Jeff Stewart

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary."

-James Madison
Federalist Paper No. 51

[Jeff Stewart @RandomStroll]

“I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore…diverting myself…whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” --Isaac Newton

[Lakota Man @LakotaMan1]

Exactly

[Norm Clark @Normsmusic]

James Robison
What Joyce Carol Oates wrote to Elon Musk on Twitter. I am told it rattled him. I love it.
“So curious that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates – scenes from nature, pet dog or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book (but doubt that he reads); pride in a friend’s or relative’s accomplishment; condolences for someone who has died; pleasure in sports, acclaim for a favorite team; references to history. In fact he seems totally uneducated, uncultured. The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty & meaning in life than the ‘most wealthy person in the world.’”

[Joni Askola @joni_askola]

Do not let the far right gaslight you into thinking their current platform is just common sense, or that their views used to be the norm.

Their obsession with absolute presidential immunity, dismantling NATO, and carrying water for Russia is entirely abnormal.

Figures like Elon Musk frequently claim that the political center has shifted and that their views were considered mainstream a couple of decades ago. This is a massive lie designed to disguise an increasingly radical, post-truth agenda. The positions they champion today would have been laughed at thirty years ago by anyone with a shred of sanity.

Consider the current landscape under Trump. The erasure of checks and balances, the demand for absolute presidential immunity, and the open use of the highest office to generate billions of dollars show an unprecedented level of corruption. No normal citizen in the past voted for the destruction of the country from within.

The betrayal is even more obvious when examining their foreign policy. The modern far right has become thoroughly pro-Russian, routinely echoing the talking points of a brutal dictatorship while actively trying to dismantle NATO. A generation ago, this blatant subversion of Western security would have been universally condemned as treasonous.

Today's far right is a uniquely dangerous, modern phenomenon that weaponizes misinformation and stokes division. They are not trying to preserve history. They are trying to rewrite it to justify their own corruption and insane extremist ideology

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

The oldest hand to sign the Declaration of Independence shook so badly the man could barely hold the pen. He signed anyway, and what he said while doing it should be carved somewhere. Here's the story.

Stephen Hopkins was born in Rhode Island in 1707. No money, no fancy schooling, almost no formal education at all. His mother and grandfather taught him at home, and from there he did the rest himself. He read everything he could get his hands on and became a surveyor and an astronomer by sheer self-teaching.

A poor self-taught kid then did this with his life. Justice of the peace at 23. Speaker of the Rhode Island House seven times. Chief justice for eleven years. Governor nine separate times. He basically taught himself into running an entire colony.

He was also a complicated man, and honesty demands we say it. He had enslaved people in his household, and later in life he turned against the trade, freeing people he held and pushing a 1774 bill to stop the importation of slaves into Rhode Island. A man wrestling with his own contradictions in real time.

By the time independence came, he was old. Nearly 69 when he got to the Continental Congress, one of the oldest men in the room, second in age only to his friend Benjamin Franklin.

And here's the thing. He was sick. He had palsy, a condition that made his hands shake so violently that writing was genuinely painful. For a man whose whole life ran on reading and writing, his own hands were betraying him.

So when the moment came to sign the most dangerous document in America, treason against a king, he could barely do it. He reached over with his left hand, gripped his trembling right hand to steady it, and forced the pen across the page.

And as he did it, he said the line they should put on a wall:

"My hand trembles, but my heart does not."

He went on to help draft the Articles of Confederation before his health finally pulled him out of public life. He died in 1785.

A self-made man, an old man, a shaking man, who looked down at hands that would barely obey him and signed his name to a revolution anyway.

Stephen Hopkins. The heart doesn't tremble.

[Jeff Stewart @RandomStroll]

https://t.co/caVDSXdVeZ

[Matthew Feinberg @thewebbie]

An Israeli friend that wishes to remain anonymous wrote this. Please share.

The Letter Israel’s Prime Minister Cannot Write

Mr. President of the United States,

There are things the Prime Minister of Israel cannot say to you.
He’s bound by diplomacy.
He’s committed to alliances.
He must measure every word.

I, on the other hand, am not restricted by these things.

I write to you as an Israeli citizen who happens to also be an American.
As a former soldier whose friends have children who are also active soldiers.
As a someone with strong roots in the north.
As a person who lived in a country that has buried soldiers, children, families, neighbors, and friends, and still stands tall.

And therefore, Mr. President, when you speak about Israel as if it owes you its very existence, perhaps it is time to bring you back down to earth.

Israel did not begin with Donald Trump.

Israel was not born in the White House.
Israel was not established because of a tweet, a speech, a deal, or a press conference.

Israel was built from the blood of generations.
From pioneers who buried children and kept plowing.
From fighters who fell so others could live.
From mothers who waited for sons who never returned.
From families who were burned, slaughtered, expelled, returned, and built a home here.

So, thank you for your support.
Thank you for your friendship.
Thank you for the moments when you stood beside us.
But do not be confused.

You did not save Israel.
Israel is saved every day by the soldiers of the IDF, the intelligence services, the security forces, the citizens who remain dedicated to living on the borders, and this people that refuses to disappear.

And then you tell the world that a Syrian rebel leader turned president can deal with Hezbollah better than Israel.

Really?

If what you mean is that he can do what Israel will never do, slaughter without warning, erase without checking, turn an entire village into a “security solution,” then yes, he is probably faster. Barbarians always work quickly. They do not pause for morality, for children, for uninvolved civilians, or for conscience.

But do not call that victory. And do not compare that to the IDF.

Because the Israel Defense Forces does not need a lesson in security from someone who mainly knows the language of blood & violence.

The Jewish people do not need permission to exist from any leader in the world.

