1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii.
Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas.
The ultimate sacrifice.
Our nation grieves.
Heroes. 🇺🇸
Allow me to introduce myself again:
- I am Zeek Arkham.
- I’m a retired NYPD lieutenant. Over twenty years, I’ve done almost everything there is to do in policing.
- I built my social media by telling the truth, being who I am, and being able to say “I was wrong” when needed.
- I don’t take money from anyone. Not “buy me a coffee,” not “my cashapp is in my bio,” not sponsored by anyone. Not judging anyone who does those things, but I love the fact that no one can direct me to post something and then say “but we’re paying you.”
- My page isn’t for the weak, titty-twisted, sensitive, or butthurt. It’s also not for racists of any color, low-IQ retards, or whiners. Seriously, I’ll hurt your feelings.
- Sometimes we’ll agree. Sometimes we won’t.
- If you choose to unfollow, just leave. Don’t announce it. I’ll just make fun of you.
If you’re cool with this, enjoy the ride.
- Zeek
21 years ago today, on June 28, 2005, four Navy SEALs were inserted under cover of darkness into the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan, a place so high and so cold the clouds drift below your feet. Their mission was to find a Taliban commander hiding in the village of Sawtalo Sar. Their names were Michael Murphy, Danny Dietz, Matthew Axelson, and Marcus Luttrell.
By morning, fate walked right up the mountain to meet them. A goat herder and a boy wandered straight into their hidden position. The team had a choice no man should ever have to make: kill unarmed civilians, or let them go and risk everything. They let them go. Within an hour, the mountain came alive with rifle fire.
What happened next is almost too brutal to put into words. Dozens of fighters swarmed the high ground above them. The four men fought their way down a near vertical slope, throwing themselves off ledges and cliffs to escape the fire, breaking bones, tearing flesh, leaving blood on the rocks, and still turning to shoot. One by one they were hit. Still they fought. They would not stop. They would not surrender.
Their radios could not reach the base down in the valley. They were screaming for help into dead air. And so Lieutenant Michael Murphy did something that should never be forgotten. He stood up. He walked out of the rocks and into open ground, into the full teeth of the enemy, with bullets cracking past him on every side, just to get a clear signal. He was shot in the back while making that call. He dropped the radio, picked it back up, finished the call, and said thank you. Then he kept fighting until he could fight no more. That single act of courage is the only reason the world ever learned their names.
Help came screaming up the valley. An MH-47 Chinook, call sign Red Wings 11, packed with eight more SEALs and eight Army Night Stalkers of the legendary 160th SOAR, refused to wait for gunship cover. Their brothers were dying and they would not sit still for it. As the bird flared over the ridge, a single rocket propelled grenade flew through the open rear ramp. The explosion tore the aircraft apart in the sky. All sixteen men aboard were killed the instant it hit the mountain.
Three on the ground. Sixteen in the air. Nineteen American sons gone in a single afternoon. It remains the worst loss of life in Naval Special Warfare history since World War II.
Michael Murphy was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Danny Dietz and Matthew Axelson received the Navy Cross. Marcus Luttrell, blown off a cliff and shredded by shrapnel, was the only one to come home. He survived because a Pashtun villager named Mohammad Gulab found him broken in a ravine and, under an ancient code of honor older than the country these men died for, stood between him and the Taliban and refused to give him up.
Twenty one years later, do not let these be just names on a screen. They had mothers. They had wives. They had children who grew up with a flag folded into a triangle instead of a father. They chose each other over their own lives on a mountain most people will never even hear of.
So today, say their names out loud. All nineteen of them 🇺🇸
In remembrance:
Lt. Michael P. Murphy
Gunner's Mate 2nd Class Danny P. Dietz
Sonar Technician 2nd Class Matthew G. Axelson
Lt. Cmdr. Erik S. Kristensen
Senior Chief Daniel R. Healy
Petty Officer 2nd Class James E. Suh
Petty Officer 2nd Class Eric S. Patton
Chief Petty Officer Jacques J. Fontan
Petty Officer 1st Class Jeffery A. Lucas
Petty Officer 2nd Class Shane E. Patton
Petty Officer 1st Class Jeffrey S. Taylor
Maj. Stephen C. Reich
Chief Warrant Officer Corey J. Goodnature
Chief Warrant Officer Chris J. Scherkenbach
Master Sgt. James W. Ponder III
Sgt. 1st Class Marcus V. Muralles
Sgt. 1st Class Michael L. Russell
Staff Sgt. Shamus O. Goare
Sgt. Kip A. Jacoby
Operation Red Wings. June 28, 2005. Never forgotten.
Finalizing budget review/vetoes and I can report:
FY 26-27 will be the fourth straight year that Florida has reduced its budget.
Rainy day fund = full (and more than triple the size from 2019).
The budget represents 44% of the size of the budget of New York (the state closes to FL in population, with NY having between 3 and 4 million fewer residents).
