Hassan Booker

Loving father, husband, and Lakers Fan.

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

250 years ago today, on June 28, 1776, a half-finished fort made of palm tree logs and sand did something it had no business doing: it beat the most powerful navy on earth and saved the American South. We just hit the 250th anniversary of one of the most improbable victories of the entire Revolution.

The setup looked hopeless. A massive British fleet under Admiral Sir Peter Parker sailed into Charleston harbor to crush the rebellion in the south before it could grow. Guarding the city was an unfinished little fort on Sullivan's Island, defended by Colonel William Moultrie and a few hundred men. The walls weren't even done. One British officer reportedly figured they'd flatten it in an hour.

Then the palmetto logs did the impossible. The fort was built from soft, spongy palmetto wood packed with sand, and instead of shattering when the British cannonballs hit, the logs just absorbed them. Iron sank into the mush and stuck. The fleet hammered that fort for hours and could not break it, while the American gunners coolly fired back and tore the British warships apart. Several ships ran aground. Admiral Parker himself got hit so hard that the blast literally ripped the seat out of his pants.

And then the moment that became legend. When a cannon blast knocked the fort's flag down, Sergeant William Jasper climbed out over the wall, in the middle of the bombardment, grabbed the fallen colors, and raised them back up so everyone could see the fort still stood.

By nightfall the British fleet limped away. They wouldn't seriously come back to the south for nearly three more years. South Carolina loved that fort so much it put the palmetto tree on its state flag, where it still flies today.

A quarter of a millennium later, the lesson still lands. Sometimes the thing everyone writes off as too soft and too unfinished to matter is the exact thing that refuses to break.

[@amuse @amuse]

LOVE: Katharine Birbalsingh says the West has spent decades teaching kids to loathe their own nations, and the children are the victims. Her solution is the one the establishment fears: teach them to love their country. Common sense, finally.

[The White House @WhiteHouse]

1. ALL VOTERS MUST SHOW PHOTO I.D. (IDENTIFICATION!).

2. ALL VOTERS MUST SHOW PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP.

3. NO MAIL-IN BALLOTS (EXCEPT FOR ILLNESS, DISABILITY, MILITARY, OR TRAVEL!).

4. NO MEN IN WOMEN’S SPORTS.

5. NO TRANSGENDER MUTILIZATION SURGERY ON OUR CHILDREN.

[Carol M. Swain, PhD @carolmswain]

Most people are taught a very simple story about American slavery.

But history is messier.

Anthony Johnson, a Black man from Angola, arrived in Virginia in 1621 as an indentured servant. He gained his freedom, became a landowner — and in 1655 won a court case to keep his

Black servant John Casor as his slave for life. This helped set an early legal precedent for chattel slavery.
In 1830 there were 3,775 free Black slave owners holding ~12,760 enslaved people.

Did you know this part of the story?
Does it change how you see the “simple” version we’re usually taught?

Share it if you’re tired of slogans and want facts instead.

Tag someone who needs to see this.
Facts > slogans.

#Virginia #slavery #HistoryMatters #enslavedpeople #AnthonyJohnson

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

True

[Kerry McQuisten’s Common Sense Sanctuary @KerryMcQ4Oregon]

Let’s talk reflecting pool. Warren G. Harding built it on swampland and the structure beneath it would have been fine - if it had been built on stable ground. The whole thing started sinking slowly.

Presidents all the way up through Carter kept trying to prop it up with little cement pours, and regularly draining and cleaning it. Algae was a problem even then because there was no real circulation system. No pumps. No filters.

Reagan added some more concrete, realizing the entire pool was now 12 or 13 inches lower than it should be. It had sunk over a foot and pulled loose from its structure.

Clinton publicly acknowledged that the entire pool needed demolished and rebuilt, and that it would take hundreds of millions of dollars to do it right.

The Bushes just kept trying to plug leaks and clean it. Every time they had to drain and scrub the thing, it cost around $100,000 to do so. George W. Bush actually had plans drawn up to rebuild it. 

Obama decided to revise and execute the Bush renovation, which was needed, but it was flawed, and he spent tens of millions of dollars on it. He raised the pool up with a timber under-structure so the water ended up being even shallower, which means that’s the point at which the water started getting warmer. He also turned off the chlorinated city water supply into the pool and began pumping water in from the tidal basin - that’s the somewhat stagnant water that comes in from the Potomac River and surrounds the Jefferson Memorial. There was algae before, but with those changes came even more algae. Obama‘s reasoning was that the basin water would be cheaper instead of using the city water supply. He had the pool tiles removed from the bottom and another layer gray cement put in place along with gray-tinted reflective paint, which gradually faded away.

