Glenn Zaramba

Retired soldier, dog lover, motorcyclist, father. Scouts Out!

[Maria Shriver @mariashriver]

Excellent statement by Cecilia Vega. What’s happening at 60 Minutes is beyond belief and should concern everyone who wants to live in a country with a free press.

[Graham Platner for Senate @grahamformaine]

Multibillionaire Ken Griffin just gave $2,500,000 to Susan Collins’s super PAC (after she voted four times to cut his taxes).

I look forward to raising Ken Griffin’s taxes, and banning him, and all billionaires, from buying elections.

[Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom]

It wasn't a secret, even then, who he was

[Devana 🇺🇦 @DevanaUkraine]

Today is the last bell in Ukrainian schools. According to custom, girls who finish school dance a waltz behind their parents. Those whose parents were killed by Russia dance in their parents' jackets by themselves. This is just one school and how many of them...

[Joe G @EastEndJoe]

The difference between CLASS and TRASH!

[WWII Memorial Friends @WWIIMemorial]

U.S. Army Sergeant Sylvester Antolak of St. Clairsville, OH, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions in Cisterna di Littoria, Italy, on May 24, 1944.

Fellow MOH recipient Audie Murphy refers to Antolak as “Lutsky” in his book about his WWII experiences, “To Hell and Back,” published in 1949. This is how he described Antolak’s heroism:

“A sergeant in the first platoon senses the predicament. If his men are isolated, they will likely be destroyed. He makes his decision quickly. Motioning his men to follow, he rises and with a submachine gun charges head-on toward one of the enemy positions two hundred yards away.
On the flat, coverless terrain, his body is a perfect target. A blast of automatic fire knocks him down. He springs to his feet with a bleeding shoulder and continues his charge. The guns rattle. Again he goes down.

Fascinated, we watch as he gets up for the third time and dashes straight into the enemy fire. The Germans throw everything they have at him. He falls to the earth; and when he again pulls himself to his feet, we see that his right arm is shattered. But wedging his gun under his left armpit, he continues firing and staggers forward. Ten horrified Germans throw down their guns and yell “Kamerad”.

That is all I see. But later I learn that the sergeant, ignoring the pleas of his men to get under cover and wait for medical attention, charged the second enemy strongpoint. By sheer guts, he advanced sixty yards before being stopped by a final concentration of enemy fire. He reeled, then tottered forward another few yards before falling.

Inspired by his valor and half-insane with rage, his men took over, stormed the kraut emplacement, and captured it. When they returned to their leader, he was dead.

This was how Lutsky, the sergeant, helped buy the freedom that we cherish and abuse.”

#WeRememberThem

[Willie Ross Jr. Knee Deep @RossKneeDeep]

America: Trump's 7th Bankruptcy.

[Congressman Greg Casar @RepCasar]

Colbert got cancelled because CBS’ owner wanted to suck up to Trump.

Over and over, billionaires are auctioning off our 1st Amendment.

This isn’t about the rights of a TV host.

It’s about all our rights to live in a country where the president doesn’t dictate who says what.

[Voices of WW2 @VoicesofWW2]

On this day in 1944, the most miserable battle the US Army fought in Europe was finally ending.

For 124 days, Allied troops had been pinned to a beach in Italy the size of a small American city.

Anzio was supposed to be a stroke of genius. Land 36,000 men behind the German Gustav Line, race 30 miles inland, cut Highway 6, and capture Rome in a week. Churchill personally championed the plan. He called it "hurling a wildcat onto the shore" of occupied Italy.

What he got, he later admitted, was "a stranded whale."

The American commander, Major General John Lucas, hesitated on day one. Instead of racing inland against almost no opposition, he dug in to consolidate the beachhead. The Germans, under Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, rushed 8 divisions to seal it off. Within two weeks, Anzio was not a launching pad for Rome. It was a 7-mile-deep pocket where every square yard was within range of German artillery.