🚨 JUST IN: Gov. Ron DeSantis confirmed that after he finalizes the new budget, the red state of Florida will have SLASHED SPENDING for 4 YEARS STRAIGHT…
…Florida will have a budget less than HALF the size of New York, despite being similar in population
…and the state rainy day fund WILL BE 100% FULL and more than 3X THE SIZE from 7 years ago
FLORIDA CRUSHES IT AGAIN! 🇺🇸 ☀️
All with NO INCOME TAX and impending slashing of property taxes. Imagine that.
🇺🇸 Most Badass Americans You Don’t Know D-Day Edition: John J. Pinder Jr.
Technician Fifth Grade John J. Pinder Jr. landed on Omaha beach on his birthday. He didn’t make it off.
Born June 6, 1912, in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, Joe Pinder was the oldest of three children. His father worked in the steel industry.
He graduated as valedictorian of Butler High School in 1931.
Pinder spent the next several years as a right-handed pitcher in the minor leagues.
He played six seasons in the farm systems of the Cleveland Indians, New York Yankees, Washington Senators, and Brooklyn Dodgers.
In 1941 he won 17 games and was still chasing a shot at the major leagues when the war came.
He entered the Army in January 1942 after Pearl Harbor.
Assigned as a radio operator with the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, he fought in North Africa and Sicily.
In Sicily he earned a Bronze Star for staying at an observation post under fire.
On June 6, 1944, Pinder landed with the first waves on Omaha Beach on his birthday.
Communications were shattered. His job was to get a working radio ashore.
He made it off the landing craft. They were 100 yards off the beach.
Then he was hit. A round tore into his face after only a few steps off the boat.
Pinder held the torn flesh of his face together with one hand, carried the radio with the other, and delivered the radio to his unit, while wading thru waste deep water.
That should have been enough. It wasn’t.
Weakened and bleeding, he turned around and went back into the surf and fire three more times to salvage communication equipment.
He even recovered another workable radio.
On the third trip machine gun fire hit him again, this time in the legs.
Still he kept going.
Weakening but exposed on the beach, he helped get the radios working so the men around him could call for support.
While doing so, he was hit for the third time and killed.
Medal of Honor. Posthumous.
It was presented to his father on January 26, 1945.
Pinder was initially buried in Normandy.
In 1947 his family brought him home to Grandview Cemetery in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania.
He was the only professional baseball player awarded the Medal of Honor in World War II.
John Pinder is an American Badass
Thank you, John! 🫡🇺🇸
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.
I’m going to say this as calmly as possible:
Watching Caitlin Clark in the WNBA has become genuinely hard to stomach.
Not because she struggles sometimes. Not because she makes mistakes. Not because she gets criticized. That comes with being great.
It’s hard to stomach because it has become obvious that the league, the officials, the media, the players, and even her own organization have all decided that the most important thing is not letting Caitlin Clark become too big.
And that is insane.
This league was handed the most marketable, electric, revenue-generating player women’s basketball has ever seen, and instead of building around the moment, too many people seem obsessed with humbling her.
She gets fouled. Held. Hit. Cheap-shotted. Mocked. Targeted. Then when she reacts like a normal competitor, suddenly everyone wants to analyze her attitude.
No.
Her attitude is not the story.
The story is that a generational player is being treated like a problem by the very league she helped drag into mainstream relevance.
This reminds me of the worst kind of youth coach... the one who sees a special player, feels threatened by her talent, and slowly drains the joy out of her in the name of “teaching humility.”
That is what this looks like.
The freedom she played with at Iowa is disappearing. The fire is still there, but the joy looks damaged. The confidence looks weighed down. She looks like someone constantly fighting the refs, opponents, narratives, coaching decisions, jealousy, and a league culture that should be protecting its golden opportunity instead of resenting it.
And let’s be honest: Stephanie White has not helped.
Benching Caitlin Clark randomly when she is controlling the game tempo, or having your best shooter off the floor in critical game ending minutes when a victory is within reach is basketball malpractice. Limiting her rhythm, downplaying her greatness, benching momentum, and treating her like just another piece instead of the engine is absurd.
You do not take a player who changed the economics of your sport and manage her like you’re afraid her greatness might offend the room.
Nike deserves criticism too. Other players get signature shoes rolled out with urgency, while the biggest draw in women’s basketball is somehow still waiting on that signature shoe. That is not confusing. That is revealing.
Fans are not stupid.
They see the fouls.
They see the double standards.
They see the jealousy.
They see the media resentment.
They see the league benefiting from her popularity while refusing to fully embrace her.
And here is the part the WNBA better understand quickly:
People are not tuning in to watch Caitlin Clark be humbled.
They are tuning in to watch Caitlin Clark be great.
If she walked away tomorrow, the fans would follow her. The sponsors would follow her. The energy would follow her. The high salaries and the charter jets would follow her. And the league would be forced to confront the uncomfortable truth it keeps trying to avoid:
Caitlin Clark did not need the WNBA nearly as much as the WNBA needed Caitlin Clark.
