Timmy @timohaskell

There was a paper sign taped to the door of a gas station. Spaghetti dinner. Ten dollars. All proceeds to the Hensley family. I did not know the Hensley family. I went because a man at the counter said "you going?" in a way that was not a question. It was held in a fire hall. Folding tables. Paper plates. A row of women serving out of foil pans, and a boy of about twelve carrying a pitcher of tea with both hands and terrible concentration. The father had been sick. That is all anyone said about it, all evening, and they said it exactly the same number of times, which was once. There was a raffle. The prizes had been donated by people standing in the room. A cord of firewood. Four hours of lawn care. A quilt. A cooler. A hand lettered index card that read "one oil change, any vehicle, Randy." I bought thirty dollars of tickets, because the tickets were the point and I am not a fool. I won the socket set. Two hundred and thirty pieces. I do not own a vehicle in this country. I have never needed a socket set and I never will. It is on a shelf. I will not give it away. Here is what I could not stop watching. By the door sat a coffee can with a slit cut into the lid. Men came in from the parking lot who did not stay to eat. They put money in the can. They shook one hand. They left. They came to a dinner they did not eat, to pay for a family they were not related to, and they were embarrassed to be seen doing it. That hall raised eleven thousand dollars in one evening at ten dollars a plate. I have read many times that Americans are the loudest people on earth. Whoever wrote that has never watched a man put cash in a coffee can and leave before anyone could thank him.

Official Statement Regarding Western Michigan - Michigan Football Game 🗒️: bit.ly/4cxOiYH

In 1988 Dolly Parton pulled every 7th and 8th grader in Sevier County into a room and told them to pick a buddy. She made them sign a contract.. if BOTH graduate, she hands you both $500. One fails, nobody gets paid. The county dropout rate went from 35% to 6%. She handed out the checks herself. In 1989 she offered $500 to every kid in the county who wanted to go to the local college. When Gatlinburg burned in 2016, she sent 900 families $1,000 a month for six months. You've probably heard that part. Here's the part you haven't: The fund raised more than expected, so she showed up in May and handed every one of those families another $5,000 on top. Then she quietly put $3 million into the recovery group that handles the years after the news trucks leave. She built her county an entire hospital. She played a benefit concert in 2007, Dollywood and the Stampede matched it, and LeConte Medical Center opened in 2010 with a birthing unit and a women's center in it. In 2022 she started covering 100% of tuition, books, and fees for Dollywood employees. Full-time, part-time, AND seasonal. In 1991 she paid for a bald eagle sanctuary because the birds couldn't be released back into the wild, no press release. And when Hurricane Helene came through here in Western North Carolina, she wrote a personal check for $1 million and her companies matched it. She didn't owe North Carolina anything, but she helped us anyway. She started the Imagination Library because her daddy couldn't read or write. Before he passed, he told her it was the most important thing she ever did. Rest in Peace, Dolly 🇺🇸

MAJOR LEAGUE HISTORY!! THREE homers for Joshua Báez in his MLB debut!

@SusanDReynolds Can Dino come to TX?

@_megmoroney My daughter, Olivia, can’t wait to mail her letter to you about Cloud 9! She is a huge fan and hopes you will write back soon! Good luck with the tour!

@BBGreatMoments David Freese 2011 G6 and it’s not even close.

For those that saw through it, resisted and saw many peers fall for the propaganda…their world view was forever changed. Team Humanity was born.

Brownstone Institute @brownstoneinst

3 months ago

Covid-era propaganda was even worse than you think. This story will make your blood boil: In 2020, Jeffrey Tucker quickly realized that mainstream reporters had no idea how viruses actually work. So he offered to help. He noticed that reporters didn’t even know the difference

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Yes, that is exactly right. One is successful at pulling people out of poverty and one is not.

Ro Khanna @RoKhanna

3 months ago

This the basic difference. Republicans believe that that if you let the wealthy spend capital it will make Americans prosperous. Democrats believe that the federal government investing in the healthcare & education of our people will make America prosperous & productive.

