Straight Flair

Nice Matters. God. Grace. Gratitude.

[Straight Flair @straightflair]

Home is where my dog is.

[Jonathan Turley @JonathanTurley]

As Democrats demand the removal of the masks of ICE agents, a protester was shown yesterday yelling at an agent, "I've got your face. I'll kill your whole f**king family. You whole f**king family is dead. Your child, your wife, and all are dead. I have your face mother f**ker. You re dead."

[SharrellAnne @SharrellAnne2]

Last night, I made a simple request on X. I asked if anybody visiting Arlington National Cemetery for Memorial Day would stop by Alan’s grave and leave a photo for our family.

What happened next honestly caught me off guard.

By this afternoon, dozens of Americans from all walks of life had made the walk to Section 60 to visit SSG Alan W. Shaw. Veterans. Families. Complete strangers. People who had never met Alan, but chose to honor him anyway.

For one day on social media, people put aside the constant noise and negativity and came together for something bigger than themselves. My notifications filled with photos, kind messages, prayers, and stories from people honoring not just Alan, but so many of our fallen heroes.

I don’t think people fully understand what moments like this mean to Gold Star families. The fear is never just losing them. It’s losing them slowly over time as the world moves on and fewer people remember their name.

But today showed me that Alan will never be forgotten.

After years of watching social media reward some of the worst parts of humanity, today gave me a reminder that the good is still out there too.

Thank you to every single person who stopped by to visit Alan today, said his name, shared his story, or took a moment to honor the fallen.

This right here is the America Alan knew and loved enough to fight and die for.

And today, y’all showed us all that it’s still here and it’s still worth fighting for. 🇺🇸

[Mark Hemingway @Heminator]

“Nothing but respect”? Obama said Romney was a felon who gave his employees cancer and would push the elderly off of cliffs. Biden said he would put black people back in chains.

[John Ʌ Konrad V @johnkonrad]

Confession time.

I was in the handicapped gym class in early grade school.

They pulled us out of normal class thirty minutes before gym to give us one on one instruction on whatever activity the rest of the kids would be doing that day.
It was mostly an anti-bullying measure.

Teach us the activity so we didn’t completely embarrass ourselves.

It was me & two kids with Down syndrome.

It was embarrassing.

The worst part came when the regular class arrived early. They had to stand outside & wait for our instruction to end. Then we would file out & they would harass us as we walked past.

I had great strength and stamina but zero coordination.

(Years later we found out I’m in the top 0.1% for depth perception. My brain was getting overwhelmed by extra information.)

So the Presidential Fitness Test was a big deal. The top kids got their picture taken and hung on the wall outside the gym.

I thought I had a real shot. It was strength and conditioning. Not hand eye coordination.

One mile run.
Pull ups, sit ups, push ups.
Flexibility.
Shuttle run.

Obama killed the test because, he said, kids were getting bullied.

Like most things Obama said, the truth ran the other direction. This was my chance to STOP getting bullied.

Problem was, I was a chubby kid but I put my heart and soul into it & got gold.

But in my mind, gold wasn’t enough. Gold got your name on a list.

Some schools added a bonus event for the elite tier:
Standing broad jump.
50 yard dash.
Rope climb.
Softball throw.

My school picked rope climb.

If you got gold and could climb all the way to the ceiling, your picture went on the wall.

You had a few weeks to do it. The real athletic kids nailed it the first day. By week two, almost nobody else had reached the top.

It was the last day. I was determined.

I could get up the knotted rope. The smooth rope was the problem. My hands kept landing in awkward spots, my grip kept slipping, my brain kept misreading the distance.

So on that last day, I closed my eyes and started climbing.

I felt like I was going to die. This was the 80s. The gym was two stories tall. There were no safety ropes, no mats worth a damn. If you slipped, you could die.

Finally my hand reached the top. I was so excited I opened my eyes. I almost fell.

I could not catch my breath for the life of me. The mix of excitement and exhaustion made yelling impossible.

So I hung there, trying to get someone’s attention. No luck. I was dying and nobody noticed me up there.

I tried the Jedi mind trick. No luck.

Then class ended & everyone started walking out.

One kid pivoted, turned back into the gym to hold the door, and looked up.

He yelled, “Look at John!”

Everyone ran back in & cheered.

Then the gym teacher told me to come down. I refused. I couldn’t talk. I was breathing too hard.

I worked one hand free and made the shutter click sound with my mouth.

