Ralph

buckeye, scout, climber, hiker, diver, swimmer, rower. OBX. retweet ≠ endorsement

[Allan Huffman @RaleighWx]

There is a level 2 risk of severe storms tomorrow afternoon. Some scattered strong to severe storms are possible in the late afternoon/evening.

[Old Paths Homestead @smithhmesteadms]

You always see the wins on social media. Heres the other side.

20 inches of rain for me yesterday. 60+ mph wind gusts.

A tornado close enough that I could see.

Roads flooded over and washed out. Major highway shut down from flooding.

Ive lost my entire crop. Everything is gone. No income from spring planting. Thousands of dollars in grow beds destroyed.

Greenhouse destroyed.

It'll take me 2-3 years to get back what I loss.

Sometimes homesteading is unforgiving.

[Freddy🇩🇪 @FreddyLA7]

Nighttime border crossing into Canada 🇨🇦

Goodbye USA for now. It’s been a blast.
See you in a few days.

[𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐮𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐞 🇺🇸 @creation247]

For years we were told America was declining.

That Europe had figured it out. That patriotism was cringe. That national identity was dangerous. That the future belonged to bureaucrats, technocrats, and people who thought flying a USA flag was somehow controversial.

Then the World Cup shows up.

Millions of people from around the world land in the United States and immediately start posting about the size of everything. The roads. The homes. The trucks. The gas stations. The food. The friendliness. The optimism.

And most importantly: freedom

That spirit is contagious.

And the timing couldn't be better.

All of this is happening as America approaches its 250th birthday. A quarter of a millennium after a handful of rebels looked at the most powerful empire on earth and said, "Nope. We'll do it ourselves."

The entire world is getting a front-row seat to the American experiment.

And from where I'm sitting, it looks good.

Happy 250th, America 🇺🇸

[John Ʌ Konrad V @johnkonrad]

When I was a kid, the Bronx was burning. My dad was a fireman who happened to be an Ivy League graduate.

He told me it wasn’t the crackheads torching the city, whatever the news said. It was fraud.

Let me explain how it worked…. John Doe buys a rundown apartment building for $100k. He pockets the redevelopment tax break, then sells it to Joe Doe for $250k. Joe pockets the tax break, then sells it to Jerry Doe for $500k. Rinse and repeat until the building is worth $5 million.

The tax breaks are real. The money is not.

Because the buyers are all family, the cash flows out of Swiss bank account 27852 and right back into 27852 after every sale. There’s a transaction cost, sure, but the tax breaks more than cover it.

Then comes the payoff: they insure the building for $5 million and burn it down.

The name for this was “Jewish Lightning.” The phrase stuck around not because the landlords were all Jewish, but because the stereotype hit a nerve in a city run by Jewish mayors from 1974 to 1989, the peak of the burning. Fair or not, the term stuck.

So why was none of this investigated? NGO funding, of course.

The NYPD union was powerful, and NYC detectives had sweeping investigative authority over almost everything. Except arson. Arson belonged to FDNY detectives. NGOs, routing money through union donations, stoked the rivalry between cops and firemen.

Long story short, arson investigators got no funding and zero cooperation from the NYPD.

No money for investigations means no arrests.

Eventually the Bronx ran out of buildings to burn, and Giuliani drove the final nail into arson fraud’s coffin.

But the lesson survived, and it’s the foundation of today’s fraud. The lesson was this: the actual value of the asset doesn’t matter.

👉What matters is the movement of money.

Destruction is still very profitable. When the Baltimore bridge collapsed, the cleanup and rebuild were estimated at $1.7 billion, with the bridge reopening in 2028. The cost has since ballooned to $5.2 billion, and the wreckage still isn’t fully cleared.

Money pours into demolition,, engineering, environmental review, project management, waste removal.

But if the work doesn’t actually get done, the real expenses stay low. The money moves; the bridge doesn’t.

And here’s the leap: you don’t have to destroy anything at all. You just have to not build it.

Democrats allocate money to a government body, which hands it to a project manager, who hires consultants, who hire subcontractors, who hire more subcontractors, who funnel it back to Democrats, who allocate more money.

The fewer the actual costs (labor, materials, equipment) the more of the flow you can capture.

And if a taxpayer complains, you hire a PR firm and a few consultants to explain why costs keep exploding while nothing gets built. The easiest thing to blame is red tape.

So why does red tape exist?

Because destroying valuable property, while profitable, is too obviously unethical.

Burning buildings gets you arrested, eventually. Not building gets you a ribbon-cutting and a press release.

Here’s the deeper trap. Because our most valuable assets are fixed (houses, cars, index funds) we think of money as static. You have what you have. It grows over time, but it doesn’t flow.

That’s exactly where the fraud lives: in the flow.

The light bulb moment was realizing you don’t need to destroy physical property. You only need to destroy productivity.

If labor and materials are never purchased while money pours in, the fraud works.

You don’t have to build or destroy anything of value, just productivity. You just announce a project and start writing checks while throwing up enough red tape to block any real spending on labor and materials.

