Mike Hudgins

[Leah Rain ✝️🇺🇸🎸🏝️ @LeahRain77]

Here we have Delta Airlines flight from Hawaii to LA booting a family off because they needed one of the seats for a passenger on standby.. because Delta overbooked the flight.
I realize this happens a lot, but what makes this incident a little more insidious is that the flight attendant booting them off the plane threatened he and his wife with arrest , have their children taken away from them and placed in foster care . Additionally,no other accommodations would be made for this family.
The airline to my knowledge has acknowledged the incident apologized, and said they would be looking into things..
WHAT ?
What the hell happened to customer service and professionalism ?

[Ethan Brooks @alt_w_v_g]

Took my wife to dinner to make up for introducing her as my first wife the other night.

Still a factually accurate statement.

But you quantify the opportunity cost, run it through a benefit-effort matrix, and the answer is clear.

"I'm sorry" plus a meal at a 200% markup had a better ROI than explaining that "first" means first.

My analyst confirmed the math. He was at the table. He is always at the table.

Halfway through she smiled at me and said "this is nice."

It was. But the staffing model had been distracting me since we sat down.

Eleven tables. Six turning twice. Four staff front of house, assume three in the kitchen. Food COGS around 28% against the menu. Average check $90. Average diner there 74 minutes.

Our waiter had touched the table fourteen times. Fourteen. I was counting. That is at least nine too many. Each touch is forty-five seconds of lost capacity across his other three tables.

My wife's friend Stephanie recommended this place. Stephanie is married to Rolex Ron. This explains a lot.

Texted my analyst.

He had left during the first course. Something had not agreed with him.

90 seconds later the model came through. Built it from the stall. He carries the laptop everywhere now. Trained him well.

Started to explain the staffing inefficiency to her.

My five-year-old explained it first.

"There's too many waiters, Dad. That man came to our table three times and we didn't need anything. He could have been helping someone else."

Correct.

"At my lemonade stand I don't walk to people who already have lemonade. That's just wasting steps."

My wife looked at the ceiling.

My analyst is going to have competition.

The staffing model is unsustainable.

I left the manager my notes instead of a tip.

He will thank me later.

[Ethan Brooks @alt_w_v_g]

My wife mentioned a nice private school over dinner this week
She said the campus was beautiful
I asked what's the tuition
She said we should look at it as an investment in him not a cost
I made a note
She said don't make a note
I said I always make notes
She said this isn't a deal
I said everything is a deal
She closed her eyes

She said we'd discuss it Saturday
I agreed

Saturday 7:02am
She came downstairs in her Saturday robe
Coffee in hand
I had my cargo shorts on

The dining room had been cleared
The projector was on
The analyst was at the head of the table
Quarter zip on, three iced coffees, a legal pad, and two laptops
He had been there since 6:44am

I texted him at 11:14pm Friday
The text said dining room 6:45am bring the model
He sent a thumbs up

My wife stopped in the doorway
She said what is this
I said you said you wanted to discuss it
She said this is not a discussion
I did not respond
She sat down anyway

The analyst stood
He said good morning ma'am
She did not respond
He sat back down
A printed deck in front of each seat
A fourth copy in case

Slide 1 Tuition Schedule
$38,500 per year
Thirteen years
$500,500 nominal
Before escalators
The school has raised tuition 4.2% per year for a decade
With escalators $648,000
My wife said okay
I said I'm not done

Slide 2 Opportunity Cost
Even before escalators
$38,500 invested annually
10% nominal return
S&P long-run average since 1928
By his eighteenth birthday $944,000
My wife said we can afford it
I said I know that's not the slide

Slide 3 Terminal Value at Age 65
$83 million
She was quiet

The analyst slid the sensitivity tables across the table
8% return $31 million
10% return $83 million
12% return $222 million
She did not look

She said this isn't about money
I said it's always about money
She said no it isn't
I said then what is it about
She did not answer

She said you can't put a dollar value on his teachers his classmates his environment
I said I can the analyst already did slide 6
He flipped to slide 6
She did not look

She said the school is the best in the city
I said best is a feeling
She said it produces the best students
I said the students were already the best before they got there

She said our son deserves it
I said our son deserves $83 million

My son walked in
He is five
Dinosaur pajamas
He looked at the projector
He looked at the open deck on the table
He looked at slide 3
He said are we modeling pre-tax or after-tax
The analyst opened a new tab
My wife looked at the ceiling