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This is the last time I’m going to comment on the Reuters story about the alleged $3 billion, $12 billion, or $20 billion supposedly transferred, made available, made accessible, or otherwise handed over by the UAE to the Iranian regime, a claim that the UAE government has categorically denied. Let me state something clearly. I’ve spent more than two decades working in intelligence, counter terror finance, and financial investigations. I’ve worked on terrorism financing cases, advised on complex IRGC finance matters, and been called as an expert witness in terrorism finance cases involving governments, major banks, and cross-border financial transactions. And one thing I learned very early is this: When a story revolves entirely around a financial transaction, you do not simply assert that Country X paid Country Y billions of dollars and then expect everyone else to prove that it didn’t happen. That’s not how evidence works. You cannot demand that people prove a negative. If nothing happened, how exactly are they supposed to prove that nothing happened? The burden of proof lies with the person making the claim. In finance, especially at this scale, evidence matters. Paper trails matter. Documentation matters. Banking records matter. Regulatory approvals matter. Transaction records matter. Leaked documents matter. You don’t just point to anonymous sources and declare that billions of dollars moved across borders. A transfer of $3 billion, $12 billion, or $20 billion does not simply disappear into thin air. Whether it moves as cash, gold, dollars, yuan, rupees, dirhams, or even cryptocurrency, there will be evidence. There will be records. There will be traces. There will be counterparties. There will be compliance procedures. There will be reporting obligations. There will be people involved. That’s the nature of modern finance. So my simple question is this: Apart from anonymous sources, where is the paper trail? Show us one document. One transfer instruction. One banking record. One payment confirmation. One regulatory waiver. One piece of evidence that can actually be examined, scrutinized, and verified. Because that’s how financial investigations work. Until then, we’re being asked to accept an extraordinary claim with no publicly available evidence whatsoever. And on a lighter note, two nights ago I observed a suspicious formation of flying magic carpets crossing the skies above Dubai and heading east over the Gulf toward Iran. They appeared to be carrying large wooden chests overflowing with gold coins. Based on the evidentiary standard apparently being applied here, I assume Reuters will be reporting that transaction shortly.

@heckyessica Texas is great isn’t it?!

As a lifelong, taxpaying New Yorker, I am extremely worried about the ramifications of the estate tax proposal on New Yorkers if it gets signed into law. I want to be clear up front; this isn't about politics for me. I'm not fighting for the billionaire class, and I'm certainly not one of them. What I am is someone who understands basic math, economics, and business, who has watched what happens when states push tax policy past the breaking point. Here's what's on the table right now: a proposal to reduce New York’s estate tax exemption from $7.1 million down to $750,000, an 89% cut while increasing the top rate from 16% all the way to 50%. This is embedded within a batch of revenue ideas sent up to Albany to try and plug a $5.4 billion hole in the city budget. I want to discuss who this estate tax actually hits, because it’s certainly not the ultra-rich. The ultra-rich weren’t exempt as only the first $7.1 million avoided estate taxes. A $750,000 threshold in the New York metro area is not reasonable. The median home price in New York City hit roughly $809,000. In Nassau County you're looking at $820,000. Suffolk County sits around $675,000. Westchester is $754,000. If you bought a house in the city, Nassau, or Westchester and you spent 30 years paying off that mortgage like a responsible adult, congratulations, you're now above the estate tax threshold. What’s even better is that you hit the threshold before even factoring in your 401k, life insurance, savings, a family business, or other investments. This isn't a tax on the wealthy it’s a tax on a retired couple in Bayside who paid off their split-level. It's a tax on the family that runs a deli in Astoria and owns the building. When you force those families to come up with 50% of the value above $750,000 after someone dies, what do you think happens? They sell. They liquidate. The house goes, the business goes, and the generational wealth that took a lifetime to build disappears in a single tax event. Family businesses which are the backbone of employment in neighborhoods all over this city get gutted. According to the State Department of Taxation and Finance's own numbers New York's tax structure is incredibly top heavy as millionaires paid 44.6% of all personal income tax collected in 2024. The top 200,000 filers covered 51.9%. The bottom half of all earners paid 0.2%. Think about how fragile that makes us. You don't need a mass exodus. You need a few thousand people to change their mailing address to Palm Beach or Austin and the budget math falls apart. Here's the part that really gets me though. The biggest victims of "tax the rich" policies aren't the rich. The rich utilize their resources and leave once they have had enough because their resources make them mobile. The people who get crushed are the ones who stay such as teachers, firefighters, nurses, and the small business owner. They can’t simply pick up and go. The harsh reality is that when the wealthy leave and the tax base shrinks, the city still needs the same amount of money to run the subways, pay the cops and keep the lights on. So where does it come from? It comes from everyone left behind as they are forced to pay higher taxes, and higher fees. What may bother me more is the double taxation piece. The money in someone's estate didn't just appear from thin air. They earned it and paid income tax. They invested it and paid capital gains. They bought property with it and paid property taxes every single year. They bought things and paid sales tax. Every dollar in that estate has already been taxed multiple times over the course of a lifetime. Now when they die the state wants to take half of everything above $750,000? At what point does it stop being a tax and start being confiscation? That's a genuine question I have because if you work your whole life, play by every rule, pay every tax along the way, and the government still takes half when you die what exactly was the point of saving any of it? A $750,000 threshold doesn't catch billionaires it catches the middle class. It catches people who were never wealthy, they were just disciplined. They bought a house, they didn't sell it, they put money away for retirement, and they wanted to leave something for their kids. Punishing that with a 50% tax rate sends a very specific message: the state believes your assets belong to it first and your family second. I don't care where you fall politically that should bother you. I'll say this very simply. When you tax people to the point where they feel targeted, they leave. When they leave the burden falls on everyone who can't. When that burden gets heavy enough, more people figure out a way to go. That's not theory, that's exactly what IRS data and Census numbers have been showing us for half a decade straight. New York is standing at a fork in the road right now. One direction is more punitive taxation with an increasing dependence on a shrinking pool of high earners who increasingly have one foot out the door. The other direction is putting forward competitive tax policy, fiscal discipline, and creating an environment where building wealth and creating jobs isn't treated like something the government needs to punish. I know which path leads somewhere good. I just hope the people making the decisions figure it out before there's nobody left to tax. @amitisinvesting @BillAckman @chamath @patrickbetdavid @PBDsPodcast

A second theater of operations to protect and ensure our national energy security has opened....