There was no rear area. There were no safe hospitals. There was nowhere to hide. Nurses were killed at field stations. Cooks were killed at field kitchens. Soldiers lived in flooded foxholes for months. The mud, the rats, the cold, the German shells that fell at random hour after hour, day after day, week after week. Veterans compared it to the Western Front of 1916.

By May, Anzio had cost the Allies more than 43,000 casualties. 7,000 dead. 36,000 wounded, missing, or evacuated sick.

Then on May 23, 1944, Major General Lucian Truscott, who had replaced Lucas months earlier, launched Operation Buffalo.

Six Allied divisions burst out of the beachhead at once. The 1st Armored Division lost 100 tanks on the first day. The 3rd Infantry Division took 955 casualties in a single afternoon, one of the worst single-day losses any American division would suffer in the entire European war.

On May 24, the second day, the breakout was still grinding forward. Cisterna, the German strongpoint anchoring the line, was about to fall. 24 hours later, the men of Anzio would shake hands with US II Corps troops advancing from the south, at a crossroads called Borgo Grappa. The beachhead would cease to exist.

Truscott's orders were to swing northeast and cut Route 6 at Valmontone, trapping the entire German 10th Army as it retreated from Monte Cassino. He was hours away from doing exactly that.

He never got the chance.

General Mark Clark, his superior, redirected the attack toward Rome instead. He wanted his Fifth Army, and his name, to be the one in the headlines when the Eternal City fell. On June 4, US troops marched into Rome to cheering crowds and global front pages.

2 days later, the headlines vanished.

The Allies had landed in Normandy.

The German 10th Army, which Truscott had been an afternoon away from destroying, escaped north intact and fought the Allies in Italy for another 11 months. Tens of thousands more men, on both sides, died in the mountains of northern Italy in a campaign whose outcome had already been decided in France.

Mark Clark got his parade.

The men of Anzio got nothing.

[ziks @zicobarre]

He told the police to come back with a judicial warrant before stepping into his home. Knowing your rights can make all the difference.

[🪴Laurie @Laurieluvsmolly]

😡 Remember this?

MAGAs, who claim they’re patriots, threw the American flag to the ground, and replaced it with a Trump flag.

Now they want your tax dollars.

Angry yet?

Call your representatives, STOP THE FUND!

[Natural Resources Democrats @NRDems]

Yesterday, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum swore under oath that Trump's Arch was "not even a proposal," claiming it was just a "discussion."

Today, @RepHuffman was standing in front of the industrial drilling rig starting work on it.

[Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock @SenatorWarnock]

John Lewis was my parishioner.

He had no reason to think that he would win when he was crossing the Edmund Pettus bridge.

But he just kept walking.

We must keep walking.

[Antoninaodesa NAFO @antoninaodesssa]

#NAFO While the world talks about politics and “peace,” we keep driving through craters, explosions, and sleepless nights.
Yesterday I went to the post office... There had been a strike nearby, and I was driving along a road damaged by a drone attack. It’s a terrible feeling💔.
Today I went to the production site in the Odesa region, the village was also hit during the night attack. As soon as I turned into the village, I saw a huge crater. It honestly looked big enough to build a private house inside it. Thankfully, the production site was not damaged.
And also I got a call from the 80th Brigade 💙💛 . Remember the “bird department,” as we call them — the
dr🫶ne operators. Those who have been with us for a long time probably remember that we bought them huge wheels for an evacuation vehicle, rims, Mavics, and many other things.
Now they need our help again 🙏. They will record a video.
So friends, #OdesaSisters really needs your support right now. Let’s close the fundraiser for the 23rd Brigade💙💛. Even though I wanted to take a pause because I have a lot to do for my own work, I simply cannot refuse the 80th Brigade 💙💛.

✅ 1297 to go.
If you can support 🙏
🅿️🅿️ [email protected]
🅿️🅿️ [email protected] @tatyanaodesssa

[Miles Taylor @MilesTaylorUSA]

Donald Trump is about to turn Jan 6 criminals into MILLIONAIRES.

With your tax dollars.

The people who smeared feces on the Capitol walls…
…hunted Mike Pence through the halls of Congress…
…assaulted cops.