They figured out I wanted my picture taken.

This was before digital. You needed a camera, a flash, and film. All of it had to be loaded.

The gym teacher had assumed nobody would make the climb that day, so she had put everything away.

She begged me to come down and get my picture taken on the ground. I refused.

She threatened to call the fire department. I refused.

Remember, I was chubby. I had extra weight to hold up there & I never fully mastered the leg lock technique.

It was one of the most painful ten minutes of my young life while she got the camera ready.

The entire class never stopped cheering.

I got my picture taken.

I still had to go to the handicapped gym class. But a few times after that, when the kids waited outside & tried to bully me, I just pointed to my smiling face on the wall.

So yes, the Presidential Fitness Test matters. More than most people realize.
In my experience, it was the opposite of bullying. It was a chance for kids willing to put in the work to be recognized for it.

Obama took that away. He called it protection. It was the opposite.

[Frontierism @frontierism]

Red button pushers are the same ones returning shopping carts btw

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am a senior coordinating producer for the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. I have worked eleven of these. I was backstage at the Washington Hilton when the shots were fired.

The first thing I heard was not the gunfire. It was glass.

A champagne flute hit the floor of the International Ballroom at approximately 9:47 PM. Then a second. Then the sound that I have since been told was a 12-gauge shotgun, which from inside the ballroom sounded like a heavy door slamming in a parking garage. Then the Secret Service moved. They moved the President, the Vice President, the First Lady through the east corridor in under ninety seconds, which is protocol, which is practiced, which is the one part of the evening that worked exactly as it was designed.

Everything else was improvised.

I know this because I ordered the wine. 94 tables. Two bottles per table. 188 bottles of a Willamette Valley pinot noir that the Association selected in February after a tasting committee spent three meetings debating between Oregon and Burgundy. Oregon won. The budget was $14,200. I signed the invoice. I can tell you the vintage. I can tell you the distributor. I can tell you the per-bottle cost because I negotiated it down from $89 to $76.

What I cannot tell you is how 147 of those bottles left the building during an active shooter evacuation.

I can tell you what I saw. A correspondent from a network I will not name picked up two bottles on her way to the east exit. Full bottles. One in each hand. She was wearing heels and she did not spill. A man in a tuxedo tucked one inside his jacket the way you'd shoplift a paperback at an airport bookstore. A woman picked up a bottle, looked at the label, put it back, and took a different one.

She checked the vintage. During an evacuation. That's editorial judgment under pressure.

The theme of the dinner was "A Free Press for a Free People." The banners were still hanging when the evacuation began. I know because I hung them. Twenty-three banners, navy blue, gold serif lettering, $11,400 for the set. They were still hanging when 2,600 guests were directed to the exits by Secret Service agents, one of whom had just taken a shotgun round in his ballistic vest and walked to the ambulance on his own feet.

The agent's vest costs approximately $800. The wine that left the building was worth $11,172 at Association cost. At restaurant markup, roughly $29,000. The guests saved more in wine than the vest that saved the agent.

That's priority.

The video went viral by 10:15 PM. Not the video of the evacuation. Not the Secret Service response. The wine. Three guests in formalwear grabbing bottles off white tablecloths while being told to move toward the exits, while a man with a shotgun stood in the same motor entrance where John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan 45 years ago.

A woman near the service entrance was crying. She said "I just wanna go home." She was not holding wine. She was holding her phone. She was the only person I saw that night who looked afraid rather than inconvenienced.

That's the distinction. The rest of the ballroom did not look afraid. They looked interrupted. An active shooter at the WHCD is a logistical problem. The dinner was disrupted. The timeline was off. The after-party at the French Ambassador's residence would need to be rescheduled. These are contingency matters. Contingency matters have solutions. Fear is for people who attend events without security details.

I have produced eleven of these dinners. I have managed seating charts that require diplomatic-grade negotiations. I have handled comedians, cabinet secretaries, network anchors, and the editor of a major newspaper who once threatened to leave because his table was behind a column.

I have never, in eleven years, seen a guest leave a $76 bottle on the table during an evacuation. I have also never seen a guest check the label first. Both observations are consistent. The bottle is worth taking. The evacuation is worth surviving. The instinct is to do both simultaneously.

188 bottles placed. 41 recovered. 147 unaccounted for. One agent shot. Zero guests injured. Zero bottles broken.

A free press for a free people. The press is free. The wine was $76 a bottle. They took it anyway.

