Rob Shearer

Christian, husband, father of 12, elder, teacher, author, speaker - Publisher-Greenleaf Press & Director-Francis Schaeffer Study Center

[Matt Van Swol @mattvanswol]

Cute theory, let's play it out.

A monkey hoards a trillion bananas. The troop, enraged, beats him to death. They gather around the pile to feast at last.

But... oh wait, there is no pile.

It turns out the "bananas" were shares in a banana-launching company the dead monkey founded.

The shares were worth a trillion because he was alive to run it.

Now he is dead and the stock is worth $0.

The retarded monkeys have clubbed their way into a recession.

But it gets worse.

Half the "bananas" were tied up in a rocket that supplies bananas to monkeys on the far mountain who had no bananas at all.

Another chunk was tied up in a little satellite dish that beamed banana coordinates to the troop after a flood took out their trees.

So now they realized they beat to death the only monkey who knew how the dish worked.

So the monkeys sit there.

No bananas.
No rockets.
No coordinates to get more banananas.

Just a dead body and a powerful sense of fairness as they all now became infinitely poorer.

OH

And somewhere a smaller monkey watches the whole thing and quietly decides he will never build anything in front of these animals again.

[Rod Dreher @roddreher]

Proposal: resurrect USAID, and dedicate all its funding to sending Europeans on field trips to Buc-ee's, Costco, and Bass Pro Shop.

[Bennie🕊️ @Bennieeexyz]

I still remember the only substitute teacher who managed to silence an entire classroom with one sentence.

Back in high school, our science teacher went on maternity leave for most of the year. We got a replacement teacher instead—a friendly middle-aged woman from Germany with a pretty strong accent.

Unfortunately for her, our class was a nightmare.

Every lesson sounded like a crowded train station.

One day she walked in carrying a stack of papers and tried to start class.

Teacher: "Okay, everyone, please take out your workbooks and..."

The room kept buzzing.

Students: talking

Teacher: "...and open to your homework from last week."

The chatter somehow got louder.

Teacher: "Excuse me. I'm trying to teach the class."

Nobody cared.

A few people in the back had started completely different conversations.

Teacher: "Would you please be quiet?"

That only bought her about two seconds of silence.

By now the noise was ridiculous. The people sitting next to me were talking so loudly I could barely hear the teacher from a few feet away.

Then she suddenly slammed her book onto the desk.

Teacher: "EXCUSE ME!"

For a split second everyone looked up.

Then she unleashed what sounded like the angriest speech ever delivered in human history.

Teacher: "SCHNELLENFRAUENBLAH BLAH BLAH ACHTUNG UND..."

I have no idea what she actually said.

All I know is that it came out at machine-gun speed with wild hand gestures and enough intensity to make it sound like Germany was declaring war on our classroom.

The entire room froze.

Instantly.

Thirty teenagers who hadn't listened to a single English sentence she'd spoken all week suddenly became silent monks.

Nobody moved.

Nobody whispered.

One kid slowly put down the pen he'd been throwing.

Then she smiled sweetly.

Teacher: "Thank you. Now, if you would get your workbooks out..."

And somehow the class stayed quiet for the rest of the period.

After the bell rang, I couldn't let it go.

I walked up to her desk.

Me: "Miss, can I ask what you said in German earlier?"

She started laughing.

Teacher: "Oh, that?"

Me: "Yeah. What did it mean?"

Teacher: trying not to laugh "Nothing."

Me: "Nothing?"

Teacher: "I was just reading the lesson plan."

Me: "Wait... seriously?"

Teacher: "Yes."

Me: "The lesson plan?"

Teacher: "I just read it very angrily."

Turns out she hadn't threatened anyone.

Hadn't insulted anyone.

Hadn't even told us to be quiet.

She literally just weaponized German.

And honestly?

It worked better than any detention ever could. 😂

[Secretary Doug Burgum @SecretaryBurgum]

Brought to you courtesy of the Red, White and a lot of Blue 🇺🇸🦅

[Dr. M.F. Khan @Dr_TheHistories]

This famous 1910 photograph captures nine reigning European monarchs gathered at Windsor Castle for the funeral of King Edward VII. It is historically notable as the only known photograph of nine reigning kings taken together, just a few years before their interconnected empires collapsed during World War I...

