Dunkin’ Idaho

"The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true." - J. Robert Oppenheimer

[FIFA World Cup @FIFAWorldCup]

🇺🇸 USA have qualified for the Round of 32!

#FIFAWorldCup

[Crazy Vibes @CrazyVibes_1]

When the President of France visited the United States in April 1960, he asked the FBI to help him find a man.
The man he was looking for was an American citizen. He was sixty-four years old. He had been awarded fifteen French military decorations and — six months earlier, in a ceremony in Paris — had been made a Knight of the Légion d'honneur, the highest civilian honor France can give. The medal had been pinned to his chest by the President himself, who had publicly called him un véritable héros français. A true French hero.
The FBI located the man within a few days.
He was operating an elevator at Rockefeller Center in New York City.
The elevator operator's name was Eugene Bullard. He had been born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1895, the son of a man whose own father had been a slave.

He had run away from Columbus at the age of eleven, after watching a white mob nearly lynch his father.
He spent the next several years drifting through the American South. At sixteen, he stowed away on a German freighter at Norfolk, Virginia. He landed in Aberdeen, Scotland. From there he made his way to London, where he learned to box. By 1913, at eighteen, he was prizefighting in Paris.
When Germany invaded France in August 1914, Bullard was nineteen years old. He had no legal obligation to fight. He had no French citizenship.
He went to the recruiting office on October 19, 1914, and signed up for the French Foreign Legion.
He spent the next eighteen months as an infantryman in some of the worst fighting of the war — at the Somme, at Champagne, at Verdun. He was wounded three times. The third wound, on March 5, 1916, tore open his thigh and left him with permanent damage to his leg.
He was twenty years old. The doctors told him he would not return to the infantry.
He decided he wanted to fly.

In a Paris café in the spring of 1916, while he was recovering, Bullard mentioned to three white American friends that he was thinking of joining the French air service. A Mississippian named Jeff Dickson laughed.
Gene, Dickson said, you know damn well there aren't any Negroes in aviation.
Bullard answered: Sure do. That's why I want to get into it. There has to be a first to everything, and I'm going to be the first.
Dickson bet him two thousand dollars he would not make it.
Bullard took the bet. He earned his pilot's license on May 5, 1917. He won the bet.
He reported to the front in August 1917 and flew approximately twenty combat missions over the next three months in a SPAD VII. The fuselage was painted with a bleeding heart pierced by a knife and the French phrase Tout le Sang qui Coule est Rouge — All Blood that Flows is Red.
He carried, on every combat flight, a small capuchin monkey named Jimmy in the front of his flight jacket.
The French press began calling him L'Hirondelle Noire — the Black Swallow.

When the United States entered the war in 1917, Bullard immediately applied to transfer to the U.S. Army Air Service.
His application was rejected.
The U.S. Army Air Service had a policy, in 1917, of not accepting Black pilots. The other American pilots flying for France in his unit, all of them white, were transferred to the U.S. Air Service.
He was the only one who was not.

For the next twenty years, he was one of the most familiar faces in the Montmartre nightlife of Paris between the wars. He owned a nightclub called L'Escadrille. He spoke fluent French, English, and German. Hemingway drank there. Fitzgerald drank there. Langston Hughes drank there. Josephine Baker performed there. Louis Armstrong was a personal friend.
When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Bullard was forty-four. His fluent German and his ownership of a nightclub frequented by German officers made him useful to the French Resistance. He became an intelligence agent — eavesdropping in his own bar on conversations between German officers who did not know he understood every word.
When France fell in June 1940, friends in the Resistance smuggled him across the Spanish border before the Gestapo could arrest him.
He came back to the United States for the first time in twenty-eight years.
He arrived in New York with thirty dollars in his pocket and a permanent limp.

He did not return to a hero's welcome. He returned to a country that had no idea who he was.
He worked at a perfume counter. He worked as a security guard. He worked at the Staten Island shipyards. By the late 1940s, he had taken the job that he would hold for most of the rest of his life.
He operated the elevator at Rockefeller Center.
He was wearing the elevator uniform on the day a producer from NBC came down from the studios upstairs to ask if he was the man Charles de Gaulle had been looking for.
A few weeks later, NBC sent a film crew to interview him in the lobby. The studios where NBC produced The Today Show were on the floors above. He had operated the elevator that took the network executives up to those studios every morning for nearly ten years. He had not been recognized as he did it.
He went back to operating the elevator the following Monday.

He died of stomach cancer on October 12, 1961, three days after his sixty-sixth birthday.
He was buried in the French War Veterans' section of Flushing Cemetery, in Queens, in the uniform of the French Foreign Legion. The casket was draped with the French flag.
In 1994 — thirty-three years after his death — the United States Air Force formally commissioned Eugene Jacques Bullard as a Second Lieutenant, posthumously.
It was the first commission the U.S. military had ever offered him.
He had been the first Black combat pilot in American history.
The French had been calling him a hero since 1917.
The Americans got around to it in 1994.

