Gabe Thornton

[Bishop Robert Barron @BishopBarron]

Gosh, I’d love to attend this debate. But I’m pretty sure I have a MAGA rally to attend that night…

If you have any doubt that the German Catholic academy has fallen into clownish irrelevance, look no further than this inane and ginned-up “controversy.”

Last summer, the vaunted “protest” consisted of 25 desultory septuaginarians holding signs and a statement from the theological faculty of the University of Munster, which was at an undergraduate level of sophistication and which betrayed not the slightest indication of any familiarity with my work.

And yes, that sound you hear in the background is Josef Pieper turning in his grave.

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

Oct 22, 1836: Sam Houston was sworn in as the first president of the Republic of Texas.

Houston had already lived several lives. He fought under Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812 and was badly wounded. He became a congressman and governor of Tennessee. Then his marriage collapsed after a few months, and he suddenly resigned and went to live with the Cherokee, who had adopted him as a teenager and called him the Raven. He drank so heavily they started calling him by another name, the Big Drunk.

He came to Texas in the early 1830s. When Texas rebelled against Mexico, he was made commander of the army. After the Alamo fell, he retreated east for weeks while his own men called him a coward. Then on April 21, 1836, he turned and attacked Santa Anna's army at San Jacinto and won the war in about 18 minutes. Santa Anna was captured the next day.

That fall Texans elected Houston president over Stephen F. Austin. At his inauguration in the little town of Columbia, he took off his sword to show he was giving up military power for civilian office. Austin died a few months later, and Houston called him the Father of Texas. The new city of Houston was named after him.

Years later, as governor of Texas, he refused to swear allegiance to the Confederacy. He was removed from office in 1861.

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

BREAKING: The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) fell -300,000 barrels last week, to 282.7 million barrels, the lowest level since October 1982.

Since March 20th, US oil inventories in the SPR have dropped -132.8 million, or -32%.

We have now seen drawdowns in 29 of the last 30 weeks.

For perspective, oil reserves in the SPR stood at 653.9 million barrels in 2020, or +131% above current levels.

Meanwhile, commercial crude oil stocks excluding the SPR dropped -3.1 million barrels last week, to 412.5 million barrels, the lowest reading since the end of July.

This is also ~3% below the 5-year average for this time of year.

America's oil stockpiles are at critically low levels.

[Gabe Thornton @thornton_gabe]

1941: Russia was invaded, and months before Pearl Harbor, a neutral America sent it planes, tanks and trucks. 2026: Russia is the invader, and we’re debating whether to help the country it invaded. History doesn’t repeat. Sometimes it flips.

[@jason @Jason]

Let me explain reality… if you have but sixty seconds:

They were targeting Elon

They were targeting him with fake charges because the socialist-industrial complex is terrified that he would expose their long grift.

They came after him for the Model 3 and Elon’s claims around its potential.

That potential was realized, and it became, along with the Model Y, the best-selling electric vehicle ever created.

These were fake charges to try to stop somebody from building the best category-defining product.

Let that sink in: that's how evil these motherfuckers are.

The loooooong grift has been exposed: socialist grifters are stealing our tax dollars to fund fringe lunacy, NGOs and government programs without oversight or audits.

They’re parasites incapable of creating any product or service that has to compete in the open market.

Elon creates a couple of cutting-edge products each year, and half of them succeed.

Some of them actually change the world. Some of them fail brutally.

It's called capitalism. It's called creation.

This is what moves the human condition forward: trying things.

Trying really hard things.

Socialists come for the people building valuable products and services — that’s the tell

Keep your eye out for the people who've created nothing and risked nothing, but who are attacking the people who risk everything to create Something.

That's the tell.

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

BREAKING: Foreign holdings of US Treasuries jumped +$83 billion in August, to $9.33 trillion, their 6th-highest total on record.

The surge was driven by Canada, which raised its holdings by +$38 billion, to $465 billion, its 4th-highest on record.

This was followed by Belgium, which increased its holdings by +$20 billion, to a record $491 billion.

The UK, the 2nd-largest holder, raised its holdings by +$11 billion, to a record $1.01 trillion.

Meanwhile, Japan, the largest foreign holder, cut its holdings by -$36 billion, to $1.07 trillion, its lowest since November 2024.

China, the 3rd-largest holder, reduced its holdings by -$27 billion, to $591 billion, its lowest level since August 2008.

Foreign holdings of US Treasuries are rising despite continued selling in Japan and China.

[Boerne Star Sports @BoerneStarSport]

🏐🏐🏐🏐🏐
Boerne Champion sweeps crosstown rival Boerne High Tuesday at Charger Gym. Champion moves into first place in 26-5A and a win Friday will give them their first district title since 2019.

