Retired attorney, author, mother, photographer, political junkie.
For tweets re writing (my books & in general) and publishing, please head to @KarenAWyle.
If America beats Paraguay in tonight's World Cup match, come celebrate at Steak n Shake tomorrow with a Patriot milkshake for only 25 cents! Limited to one milkshake per customer.
🇺🇸 ⚽️ 🏟 🇺🇸
Oh yes, I remember that Bond film where the villain decarbonized the auto industry, brought fast internet to everyone on the planet, and helped paralyzed people interact with the world again.
OTD in 1864: 100,000 men vanished overnight, and the greatest general of the age had no idea where they went. This might be the most underrated move of the Civil War.
Context: Grant had just spent ten days locked in trench warfare at Cold Harbor, Virginia, after a frontal assault on June 3 that cost him thousands of men in under an hour. He admitted it was the worst mistake of his career. The armies were so close that soldiers could not lift their heads above the dirt in daylight.
Everyone, including Lee, expected Grant to do what every Union commander before him did after a bloody repulse: retreat north and regroup.
Instead, on the night of June 12, Grant did something audacious. He pulled the entire Army of the Potomac out of trenches that were in some places only yards from Confederate lines. No bugles, no fires, wheels muffled. By morning the Union trenches were empty and Lee's scouts found nothing but abandoned earthworks.
The army marched south, away from Richmond, which made no sense to Confederate observers. Then Union engineers did something almost nobody thought possible: they threw a pontoon bridge across the James River, roughly 2,100 feet of it, over water up to 85 feet deep with a four-foot tidal swing. They built it in about eight hours. It was one of the longest floating bridges in military history.
For three full days Lee was effectively blind, unsure whether Grant was north or south of the James. By the time the picture cleared, Grant's army was across the river attacking Petersburg, the rail hub that fed Richmond.
The siege that followed lasted nine months and ended with Lee's surrender at Appomattox.
Everyone remembers Cold Harbor as Grant's worst day. Almost nobody remembers that one week later he pulled off the maneuver that won the war.
Yiftah Dan Tweg, 27, a Jewish Israeli man, was murdered by Hamas terrorists at the Supernova music festival on October 7.
That day, Yiftah and his friends fled to a nearby dumpster to hide once they learned Hamas had invaded.
At 11:47am, Palestinian militants open fired on the dumpster, killing all but two: the two women Yiftah protected by positioning his body over theirs, TOI reported.
Never forget🎗️
🚨 BREAKING. Scott Bessent just announced the Internal Revenue Service is launching MASSIVE AUDITS of financial institutions that facilitated the laundering of Minnesota funds.
Read that again.
Banks. MSBs. Financial middlemen.
Anyone who helped move dirty money is about to get TORCHED.
For once, the IRS is being deployed FOR AMERICANS FIRST — not against working families.
Follow the money.
Audit everything.
Prosecute whoever broke the law.
Music to my ears.
Thank you, Sec. Bessent. 🇺🇸
Leftist publication The Intercept blamed Donald Trump and his supporters for multiple bomb threats on Jewish institutions in February 2017. It turned out the threats came from one of The Intercept's staff reporters, Juan Thompson. He was convicted and sentenced to 60 months in prison.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi:
We will never leave Hezbollah in Lebanon alone, and the end of the war will also encompass Lebanon and all other fronts.
⚠️ WARNING TO TRUMP: IRAN doesn't want PEACE, they want TIME
Every deal they sign is the ancient Islamic strategy of Al-Hudaybiyyah: a calculated pause to rearm, regroup, and strike when you least expect it. Used for 1,400 years to lull enemies into a false sense of security before the kill.
Mohammed. Arafat. Iran. Same strategy, different century.
You cannot negotiate with a regime that has already decided you are the enemy. Finish the job.
EXCLUSIVE: The kids whose lemonade stand was robbed at gunpoint in Boston opened another stand today
Check out this crowd who came to support them!!
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
The United Arab Emirates “categorically denied” reports alleging the transfer of funds from the UAE to the Islamic Republic of Iran, “including allegations concerning $3 billion.”
In a statement, the UAE’s Foreign Ministry said these allegations “are entirely false and unfounded, stressing that no frozen Iranian funds have been released, transferred, or facilitated through the UAE.”
People love to talk about privilege.
The greatest privilege in history may be building in a nation where an immigrant can arrive with talent and end up launching rockets, building electric cars, creating satellite networks, and changing entire industries.
America didn’t give @elonmusk his brain.
America gave him room to use it. That’s what we do. Less government more merit.
Democrats spend a lot of time arguing whether success comes from the individual or the system.
The uncomfortable answer is usually both.
A seed matters. Soil matters. Plant a giant oak in concrete and you’ll get a very disappointing tree. Democrats love planting on concrete and then wonder what went wrong..
#AStoneGroove
No, you don't get it.
He does not have $1 trillion sitting in cash, it is 99% stock in his companies.
To make that wealth liquid would mean selling all that stock which would swiftly destroy *both* the companies (Tesla, SpaceX, others) and the wealth. If he sold it all, he'd end up with maybe $100b max, several hundred thousand people would be out of work, the companies ruined and many of their suppliers also ruined.
Okay, but now Elon has $100b in cash, and can "solve the world's problems".
$100b divided by the world's 8 billion people is $12
If you were in charge, several of the most innovative industrial companies in the world would be destroyed, hundreds of thousands out of work, and space would again close to human civilization for another generation.
But everyone on earth could have one nice meal and you could revel in your altruism.