Thomas Ferdousi

Conservative blogger, Pundit Press. New York Mets.

[Thomas Ferdousi @punditpress]

@Eric_Schmitt ...maybe you should have?

[Theo Jaffee @theojaffee]

I made an interactive map of every passenger rail line in the world.

High-speed rail, commuter rail, metro systems, trams, even Disney monorails, including in countries like Russia, China, and North Korea where Apple Maps lacks coverage.

https://t.co/grOjxawob6

[Johanna Nyman @JohannaNyman5]

European politicians: Be like Sikorski.

[Vanguard WWII @Vanguard_WW2]

🇺🇸 A German officer pressed a pistol between his eyes. Behind him stood more than 1,200 American prisoners.

If he surrendered the names the Nazis wanted, more than 200 Jewish-American soldiers could disappear.

He answered with five words.

His story was nearly forgotten. Follow us and share it so it never will be again.

Master Sergeant Roderick "Roddie" Edmonds had been captured during the Battle of the Bulge while serving with the 422nd Infantry Regiment.

By January 1945, he was the senior American NCO at Stalag IX-A. On January 26, the Germans issued an order: every Jewish-American prisoner must report separately at morning roll call.

Edmonds understood what separation could mean. So he issued his own order: "Every American would report".

The next morning, more than 1,200 men stood together outside the barracks.

The German commandant demanded that Edmonds identify the Jews. When he refused, the officer drew his pistol and pressed it against Edmonds’ forehead.

Edmonds did not move. "We are all Jews here."

He reminded the commandant that prisoners were required to give only their name, rank and serial number. If the German shot him, Edmonds warned, he would have to shoot them all, and face trial for war crimes after Germany’s defeat.

Then the commandant lowered his pistol and walked away.

Not one Jewish-American prisoner stepped forward. More than 200 men had been saved because one soldier refused to surrender them.

Edmonds survived the war but never told his family what he had done. He died in 1985.

Witnesses later revealed the truth. In 2015, Yad Vashem recognized him as Righteous Among the Nations. On March 2, 2026, his son accepted the Medal of Honor on his behalf.

His name was Master Sergeant "Roddie" Edmonds.

And when evil demanded names, he answered: "We are all Jews here".

[Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUa]

Recently, we sent two North Korean prisoners of war to the Republic of Korea… These guys are not easy to capture alive. One of them, when he realized he was going to be taken prisoner, tried to kill himself. And he was shocked that fate did not let him die.

This is how they raise people in the North. They take away their freedom. They take away their right to choose. And they drill into them that they must die, no matter what.

Do you really want to give such a force more time to learn how to wage war?

From an address to UNGA. (2/7)

[Gershon Rabinowitz @GershOnline]

Bob Murphy and Gary Cohen call Mike Piazza’s HR in the first game back at Shea Stadium after 9/11 on this day in 2001.

#LGM

[2001 Live @25YearsAgoLive]

Mike Piazza hits a two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth inning during the first professional sporting event held in New York City after 9/11, at Shea Stadium.

The New York Mets defeat the Atlanta Braves 3-2.

[New York Mets @Mets]

No, @HowieRose. Thank YOU! 🫶

[Danny Torres @DannyT21]

Earlier today in Chicago, I attended a special brunch/fundraiser that was hosted by 3x All-Star outfielder/2016 Roberto Clemente Award winner @cgrand3. The event was amazing. Every dollar raised will go directly to the @CBEA_UIC. And, he was proud to wear the “blue and orange.”

[Mets Radio 880 @metsradio880]

We love you too @HowieRose and thank you for everything from Mets Radio.

[Thomas Ferdousi @punditpress]

@WexlerRules @Mets Aha! Nice clarification

[kevin smith @kevin_smith45]

This might be the best political chart ever made…

[G @stevensongs]

Five years ago today we lost a legend.