[Senator Mark Kelly @SenMarkKelly]

In what world is Putin a "humanitarian?” He's assassinated political rivals and journalists, bombed hospitals, and started a war that has intentionally killed tens of thousands of innocent people, including women and children. He's a war criminal.

[Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUa]

I spoke with Marco Rubio @SecRubio, and it was a substantive conversation – focused on the issues that matter. I am grateful for his readiness to help and his clear position. First, ballistic missile interceptors, which are needed to protect lives. Second, early warning of Russian ballistic missile attacks, which is vital. Third, the situation with Starlink/Starshield, which needs to be restored. Of course, all of this comes against the backdrop of our diplomatic efforts to end this horrific war and the constant killing of people. We agreed to get in touch again soon for an update. Thank you, Marco, for the constructive discussion! Thank you to everyone in America who supports fair approaches!

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

Oct 20, 1781. Yorktown, Virginia. The day after Cornwallis surrendered, George Washington writes his orders to the army. He doesn't brag. He thanks his men, frees the ones in the stockade, and tells everyone to go to church.

He began by congratulating the army on the victory and thanking everyone who made it happen. He singled out the French by name, Comte de Rochambeau and his officers, and Admiral de Grasse, whose fleet had trapped Cornwallis in the first place. He thanked his own generals, the engineers, the artillerymen, and the regular soldiers who'd dug the trenches and stormed the redoubts. He even thanked the Virginia militia and Governor Thomas Nelson.

Then came the part that tells you what kind of man he was. To spread the general joy to every heart, he wrote, every man in the army under arrest was to be pardoned and released. Deserters, men accused of misconduct, all of them. Nobody was going to sit in confinement on a day like this.

He ordered divine services to be held the next day in every brigade. He asked the troops who weren't on duty to attend with seriousness and gratitude, because he believed the victory showed a surprising and particular interposition of Providence in their favor.

That was Washington. He had just won the war, and his instinct was humility.

Around the same time, he picked a messenger to carry the news to France. It was the Duc de Lauzun, the dashing French cavalry commander whose hussars had beaten Tarleton at the Hook across the river. Lauzun sailed for Europe to tell King Louis XVI that his gamble on America had paid off.

And Washington invited the defeated British officers to dine with him. Cornwallis eventually joined in. There's a story, told by Washington's step-grandson years later, that Cornwallis raised a toast at one of these dinners. He said that when history was written, Washington's fame would rest less on the banks of the Chesapeake than on the banks of the Delaware. He meant the night crossing to Trenton, back when everything seemed lost.

Whether those were his exact words or not, it was true.

[Gabe Thornton @thornton_gabe]

America and its leaders need to return to this ideal: If proof were needed that we fought for a cause, not conquest, it could be found in these cemeteries. Here was our only conquest: all we asked was enough soil in which to bury our gallant dead. - Gen Clark WW2

[Carter Karels @CarterKarels]

I’ve watched this 36 times.

[string @propjoesays]

what the hell is happening

[John Arnold @johnarnold]

530A accounts ("Trump Accounts") are a great solution for many ultra-wealthy Americans who are philanthropically inclined, do not want a foundation staff, do want to give while living, and haven't been inspired by existing nonprofits. It's an American version of “GiveDirectly."

[SEC Shorts @SECShorts]

The College Football ER has never seen a day like that.

presented by: @renasant

[Gabe Thornton @thornton_gabe]

If Trump agrees to meet with just Xi and Putin, I'm worried this video might be appropriate... https://t.co/2CDH4wJcfj

[Rusty Surette @RustySuretteTV]

❤️👍 THREE TEXAS A&M CADETS are being honored for helping save the lives of complete strangers right here in Aggieland! And their stories deserve some attention!

Camila Ospina and David Berry were near Texas Avenue in College Station when they spotted a man who had collapsed.

The man was unresponsive and began having convulsions.

Rather than walking away, Camila helped place him in a recovery position while David called 911. Together, they stayed by his side until paramedics arrived.

In a separate emergency, senior cadet Benjamin Claypole rushed to help a woman who had been hit by a vehicle while riding a moped.

He actually took off his own shirt and used it to apply pressure to her wound until medical crews arrived.

Now, all three have received the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets Life Saving Award, a rare honor recognizing extraordinary courage and service to others.

And here’s what stands out to me: None of these young people knew they were going to face an emergency that day. They simply saw someone who needed help and stepped up.

❤️ These are the kinds of young people who make Aggieland proud!

