Andy

Rearranging deck chairs on a listing society. Mens sana in corpore sano.

[Andy @Andyinks]

Wendell Barry's wakeful respite from the troubled world of men.

[Andy @Andyinks]

@ZackPolanski So it's down to one man, Elon Musk, albeit a powerful man that wholeheartedly supports free speech, and not the millions of illegal economic parasites ravaging Britain? Obtuse little weed.

[Andy @Andyinks]

@TruthFairy131 Shouldn't be too sure who's the likely suspect. Volatile times are easily exploited.

[Alice Smith @TheAliceSmith]

They call for calm in the face of horror.

This is inhuman and manipulative.

The proportionate and natural response to an horrific incident is disgust, fear and anger.

They want to downplay the horror to dodge their own political responsibility for it.

[Yogi @Houseofyogi]

Chicago lost the Bears this week. A team that's been in the city since 1921.

They didn't lose them to a bigger market or a better deal. The Bears decided they'd rather be a tenant in Indiana than deal with Illinois for one more year.

Think about how badly you have to run a place for that to be the smart move.

They lost them for two reasons.

The people running Illinois would rather villainize a builder than keep one. And they're bad at their jobs.

In 2021 the Bears spent $197M on the old Arlington Park racetrack.

Before they could break ground, Cook County valued the empty lot at $192M (Bears said $60M). They were salivating at the chance to extort a building that didn't even exist yet.

That fight dragged on for years.

The Bears were ready to put $2B into the stadium. All they wanted was a promise the county wouldn't reassess them into oblivion, plus $855M for infrastructure everyone uses. Roads, transit, utilities. A $3B project, two thirds of it private money pouring into Illinois.

Springfield had since 2021 to get this done. They dragged it to the final night of session, passed it through the Senate at 3:39AM, and the House went home without voting.

So now it's all gone.

The funniest part? This started because Cook County tried to grab the tax early. They knew a built stadium would pay $53M a year. Now they get under $4M on a vacant lot. No jobs, no buildout, no new anything.

Congrats on fighting for scraps and losing the whole prize.

Pritzker: they're "an $8.5B valued business" that doesn't need propping up.

But be smart for a second. Almost every NFL city throws in public money for a stadium. Not charity. The return is real. Tourism, hotels, restaurants, jobs, game days, property tax on a huge development. The math works.

Indiana did the math. While Illinois sat on it for years, Indiana passed a bill in months, put up $1B, and took the team.

And the Bears took a worse deal to get there. In Illinois they were going to own their stadium. In Indiana they rent it from the state. A team that wanted to build its own home gave up ownership just to escape Chicago.

Nobody won but Indiana. The Bears lost their stadium. Illinois lost the team, the $2B, and $53M a year in taxes.

Pritzker after they left: "I wasn't willing to give up billions of dollars of taxpayer money to give it to a billionaire-owned family or team."

There it is. "Billionaire-owned."

That's how Democrats talk about any business right before they run it out of town. Call them a billionaire, act like you're saving working families, take a victory lap while the tax base drives across the state line.

Meanwhile they're running the whole state into the ground. And you already know how this ends. You're living in it.

Pensions are $143B in the hole, worst in the country and not close. You pay $6,285 a year in property taxes, double the $2,969 national average, for a city that's $1.15B in the red. The mayor called its finances "the point of no return."

When you run things this badly, you sell what's left.

They leased the parking meters for 75 years to Morgan Stanley and a sovereign wealth fund in Abu Dhabi. Took $1.15B and burned through it in two years. The investors already made it all back, with 58 years left to collect.

Sold the Skyway. Sold the downtown garages. Every asset that made money, gone for one check.

But a fixed property tax rate for a team that's been here 106 years? That's "propping up billionaires."

Companies are leaving. Boeing for Virginia. Caterpillar for Texas. Citadel for Miami. In 2023 alone Illinois lost 56,000 people and $6B in income to other states. The ones who left earned a third more than the ones who moved in.

Indiana didn't outbid anyone. AAA credit, 16 years straight. A $676M surplus. Fourth-lowest debt per person in the country. They just weren't a disaster.

Illinois could have collected $53M a year. It chose zero. Ignore all the bad management but make sure to stick it to those evil, pesky billionaires.

[Dovi Safier @safier]

“It was one of the most monumentally unselfish things one group of people did for another.”

-#DDay veteran Andy Rooney on the young 🇺🇸 🇨🇦 🇬🇧 soldiers who stormed the beaches of Normandy 82 years ago.

