Les Breeding

Les Breeding is an EV cell manufacturing trainer & educator #Tesla #TexasDemocrats #FormerLegislativeStaff he/him 🇺🇦🇺🇸

[Les Breeding @LesBreeding1]

If Trump could figure out how to do it, he would toss the Constitution in a heartbeat and declare himself dictator

[Les Breeding @LesBreeding1]

@Acyn Is Trump off his meds?!?

[Bill Kristol @BillKristol]

It appears that Trump never posted anything about D-Day, though he had plenty of posts on June 6. It's as if all pretenses are gone, and he's given up even pretending he's interested in honoring anything about America other than himself.

[Mayor Pro Tem Chito Vela, III @chitoforatx]

What would Austin look and feel like if we could get the percentage of car free households up to 15%? There are huge public benefits to doing this. Less pollution, people walk more and interact w their neighborhood. Helps local and neighborhood businesses. Saves people money.

[Shannon 🇺🇸I stand with America @thewriterme]

Excellent Read. Sad and uplifting. Never give up.

Robert Plant
He was twenty-eight years old, leading the most powerful band on the planet, living among private jets, packed stadiums, and seemingly limitless success. Then he heard the voice of his wife, Maureen. And in an instant, everything fell apart.
Karac, their five-year-old son, was dead. A stomach virus, swift and merciless. No warning, no chance to intervene. While Robert sang on the other side of the ocean, his "little mountain man" was gone.
The tour stopped immediately. Plant flew to England in a state of shock that no amount of fame could allay. He found his son in the quiet of the Midlands, surrounded by a grief beyond words. That day, he looked for his bandmates. John Bonham was there, as devastated as he was. Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones were not. They did not show up at the funeral. Years later, they would talk about "respecting space," but for Robert, it was an absence that left a deep scar.
Something inside him cracked. He returned to his farm, stopped drinking, stopped taking drugs, stopped living like a rock star. He said he didn't want to be in Led Zeppelin anymore, that he just wanted to be with his family. He even applied for a job at a teachers' college, ready to leave music forever.
The only one who managed to bring him back was Bonham. Not with pressure, but with friendship. He'd show up at the farm driving a limousine, wearing a chauffeur's hat to make him laugh, and take him out for a quiet drink. He'd remind him that they were friends first, and musicians second. So Robert agreed to give it one last try.
In Through the Out Door was born, an album marked by an undisguised pain. Inside was All My Love, the most intimate tribute Plant ever wrote for his son.
In 1980, they were about to go back on tour. But tragedy wasn't over. On September 24th, during rehearsals, Bonham began drinking like never before. Forty shots of vodka in twelve hours. The next morning, he was dead. He was thirty-two years old.
Led Zeppelin issued a brief, almost terse statement: without Bonham, they couldn't continue. And they kept their word. No farewell tour, no replacement, no nostalgic outing. The biggest band in the world simply stopped.
For the next forty years, promoters from half the planet offered Plant astronomical sums for a reunion. Hundreds of millions for a single tour. Each time, he refused. Fans accused him of selfishness, of stubbornness. But Plant knew something they didn't: the "Golden God" had died in 1977, along with Karac.
Since then, he has built a new musical life. He explored folk, bluegrass, North African rhythms, sang with Alison Krauss, lowered his voice, let go of the cry that had made him immortal. He said he could no longer be that man, because that man no longer existed.
His story overturns the common idea of strength. It's not about moving forward at all costs. It's about knowing when to stop, when to protect what remains of truth. Plant chose his humanity over legend, life over myth.
Today he's seventy-six. He still plays, still creates, tours small venues. But he's never looked back. And perhaps this is his greatest lesson: you can buy everything except the past. And sometimes the bravest thing is to let go of what made you famous to save what made you human.
Credit Quara

[Occupy Democrats @OccupyDemocrats]

BREAKING: ANOTHER ZOHRAN? Republicans melt down as Democratic Socialist Janeese Lewis-George pulls ahead in the polling for the D.C. mayoral race after she vowed to end cooperation with ICE.

Trump is going to absolutely blow a gasket...

"Who do you trust to deal with this affordability crisis, whether it's housing, utilities, or child care?" Lewis-George asked in a campaign video posted to X.

"We can build more housing to lower costs."

"We can expand our solar and rein in PEPCO's greed, and we can achieve universal access to child care for our families."

"Who do you trust to deal with this Trump administration? We can end cooperation between MPD and ICE on day one, and we can build relationships in Congress to protect our autonomy and fight for DC statehood."

"And who do you trust to just care about basic DC government services, a 9-1-1 and a 3-1-1 that works and an accredited crime lab that allows us to actually solve cases?"