Standing (left to right): King Haakon VII of Norway, Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria, King Manuel II of Portugal, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, King George I of Greece, and King Albert I of Belgium.

Seated (left to right): King Alfonso XIII of Spain, King George V of the United Kingdom, and King Frederick VIII of Denmark.

(Colorized Photo)

© Historical Photos

#drthehistories

[Secretary Kennedy @SecKennedy]

Sheryl. Your article exemplifies the biased reporting we have come to expect from you and @nytimes. It was unfair, inimical, and inaccurate. All one needs to refute your argument is to glance at my publicly available calendar and to review my unprecedented list of accomplishments on a wide range of issues, all of which I drove. You evidently never undertook these foundational due diligences. Why let facts obscure a good story?

You fault me for missing a couple of monthly counselor meetings. However, I meet one-on-one with my counselors every day to decide policy and strategy. We schedule the monthly meetings to give the divisions a chance to keep each other informed about HHS-wide policies with which I’m already intimately familiar. Had you read my calendar, you would have seen that I have back-to-back meetings all day, every day, with both career and political staff, with my counselors and with outside stakeholders, interspersed with press conferences and other policy announcements.

I am knowledgeable and active on every issue in every division of my department, and I always make the final decisions. I meet with the principals at FDA, NIH, CDC, and my senior counselor every morning, something, I’m told, is unprecedented in HHS history. I try to get out of the office between 4:30 and 6:00 PM, so that I can spend three hours, in quiet, responding to emails. I normally work until 11 PM every night, mostly on phone calls to staff.

In order to prove your preconceived case for my disengagement, you quote anonymous employees, some of whom I fired or who quit to avoid being fired. You also deceptively quote HHS employees without identifying whether they were among those I fired, thereby depriving your readers of the opportunity to make an independent judgment about their credibility.

I came into this job to change the culture of a broken agency that has presided over the worst decline in public health in American history. Of course I fired people—lots of them! It's an easy task for even the laziest journalist, to comb that flotsam and jetsam for malevolence toward the Trump administration. And of course, this species of journalist will always be able to find disgruntled individuals among the 70,000 employees of the Department from whom to cherry pick "facts" to flesh out a preordained hit piece. All that is required for this brand of journalism is the ethical elasticity that you seem to have in spades. You had a preconceived thesis, and you set out to prove it. This is a widely accepted technique in journalism today, but I grew up in an era when it would not have been tolerated by the New York Times.

Ultimately, God puts us all on this earth to search for existential truths. I've tried to instill this mission at HHS by implementing gold standard research to end the regime of politicized science that COVID exposed to the American public. There was a time that journalists were proud to be the fearless and uncompromising champions of truth. Standards have devolved, and journalism is dead. The Times now employs propagandists. Your capitulation to partisanship further compounds your journalistic challenges; since we all are aware of your predictable bias, we at HHS are unwilling to talk to you about the topics that are important. The fact that you have minimal access to decision makers leaves you covering trivia and relying on your own capacity for invention.

Btw. When I took this job, the building was empty. About 90% of the employees were not coming to work. I changed that, but your newspaper never covers my reforms. Nor did you cover the fact that my predecessor almost never showed up for work here during his four years in office. When we came in, there were still artifacts from the first Trump administration in many of our office drawers because no one showed up for work during the Biden years. Just as Rochelle Walensky spent her entire term as CDC Director in Cambridge, Xavier Becerra reportedly spent most of his term as HHS Secretary in California. (I live in California, but I’ve only been there once in fifteen months).

His only notable accomplishments here were losing 300,000 children, referred to HHS for custody and care, to human traffickers and drug runners, encouraging transgender surgeries, and disabling the entire program-integrity apparatus, allowing hundreds of billions of dollars of theft from my agency. I have set out to find the children Becerra lost. He is now the front-runner for the governor of California. These are not invented stories; they are genuine scandals that the Times will never cover, presumably, because the malefactors are Democrats.

Finally, you criticize me for spending time with the Indian tribes in Alaska. I consider that part of my job. I run the Indian Health Services, and I’ve had unprecedented success in transforming IHS from a backwater to a top priority for this department. I’ve made more trips to Indian country and to Indian health clinics and hospitals than any HHS secretary in history, and I’ve brought Indians into high positions on the sixth floor for the first time in agency history. This is another success story that the Times will never cover.

