Jennifer Weed

Educator. Leader. Lawyer. proUD Dayton Flyer. Making the world smarter one association at a time.

[Jennifer Weed @weed713]

Thanks for the sound advice @ValaAfshar! This is more than Saturday motivation, it's a creed to live by. #goals

[Vala Afshar @ValaAfshar]

Family first
You are not your job
Stay healthy, fit
Keep in touch with friends
Forgive first
Be humble
Don’t take people for granted
Complain less
Dare to dream
Show appreciation
Be honest
Know when to leave
Be a mentor
Don’t respond to negativity
Be teachable #SaturdayMorning

[Bill Kristol @BillKristol]

As JD’s Bible says, “For I was hungry and you gave me not food, I was thirsty and you gave me not drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me—for I am a low-wage foreigner, and their politicians are demagogues.”

[Rich Raho @RichRaho]

In wake of Sister Letty’s detainment and confiscation of her rosary, Brownsville’s Bishop Flores speaks out: “protocols that make it possible for a religious sister, or anyone, to be detained and handcuffed while peacefully walking to Church on a Sunday morning are wildly disturbing.”

[History With Jacob @HistoryWJacob]

The vote that would create the United States was deadlocked, and the man who could break the tie was eighty miles away, dying of cancer, on the wrong side of a thunderstorm.

His name was Caesar Rodney. On the first of July 1776, while Congress argued itself toward independence in Philadelphia, he was stuck back in Delaware. He was tamping down Loyalist trouble, in constant pain from the cancer eating at his face and fighting for breath due to his asthma.

Then the letter came. Delaware's two delegates in Congress were split. One for independence, one against. Without a tiebreaker, the colonies would not stand united. And a divided front was exactly what the Crown was counting on.

He did not hesitate. He climbed onto his horse near midnight and rode straight into the storm. Lightning split the sky. The roads turned to sludge. A journey that normally took two days but he made it in eighteen hours. He stopped only to change horses, soaked with every mile.

He reached Independence Hall on the morning of July 2 just as the vote was called, still in his boots and spurs. Caked in mud. Thomas McKean never forgot the sight of him standing in the doorway.

Rodney walked in and cast his vote for independence. It broke Delaware's tie, and with that, not a single colony stood against the break from Britain.

On this day, 250 years ago, a dying man rode all night through a storm so America could be born.

America 250 🇺🇸

[PBS News @NewsHour]

Most Americans believe the country has moved away from its founding principles as the nation prepares for its big 250th anniversary, a new PBS News/NPR/Marist poll finds.

Eighty-three percent of U.S. adults feel America has strayed from the ideals the country was founded on two-and-a-half centuries ago.

Among them, close to half of Americans — 47% — say the U.S. has "moved far away" from these principles, joined by 36% who said America has "moved somewhat away" from them. Another 16% said the country "pretty much still represents" those principles.

Over the last 50 years, Americans' views of whether the country is living up to its nascent promise has flagged. In 1976, ahead of the nation's bicentennial, the Roper Organization polled Americans about the nation's founding principles in the wake of the Vietnam War and President Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal.

At the time, 30% of adults believed America had moved far away from its founding principles. Today, according to Marist's poll, that's jumped to 47%.

To Beverly Gage, Yale University historian, the shift around ideals may depend, in part, on how people are thinking differently about those founding principles today. There are certain principles, like the embodiment of slavery, that would be good to have moved away from, she said.

But Gage thinks there's a deeper concern among Americans about some of the nation's highest ideals — namely, the declaration that all men are created equal, the belief in the pursuit of happiness and the belief in some form of democracy.

"There are lots of people that are really questioning, in this moment, whether those things are true anymore," she said.

For more from the poll: https://t.co/Lja0R9v3tM

Photo by Carlos Barria via Reuters

[Jonathan Karl @jonkarl]

"To say that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." - Teddy Roosevelt

#26 in Salvatore Catalano's new series of American Presidents

https://t.co/Z6avE07vPd
#America250
#TRLibrary

[David Axelrod @davidaxelrod]

"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which HE stands by the country."
--Theodore Roosevelt

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

Imagine if Biden or Obama had bragged about shaking down a private company for 10% public ownership.

Where are the supposed stalwarts of free markets like @club4growth or @Heritage or @freedomcaucus ? 🦗🦗🦗

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

The net effect of this decision is political parties will have more power over individual candidates. When elections are over, winning candidates will feel more obligated to vote with their parties instead of their constituents.

