Acosta—Trump's Labor Secretary—who killed the investigation that could've brought down the entire network. He looked directly at the GOP and said: "You have children. Don't you want to know?" Then he mentioned college sports teams. You know who that is.
Jim Jordan—who had a locker two down from Dr. Richard Strauss at Ohio State, whom wrestlers say looked them in the face and dismissed their abuse as "that's just Strauss," and who they say KNEW and did NOTHING while 177 young men were violated.
And the files? They show Elon Musk emailing Epstein asking about the "wildest party" on his island and responding to Epstein's offer of "no one over 25 and all very cute." JPMorgan lawsuits allege Epstein referred to Musk as a client WHILE moving billions for his trafficking operation.
This isn't about party. This is about truth.
Conservatives: You scream about "protecting children" while voting for the men who covered up the largest child sex trafficking ring in American history.
How do you sleep? How do you vote? How do you look your kids in the eye?