MWhite

I wish this quote wasn’t still so relevant

Marine who crawled under bridge to plant explosives approved for Medal of Honor Capt. John Ripley hung 500 pounds of explosives under a bridge, swinging hand over hand for hours, to stop a major offensive in Vietnam.

From me:

Col. John Ripley, whose courage under fire beneath the Dong Ha Bridge is one of the Marine Corps' most hallowed stories of combat valor, will receive a posthumous Medal of Honor. The Senate OK'd it last week.

Truly, an astounding American combat story.

taskandpurpose.com/news/marine-...

I wonder what Zohran-style figure from out of nowhere is going to have the honor of humiliating Gavin Newsom for two years until he tumbles backward into a metaphorical political grave and goes full maga podcaster out of spite

finally watched Casablanca. wild in this day and age for something to actually live up to the hype

Bernard LaFayette, Selma voting rights organizer, has died Voting rights organizer Bernard LaFayette has died. LaFayette's son says his father died Thursday morning of a heart attack. He was 85.

Bernard LaFayette, the advance man who did the risky groundwork for the voter registration campaign in Selma, Alabama, that culminated in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, has died.

Time series plot depicting predicted Nino 3.4 region ocean temperature anomalies from the latest (Mar 2026) ECMWF ensemble. It depicts an extremely rapid rise in such temperatures, from modest negative anomalies to strong positive anomalies, by mid-summer 2026--indicative of a transition from weak-moderate La Nina conditions to moderate-strong El Nino conditions over just a few months.

Whew.

All signs are increasingly pointing to a significant, if not strong to very strong, El Niño event. I'll have more to say in coming weeks & months, but for now I'll just say that this is increasingly likely to become a major regional-to-global climate driver in 2026-2027.

You know what? I would prefer a norms based order to a rules based order but I also think flight attendants should have qualified immunity.

I appreciate that response. I definitely am not a criteria expert or historian on valor awards.

interesting. I've been thinking today a parallel thought, and putting them together might be something like, "In politics, you can't shoot a dog, because people remember. In war, you can't sink a ship with no reason, for the same reason."

Was Bondi 50,000 the top?

they're coast guard. smell ain't no thing.

Introducing: Cosmology 101 with Katie Mack YouTube video by Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

I've been going through these videos for some work reasons, and they're so well done. Just great work all around by @astrokatie.com and @perimeterinstitute.ca.

covering the military and general stories of combat over the last many years, I always came back to 2 stories of individual combat valor that seemed like absolute slam-dunk Medals of Honor.
This was one. The other - which I put as #1, even ahead of Ripley - is Charles French.

Marine who crawled under bridge to plant explosives approved for Medal of Honor Capt. John Ripley hung 500 pounds of explosives under a bridge, swinging hand over hand for hours, to stop a major offensive in Vietnam.

From me:

Col. John Ripley, whose courage under fire beneath the Dong Ha Bridge is one of the Marine Corps' most hallowed stories of combat valor, will receive a posthumous Medal of Honor. The Senate OK'd it last week.

Truly, an astounding American combat story.

taskandpurpose.com/news/marine-...

i saw that. that's all the same things!

OK - moratorium on The Ills Of the World. dumb posts only until further notice.

Read about Top Dog Law, y'all

if you don't INSTANTLY know who this is, you listen to shit music.

I know that the people who need to read this aren’t here, but here goes:

Rules of engagement aren’t for the enemy. They’re for you. They’re for your soldiers when they’re captured or wounded. They’re for your civilians when they’re in range of the enemy. They’re for your allies, to reassure.

OK, on the main TL:

has a US Senator ever quit to be a non-Big 3 cabinet secretary?

If so, was it a YOUNG, on-the-come-up Senator from the safest of seats?

damn, he must REALLY hate brown people.

i only had one friend go all through high school with straight As. only one, and I hung out with the 'smart kids.'

he's such a super-mega millionaire now. hes just the worst, this is probably not the response you guys were looking for.

i dont think there's any serious way to paint a 'this act was immoral/illegal.'

but was it smart or productive? good question.

was it depraved and vicious? for sure, so given that, was it worth it? idk

the second word is "unarmed" and that is something somebody needs to prove before we believe. That's sorta like saying a military base was "unarmed" just everybody was at lunch.

WHAT ARE THE 3RD AND 4TH WAYS?!?!?!

is there any example of a sitting Senator taking a low-end cabinet spot? is Mullin, like, trailing in some poll?

this is why "quiet death" (cringe-so-hard-my-femurs-snap) was not the A-Level Student response:

drop 1000 bombs on a 1000 tanks. all noise.

People remember boats. the Maine, the Lusitania, the Arizona, the Cole.

you're giving them a Flag to Rally On, you morons.

bsky.app/profile/nyti...

im not sure i believe an Iranian warship is sailingthe 7 seas literally 'unarmed' (and that word can actually be tricky for ships).

but, i mean... you don't want to just surface 1000 yards away and let 2 Growlers buzz by and then demand the keys? ride it into the harbor in Bahrain?

ok then

take a lap

the response would be:
these men - well described by you! - are never going away and never changing, but there is a world in which "they" join a coalition that broadly defends and enforces rules of a liberal democracy.
LBJ wasn't awesome, but here we are, ya know?

the European mind - and also the American 'Modern Country' mind - cannot comprehend.

This is excellent.

Outlets can just do this! No current events hook, not even a new release for the author, just 'this writer is good as hell' backed by a lot of close reading.

Pressman for the LA times, high school to retirement. From carrying 80lbs type plates to whatever the 60s did.

Ww2 pilot, ferrying b25s to Europe, no combat. Owned a Car dealership. Scumbag.