Required watching for every young person today!

[𝐍𝐢𝐨𝐡 𝐁𝐞𝐫𝐠 🇮🇷 ✡︎ @NiohBerg]

In 1979, the mullahs tortured the Shah's favourite horse to death.

The horse, Azar, was paraded in the streets. They broke his legs, cut his tongue out, and then shot him in the head in front of a large crowd.

Iran is occupied by demons from hell.

[Kevin → Plant Daddy @KevinEspiritu]

I traveled to the rural town of Wazuka, Japan today to meet Daiki-san, who left a career as the CEO of a small donut chain to grow organic tea for a living...

He didn't buy land first. Instead, he apprenticed under master teal growers, most of them members of families that have grown tea for 5-10+ generations, which brings us to the problem...

The farmers who grow tea are aging out. Their kids moved to the cities, and with no plans to succeed the family business, their tea fields and homes are going abandoned

So Daiki-san apprenticed, built trust, and reclaimed fields from families who had no one to carry on their legacy

He goes direct to consumer, producing over 5 cultivars of organically grown tea, some even hand-picked for complete control over the quality

This valley has grown some of the highest grade tea in Japan for over 800 years and it's amazing to see a young intrepid grower using organic methods and business savvy to make sure tea grows here for many generations to come

[Prep Propaganda 👔 @prep_propaganda]

Straight to the point 🐊

[Vinnie Sullivan @VinnieSull1van]

⏳️ 1960s: This fascinating footage is of a "Totter" (rag-and-bone man) traversing London in the 1960s. Seeing the sights and hearing their accents is a heartwarming and heartbreaking experience.

Rag-and-bone men were self-employed scavengers who travelled the streets with a sack, handcart, or horse and cart, collecting unwanted household items to resell for a living. Though they had a lot less than people today, they also had a lot less to worry about compared to the corporate, unsafe world that we currently call home.

I wonder how many of our relatives did this job or simply dealt with these polite roughians as they strode through lost London. Their kind are seen no more. 🐎

[MatrixMysteries @MatrixMysteries]

“I watched people sell their wedding rings to keep the lights on… then I saw where the ‘relief’ really went.”

Barbra Streisand, net worth $400 million, took a $200,000 PPP loan

Robert De Niro, net worth $500 million, took $27.7 MILLION in PPP money

Paid for by U.S. taxpayers

[Dawid Żbik @DawidZbik]

Jeśli ktoś ogląda dziś tenis po raz pierwszy, to nie ma opcji, żeby nie zakochał się w tej dyscyplinie, widząc grę Mai Chwalińskiej.

No po prostu nie ma takiej opcji.

#RolandGarros

[Andy @Andyinks]

@BethanyForTruth "Houston man"

[Andy @Andyinks]

@MattWalshBlog Opinions influenced by race often freely shared in the public forum regarding personal accountability, moral behavior, and impartial justice have been in the gutter for decades.

[James Woods @RealJamesWoods]

The perpetrators are up for parole soon.

[David Marshall 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @Sausageandeggx]

They broke his bones, gouged his eyes out, cut out his tongue and castrated him. He died of a heart attack after being set on fire and dragged himself 50 meters across the floor.

[Andy @Andyinks]

@reviewwales Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

[A. B. Thompson @procrastixote]

I had no idea there was a British Isles-equivalent of Northern France's Mont Saint Michel. I'm very surprised it's both a near-shore semi-island and using the English version of the name. Very interesting.

[JD Vance @JDVance]

Henry Nowak died the same way a civilization dies: abandoned, handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him, and accused of hate crimes he did not commit. His murder is as tragic as it is enraging. He should still be alive today, and he would be if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it.

Henry was far from the first to so needlessly lose his life, and I fear he won’t be the last. Each time a life like his is lost, the proper response—the only response—is righteous anger. One of the most important things the Trump administration has proven to the world is that stopping the flow of mass migration and defending national sovereignty is a matter of political will and leadership. Anything else is an excuse.

It is because we love the West that we want to preserve it. We love our civilization. We love our country. We love our children. And nobody—nobody—should ever die the way that Henry Nowak died. May God comfort those who loved him, and may God rest his soul.

[HeritageBulwark @hbulwark1]

Coats of Arms of the Thirteen Original Colonies

[Historical Chronicles @HistoriaJack]

Captain Hornblower

- N.C. Wyeth, c. 1939