At some point, her family, her agent, and her team need to ask a hard question:
How much longer do you let a league profit from her while allowing the culture around her to beat the spirit out of her?
Because from the outside looking in, this does not look like normal adversity anymore. It looks like abuse.
It looks like a league trying to break the very player who made millions of people care.
https://t.co/AAxFrO46Z4
Chris Kyle was a U.S. Navy SEAL sniper and one of the most legendary figures in modern U.S. military history
Joined the Navy in 1999, graduated BUD/S with Class 233, and became a Chief Petty Officer with SEAL Team 3. Served four tours in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom
Credited with 160 confirmed sniper kiIIs (possibly up to 255), making him the deadIiest sniper in U.S. military history. Insurgents called him “The DeviI of Ramadi” and put a bounty on his head. His fellow SEALs called him “The Legend”
Tragically m*rdered on February 2, 2013, at a Texas gun range while trying to help a fellow Veteran struggling with PTSD
He was 38.
American legend and hero 🇺🇸🙏🏼
🚨 NOW: LA mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt just dropped an absolute BANGER, drawn from the theme of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
Pratt's ads are SO GOOD 🔥🔥
No wonder Karen Bass is terrified.
He's surging.
KEEP PUSHING, @spencerpratt 👏🏻
Greg Burgess writes....
So apparently Jill and I are on a plane to China with Trump, Elon Musk, half the Cabinet, and a collection of CEOs whose combined net worth could probably refinance the moon.
Totally normal day for Gen X.
And I just can’t stop laughing at how the media spent YEARS telling us:
- China hated Elon
- Trump was “finished”
- America was collapsing
- capitalism was dead
- and everybody important was abandoning the U.S.
Meanwhile, here we are somewhere over the Pacific looking like the cast of Succession meets Top Gun: Retirement Plan Edition.
Remember when China sanctioned Marco Rubio back in 2020 and everybody acted like the geopolitical chessboard had permanently shifted?
Now suddenly everybody’s still showing up to the table because — shocking development — nations tend to like:
- money
- technology
- manufacturing
- trade
- AI
- energy
- semiconductors
- and not being economically irrelevant
Who knew.
The best part is the internet meltdown cycle never changes.
Trump:
“America needs stronger trade relationships.”
Media:
“HITLER.”
Elon:
“I make electric cars, rockets, satellites, AI, and robots.”
Internet activists:
“Yeah but we posted an angry hashtag.”
Cool.
I’m sure Beijing is trembling before your TikTok resistance movement.
And flying with this group is exactly what you think it would be.
Trump walks around the cabin narrating reality like it’s an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Geopolitical:
“Great flight. Powerful people. Very high IQ. The Chinese are saying they’ve never seen anything like it.”
Elon looks like he hasn’t slept since 2019 and is simultaneously calculating orbital trajectories and wondering if the beverage cart could be automated.
Meanwhile Jill and I are sitting there like two exhausted Gen Xers who survived dial-up internet, chain-smoking restaurants, lawn darts, and drinking from garden hoses… wondering how in the hell we became side characters in the weirdest timeline imaginable.
Honestly, at this point if Trump walked into Beijing blasting “Danger Zone” while Elon live-streamed it from orbit, I wouldn’t even blink.
Because the people who told us America was over are still tweeting from iPhones, driving Teslas, using Starlink during hurricanes, and cashing checks tied to the same capitalist machine they claim to hate.
Gen X translation:
The world’s still running.
The adults are still making deals.
And the internet is still confusing hashtags for accomplishments.
Carry on.
Xi Jinping dejó al planeta con la boca abierta. En un banquete con solo 47 invitados, el presidente chino miró a Trump y soltó sin filtro: “Trump está haciendo a América grande de nuevo.” Sí, leíste bien. El líder del Partido Comunista Chino recitó el eslogan MAGA en público. Trump convirtió a Xi al MAGA.
Xi continuó con un discurso épico: “En el 250 aniversario de la independencia de Estados Unidos, los más de 300 millones de estadounidenses están revitalizando el espíritu de patriotismo, innovación y emprendimiento, e inaugurando un nuevo capítulo en la historia de la nación.”
Y remató: “Los pueblos de China y Estados Unidos son dos grandes pueblos. La gran revitalización de la nación china y hacer a América grande de nuevo pueden ir de la mano. Podemos ayudarnos mutuamente a triunfar y llevar prosperidad a todo el mundo.”
🔥 WOW - This one may be the BEST ONE YET! A NEW Campaign Ad was just released for Spencer Pratt running for Mayor to SAVE Los Angeles!
Hopefully Los Angeles has WOKEN UP and can see that Socialist policies FAIL EVERY TIME. Don't make the same mistake NYC did with Mamdani! I don't think LA can afford ANY more mistakes!
Go @spencerpratt to SAVE LA!
This Campaign Add was created by Menace Studio, an AI Film studio.
Video posted by @charliebcurran on X.