Matt Cole

The Iran war shows we need a new defense strategy against China and Russia. 1. If Iran—a second rate military—can significantly damage U.S. bases, this means China or Russia can obliterate our overseas bases. 2. U.S. will run out of defensive munitions against China and Russia.

The Trump administration has sought to weaken oversight of workforces across the country by shrinking federal agencies such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. buff.ly/qkoynzP

Karoline Leavitt holds a press briefing at the White House with Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel

Never fails

Fact: There have been more mass shooters in America over the last 40 years than there've been non-citizen voters.

Germany is not hosting American troops. It is hosting American power. Amplifying it. Projecting it across three continents. And now, for the first time with real legal and political weight behind it, voices inside Germany are beginning to say out loud: Berlin could shut down every American base on German soil. A fiber-optic cable runs beneath Ramstein Air Base. It carries a signal from a drone pilot in Nevada to an armed aircraft over Yemen. Fraction of a second. Precision. Control. That cable sits on German soil. Cut it, and the strikes do not miss. They simply cannot happen. This week Washington punished Berlin for telling the truth about the Iran war. Five thousand troops withdrawn. A presidential post calling Germany a failure. The language of a tenant who has forgotten whose name is on the deed. Because Berlin can end all of it. Not the 5,000. All 36,436. Every soldier, every satellite dish, every signal passing through German soil on its way to a target over Africa or the Middle East. Spain tore it up. Italy said no. Germany has not moved yet. But it is thinking about it. And what it is thinking about is this: Germany holds the one thing that separates America from every other country on earth. The ability to project military force across three continents simultaneously. Take away the European staging ground and the United States becomes what every other nation in the Western Hemisphere already is. Large. Armed. And unable to reach anyone who does not live next door. open.substack.com/pub/gandalv/p/…

Aziz Ansari just played Kash Patel on SNL… And it was AMAZING!

Environmental scientists said a new EPA directive could lead to weakened chemical protections, such as revised limits on how much arsenic is allowed in drinking water or the amount of lead considered acceptable in paint or soil. propublica.org/article/trump-…

That belt built this county

Your party has had complete control of Florida for 15 years.

This man went shopping at Publix and a pound of ground sirloin was $12.64. This is totally ridiculous especially since we were paying $4.83 at the end of Biden’s Presidentcy!

Yes, the U.S. Air Force buying drones from a company backed by the Trump sons is outrageous. No, the president's family benefiting from government contracts amid a war started by the president is not normal or ethical. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

The body of Lincoln, after 1654-mile funeral train trip from Washington DC, arrived today 1865 for burial in Springfield. This long-lost illicit photo of his open casket was taken in NYC on the way.

Anne Frank wrote today in 1944: 'What's the point of the war? Why, oh why can't people live together peacefully? Why all this destruction? (...) Why are millions spent on the war each day, while not a penny is available for medical science, artists or the poor? Why do people have to starve when mountains of food are rotting away in other parts of the world? Oh, why are people so crazy?'

Today we celebrate World Press Freedom Day, sponsored by UNESCO. Unfortunately, this right is often violated, sometimes flagrantly, sometimes in hidden ways. Let us remember the many journalists and reporters who are victims of war and violence.

NEW: After lawmakers stripped local control over data center projects, West Virginians say they’ll take their grievances to the ballot box buff.ly/WUZdwcx

RESULT. The Lake Travis school district in the Austin area become a focal point for book bans (see this story from 2024: kut.org/education/2024…) Two conservatives school board members who were integral to that push just lost their reelection bids tonight, and are ousted.

It was two in the morning on December 16, 1811, when the sleeping towns of the Mississippi Valley were swallowed by something ancient and terrifying. No warning. No rumble building slowly in the distance. Just a sudden, savage lurch that threw men and women out of their beds and sent furniture crashing across the floor. Children screamed. Dogs howled. The cold December air filled with the sound of splintering timber and exploding brick. People ran barefoot into frozen fields, wearing nothing but nightclothes, watching their homes shake apart in the darkness. The ground beneath them was no longer solid. It moved in waves, like the surface of a lake struck by a stone. Massive fissures tore open in the earth, some wide enough to swallow a man, then slammed shut again. Sand and water exploded upward in geysers thirty feet high. Out on the Mississippi River, a Scottish naturalist named John Bradbury was traveling by boat. The quake hurled him from his bunk. When he clawed his way onto the deck, he witnessed something that defied every law of nature he had ever learned. The river had stopped. The mighty Mississippi, draining half a continent, sat momentarily still. Then it began to flow the other way. Upstream. Boats were dragged backward. Vessels collided in the chaos. Riverbanks caved into the churning water. Islands that had stood for generations disappeared beneath the surface. That was only the first act. On January 23, 1812, the earth struck again, possibly with even greater force. Survivors who had begun rebuilding watched their repairs collapse in seconds. Then came February 7, the most violent blow of all. Estimated between magnitude 7.7 and 8.1, the shaking was felt across fifty thousand square miles. Church bells rang spontaneously in Boston, more than a thousand miles away. Clocks stopped mid-swing in South Carolina. People stumbled through the streets of Washington D.C., convinced the city was under attack. In western Tennessee, an entire forest sank into the earth and filled with water. Within days, a lake fifteen thousand acres wide had appeared from nothing. Reelfoot Lake. It still exists today. The New Madrid Seismic Zone never went quiet. It is still active. Memphis sits directly above it. St. Louis lies within its reach. Seismologists put the odds of another magnitude-7 quake in the next fifty years at somewhere between seven and ten percent. The infrastructure of the central United States, bridges, pipelines, power grids, was never designed for this kind of violence. Damage estimates for a repeat event exceed three hundred billion dollars. Most Americans have never heard of New Madrid. The fault has not forgotten us. 📷© United States Geological Survey (Restored & Colorized) © The History Drop #archaeohistories

American satellite imagery providers, including Google and Apple, have started censoring key Kuwaiti airbases hit during the Iran War. Seen here, Ali Al Salem Air Base on Google Earth (left), and Apple Maps (right).

Gasoline prices in WV have spiked by 40% as the conflict in Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz create a massive economic squeeze at the pump and the grocery store. Find the full story link in the comments. #GasPrices #Inflation #WestVirginia #Economy #wvnews