📲 Source: Texas A&M Corps of Cadets,

[Senator Thom Tillis @SenThomTillis]

Beyond irresponsible. What part of enforcing a law passed 86-11 by the Senate does the President and his advisors not understand? It’s unconscionable that this administration is capitulating to a Russian dictator who illegally invaded Ukraine and butchers innocent civilians every single day. If the President wants to actually bring down energy prices, he can do it by solving the Iran problem, not by doing a solid for Vladimir Putin.

https://t.co/ccCakQUTDt

[The New York Times @nytimes]

Breaking News: President Trump signed an executive order to exempt Russia from new sanctions legislation that Congress passed last month. https://t.co/8KuQ5fuOjq

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

Charles Goodnight invented the chuckwagon, blazed one of the great cattle trails, hauled his dead partner hundreds of miles home in a coffin because he had promised he would, and helped save the American bison from extinction because his wife asked him to.

He died in 1929.

He was born March 5, 1836, in Illinois, and the family moved to Texas in 1846 when he was ten. He grew up on the frontier and spent his early adulthood as a scout and Ranger out on the Texas plains.

In 1866 he teamed up with an older cattleman named Oliver Loving, put together a herd, and drove it out of Fort Belknap, Texas toward Fort Sumner, New Mexico, where the Army needed beef. That route became the Goodnight-Loving Trail, and it opened the whole Southwest to Texas cattle. The drive included about ninety miles of waterless country before they reached the Pecos. Cattle died on it. They went anyway.

On that same drive, Goodnight invented the chuckwagon.

He bought a surplus Army wagon, rebuilt it with iron axles, and bolted a hinged box onto the back fitted with drawers and shelves and a lid that folded down into a work surface, with a water barrel underneath. A cook could run an entire kitchen out of the back of it a hundred miles from anything.

Every trail outfit in the West copied it within a few years, and the rigs people still build for chuckwagon cooking competitions today are essentially the same design.

He solved the biggest logistics problem in the cattle industry with a piece of carpentry.

On the second drive in 1867, Loving rode ahead and was ambushed and wounded by Comanches along the Pecos. He made it to Fort Sumner, but the wound went gangrenous and he died there.

Goodnight had promised him he would not be left in New Mexico.

So after the burial, Goodnight came back, had the body taken out of the ground, and hauled it in a coffin across hundreds of miles of plains to Weatherford, Texas, so Loving could be buried at home.

If that sounds familiar, it is because Larry McMurtry built Lonesome Dove on these two men.

In 1876 Goodnight moved into the Palo Duro Canyon in the Texas Panhandle and founded the JA Ranch with an Irish investor named John Adair. By 1885 it covered 1,325,000 acres and ran 100,000 head of cattle.

Six years earlier he had married Mary Ann Dyer, a schoolteacher from Weatherford that everyone called Molly. She went out to the Panhandle with him, where for long stretches she was effectively the only woman for a hundred miles in any direction.

And in the late 1870s she looked hard at what was happening on the plains around her.

The southern bison herd was being wiped out. Millions of animals killed in a handful of years for their hides, the bodies left where they dropped. Molly kept coming across orphaned calves standing next to their dead mothers.

She asked her husband to save some of them.

So Goodnight went out into the canyon and roped a few bison calves and brought them home, and Molly set aside six hundred acres of the ranch as a buffalo park.

From that handful: thirteen animals by 1888, around forty five by 1903, over a hundred and sixty by 1914.

And then they went out into the world. Bison from the Goodnight herd went to Yellowstone in 1902, to the National Bison Range, to parks in Montana, to Canada, to the New York Zoological Park, to zoos all over the country, and to Buffalo Bill Cody.

Along with four other private herds and the protected animals at Yellowstone, that is the reason the species still exists. Nearly every plains bison alive today descends from that small group of founding herds. Descendants of the Goodnight animals are standing in Caprock Canyons State Park in Texas right now.

Molly died in 1926. Goodnight died on December 12, 1929, at ninety three. He was born before Texas was a state and lived to see automobiles, airplanes and talking pictures.

One more thing happened in 1929.

In January of that year a man named Bose Ikard died. He had been born into slavery in Mississippi in 1843 and brought to Texas as a boy. After the war he went up the trail. He rode for Oliver Loving, and then he rode four years for Goodnight.

Goodnight said he trusted Bose Ikard farther than any living man, and that out in Colorado and New Mexico, Ikard was his detective, his banker, and everything else.

When Ikard died, Goodnight, then ninety two years old, paid for a granite marker over his grave in Weatherford and wrote the words himself.

"Bose Ikard served with me four years on the Goodnight-Loving Trail, never shirked a duty or disobeyed an order, rode with me in many stampedes, participated in three engagements with Comanches, splendid behavior."

He signed it with his own name, and died eleven months later.