[Barnaby Breaks History 🇺🇸 @BarnabyHistory]

🇺🇸 Look at Me, Ma

Bob Beckwith climbed a crushed fire truck just to see the president. He was 69. Retired seven years. Put his helmet back on just so he could help.

Bush was supposed to go to the command post. He came around the wreck instead. Beckwith pulled him up. When he started to climb down, Bush said, “Where are you going? Stay right here.”

Then the bullhorn:

“I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”

At one point Beckwith looked up at the sky. “Look at me, Ma. I’m with the president.”

He didn’t see any cameras. Driving home that night he kept thinking, “Who’s going to believe I was with the president?”

Neighbors were already coming out of their houses to greet him. Some carried candles. The guy across the street said, “Beck, you were on television.”

Inside, his granddaughter was on the couch: “Grandpa, you’re on TV.”

He had no idea the whole country had been watching.

He saw Bush 11 more times after that. Bush told him he was the man who made him famous. Christmas cards went both ways. He raised money for burned firefighters and told the story when people asked. He died in 2024 at 91. Bush called the house.

For a few minutes on that truck the whole country had one feeling.

[Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @DrewPavlou]

Michael Moore's post-9/11 movies are just complete and utter pseudo-intellectual slop.

Bowling for Columbine is a perfect example. Just as he instinctually tried to cast 9/11 as righteous ''blowback'' against United States foreign policy, he instinctually tried to make his viewers empathise with maniac Columbine shooters Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris.

It doesn't even make sense from any kind of ideological perspective, because it's not like Karl Marx or any other foundational figure of modern leftist thought talked about empathising with psycho school shooters or Islamic terrorists.

So Michael Moore's leftism was completely sui generis, it was just his own personal justification for hating normal people and waging spiritual terrorism on mainstream society.

His interview with Marilyn Manson in Bowling for Columbine is a case in point.

He tries to elevate Manson to the status of a noble persecuted dissident, as though he were Solzhenitsyn or something.

Marilyn Manson: ''I think it's easy to throw my face on a TV because I'm, in the end, sort of a poster boy for fear because I represent what everyone's afraid of, because I do and say what I want.''

It's just utter slop, because everybody knows Marilyn Manson's entire career was built on provocation. The Onion even wrote that famous meme about it: ''Marilyn Manson Now Going Door-To-Door Trying To Shock People.''

This is a bloke who would physically cut himself on stage in front of teenagers, night after night. There was no ideological or political motive behind such disgusting actions - he just did it for money and attention.

Basically he managed to monetise and build a career off provoking the American religious right, which somehow elevated him to the status of persecuted Eastern Bloc martyr-intellectual in Moore's book.

But there was nothing ultimately there. There was no ''there'' there. The ultimate fatuousness of Manson's non-existent intellectual and political project quickly becomes evident in Moore's farce interview.

Moore starts trying to prod Manson to talk about US foreign policy, a topic Moore evidently tried to coach him on before the interview. And what comes next is the most pathetic, infantile, I'm-twelve-and-this-is-deep political analysis in history.

Michael Moore and Manson start engaging in the most stupid whataboutism possible, arguing that the harm caused from Marilyn Manson cutting himself in front of teenagers is nothing compared to NATO bombing Serbia.

Manson: ''We forgot about Monica Lewinsky and we forgot about the president was shooting bombs overseas. Yet I'm a bad guy because I've sang some rock and roll songs. And who's a bigger influence, the president or Marilyn Manson?''

Moore: ''Do you know that the day the Columbine happened, the United States dropped more bombs on Kosovo than any other time during that war?''

Manson: ''I do know that, and I think that that's really ironic, you know, that nobody said, well, maybe the president had an influence on this violent behavior.

No, because that's not the way the media wants to take it and spin and turn it into fear, because then you're watching television, you're watching the news, you're being pumped full of fear. There's floods, there's AIDS, there's murder, cut to commercial. It's a campaign of fear and consumption.''

Literally baby's-first-thought level political analysis. The type of shit you hear when you're ripping cones with your mates at 15.