He said what's the discount rate
The analyst set down his pen
She closed her eyes

He said is this the same return assumption from the 529 conversation
The analyst stopped typing
He looked at me
I did not say anything

She stood up
Sat back down

He said dad can I help
I said yes
He pulled up a chair
The analyst handed him a printout
He started reading

My wife watched him read
She watched him for a long time

She said his name
He looked up
She said do you like school
He said the work is too easy and the kids don't ask questions

She did not respond
She looked at the ceiling
She walked out of the room

The analyst started packing up
He said should I follow up Monday sir
I said no follow up needed

He'll be fine

Sent from my iPhone

[DMac Wake @DMacWake316]

Man @theStevenRuiz hit this on the head about the Chiefs still needing WR help…

“Nobody is going to feel sorry for Patrick Mahomes…but watching him try to carry this offense the past few seasons has been tough. And it’s frankly a crime against the sport that he’s now a fixture at the bottom of league aDOT charts. Andy Reid and general manager Brett Veach should be thrown in football jail for what they’ve done to their quarterback, who finally buckled last season under all the weight put on him by suspect roster management and an offensive scheme that grows increasingly stale every season…hasn’t helped, but the lack of talent has been the main issue holding Kansas City’s offense back. 
As things stand, the Chiefs’ offensive depth chart will look awfully similar to 2025’s in 2026. Walker is a welcome addition, but the group of pass catchers is still painfully thin after the team used its first three draft picks on defense.”

https://t.co/jvgjGyrHSd

[MERICA MEMED @Mericamemed]

Already better than Nolan's odyssey 😂

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

How it is supposed to be

[Sarah Nauser @SarahNauser]

Day 15
How did you become friends with George Brett?

The timing of this question feels especially fitting since today is George’s birthday. Happy Birthday, George!

Back in 2018, I was living out a dream by working as a police officer in the Royals dugout. Before the game started, George’s son, Jackson, came down behind the dugout to say hello to my friend Sergeant Tommy Woods, who had graciously let me work alongside him that night. Tommy introduced us and mentioned that I had just been diagnosed with ALS.

Not long after, I jokingly told Jackson, “Tell your dad to come down here. I want to meet him.” Normally, I would never say something like that. But I knew how deeply ALS mattered to George. It’s even referenced on the inscription of his statue beyond the right field wall.

For more than 40 years, George has been committed to fighting ALS after losing his close friend Keith Worthington to the disease. He made Keith a promise that he would stay in the fight until there’s a cure.

A little while later, Jackson returned and said, “George is down there and wants to meet you.” Instantly, I was nervous. What do you even say to your childhood hero?

George greeted me with a hug and handed me a baseball he had signed. He asked how I was doing and made sure I had the support I needed. Before we finished talking, he asked what he could do for me. I remember laughing and saying, “Honestly, this is already pretty amazing.” But then I added, “Throwing out the first pitch with you would be awesome.”

George smiled and said, “Consider it done.”

Less than a month later, it happened.

Before we parted ways that night, George also promised me something else — that he would stand beside me throughout my battle with ALS. Over the years, he has kept that promise in every way possible.

A lot of people know George Brett as a Hall of Fame baseball player. I know him as a loyal friend, a man of his word, and someone who quietly shows up for people when they need it most. His friendship has been one of the greatest blessings of my ALS journey, and I will never stop being grateful for the kindness he’s shown me and so many others fighting this disease.
#ALS #ALSAwareness #SarahsSoldiers #FightLikeAGirl

[Andrew Follett @AndrewCFollett]

Defense is 8% of US government spending.

Welfare is 47%!

[Bink Saunders @khalenNOTkaylen]

Man I usually don’t do this but @united yall really got me beyond messed up. Your employees stole 3 pairs of shoes worth $1000+ each and i file the claim and yall asking for receipts???? But not acknowledging the theft of damn near 4K out my bag??? Unacceptable bro.

[Defiant L’s @DefiantLs]

"Why am I in cuffs because of something he shared, then I shared?"

"Because someone has been caused anxiety based upon your social media post. That's why you've been arrested."

This right here should scare the living sh*t out of you. These two sentences alone. We have a lot of work to do.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

The American deer camp was, between approximately 1880 and 1990, the autumn ritual of every rural family in the upper Midwest, the Northeast, and the Appalachians.