This is basically why Congress handed @PeteButtigieg $1.2 trillion and our roads and bridges still suck five years later. They put up signs, traffic cones, and red tape, and little else.

But there are a few residual problems. 1/2

[Ella Langley @ellalangleymsic]

So nice meeting y’all 🫶🏼 Hope you enjoyed the show!!

[Freddy🇩🇪 @FreddyLA7]

The travel group with Ella Langley, our new favorite musician🤠

[emily miller @emilymiller]

Here’s a close up of the American flag blue sealant that peeled off the bottom. This is the north side of Reflecting Pool about half way down. I dont see any other spots.

[Freddy🇩🇪 @FreddyLA7]

WE‘RE IN OKLAHOMA CITY!!!!! Thank you so much to Ella Langley and her team for the amazing hospitality.

WE FINALLY HAVE NEW SUITCASES!!!🤩

[AppPatriotgirl 🇺🇸 @goneers]

I need to correct something I posted yesterday. I said that 15 administrators in Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools were making $200k a year. I was wrong.

22 people in CMS are making over $200k a year. For perspective, Wake County schools, which is bigger than CMS only has 3 employees making that much. And that’s not all.
29 CMS employees have “company” cars that they drive home at night. Apparently the school board didn’t even know about that.

Now the superintendent has been put on leave pending an investigation.

Every single government entity in this city and county is corrupt and scamming the taxpayers. I’ve never seen this level of grift except maybe in California, yet they keep voting these clowns in.

Charlotte has the dumbest voters in the state.(

[Richard Grenell @RichardGrenell]

Dear @jenvanlaar - you need to repost all of your previous scoops and reporting on Gavin.

There’s some renewed interest in corruption and much of the brain dead California media missed your reporting.

Pretend like it’s new….

[Fm Gente🇺🇾📲 094054756 @fmgenteradio]

🇺🇾💙 A miles de kilómetros de Uruguay, pero con la Celeste en el alma

Una policía uruguaya que vive en Miami desde hace 28 años recibió un prendedor de la Selección por parte de hinchas celestes. Se lo colocó en el uniforme, lo besó con emoción y no dudó en alentar a Uruguay. 🫶

Contó que cada vez que escucha el Himno se le eriza la piel y que le dan ganas de llorar al no poder gritar los goles como quisiera. Además, agradeció a quien captó este momento que ya emociona a miles de uruguayos.

Un recuerdo de esos que demuestran que la pasión por Uruguay no conoce fronteras.

[NCDOT @NCDOT]

The Wildflower Program not only beautifies NC’s roadsides, but also provides habitats for pollinators.

This vibrant Coreopsis bed is a pollinator favorite. 🐝

Keep an eye out for more seasonal blooms on roadsides statewide.🏵️ #WildflowerWednesday

[Tim Buckley @TimBuckleyWX]

Our model continues to be aggressive an wet with the Arthur remnants Thursday night / Friday morning.
I still think it's a bit much, but the longer it stays like this the more believable it gets.
Main timing we're watching is Thursday night / Friday morning.

[State Auditor Dave Boliek @NCAuditorBoliek]

Governor Stein shows little understanding of this local issue in Jackson County. When you consider accessibility, parking, and construction challenges, the Cullowhee Recreation Center is a better early voting site than the WCU site. It’s been used longer and provides greater accessibility to all Jackson County voters, including students, faculty, and staff. Common sense and efficiency needs to drive election decisions.

[Pete Kaliner @PeteKaliner]

REMINDER:
Duke Energy "loaned" 8 million to the Democrats for their Democratic National Convention in Charlotte in 2012.
Then they forgave the loan when the DNC had no money to pay it back.

#NCsen #NCpol

[Ralph @embrey_ralph]

@BrandonDonkey2 Happiest of Birthdays!

[Tim Burchett @timburchett]

This rat snake didn’t bite me out of professional courtesy. Hey @RobertKennedyJr you got nothing on me Brother. Snakes are our friends. #SexyLegs

[Brenden Dilley @WarlordDilley]

This is Richard Webb. He's my father-in-law. He served two tours in Vietnam as a Marine Recon Sniper. He received two purple hearts for his service along with countless other medals.

This photo is seven years ago...

Today, Richard spends most days not knowing what the hell is going on because he developed type 2 diabetes from agent orange in Vietnam.

My wife has been fighting the VA for over a year to get Richard the care and benefits he needs just to survive. The process is a joke. The service is a bigger joke.

The VA case managers are absolute dog shit and treat our nation's heroes like garbage. They also act as if they're doing our vets a FAVOR for the most basic of care.

@SecVetAffairs, I've been to your headquarters building in DC, and have first hand experience dealing with the incompetent staff.

This is hands down the most embarrassing department in all of the Trump administration. If the Boss knew how horrendously our veterans are still being treated after you've had eighteen months to fix these issues, you'd be fired tomorrow.

I waited a long time to write this, but at this point I've seen enough.

[PNWGUERRILLA @pnwguerrilla]

High rock lookout got vandalized….

Damn man…..we were JUST out there too.

Why the fuck would you climb all the way up there just to destroy a watch tower being repaired?