"People will talk about what government can't do. I'm running to show you what government can do, and that's put people first," she concluded.

According to a new Washington Post-Schar School poll, Lewis-George has 35% support among likely voters. The second highest polling candidate is City Council Member at-Large Kenyan McDuffie at 25%.

Lewis-George is the member of the Council of the District of Columbia from Ward 4 and the first self-described Democratic Socialist to serve on that Council since 1998. Her political ascent proves that voters are no longer swayed by conservative fearmongering about "socialism." Americans know that the system is rotten, and they're ready for a change.

Since incumbent Mayor Muriel Bowser is not running for re-election, the path ahead for Lewis-George is very winnable if she maintains this momentum. D.C. residents will head to the voting booths in November.

In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has proven that Democratic Socialism is a recipe for success. He has balanced the city's budget while updating and improving services for people from all walks of life. And he too ran on affordability.

Americans are getting crushed by Republican governance. Trump has skyrocketed consumer prices between his tariffs and pointless Iran War while his party focuses on more tax cuts for the billionaire oligarchs who are destroying our country. Working class people are getting crushed, and the only politicians with a plan to fix these problems are on the left.

Imagine how furious Trump will be when a Democratic Socialist wins in D.C. He'll be forced to look out the window of the White House every day, knowing that the city around him is thriving because of someone with a political worldview diametrically opposed to his own.

Please ❤️ and share if you're not afraid of Democratic Socialism!

[Priyank Ahuja @ahuja_priyank]

🚨 BREAKING: Google Maps just rolled-out a massive upgrade.

This will be the biggest upgrade in over a decade.

Here are 8 Mind-blowing features that will surprise you:

[Rep. Dan Goldman @RepDanGoldman]

Our volunteer coalition immediately brought the family to my office’s triage center and my team sprung into action. Within minutes, one of my staff members demanded his belongings from ICE while @NYLAG prepared an emergency lawsuit and his kids had a snack and played games.

Realizing they could not defend the arrest in court, ICE quickly released him to his family.

They knew they broke the law. Aggressive congressional oversight and legal advocacy are our best defense against this administration's lawless dragnet. (2/2)

[Maria Shriver @mariashriver]

I’ve been thinking a lot about the extraordinary outbursts of the President of the United States against female journalists... well, actually against journalists in general and journalism. But it feels like he saves his most childlike behavior and irrational language for female reporters, calling them all kinds of names that kids in kindergarten are given times out for. It’s stunning to me to witness such behavior from any leader, any CEO, any person of influence or importance. I’ve never witnessed someone like this raging, this weekend with @meetthepress host @kwelkernbc, just last week in the Oval Office with @cnn’s @kaitlancollins, calling women stupid or piggy, telling them to “smile”, calling them darling, demeaning their credibility. Every good man should denounce this behavior. Every person should be able to stand up for their colleagues and say “No more.”

Imagine this man screaming like this at your daughter, your wife, your sister, your mother... would you stand for it? No, you wouldn’t! And neither should any of us. It’s unacceptable and undignified. Period. End of story.

[David French @DavidAFrench]

This is unhinged. If a family member behaved this way, you'd worry about them. If a CEO behaved like this, the board would meet. He's living in an alternate reality and furious when a person won't indulge his fantasies.

[Majority Democrats @MajorityDems]

We’re supposed to pretend he can negotiate with Iran when he can’t even handle Meet the Press.

[Crazy Vibes @CrazyVibes_1]

When the President of France visited the United States in April 1960, he asked the FBI to help him find a man.
The man he was looking for was an American citizen. He was sixty-four years old. He had been awarded fifteen French military decorations and — six months earlier, in a ceremony in Paris — had been made a Knight of the Légion d'honneur, the highest civilian honor France can give. The medal had been pinned to his chest by the President himself, who had publicly called him un véritable héros français. A true French hero.
The FBI located the man within a few days.
He was operating an elevator at Rockefeller Center in New York City.
The elevator operator's name was Eugene Bullard. He had been born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1895, the son of a man whose own father had been a slave.

He had run away from Columbus at the age of eleven, after watching a white mob nearly lynch his father.
He spent the next several years drifting through the American South. At sixteen, he stowed away on a German freighter at Norfolk, Virginia. He landed in Aberdeen, Scotland. From there he made his way to London, where he learned to box. By 1913, at eighteen, he was prizefighting in Paris.
When Germany invaded France in August 1914, Bullard was nineteen years old. He had no legal obligation to fight. He had no French citizenship.
He went to the recruiting office on October 19, 1914, and signed up for the French Foreign Legion.
He spent the next eighteen months as an infantryman in some of the worst fighting of the war — at the Somme, at Champagne, at Verdun. He was wounded three times. The third wound, on March 5, 1916, tore open his thigh and left him with permanent damage to his leg.
He was twenty years old. The doctors told him he would not return to the infantry.
He decided he wanted to fly.