[Howard Lutnick @howardlutnick]

I stopped by the new Reflecting Pool. It is simply glorious. There were a thousand people, everywhere, taking pictures and just enjoying its beauty. Thank you President Trump for restoring our city’s national treasure.

[Greg Price @greg_price11]

According to a new Elon University/YouGov poll, a full *55%* of Democrats said that they would rather live in a different country than the United States.

Only 10% of Republicans said the same.

[David Burge @iowahawkblog]

I wish I got royalties from this one

[Pete Hegseth @PeteHegseth]

June 6, 1944

[Kristina Wong 🇺🇸 @Kristinawong]

One of the coolest things I’ve learned at Normandy is about Lt. Col. Robert “Bull” Wolverton, commander of 3rd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, who said to his men before their jump 🪂:

Men, I am not a religious man and I don't know your feelings in this matter, but I am going to ask you to pray with me for the success of the mission before us.

And while we pray, let us get on our knees and not look down but up with faces raised to the sky so that we can see God and ask his blessing in what we are about to do.

God almighty, in a few short hours we will be in battle with the enemy.

We do not join the battle afraid.

We do not ask favors or indulgence but ask that, if You will, use us as your instrument for the right and an aid in returning peace to the world.

We do not know or seek what our fate will be.

We ask only this, that if die we must, that we die as men would die, without complaining, without pleading and safe in the feeling that we have done our best for what we believed was right.

Oh Lord, protect our loved ones and be near us in the fire ahead and with us now as we pray to you.

#LestWeForget

[Trump Lover❤🇮🇳🇺🇸 @SUBRATA30016572]

Abraham is out of surgery and all went well. God is great!!🙏❤

[🌱helga🌿🕊️🍃 @anemlon]

Vierzig Jahre lang lebte ein gesuchter Mann unauffällig in Amerika – er arbeitete, zahlte Steuern und baute sich ein Leben auf –, während das FBI nach ihm suchte. Als er sich schließlich stellte, wusste die Regierung nicht, was sie ihm vorwerfen sollte.

Georg Gaertner wurde 1920 in Schweidnitz, einer Stadt in Niederschlesien, geboren. Mit neunzehn Jahren wurde er zur Wehrmacht eingezogen. Er kämpfte in Nordafrika mit dem Afrikakorps und geriet 1943 in Tunesien in alliierte Gefangenschaft.

Die nächsten zwei Jahre verbrachte er als Kriegsgefangener in Deming, New Mexico.

Den meisten Berichten zufolge waren die Kriegsgefangenenlager in Amerika nicht brutal. Gaertner lernte Englisch. Er beobachtete seine Umgebung. Er wartete. Und als sich das Kriegsende näherte, begann er etwas zu erfahren, das ihn mehr erschreckte als die Gefangenschaft selbst.

Alle deutschen Gefangenen sollten repatriiert werden – zurück in ihre Heimatstädte geschickt. Für die meisten Männer bedeutete das die Heimkehr. Für Gaertner bedeutete es etwas anderes. Seine Heimatstadt Schweidnitz lag nun in sowjetisch besetztem Gebiet. Gemäß dem Potsdamer Abkommen war seine gesamte Region an Polen abgetreten worden. Die Sowjets hatten die Kontrolle. Deutsche wurden vertrieben. Und ehemalige Wehrmachtssoldaten, die in die sowjetisch besetzten Gebiete zurückkehrten, sahen einer ungewissen und gefährlichen Zukunft entgegen.

Gaertner hatte kein Zuhause mehr, zu dem er zurückkehren konnte.

Am 22. September 1945 – einige Wochen nach der Kapitulation Deutschlands – kroch er nachts unter zwei Stacheldrahttoren hindurch. Wochenlang hatte er den Fahrplan der Güterzüge studiert, die in der Nähe des Lagers vorbeifuhren. Er berechnete genau, wann er aufbrechen musste. Er erreichte den Zug. Er brachte ihn nach Kalifornien.

Er kehrte nie zurück.

Er nannte sich Dennis F. Whiles. Er arbeitete als Holzfäller, Tellerwäscher und Hilfsarbeiter. Er perfektionierte sein Englisch. Unter seinem falschen Namen beantragte er eine Sozialversicherungsnummer. Er zog ständig an der Westküste um und ließ sich schließlich in Norden, Kalifornien, nieder. Dort führte er ein unauffälliges, gesetzestreues Leben als stiller Mann mit einem Geheimnis.