A cabin in the woods. Three or four men, three generations sometimes, who got there on the Friday before opening day, lit the wood stove, drank coffee that had been on the burner since 4am, played cards, told the same stories they had told the year before, and went out at first light on Saturday with rifles their grandfathers had owned.

A buck taken cleanly with one shot. Field-dressed in the snow. Hung in the woodshed. Butchered the next weekend in the garage with the family. Forty pounds of venison in the chest freezer. Steaks for the winter. Sausage made by the grandfather with a recipe nobody had written down. A roast for Thanksgiving. The hide tanned and turned into mittens for the youngest grandson.

The deer was free. The freezer was full. The boys learned to shoot, to clean a rifle, to gut an animal, to butcher it, to thank the woods for the deer, to be quiet for hours at dawn in the cold and notice things.

Roughly 14 million Americans hunted in 1980. By 2020 that number was 11.5 million, and the average hunter age had risen from 35 to 51. The next generation is not coming up.

Suburbanization removed the woods from the back door. Liability fears closed private lands. Public hunting access shrank. Time pressure on working families killed the long weekend at camp. The cultural drift made hunting socially suspect, then unfashionable, then, in some quarters, taboo.

The number of American teenagers who have ever fired a rifle, gutted an animal, or watched their grandfather butcher a deer in the garage on a November Sunday afternoon is, in 2026, statistically vanishing.

The freezer that used to be full of free, lean, grass-fed wild protein is full of ground beef from a Smithfield CAFO in Iowa.

The skill is one generation deep. If the grandfather did not pass it to the father, and the father did not pass it to the son, the chain is broken. YouTube is, at the moment, where the few remaining young hunters are getting most of their training.

A small American tradition that fed families for a century, taught a sequence of practical and moral lessons no textbook can replace, and connected three generations to the land their ancestors lived on, is closing down quietly, camp by camp, season by season.

The cabin is still there. The stove still works. The buck is still in the woods.

The grandfather is in the cemetery on the hill above the cabin. He cannot take the boy himself.

Somebody else has to.

[The Civil Rights Lawyer @johnbryanesq]

7 months ago I showed you the video of Kentucky State Trooper Seth Owens arresting Devin Langsdorf during a traffic stop, as Devin’s 3 year old daughter was in the backseat...

[Robert Sterling @RobertMSterling]

I feel terrible for anyone who loses their job. I’m not trying to kick anyone while they’re down.

But these USAID and NGO workers are the least sympathetic unemployed people I’ve ever seen.

EVERY person in this story was making well into six figures:

USAID employee: $175,000
USAID contractor: $127,000
USAID-funded NGO employee: $272,000(!)
USAID advisor at the DOD: $195,000
USAID contractor: $200,000

There were 16,000 employees at USAID, and the New York Times was only able to interview one making less than $175k. Worldwide, there were an estimated 280,000 contractors.

ALL of these people were getting paid from our tax dollars. Many were making 2-4x the wage of the average American taxpayer ($65-70k per year).

Yes, USAID did some good work, especially during the Cold War. And, yes, many of the agency’s employees were hard-working Americans, with good intentions and love for their country. Again, we should take no joy in seeing thousands of people lose their livelihoods—this is not a case of justifiable schadenfreude.

But it’s not sustainable for an agency with so little accountability to manage tens of billions of dollars per year, enriching tens of thousands of NGO-industrial-complex managers living in the DC/Maryland/Virginia metroplex in the process. Even the NYT acknowledges that “there was bloat and waste in the agency and a need for reform. Much of the $35 billion [USAID] managed in 2024 went to Washington-based contractors, not directly to people in need overseas. The success of many projects was hard to measure.”

Every last dollar that went to these highly paid employees was funded by an American taxpayer, the vast majority of whom make far less money than the people laid off from USAID. We have the right to demand accountability, and we have the right to expect that these funds will be spent in our interest, not theirs.

USAID and its thousands of employees, contractors, and NGO beneficiaries ignored that principle, and they eventually paid the price with their careers. I wish them all nothing but the best, but I won’t mourn that they will no longer be making $200k per year on the backs of American workers.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

1890: rinderpest arrives in East Africa. The Serengeti wildebeest collapse from over a million to 200,000.

Ecologists expect the grassland to flourish. Fewer mouths, more grass. Obvious.

The grassland goes backwards.

1960s: vaccination clears rinderpest from cattle. The wild herds recover. Ecologists brace for overgrazing.

The wildebeest rebuild to 1.5 million. Largest herbivore population on earth.