In a Paris café in the spring of 1916, while he was recovering, Bullard mentioned to three white American friends that he was thinking of joining the French air service. A Mississippian named Jeff Dickson laughed.
Gene, Dickson said, you know damn well there aren't any Negroes in aviation.
Bullard answered: Sure do. That's why I want to get into it. There has to be a first to everything, and I'm going to be the first.
Dickson bet him two thousand dollars he would not make it.
Bullard took the bet. He earned his pilot's license on May 5, 1917. He won the bet.
He reported to the front in August 1917 and flew approximately twenty combat missions over the next three months in a SPAD VII. The fuselage was painted with a bleeding heart pierced by a knife and the French phrase Tout le Sang qui Coule est Rouge — All Blood that Flows is Red.
He carried, on every combat flight, a small capuchin monkey named Jimmy in the front of his flight jacket.
The French press began calling him L'Hirondelle Noire — the Black Swallow.

When the United States entered the war in 1917, Bullard immediately applied to transfer to the U.S. Army Air Service.
His application was rejected.
The U.S. Army Air Service had a policy, in 1917, of not accepting Black pilots. The other American pilots flying for France in his unit, all of them white, were transferred to the U.S. Air Service.
He was the only one who was not.

For the next twenty years, he was one of the most familiar faces in the Montmartre nightlife of Paris between the wars. He owned a nightclub called L'Escadrille. He spoke fluent French, English, and German. Hemingway drank there. Fitzgerald drank there. Langston Hughes drank there. Josephine Baker performed there. Louis Armstrong was a personal friend.
When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Bullard was forty-four. His fluent German and his ownership of a nightclub frequented by German officers made him useful to the French Resistance. He became an intelligence agent — eavesdropping in his own bar on conversations between German officers who did not know he understood every word.
When France fell in June 1940, friends in the Resistance smuggled him across the Spanish border before the Gestapo could arrest him.
He came back to the United States for the first time in twenty-eight years.
He arrived in New York with thirty dollars in his pocket and a permanent limp.

He did not return to a hero's welcome. He returned to a country that had no idea who he was.
He worked at a perfume counter. He worked as a security guard. He worked at the Staten Island shipyards. By the late 1940s, he had taken the job that he would hold for most of the rest of his life.
He operated the elevator at Rockefeller Center.
He was wearing the elevator uniform on the day a producer from NBC came down from the studios upstairs to ask if he was the man Charles de Gaulle had been looking for.
A few weeks later, NBC sent a film crew to interview him in the lobby. The studios where NBC produced The Today Show were on the floors above. He had operated the elevator that took the network executives up to those studios every morning for nearly ten years. He had not been recognized as he did it.
He went back to operating the elevator the following Monday.

He died of stomach cancer on October 12, 1961, three days after his sixty-sixth birthday.
He was buried in the French War Veterans' section of Flushing Cemetery, in Queens, in the uniform of the French Foreign Legion. The casket was draped with the French flag.
In 1994 — thirty-three years after his death — the United States Air Force formally commissioned Eugene Jacques Bullard as a Second Lieutenant, posthumously.
It was the first commission the U.S. military had ever offered him.
He had been the first Black combat pilot in American history.
The French had been calling him a hero since 1917.
The Americans got around to it in 1994.

[Mary L Trump @MaryLTrump]

Donald had a temper tantrum on national television and walked out of an interview simply because Kristen Welker presented him with a basic fact.

Note to other journalists: now is the time to pile on. He won't be able to handle it.

[Martina Navratilova @Martina]

lol

[Suzie rizzio @Suzierizzo1]

Love this! 😂😂😂

[le sociologue grincheux @OhHowByronic]

Spot on.

[Darryn M. Briggs @darryn_briggs]

Kashmir.

[The Editorial Board @johnastoehr]

1. I didn't want to talk about this today. I had planned on writing a very clever and highly nuanced commentary on American patriarchy. But the man who runs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the Affordable Care Act, forced my hand.

[The Editorial Board @johnastoehr]

22. Many thanks for reading this thread. It was brought to you by the generous supporters of the EB. Please consider showing your support by subscribing or leaving a tip. Here's the full article, also free to read. Links after the jump. Thanks!

https://t.co/rKBUNCqmGK