He’s creating a $1.7 billion apology fund for them.

Disgusting.

[US Ambulances for Ukraine NFP @AmbulancesU]

As promised the four ambulances from Sacramento are now on their way to Ukraine. While we haven't raised all of the $18000 needed to ship them yet, we decided to have a little faith and send them anyway knowing the funding will come. Thanks to everyone that has donated already.

[Fun Tom 🇨🇦 💂 @funtomvids]

🟥 When President Xi of China said today that the international situation is turbulent, and wondered out loud whether China and the US could overcome the “Thucydides Trap” and create a new paradigm to meet global challenges together, Trump nodded like a dysfunctional bobble head, clearly CLUELESS about the term being referenced. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Donald probably thought it was a Greek dessert... 🙄

The Thucydides Trap describes the DANGEROUS structural tension that occurs when a rapidly rising power (in this case China) threatens to displace an established ruling power (the USA), typically leading to heightened rivalry and risk of conflict.

It was a jab, and a warning. 🥊

Nobody respects the USA anymore.
Trump's failure and damage to America's influence, is dangerously immense.

[Crazy Vibes @CrazyVibes_1]

She was the only woman in the Senate when the most feared man in America destroyed careers with a single accusation. Male colleagues begged her to stay silent. She looked him in the eye and said, "You will not like it."
June 1, 1950. Washington, D.C.
The United States Senate was paralyzed by fear.
For four months, Senator Joseph McCarthy had terrorized the capital. He claimed to have lists of communists working in the State Department—numbers that shifted constantly (205, then 57, then 81), evidence that never materialized, but destruction that was absolutely real.
Teachers lost their jobs. Writers were blacklisted. Civil servants saw their careers destroyed. Loyalty oaths were demanded. Mere accusation was enough to ruin a life. Guilt required no proof.
And the Senate—the most powerful deliberative body in the world, filled with men who had fought in wars and built political machines—sat silent.
Every senator hoped someone else would stand up to McCarthy. Every senator was too afraid to be that someone.
Except one.
Margaret Chase Smith was a freshman Republican senator from Maine. She was 52 years old and the only woman in the chamber—not just the only woman that session, but the only woman. Period.
She had no seniority. No powerful committee assignments. No political machine protecting her. She had inherited her husband's House seat when he died in 1940, then won election to the Senate in 1948—an achievement that was grudgingly acknowledged but never taken seriously by her male colleagues.
She was dismissed as a novelty. A token. Someone who would stay quiet and vote the party line.
They didn't know Margaret Chase Smith.
At first, she had given McCarthy the benefit of the doubt. He was a fellow Republican making serious allegations. Surely he had evidence. Surely this was legitimate oversight, not witch-hunting.
She asked him privately to show her his proof.
He showed her nothing. He had nothing.
Margaret realized then that McCarthy wasn't investigating communism—he was weaponizing fear. And she watched, day after day, as her colleagues did absolutely nothing.
She later described it as "mental paralysis and muteness"—grown men rendered speechless by terror of being McCarthy's next target.
Margaret decided she would rather lose her Senate seat than lose her integrity.
She worked secretly with her aide, William Lewis, drafting what she called a "Declaration of Conscience." The speech was calm, measured, and devastating. It didn't name McCarthy, but it didn't need to. It exposed exactly what he was doing—and what the Senate's silence was enabling.
She wrote: "I speak as a Republican. I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States Senator. I speak as an American. The American people are sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds lest they be politically smeared."
She approached six moderate Republican colleagues—men she thought might have the courage to co-sign. They read it. They agreed with every word. They were terrified to attach their names.
Four eventually signed. Two others pledged support but begged her not to include them publicly.
Many more told her privately: "Margaret, you're right, but I can't afford to make McCarthy an enemy."
The morning of June 1, 1950, Margaret walked through the marble hallway of the Capitol building, speech folded in her hand. She passed Joseph McCarthy.
He noticed the papers. He noticed how serious she looked.
"Margaret," he said, half-amused, "you look very serious. Are you going to make a speech?"