Mr. President,
In the north of Israel, there is no “theoretical”.
No committees.
No PR headlines.

There are empty homes.
There are children who have not returned to their childhoods.
There are communities that have lived for years under threat.
There are families who received a knock at the door.
There are soldiers who fell so Northern towns can live.

And when you say “enough,” when you speak as though this can be wrapped up because it interferes with your agenda, you are not talking about some place on a map.

You are talking about our home.

Israel values alliances.
Israel knows how to say thank you.
Israel does not forget who stood by its side.

But Israel is not a puppet state.
It does not wait for permission to defend its children.
It will not abandon its border because it is convenient for Washington.
And it will not apologize for refusing to die quietly.

Mr. President,

Perhaps you have grown accustomed to thinking that everything begins and ends with
you.

It does not.

The people of Israel were here before you.
The State of Israel will be here after you.
And our north will not be a playing card in your game.

If you think you can explain to us who will guard our home better than our own children, then perhaps you truly have lost your north.

We have not.

And we do not intend to leave or lose the north no matter what you say!

[Anders Åslund @anders_aslund]

I have read and reread the US-Iran draft memorandum of understanding (MoU) supposed to be signed on June 19.
It looks as if the Iranians formulated their most outlandish wishlist & Trump just approved it.
Presumably Trump, as a village fool, ignored the diplomacy (as usual) and capitulated on his 80th Birthday.
This MoU is a tragicomic result of an unjustified and meaningless war instigated by Trump.
The Iranian regime has survived & probably got worse. It can celebrate a total victory over the US.
As an added bonus, it has split the US from Israel and discredited Netanyahu.
There are two generally positive agreements, which are both a restoration of the status quo ante:
First, Iran and the US "declare an immediate and permanent end to the war on all fronts". However, as in most points there are caveats to Iran's benefit. It includes "allies" and Lebanon, which means that the US prohibits Israel to bomb Lebanon and Hezbollah.
Second, both sides commit themselves to opening for full traffic through the Strait of Hormuz within 30 days.
Furthermore, Iran "reiterates that it will never produce nuclear weapons," as it did in the multilateral 2015 agreement with Obama.
For the rest, there are only US concessions to Iran:
Both countries undertake "to refrain from interfering in each other's internal affairs," that is, the US will not work for regime change in Iran.
The economic benefits the US offers Iran are extraordinary:
1. To ensure together with regional partners a development fund for Iran "of at least $300 billion."
2. To end "all types of sanctions currently facing" Iran.
3. The US Treasury "will issue waivers for exports of Iranian crude oil, petrochemical products...and all related services..."
4. The US undertakes to make sure that all frozen Iranian funds "will be released and made fully available." This involves tens of billions of dollars.
The final agreement "will be approved through a binding resolution of the UN Security Council", which gives China and Russia a veto.
Nothing is stated about Iranian proxy forces abroad or ballistic missiles or even what will happen with the Iranian uranium.
Let us hope that this unfortunate war has ended, but Trump has reinforced the terrible Iranian regime at an enormous cost.
"Stupid does as stupid is."
The US would benefit from restoring diplomacy.

[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.

[Andrea Junker @Strandjunker]

On this 82nd anniversary of D-Day, remember: The way we wonder why Germans didn’t stop Hitler is exactly how the rest of the world views Americans and Trump today.

[Murray Rothbard @MurraySuggests]

The Iranian navy, which has been destroyed eight times, has apparently closed the Strait of Hormuz again, because the United States, for the seventh time, won the war that wasn’t a war, so now the United States has to open the Strait of Hormuz that was already open before the not-war began.

The not-war began because Iran had uranium that was totally, completely, beautifully obliterated, so they can’t build the nuclear bomb they weren’t building, which is why the United States had to start the not-war it definitely didn’t start.

Now the United States, which has nuclear weapons, is threatening to use nuclear weapons to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, because nuclear weapons are far too dangerous for countries with nuclear weapons to allow other countries to have.

If the United States saw the United States doing what the United States does in other countries, the United States would invade the United States to liberate the United States from the tyranny of the United States.

[Jeff Stewart @RandomStroll]

https://t.co/fwnm3rVb0X

[Eli Afriat 🇮🇱 @EliAfriatISR]

Exactly like that.
FREE THE WORLD.

[gustavo arroyo @elcosture]

@DaniMayakovski La pregunta a su Madre , señora su hijo era estúpido oh inteligente????

[Prof. John McLaughlin @Harvard1988]

🚨🚨The Trump Crime Family is more corrupt than the totality of All Previous Organized Crime Families Combined in the history of the United States.
———————————————
I spent thirty (30 years investigating Major Organized Crime Families & Gangs and without a doubt, Donald Trump has committed more crimes against the United States of America and its citizens than all Organized Crime Syndicates.
TRUMP is directly responsible for the theft of billions of dollars and the systematic destruction of our economy, the rule of law and our democracy.
TRUMP must be Impeached and Removed from office by the U.S. Congress this year. Both Democrats & Republicans must join together to save our nation.

[Suzie rizzio @Suzierizzo1]

Who thinks that Rep.Thomas Massie should walk out onto the House floor and start naming all of the names listed in the Epstein files no matter who they are or where they’re from.

[Annie @AnnieForTruth]

I agree 💯💯💯

[Annie @AnnieForTruth]

I agree 💯💯💯

[Jeff Stewart @RandomStroll]

https://t.co/iJnJ6wGI0N

[Protect Kamala Harris ✊ @DisavowTrump20]

Retired 4-Star Navy Admiral and former Navy SEAL William McRaven on Donald Trump: "Through your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation."

RETWEET if you stand with Admiral McRaven!