[Autism Capital 🧩 @AutismCapital]

Nothing in this video is replicable. The white boy, the malls, whimsy, absurdist music videos, the 90s, all gone forever. This America no longer exists.

[Lisa @lisathebeauty1]

Girls who leave clothing reviews with their height, weight, size ordered or a picture of them wearing it are going to heaven.

[Sweet Momissa @sweetmomissa]

Kids these days will never know about dyeing their shoes to match their prom dress at Payless and that makes me sad.

[Straight Flair @straightflair]

I just don’t have the stamina to do handstands all day long like I did in 1979.

[Straight Flair @straightflair]

@ick_real Matilda was my grandmother’s name. People called her Tilly.

[John Ʌ Konrad V @johnkonrad]

Canada is the weird nerdy kid everyone leaves alone because they assume he’s nice. Then he gets invited to one party and everyone realizes he’s actually a d***.

[Jackie Chea ⚖️ @Fair_and_Biased]

I can’t stop laughing.

[Norm Macdonald @normmacdonald]

What terrifies me is if ISIS were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million Americans. Imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims?

[SwiftOnSecurity @SwiftOnSecurity]

Just think, we could have built two miles of high speed rail for what this is going to cost us

[Radix Verum ☦︎ @NotRadix]

Funny how everyone forgot about this

[Dr Manhattva @Manhattva]

For all the kids who see this.

This photo looks like the 80-90’s

This is what America felt like back then

Feels good.

Let’s keep it up.

[Dr Strangetweet or How I Learned to Love the RT @lone_rides]

To recap the Democrat 2026 platform so far:

- America is stolen land and we can’t have borders

- if we don’t have borders, everyone is allowed to come here

- if anyone is here, they’re allowed to access taxpayer funded services

- because we shouldn’t have borders, we shouldn’t enforce immigration laws

- America must be subjected to tariffs but cannot impose tariffs

- Muslims can take over public spaces to pray but conservative groups cannot have high school or college clubs

- you aren’t smart enough to homeschool your kids so you must send them to public schools where they won’t learn to read, do arithmetic, or think critically

- the Department of Education is sacred

- but kids will be taken out side to protest and shown sexually explicit materials

- biological males can be women

- women are a protected class and need special treatment, including trans women

- you’re not paying enough in taxes

- voting is a constitutional right and should have no requirements

- gun ownership is a constitutional right that should be abolished, but until then should be highly restrictive and limited

- women are smarter than men and that’s why so many of them get more college degrees than men

- women are incapable of obtaining a valid ID to vote

- law enforcement officers are going to be held accountable for enforcing the law

- former military officers cannot be held accountable for violating the rules

- going after political opponents, even if they broke the law, is illegal

- as soon as Democrats are in power, they will go after their political opponents

- using laws to prosecute ICE protesters is wrong

- using laws to prosecute pro-life nuns is correct

- uncovering fraud in NGOs, government agencies, welfare is wrong

- wealth tax for “rich” people

- there shouldn’t be billionaires

- owning 4 homes doesn’t mean someone is rich

- Republicans are racists

- it’s okay to say racist things to black and brown Republicans and law enforcement

- the Trump admin is covering up for pedophiles

- the Biden admin couldn’t do anything with the Epstein files

- we shouldn’t spend any money on detention centers for ICE

- we should spend more money of government programs without fixing the fraud (see above)

- Abolish ICE

- Abolish the police

- criminals aren’t bad, just misunderstood*

- *unless they’re white, Right, or Christian
- trans people are the real victims of trans killing people

- it’s okay to vote “not guilty” if the defendant agrees with your politics or has your skin color

- it’s okay to release violent criminals back on the streets if they’ve been arrested multiple times

- it’s okay to hit law enforcement with your vehicle as long as you say “I’m not mad at you” first

- understand that Jesus said “love everybody, welcome the stranger” but ignore everything else Jesus and the Bible said

And that’s just off the top of my head. I’m sure I missed a few.

[Kendric Tonn @kendrictonn]

You'll miss the American, who deals sharply but cheats no one, who is tougher than the thugs and cleverer than the tricksters, who says "I can do it" when others shrug, and who respects learning but is suspicious of those claiming to be learned, when the last one dies.

[William Wolfe 🇺🇸 @WilliamWolfe]

If you’re easily offended, you’ll be easily manipulated.

Stop letting social media control your mind, emotions, and reactions