By the time Trump’s first term came around, the cleaning had to be done every three or four months, some of the Obama structural repairs were failing, and the leaks were rampant again.

By the time Biden got into office, Obama’s reflecting pool fixes were cracked and the pool was leaking hundreds of thousands (probably millions) of gallons of water. Biden opted to clean the pool, but performed little maintenance, and did no substantial refurbishment.

Trump’s fix was to try something that the other presidents hadn’t. Whereas Obama had used a gray reflective paint and cement, Trump tried a combination sealant liner - it isn’t paint. Those sealants are similarly light-reflective to what Obama used. Trump switched up to blue from the dark gray. He added nanobubblers.

When we walked around it the other day, there was only a small patch on the middle of the left side that may have been coming up. It was too windy and stormy to see why. It was not as if the sealant was coming up all over the pool and floating to the top because it wasn’t. We did see the algae cleaning going on and the crews, you could tell, were tired of being harassed for doing their jobs. 

Vandals have damaged the grass, they’ve cut into the liner in other places and the knife lines are clear in the videos. We did see the National Guard soldiers coming in. We also saw them placed around the America 250 construction area and in between the museums. Five vandals have been arrested since we walked through. It’s unbelievable to me that they want to destroy something we could all enjoy out of hatred for a president whose policies they don’t even understand.  And the mainstream media is reprehensible. They aren’t reporting. They’re spinning propaganda as usual.

[Jaycee @Jayceeely]

To the many men who never made it home to become Father's. 💔🫡🇬🇧

[General Mike Flynn @GenFlynn]

REPOST THE HECK OUT OF THIS…ARREST FAUCI (OTHERS?).

[Secretary Kennedy @SecKennedy]

Thank you, Tulsi, for documenting Dr. Fauci's central role in causing the COVID-19 pandemic — among the most consequential crimes in human history.

[James Woods @RealJamesWoods]

This was why the COVID mass murder was commited:

[Bad Hombre @Badhombre]

So many examples of Black male excellence, all alive today, and they choose to prop up a dead career criminal fentanyl junkie and a guy who’s in jail for stabbing someone to death.

[Buzz Patterson @BuzzPatterson]

.@jenvanlaar is a friend and a baddass reporter. She absolutely nails @GavinNewsom in her latest article!

He’s in trouble.🤣🤣🤣

[The English Remnant @Englishremnant]

The badge on the England shirt is older than nearly every nation playing in this World Cup.

Three gold lions on a field of red, the royal arms of England. Richard the Lionheart, who cut down Saladin's men in the Holy Land, set them on his great seal in 1198. Long before they were a football badge, they were a banner of war.

The same lions flew over English armies for centuries. The standard men marched behind them, fought under them, and died beneath them. At Crécy and Agincourt, the arms of England were carried into the worst of it.

Every king bore them. Edward III quartered them with the lilies of France when he claimed her crown, and still the three lions held the shield. Through the Plantagenet, Tudor and Stuart dynasties, England's lions did not move.

Then, on 30 November 1872, England met Scotland in the first official international football match the world had ever seen. The men who walked out wore three lions on their chest. The banner men once followed into battle, men now carried them onto the field. The same lions and the same England.

That is what these three lions have always done, gathering a people behind one shield. They held men together when the stakes were life and death.

Eight hundred years on, they hold a nation still.

Three lions, one country.
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 𓃬 𓃬 𓃬 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

[Zero Tolerance Policy @ThoughtCrimes80]

This is every white woman at a “No Kings” rally. The Subaru Outback is perfection. 🤌🏼😂

[USA NEWS 🇺🇸 @usanewshq]

They just played this at UFC America 250 and it is one of the greatest things I have ever seen 🇺🇸

God bless America

[Mr. Potato Head ⚡️ @MrPotatoHeadUSA]

Built from more than 600,000 LEGO pieces, this massive USS Missouri model stretches an incredible 28 meters in length

[Today in History @TodayinHistory]

June 14, 1777: The Second Continental Congress passed the Flag Act.

This made the Stars and Stripes the official flag of the United States!

🎥: The White House