In a sane society we'd say, "Hey, remember when they told us they needed to nationalize health care to make it more affordable & accessible, & instead it became less affordable & less accessible ... So, seeing that it failed, let's undo it."
Instead it's, "hopefully Congress let's us pay a few hundred less in taxes to make up for how they destroyed health care in every state."
I’m watching “The Other Bennet Sister” and it’s fine. But I’m really frustrated that TV continues to dilute the moral clarity of the book version of characters. (That said, this is a terrific scene between Lizzie and Mary. If it wasn’t antithetical to the book I’d love it.)
Much has been said about Todd Heldt, the Chicago librarian who stole hundreds of dollars from a 12-year-old girl's medical charity
His lawyer told him he needed to start writing on Medium to try to out-rank the website exposing his fraud and cruelty
Don't go into his comments section and deface his work and don't contact the people in his community to let them know that he's a thief and a fraud
https://t.co/ALZDa8yILz
We are saddened to share the identities of the three firefighters we lost responding to the Knowles Fire in western Colorado on Saturday. The firefighters were assigned to the Rifle Helitack crew and were engaged in initial attack operations on the Knowles Fire when the incident occurred.
The deceased firefighters have been identified as:
💜Emily Barker, 38, of Clinton Township, Michigan, assigned to the U.S. Forest Service Rifle Helitack.
💜Nick Hutcherson, 27 of Glendale, Arizona, assigned to the U.S. Forest Service Kaibab National Forest.
💜Sydney Watson, 27, of Warrior, Alabama, assigned to the U.S. Wildland Fire Service Rifle Helitack.
Two additional firefighters were injured during the incident and are receiving medical care.
“We mourn the loss of three firefighters who answered the call to protect others and made the ultimate sacrifice in service to their fellow citizens,” said U.S. Wildland Fire Service Chief Brian Fennessy. “Our thoughts are with their families, loved ones, friends and crewmates as they face an unimaginable loss. These firefighters embodied the courage, professionalism and selflessness that define the wildland fire service. Please join me and my family in keeping our thoughts and prayers with the families of the fallen and our injured firefighters and their families.”
The full press release can be found here: https://t.co/2LLq8vJXOP
🚨 DC Mayor just said that the fireworks show on the Mall is not scheduled to begin until 11 PM on July 4th, later than previously publicized.
That late hour is on top of serious new restrictions: no coolers, bags, chairs, etc. And viewers have to go through metal detectors.
Thomas Paine publishes an open letter in the Pennsylvania Evening Post, under the name “Republicus,” which advocates for the name “United States of America” for the new nation now emerging.
This is the first time such a term has been used.
The absurdity of members of congress lobbying to pack the supreme court so it decides in their favor in cases like this instead of rewriting the laws in question - the literal reason they exist! - cannot be overstated.
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.
In 2025 I drove across the country. I spent a lot of time in Montana and other northern states. Often I’d go to libraries to work while I traveled. MANY of the (beautiful) libraries I visited were funded, at least in part, by Carnegie.
Andrew Carnegie donated $2B (in current dollars) to build 2,500 libraries. Most of these beautiful buildings still stand today, over a century later, anchoring downtowns across America.
MacKenzie Scott, on the other hand, incinerated $26B on woke NGOs with nothing to show for it. Nothing she has funded will endure a year from now, let alone 100.
It would be tragic, if it weren’t so disgustingly wasteful.
This is my struggle with the government control.
We have a minor example of it here at our Catholic school.
The water that we receive and pay for is filtered by the city. The city we operate out of requires us to rent a meter that measures how much water we consume so that they know how to bill us. They recently increase the cost of renting the meter we are required to have by almost 300%.
Next, the State of Michigan declared that all water fountains in schools have to have filtrated units.
Ugh.
It was a shockingly expensive thing to do but step-by-step we have replaced and are replacing every water fountain with these large filtered units.
To be clear, the water was already filtered at the city level, but rules are rules so we have to put in these.
On top of that, the government wants verification so we have to pay inspection fees every year for the people who come in and test our water to be sure that the water the city purified and that we purify afterward is pure enough.
These are not small fees.
I asked if they could look at the test results of our water before we pay all this money to put in filtered water fountains and no, we can’t.
It doesn’t matter that our water is already purified: the state made a rule
They forces a nonprofit to spend an obscene amount of money and then added to it an expensive fee of people coming in and conducting tests.
And don’t even get me started on the scam of all of the rules and inspections around elevators.
We are a small nonprofit school & Parish that commits 10% of our collection to taking care of the poor and our area. For tuition, we eat 1/3 of the cost to educate so has to make it easier for people to afford the school.
Every year, it gets harder because the State of Michigan adds more rules and more layers of bureaucracy and more fees on us.
Every. Year.
More rules, more inspections.
People who have never run a business or a nonprofit their entire life make these rules in their little bubbles with absolutely no thought of the damage it does.
One day it’s gonna put us under and then they’re gonna have to feed the people we feed and they’re going to do it the same way they did water fountains and elevators:
Maximum cost.
Minimum good.
Results defined by unintended consequences.
At the start of the World Cup, I began trying to see if each day I could have a meal in honor of one of the countries playing that day. As Europeans like @FreddyLA7 discovered Waffle House, I wanted to discover my own country in a new way. At 17 meals down and 17 to go, a recap…
The data is even more revealing when you remove suicides.
In 2024, America had 15,364 gun homicides.
The same year, Europe had around 62,700 deaths from summer heat.
America had ~2000.
That's a policy choice.
This is about one specific case, but doesn’t change the reality that Europe preventing access to A/C is killing people.
There are 60-80K excess deaths from heat every summer in Europe.
That’s 4X as many excess heat deaths in Europe as annual gun homicides in America.
In Argentina, rent freezes destroyed the housing market.
When Milei got rid of the price controls, supply rose by 300%, and rent prices decreased compared to inflation.
But communists are nothing if not absolute idiots who refuse to learn from history.