Remember the Timothee Chalamet fake woke character in the movie Lady Bird who would carry around a Howard Zinn book to parties so that girls would want to sleep with him? Michael Moore's cinematic terrorism inflicted those types of cunts on the world as a fucking spiritual plague.

Then comes the cherry on top, the pièce de résistance, Moore's attempt to get us to empathise with the psychopathic maniacs Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris.

Moore: ''If you were to talk directly to the kids at Columbine or the people in that community, what would you say to them if they were here right now?''

Manson: ''I wouldn't say a single word to them. I would listen to what they have to say. That's what no one did.''

Cut to fucking bagpipes and applause. What a fucking joke. The biggest ''fake deep'' bullshit in history. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris didn't have an ideology. They didn't have any actual genuine grievances or demands. They were just scum who murdered people because they wanted to kill as many people as possible.

Just as Michael Moore instinctually felt more sympathy for the motives of the 9/11 hijackers than he did with their victims, he instinctually felt more sympathy for Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris than the innocents they massacred.

Again, there was no real ideological basis to Michael Moore's politics. You can't go back to the writings of Karl Marx and Kautsky to work out what formed him. He was just an anti-social freak with oppositional defiance disorder, a freak who chose to dedicate decades of his life to waging spiritual terrorism on mainstream society because he hated normal people.

[Barnaby Breaks History 🇺🇸 @BarnabyHistory]

🇺🇸 Three Saints Under the South Tower

At 155 Cedar Street there was a church the size of a tavern. St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church.

Inside a 700-pound safe they kept bone fragments of three saints: Nicholas of Myra, Savvas the Sanctified, and Catherine the Great Martyr. The parish was named for St. Nicholas, patron of sailors. This was one of the first stops after Ellis Island.

The relics were attributed to a gift from Tsar Nicholas II. On feast days they took them out so the people could venerate them.

At 9:59 a.m. on September 11 the South Tower came down on the church. A landing gear was already along the side of the church. Human remains were on the roof. The sexton and an electrician had just run. No one died in the nave.

They never found the relics.

Archbishop Demetrios stood in the crater and said the saints were still there. Mixed with the dead. That the ground was consecrated twice.

Twenty-one years later a marble shrine in the manner of Hagia Sophia stands one block over in Liberty Park. A new relic of St. Nicholas is in the altar.

The Tsar is a saint now too.

[Senator John Cornyn @JohnCornyn]

Leadership

[Rodney Smith Jr @iamrodneysmith]

Jaxson’s black jacket presentation

[David Burge @iowahawkblog]

It's a melancholy day at Dave's Car ID Service, as we bid farewell to one of our most frequent and valued contributors - Andrew Wimsatt.

I won't belabor the terrible circustances of his death, which have been discussed in depth online recently. I am as angry and upset about his murder as anyone, but my car ID threads are designed as a sanctuary from the woes of the contemporary world. I would rather spare that anger for a different forum and choose here to focus on Andrew Wimsatt, the human being. He was a relentlessly cheerful and positive soul, I hope you will respect his spirit in your replies.

I think our mutual friend @AnnaZ perfectly summed up Andrew as "everybody's biggest fan." His various fandoms include countless bands, visual artists, podcasters, @wethefifth, @reason, @uaustinorg, and @TheFIREorg. And I am humbled that one of his fandoms was Dave's Car ID Service.

You may have noticed from reading the various tributes to him over the past few days his adjectives: kind, generous, warm, positive, never had an unkind word about anyone. All true. But he seldom spoke about himself, despite having a very distinguished career as a civil engineer in road materials research. He was far more interested in talking about you, with zero expectation of anything in return. He was the least transactional person in a hyper-transactional world.

If you were lucky enough to have Andrew as a fan he was generous with his time and support, and in my case, that support included loads of his old family photos with mystery cars.

I can't fully repay my debt to him for that. But I'd like to dedicate this episode of Dave's Car ID Service to him, and use those photos to illustrate the life a genuine mensch.