The grassland gets greener.

More soil carbon. Lower fire frequency. More tree cover than in 1900. The landscape gets more complex, not less.

The papers have been sitting in prestigious journals for decades.

The campaigners continue to argue that grazers destroy ecosystems.

The largest natural experiment on earth says the opposite and it cannot be cited, because it does not say the right thing.

It just sits there. Getting greener.

[🐺 @LeighWolf]

We spend 66% of our money on social welfare and education.

8% goes to the military.

9% goes to paying interest on the debt incurred by funding the 66%.

[᛭ Ian ᛭ @KnightspurHouse]

OTD,1775. Samuel Whittemore,aged 80 becomes a legend.

Whittemore working in his fields spotted an approaching British relief brigade, sent to assist the retreat from Concord. Whittemore loaded his musket and ambushed the British grenadiers of the 47th Regiment of Foot from behind a nearby stone wall, killing one soldier. He then drew his dueling pistols, killed a second grenadier and mortally wounded a third. By the time Whittemore had fired his third shot, a British detachment had reached his position; Whittemore drew his sword and attacked.He was subsequently shot in the face, bayoneted numerous times, and left for dead in a pool of blood. He was found by colonial forces, trying to load his musket to resume the fight. He was taken to Dr. Cotton Tufts of Medford, who perceived no hope for his survival. However, Whittemore recovered and lived another 18 years until dying of natural causes at the age of 98. -wiki.

[el gato malo @boriquagato]

widespread "high income UBI" is complete dependence and complete dependence is abject slavery.

once most humans are completely reliant upon the state to house and feed them, to entertain them and educate their children, there can be no rights, only servitude.

you become children who can never move out of the house.

what could such a state not demand from you?

how could liberty even exist in such a system of subjugation?

and no, "democracy" does not fix this, it makes it worse, trading the dictatorship of the tyrant, which at least retains some accountability and perhaps sanity, for that most capricious and utterly deranged madness of crowds and the tyranny of the majority and of the demagogues who inflame it.

this basic truth cannot be changed or avoided:

any state powerful enough to give you everything you want is powerful enough to take everything you have and anyone who would rely upon "government" for such has forgotten what government actually is.

[🎹 Ames™ 🎹 @Real_Ames]

I watched the body cam video of this whole incident.

Dalontay Edmond-Geiger Sr. kidnapped a 60 yr old woman, beat her, stabbed her, zip tied her hands, tortured her, dragged her room to room & up/down stairs by her broken neck & finally broke her back & spine before stuffing her inside a 3’x3’plastic container with a sealed lid. She was in a coma but is now awake & paralyzed. Edmond-Geiger was sentenced to (only) 16-20 yrs.

Black Fatigue.

He deserved much more than that !

[Cowboy Gospeler @CowboyGospeler]

After folks laughed at AOC for not knowing vaquero history, I knew Wikipedia would alter their meaning to fit hers, so I took a screenshot, and they finally did rewrite it. Wiki removed vaquero from 'The origins of the vaquero tradition come from Spain...'

[Amy Mek @AmyMek]

🚨Pay Attention, Missouri!

You may have seen this smiling face all over Catholic Charities’ social media this fall.

Meet Dr. Ismat Rashid Kaakar, Afghan Refugee Program Coordinator at Catholic Charities of Central & Northern Missouri.

He arrived in America from Afghanistan as a Fulbright Scholar in 2019. Two months after earning his Master’s in Health Administration from Mizzou, he was hired by Catholic Charities… to resettle more Afghan refugees.

In his own words (KOMU 8 interview):

“This is an opportunity for me, because before going back to my career, this is the time that I could use to help refugees from my home country.”

Exactly.

Another Afghan Muslim, brought in as a “refugee”/scholar, now sits in a key position inside an officially Catholic organization, using its name, its crucifix, and your tax dollars to import wave after wave of his own people.

This is the same nationwide:

Catholic Charities (and Lutheran Social Services) hire the very Muslim refugees they resettle because “they speak the language.” Those hires rise, take over the programs, and turn “faith-based” charities into Muslim import machines, all while keeping the Catholic branding for cover.

Missouri is now on the list right next to Utah, North Carolina, Texas, Indiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and D.C.

This is conquest with a smile and a Catholic logo.

Christian organizations are being hollowed out from the inside.

American taxpayers are funding their own replacement.
Read the full exposé:

See the full report: https://t.co/PFNww76jab