John Perrone

[U.S. Senator John Fetterman @SenFettermanPA]

The Democratic Party is becoming the party of socialism.

58% view socialism positively.

50% view capitalism negatively.

I’m a proud free market capitalist.

This is lunacy.

[Ellen Carmichael @ellencarmichael]

The most interesting part of the red card saga isn't the ruling. It's how differently Americans and Europeans process the idea that they might have been wronged.

Europeans are fundamentally different from Americans in one particular way: they expect life to be aggravating and at times unfair. It's just a fact of moving through the world. I joke that in Europe, the customer is always wrong. You didn't read the fine print. The only pharmacy in town is closed every other Tuesday for three hours, and even if the times weren't posted, that's still your problem. Too bad if you want the bill, because the waiter's on his union-mandated half-hour smoke break, and you're just going to have to wait.

To quote the great Mark Knopfler: sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug. There's something freeing in that. Things are less in your control, so there's less angst in managing your expectations.

In America, things couldn't be more different. We simply can't accept a wrong left unrighted.

The flight attendant sneezed handing you a drink on your one-hour flight? 15,000 frequent flyer miles. Didn't like your appetizer? A replacement is on the way, and the whole course comes off the bill. There's a reason our interstates are lined with trial lawyer billboards.

Europeans have turned complaining into a continental pastime with no expectation that the universe owes them a remedy for their grief. You gripe about the train being late, your friends nod solemnly and everyone goes back to their apéro. In America, we launch a full-blown investigation of the train system, sue the government (and its contractors) that allowed for the tardiness and hold a Congressional hearing on the state of national infrastructure.

So to an objective observer, the red card shouldn't have happened, and VAR was a travesty. To Americans, our star player shouldn't be unfairly banned from a match we couldn't afford to lose for a card he so obviously didn't deserve.

Who cares that FIFA used a little-used reversal to fix it. Who cares that other people are mad about it. We. Were. Wronged. It was unjust. It must be corrected. We would accept nothing less.

Europeans waxing poetic about the sanctity of the game are, of course, talking about a governing body whose last tournament host was decided via confirmed cash bribes �� one that imposed dress codes on women, shrugged off widespread allegations of modern slavery and reconfigured the entire tournament calendar to suit the host country. Which is exactly the point. If you've made peace with all of that, at least enough to watch the tournament four years later, a probationary suspension isn't actually a scandal.

Maybe that's the real divide. Over millennia, Europeans have made peace with being the bug. Americans have never once considered it, and apparently, we're not about to start now.

[Selene Mariposa @Selene_Mariposa]

America turns 250 today.

Let me read back the resume.

We started by telling a king to pound sand, in writing.

By 1803 we bought half a continent from France for about four cents an acre.

We fought a war with ourselves and somehow stayed one country.

We strung a railroad across the entire thing.

We handed the world the lightbulb, the telephone, and the airplane in about thirty years flat.

Then a man named Willis Carrier invented air conditioning and made half the planet actually livable.

You are welcome, Texas. You are welcome, Dubai.

Twice the whole world caught fire, and twice we showed up and helped put it out.

We split the atom.

We put men on the moon in 1969.

Then we went back and hit golf balls up there, because why not.

We invented jazz, blues, rock and roll, and hip-hop, and the whole planet is still dancing to it.

We put a burger and fries on every corner of the earth.

We built rockets that fly themselves home and land standing straight up.

We flew a helicopter on Mars.

We launched a car into actual space and it is still out there cruising.

We also invented ranch dressing and somehow talked the entire world into putting it on pizza.

Priorities.

We even invented three of our own sports so we could win them.

Baseball, basketball, and football.

Real football, the kind with hands, because we named it and we are not taking corrections.

The rest of the planet can keep soccer, which is fine, we are hosting it in our backyard this summer anyway.

And yes, Canadian football exists, wider field, extra man, one fewer down, and we try very hard not to think about it.

Frankly it was generous of us to invent our own games.

If we put all that energy into soccer, nobody else would ever lift that trophy again.

We would win it so often they would just rename it the America’s Cup and hand us the keys.

You are welcome for the suspense.

And in 2026 we threw a birthday so big a German tourist live-tweeted our gas stations to 750,000 people.

Not every chapter was clean.

We argued, we stumbled, we fixed what we broke, and we kept building.

That is the whole trick.

Two hundred and fifty years in, and we are still the loudest, brightest, most improbable experiment on the map.

Not bad for a country that started as a strongly worded letter to a king.

Happy birthday, America.

🦋

[John Perrone @TheBeaker18]

@FinkusD @RSE_VB No, we aren’t. 😆

[John Perrone @TheBeaker18]

@keithkman @Combat_learjet They put the “-lition” back in the demo!

[John Perrone @TheBeaker18]

@asdfgts1 @Combat_learjet Correct

[John Perrone @TheBeaker18]

@LiaS814 @mrfunnysmart @Combat_learjet There you go letting facts interfere with a perfectly emotional social media narrative.

[John Perrone @TheBeaker18]

@PGrasmehr @Fiat_Lux00 @Osinttechnical 💯

[John Perrone @TheBeaker18]

@Fiat_Lux00 @Osinttechnical However, no one person or even agency is empowered to fix it. Watch the military try to cut a bloated, inefficient program in any Congresscritter’s district of either party. It stands no chance.

[John Perrone @TheBeaker18]

@Fiat_Lux00 @Osinttechnical “Most” would have been both accurate and sufficient. Words matter. You erroneously paint us all with a broad brush and immediately accuse of groupthink for pointing out your obvious error. As taxpayers, most of us hate the waste as much as you or any other citizen.

[John Perrone @TheBeaker18]

@JudiciaryDems Exact same thing your party has done in New England.

[U.S. Senator John Fetterman @SenFettermanPA]

We were there front and center.

That venue wasn’t built to accommodate an event with the line of succession for the U.S. government.

After witnessing last night, drop the TDS and build the White House ballroom for events exactly like these.

[John Perrone @TheBeaker18]

@KierstonCreech @cut4nil @PeteHegseth Exactly!

[John Perrone @TheBeaker18]

@Mishi_2210 1050

[John Perrone @TheBeaker18]

@majic152 @BLackgold_5 😂

[John Perrone @TheBeaker18]

@SenFettermanPA @giselefetterman @UPMC Be well, Senator. We need more like you (on both sides) who espouse country over party.

[M2 @Amer1can_Barbie]

Hear me out…

[John Perrone @TheBeaker18]

@Itsphebeats @JoeCitizen15 @atensnut Yeah you’re correct. That was wrong. Did Hunter Biden ever have a controversial social media post? 🤔 This isn’t about two wrongs make it ok. What Jay Jones did was beyond disqualifying, particularly for the job of attorney general.

[U.S. Senator John Fetterman @SenFettermanPA]

As a committed Democrat, I’m dismayed my party is playing chicken with the food security of 42M Americans.

I reject a political gamble that exposes a vulnerable constituency to widespread deprivation and chaos.