Margaret Chase Smith looked the most feared man in America directly in the eye.
"Yes," she said. "And you will not like it."
Then she walked onto the Senate floor.
At 3:00 p.m., she began speaking.
"I would like to speak briefly and simply about a serious national condition. It is a national feeling of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide and the end of everything we Americans hold dear."
For fifteen minutes, she spoke without raising her voice. She defended freedom of speech, the right to dissent, the right to hold unpopular beliefs without being destroyed. She called out the smear tactics, the guilt by association, the "Four Horsemen of Calumny"—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.
She never said McCarthy's name. Everyone knew exactly who she meant.
McCarthy sat through the first few minutes, his face reddening. Then he stood up and walked out of the chamber.
When Margaret finished, the Senate chamber was silent.
Then the letters started arriving. Thousands of them. From ordinary Americans who were terrified to speak publicly but grateful that someone finally had.
President Harry Truman called it one of the finest moments of political courage he had ever witnessed.
But McCarthy's revenge was immediate and brutal.
He stripped Margaret of her committee assignment on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations—the committee he chaired. He publicly mocked her. He encouraged a primary challenger to run against her in 1954, funneling money and support to try to unseat her.
She won anyway. By a landslide.
And McCarthy's power began to crack.
The "Declaration of Conscience" didn't end McCarthyism immediately. It took four more years. But it was the first crack in the dam. It gave others permission to speak. It showed that McCarthy could be challenged and the challenger could survive.
In 1954, during the Army-McCarthy hearings, Army counsel Joseph Welch delivered the famous line: "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
That moment is remembered as McCarthy's downfall. But Margaret Chase Smith had said it first—four years earlier, when it was far more dangerous.
On December 2, 1954, the Senate formally censured Joseph McCarthy. His reign of terror was over.
Margaret Chase Smith served in the Senate until 1973—24 years total, becoming one of the most senior Republicans in the chamber. In 1964, she became the first woman ever formally nominated for president by a major party, receiving 25% of the vote in the Illinois Republican primary.
When reporters asked what she wanted to be remembered for, she didn't mention her legislative achievements or her presidential run or her years of service.
She said simply: standing up on June 1, 1950, when no one else would.
Margaret Chase Smith died in 1995 at age 97. In her obituaries, the "Declaration of Conscience" was the first thing mentioned.
Because in a city full of powerful men too terrified to speak, one woman looked a bully in the eye and said what everyone else was thinking.
She didn't have seniority. She didn't have protection. She didn't have a political machine.
She had something rarer: the refusal to let fear have the final word.
McCarthy destroyed careers with accusations. He controlled the Senate through terror. Male colleagues who had fought in wars were too afraid to challenge him.
Margaret Chase Smith was the only woman in the room. And she was the only one brave enough to stand up.
Fifteen minutes. One speech. No raised voice.
Just truth.

[Human☮🇺🇸🇺🇦🇺🇸🌊 @4HumanUnity]

They told you the real threat was the guy sweating on your roof in July, or the woman wiping your grandma’s chin for 10 bucks an hour. And you bought it.

You waved the flag chanted “USA!” , while they took your healthcare, kid’s lunch destroyed your farms to give billions to themselves.

You got conned.

They dangled fear like a shiny object, “the border, the migrants, the brown folks taking jobs you never wanted”, while behind your back, they picked your pocket and left your kid holding the bill for generations to come.

You lose your Medicaid. Your VA clinics and hospitals shut down. Your grandma gets pushed to the sidewalk with an oxygen tank. But hey, no migrants working jobs you wouldn't do, huh? What a deal.

It's a conman's trick, you know, and you're the mark.

You traded your & and your kid's future for a wall that didn’t get built and a promise that only delivered to billionaires while bankrupting our nation.

This ain’t “America First.” It never was. It’s fear first, cruelty second, and you dead last. Now they're taking your rights. This November election is it. Let's hope you wake up before it's too late.

[Tara Setmayer 🌻 🇺🇸 @TaraSetmayer]

Trump is robbing American taxpayers blind. And Republicans are letting him.