Vierzig Jahre lang galt er dem FBI als Flüchtiger.

Vierzig Jahre lang lebte er versteckt, mitten unter uns.

1985 tat Georg Gaertner etwas Unerwartetes: Er rief den Historiker Arnold Krammer an, einen Experten für deutsche Kriegsgefangene in Amerika, und bat ihn um Hilfe, sich zu stellen. Anschließend ging er in die Today Show mit Bryant Gumbel und gab seine Identität preis.

Er war der letzte deutsche Kriegsgefangene, der sich noch in den Vereinigten Staaten aufhielt.

Die Regierung war ratlos. Staatsanwaltschaft und Einwanderungsbehörden untersuchten den Fall von allen Seiten, auf der Suche nach einer stichhaltigen Anklage.

Nichts passte.

Er war kein illegaler Einwanderer – er war als Kriegsgefangener unfreiwillig in die Vereinigten Staaten gebracht worden. Er war nicht formell vor einer Strafe geflohen – er sollte in sein Heimatland zurückgeführt werden, nicht eine Strafe verbüßen. Und er war nach Kriegsende geflohen, was ernsthafte Zweifel daran aufkommen ließ, ob er zu diesem Zeitpunkt überhaupt noch Kriegsgefangener war. Es gab kein anwendbares Gesetz, das seine Tat eindeutig regelte.

Das FBI erklärte, kein weiteres Interesse an ihm zu haben. Die Einwanderungsbehörde bestätigte, kein Interesse an einer Abschiebung zu haben.

Ihm wurde die US-Staatsbürgerschaft angeboten.

Die Bürokratie, wie sie nun mal ist, ließ sich Zeit. Erst im November 2009 – 64 Jahre nachdem er unter dem Zaun hindurchgekrochen war – wurde Georg Gaertner offiziell eingebürgert. Er war 88 Jahre alt.

Er starb am 30. Januar 2013 in Longmont, Colorado, im Alter von 92 Jahren.

Er war als Gefangener nach Amerika gekommen. Er verließ es als Bürger.

[Christina Kopp @christinamkopp]

Having lived and/or worked in DC for over a decade, I can’t believe I’d never heard of this letter from the Duke of Wellington to a bunch of bureaucrats in London during the Napoleonic wars.

If you haven’t either, please enjoy (link below if the font is too small):

[Rob Shearer @RedHatRob]

@XploraSpace I believe the video was taken from the Rocket Ranch, which is approx. 13.5 km from the launch pad.

[Rob Shearer @RedHatRob]

One of the best videos of the launch of flight 12 that I have seen. Go full screen. Turn the sound up. Hit play. Sit back and let it unfold in front of you.
Awesome.

[Xplora @XploraSpace]

🫨🔈 Ce plan fixe du décollage du Starship a des airs de film de science-fiction… Une fusée colossale qui s’élève au loin dans un silence presque irréel, puis soudain le vacarme qui déferle, accompagné d’une nuée d’oiseaux désorientés…

[Ladytron Fan Account @Lady_FanAccount]

"Hurt" is not an original by Johnny Cash. The song was written by Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) in 1994 for the album The Downward Spiral. Rick Rubin had to insist several times on Cash recording his version, at first Johnny found the idea completely insane because the original version is industrial and noisy. At 71, already very ill, almost blind and with trembling hands, Cash completely transformed the band.

The iconic video, directed by Mark Romanek, was filmed at the House of Cash (his own museum). June Carter Cash appears looking at him fondly, the video was shot in February 2003, a few months before she died (May) and Johnny himself (September).

Trent Reznor was so moved that he declared, "This song is not mine anymore." It is considered one of the best covers of all time.

[Speaker Mike Johnson @SpeakerJohnson]

Our best moment of the Indy 500 yesterday was when nearly 400,000 Americans at the world’s largest single-day sporting event went completely silent for the playing of Taps.

Our country never takes for granted the profound sacrifices that have been made in the defense of freedom. #MemorialDay

[Josh Barzon @JoshuaBarzon]

God wrote the Bible.

But He used humans to do it.

These are the human instruments He used.

No prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. - 2 Peter 1:21

[Tea with Tolkien @TeawithTolkien]

the Pope quoting The Lord of the Rings!!!!!!! I feel so alive!!!!