⚡️David Blackmon⚡️ @EnergyAbsurdity

6 months ago

🚨Trump Invokes Emergency Powers – Gavin Newsom’s Energy Madness Hardest Hit In a decisive step to bolster U.S. energy security, the Trump administration has invoked the Defense Production Act to restart operations at Sable Offshore Corp.'s Santa Ynez Unit and pipeline system

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I struggle to find words strong enough to convey the utter contempt I feel for the person who perpetrated this disgraceful act of vandalism — and for anyone who condones it.

Simone Rodan-Benzaquen @srodan

7 months ago

This is what so-called « pro-Palestinians » did last night to the man who saved the free world.

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@davethul You must be unfamiliar with some of the people Jesus hung around.

This is a targeting foul. The QB clearly no longer has the ball, which is obvious to the defender, making him defenseless. There is forcible contact to the head/neck area and it's with the crown of the helmet. It violates both targeting rules.

Warren Sharp @SharpFootball

8 months ago

how is this not a penalty? late hit on the QB after he hands off

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@BBGreatMoments DH. It was the slippery slope that allowed all this other nonsense.

Obama killed Osama Bin Laden, no congressional approval. Obama invaded Libya, the opposition kills Gaddafi. no approval. Biden killed the Al-Qaeda leader in 2022. No congressional approval. Trump swoops in and brings the man alive back to the U.S, Democrats go crazy. lol. As an independent who sits in the middle, Democrats to need to stop being hypocritical.

Picture of one rugged individualist standing against the warmth of collectivism on June 5, 1989.

i'm not sure who needs to hear this, but there is nothing even remotely sophisticated about these endless somali and NGO/immigration frauds. not PPP, not food, not autism, and not daycare or welfare or SNAP or free rent. it's all blatant, hammer in the face stuff. it did not go on for years because the perpetrators were crafty. it went on because the DA's, prosecutors, police, judges, mayors, governors, and congress critters were relying on this demographic for vote harvesting. being able to defraud the electorate and plunder the taxpayers was the price of winning elections, one the swamp donkeys were happy to pay. it seemed so simple. but a funny thing happens when you keep playing this game: the power shifts. your "captive voter base" becomes your ruler once you start needing them more than they need you. the politicians are trapped: dirty, negligent, on the take, and dependent. everyone's tainted beak is in the NGO game. they'd all lose office immediately without these voting blocks and machines that they cultivated. and so here we are. "look at me, i am the kingmaker now." parts of the left tried this all over the US and all over the world. and the results have been the same every time. the servant becomes the master. and that's how you wind up with massive, unaccountable piracy everywhere and endless plunder that politicians must aid and abet for fear of losing office and every time they are complicit and help cover this up, they are dragged further into guilt, too compromised to stop. and they get eaten alive by rapacious, low trust cultures to whom plunder is a way of life and the whole purpose of government is to determine which tribe gets to rob all the others without fear of justice or reprisal. and that's how you wind up with the mayor of toronto in a hijab begging for islamic votes from men who clearly despise and disdain her. to show another person the sole of your foot in islam is a grave insult. to do it barefoot is almost inconceivable. to do that in a public meeting with a mayor? i'm not even sure there is a western equivalent to this. this is pure, raw insult and domination. her police are right there and they can do nothing. she can do nothing. that's what being compromised, dependent, and subjugated looks like. you want to know why so many politicians are cravenly parroting the "diversity is our strength" mantra and covering their heads to claim that somalia built boston all of a sudden? this is why. they're trapped. the entire machine that started this in motion and then watched it grow wildly out of hand like some cut rate sorcer's apprentice is out trying to defend it because when this all comes out, they will all lose power and many have certainly committed crimes. their whole side of the political spectrum will fold like a cheap card table without this money and dodgy voting. you cannot unravel this system piecemeal, the capture is too deep, too broad. but too much has been seen now. this is not going away, it's going to spread. these mills grind slowly, but in the end, they grind fine. and an astonishing amount of western civilization has been sold to pirates, both foreign and domestic. when people really get a look at the size of this thing, it will boggle the mind. and perhaps we can start to get our societies back. small government is the only durable path to liberty. a states this size and able to "give you whatever you want" will always and inevitably wind up being used to take everything you have.