[Texas Tribune @TexasTribune]

Inside the child sex abuse case that resulted in Ken Paxton’s office offering a plea deal of just one day in jail https://t.co/q4T2Lyz8AL

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

BREAKING: Several Gulf country officials from nations President Trump claimed urged him not to strike Iran said they were unaware of the imminent attack plan he described, per WSJ.

Yesterday, Trump said he called off an attack on Iran after leaders of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE asked him to "hold off."

[The Bulwark @BulwarkOnline]

Q: "To what extent are American's financial situation motivating you to make a deal [with Iran]?"

Trump: "Not even a little bit…I don't think about Americans' financial situation, I don't think about anybody."

[Rachel Scott @rachelvscott]

I asked the president why focus on these projects now amid the backdrop of the war in Iran and as gas prices soar.

He said the question was “stupid” and a “disgrace to the country” saying he’s “fixing” the reflecting pool.

[OSINTdefender @sentdefender]

After attacking the Head of the Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIV, in a rambling post earlier tonight for his criticisms of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, President Trump posted this AI image to TruthSocial, portraying himself as Jesus Christ.

[Qasim Rashid, Esq. @QasimRashid]

Iran Deal By Obama:
•Strait of Hormuz open for free
•Iran limits Uranium enrichment
•Iran agrees to make no nuclear weapons
•Iran allows Int'l inspectors to ensure compliance
•Inspectors confirm Iran's full compliance

Iran Ceasefire By Trump:
•Strait of Hormuz closed, only open for $2M Per Ship
•Iran makes no guarantee of limit on uranium enrichment
•Iran makes no guarantee of no nuclear weapons
•Iran makes no guarantee to allow Int'l inspectors

MAGA: Trump Playing 5D Chess! Art Of The Deal!!

[Chris Murphy 🟧 @ChrisMurphyCT]

This has always been the next shoe to drop. The Houthis have been quiet, but now can pair Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz with Houthi harassment of Red Sea traffic. This would make a very bad situation much worse.

And all a TOTALLY FORESEEABLE result of war with Iran.

[Dunkin’ Idaho @graysonisneat]

Why can’t they just be GRATEFUL for the impending recession and rolling blackouts they’re about to experience????

[OSINTtechnical @Osinttechnical]

Hegseth: “Our ungrateful allies in Europe should be saying one thing to President Trump: thank you.”

[Kate from Kharkiv @BohuslavskaKate]

Relevant again 😁

[Stephen Miller @StephenM]

To anyone still gullible enough to fall for scummy media hoaxes: Trump said warmongering neocons love sending your kids to die for wars they would never fight themselves. Liz Cheney is Kamala’s top advisor. Liz wants to invade the whole Middle East. Kamala = WWIII. Trump = Peace.

[🏴‍☠️ @calvinfroedge]

Well, I can tell you who the ultimate loser in this Venezuela episode is

Midland, TX

[Status-6 (War & Military News) @Archer83Able]

one for the history books

[Evan Wright @evanscribe]

On March 13, 2003 the first night I interviewed the members of Bravo 2, I immediately learned that some 50% of my subjects came from alcoholic/abusive homes -- which is way higher than the norm. Children of abuse tend to be really good at handling stress and violence. We dominate fields that involve risk, and we all have self-esteem issues so we tend to make us overachieve when we do perform. (Other times we tend to unproductively create strife, because we have trouble with calm situations and ordinary work...) I'd already been doing research on the effects of growing up in trauma when I went to Iraq, and I recognized in the over-achieving, aggressive, tender-hearted Recon Marines that many were my natural brothers as abuse survivors. ..Of course, we were the people that ended up in the lead Humvee of the Invasion on behalf of the USA... When you have a dirty job to do -- especially one that no sane person would do -- adult children/survivors of alcoholics/trauma tend to be well-trained for it. It's like a superpower we have.

[matthew. @iAmTheWarax]

i am genuinely sad to read that evan wright is dead.

generation kill is hands down the best story that has been written about the gwot era marine corps and i put it in the top five stories ever written about marines, period

i hope he understood how impactful his work was.

[Dunkin’ Idaho @graysonisneat]

@PopularFront_ Kenyan government may need them back quick at this rate

[Aaron Torres @Aaron_Torres]

It's official: Schloss will leave Texas A&M for its biggest rival, one day after playing for a national title.

Don't care if I get crushed for saying it: This is an all time scumbag move coaching move.

[Front Office Sports @FOS]

The U.S. just stunned Pakistan at the Men's T20 Cricket World Cup in one of the biggest upsets in the sport's history.

Saurabh Netravalkar is one of Team USA's top players, but his full-time job: Principle Engineer at Oracle.

[Dallas Stars @DallasStars]

WE'RE HAVING FUN! 🥳

🤝 @dallasmavs