Fewer Thomas Massies and Ro Khannas, more zombies.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Theodore Roosevelt said the national parks were the greatest gift this country ever gave itself, and the greatest idea we ever gave the world.

More than 100 nations copied it.

Donald Trump looks at that gift and sees a piggy bank for his own pet projects.

This week we learned where our national park money has been going. Not to Yellowstone. Not to Yosemite. To the walkway outside his office, where Trump ripped out American flagstone and laid down Italian granite at a cost of $689,000 to taxpayers. He said he paid for it himself.

That was a lie.

To cover his vanity projects, they are robbing the parks. Spending on parks outside Washington is down $854 million. More than 900 projects went unfunded. They even pulled money from a guardrail on a Colorado cliff that the Park Service flagged as a safety hazard.

I serve on Appropriations.

The power to spend belongs to Congress, not to a king redecorating his palace. These parks are not Trump’s to loot.

They belong to all of us, and I will fight for every dollar.

[Merriam-Webster @MerriamWebster]

The ‘dog days’ of summer get their name due to their association with the Dog Star, Sirius, found in the constellation Canis Major.

The first visible rising of Sirius occurs during the hot stretch from early July to early September.

Woof.

[Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump]

Ronald Reagan: “You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman…But Anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American…This, I believe, is one of the most important sources of America's greatness.”🇺🇸

[The Associated Press @AP]

BREAKING: The Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship, rejecting Trump’s proposed limits. https://t.co/RqBi4UDJAY

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

Tonight, I gave Notice of Intent to bring forth a Privileged Resolution to force a vote on releasing the names of Congressmen who used taxpayer funds for sexual misconduct settlements.

The Speaker has two legislative days to consider the timing of the vote. Stay tuned.

[Rep. Don Bacon 🇺🇸✈️🏍️⭐️🎖️ @RepDonBacon]

The SECDEF may have a legal right to conduct mass firings of generals and admirals without explanation, but it does not make it morally right nor wise. It surely lacks decency.
https://t.co/PAOghFY4AG

[Michael Steele @MichaelSteele]

This is what it sounds like when idiots gather, pound their religious breasts and sow stupidity. The words “separation of church and state” do not appear in the Constitution, but the words are a metaphor (you know what that is, right?) from an 1802 letter written by Thomas Jefferson (since relied on as precedent by our Supreme Court) in which he stated that the First Amendment built a "wall of separation between Church & State."
Jefferson should know what those words meant; so if it’s good enough for him…perhaps the idiocracy should sit down and pick up a book they haven’t burned or banned. #BringBackCivics

[Hillary Clinton @HillaryClinton]

Maybe Vance doesn't know this history because it's in one of the books his administration banned.

The difference between Watergate and now is that back then, Republicans actually did something about a law-breaking president. Today, they only roll over for their cult leader.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

A note to my friends who still back Trump:

I am not here to dunk on you. I am writing because you have a working brain, and this story insults it.

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool got a $14 million paint job. Shortly thereafter the water turned green and the new “American flag blue” coating started peeling off the bottom in sheets. Trump says vandals did it. He claims, without evidence, that someone took a knife and cut a 300-foot slit, a number that grew to 350 feet while he was still talking.

Back on May 4, Trump bragged about that same coating and said, if you had a knife, you could not even cut it, so strong, like powerful rubber. He cannot have it both ways.

And the green water?

A George Mason scientist tested it and found ordinary, non-toxic algae, the kind that blooms in any shallow sunny pool. To fight it, crews dumped hydrogen peroxide into the water.

Hydrogen peroxide is also a paint stripper.

That, not sabotage or vandalism, is the obvious reason the paint came off. They wrecked their own paint job, then blamed phantom vandals for it.

The lone "vandal" they paraded is a 67-year-old Olympian who touched a flap of paint already peeling on its own.

Here is the thing. If they will look you in the eye and lie about something this small, something you can see with your own eyes, ask yourself what else they are lying to you about.

Again, you have a working brain. People like Karoline Leavitt are counting on you to stay loyal instead of exercising independent thought.

Prove them wrong.

[The Tennessee Holler @TheTNHoller]

REPUBLICAN SEN. TILLIS: “What Freakin’ parallel universe did I wake up in? You’re telling me — if it’s true — damaging the reflecting pool lining is something Pirro wants to prosecute… yet they’re releasing people who pled guilty to assaulting officers?”

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

The irony of Republicans controlling all branches of government while

bankrupting the country, starting a war, sending money to fraudulent programs, violating the Constitution, giving corporations immunity...

but arguing that the biggest problem we have is “stolen elections.”