Brette Herber

When I’m told I need to deliver a death notification, the weight of it hits me immediately. My chest tightens, my stomach sinks, and my heart skips a beat. I know I’m about to share news that will change someone’s life forever. When I arrive at the home, I knock on the door and take a step back. I often see the family through a window, walking through their living room. They wave or smile at me, trying to greet me warmly. That moment is incredibly hard because I can’t smile back—I know I’m about to bring them the darkest moment of their life. When they open the door, they usually ask, “What’s wrong? What happened?” That’s when I begin by confirming their name and if I’m at the correct address. Once I know I’ve got the right person, in the right place, I notice something I’ve seen many times before—they start taking small steps back, almost fading away from me. I don’t think they even realize they’re doing it. I think it’s their body trying to create distance from an unwelcome moment, knowing deep down that something devastating is about to be said. Then, I deliver the most difficult words anyone could ever hear: “It’s my sad responsibility to tell you that your son has died in a crash.” “It’s my sad responsibility to tell you that your daughter has died in a crash.” “It’s my sad responsibility to tell you that your mother has died in a crash.” “It’s my sad responsibility to tell you that your father has died in a crash.” In those moments, I often see one of three reactions: 1. They collapse. Some fall to the floor, crying in a way that’s impossible to describe. I kneel beside them, and often, I cry with them. 2. They go silent. Others stand frozen, their faces blank as they try to process what I’ve said. They’re lost, unsure of how to move forward. 3. They push me away. Sometimes, I’m told to leave or forcefully pushed back as they yell, “No! Don’t say that!” But I stay because no one should face that moment alone. These moments stay with me and the family involved. Tonight is a night meant for celebration—a time to welcome the new year, look forward to fresh opportunities, and start anew. It shouldn’t begin with tragedy and heartbreak. Please make safe choices tonight. Don’t drink and drive. Use a designated driver. Protect yourself and your loved ones from the pain of ever having to face this kind of moment. Be safe, Trooper Ben

A number of my good friends and family have been surprised about my decision to support @realDonaldTrump for president. They have been surprised because my political giving history has been mostly to Democrats, my voting registration has typically been Democrat (in NY, you must be registered to the party in order to vote in the primary, and usually the Republican candidate has no chance to win), and many of our philanthropic initiatives have supported issues that are consistent with Democratic priorities. All of the above said, I have always considered myself to be a centrist and/or moderate, and I have voted for the candidate and supported the issues and policies that I believe are in the best interest of the country. Some have accused me of supporting Trump because doing so will somehow benefit me financially. Fortunately, I do not need any financial benefits as I and my family have well more than we need. I have also committed to give away the substantial majority of my resources at or by the time I am no longer, so I don't consider personal financial benefits in the determination of whom I support for office. Some have suggested that I am supporting Trump because I am seeking a position in his administration. To be clear, I haven't been offered one and I wouldn't take a job in the administration (I love my job and it is the wrong time in my life to work in an administration). I will, however, do everything else I can to help the president succeed in helping our country and its citizens. All of the above said, I am an investor who manages funds that own some of the best, principally American, businesses in the world. In a better governed and managed America, these business will do better and increase in value faster. One might therefore argue that being 'long' America is somehow a conflict, so I thought to disclose this potential 'conflict' here. Some of my friends and family who support @KamalaHarris are ok with my supporting Trump, but don't want me to attempt to convince others to support him. Because I strongly believe that a Trump administration will be better for the country and the world than a Harris administration, I think it is important to share my thinking to the extent it helps others come to the right conclusion. Three months ago, when I endorsed Trump on the day of the first assassination attempt, I promised to share my thinking about why I came to this conclusion in a future more detailed post. I intend to do so in possibly more than one post, with the first, this one, explaining the actions and policies of the Biden/Harris administration and Democratic Party that were the catalysts for my losing total confidence in the administration and the Party. To be clear, my decision to vote for Trump is not an endorsement of everything he has done or will do because he is an imperfect man. Unlike a marriage or a business partnership where there are effectively unlimited alternatives, in this election, we have only two viable choices. Of the two, I believe that Trump is by far the superior candidate despite his flaws and mistakes he has made in the past. As always, I welcome your feedback on how I could be wrong and on how the below actions and policies I outline below might actually have been good for America. I have always believed that the best way to get to the truth is to hear the best arguments on all sides of an issue. While the 33 actions I describe below are those of the Democratic Party and the Biden/Harris administration, they are also the actions and policies that unfortunately our most aggressive adversaries would likely implement if they wanted to destroy America from within, and had the ability to take control of our leadership. These are the 33: (1) open the borders to millions of immigrants who were not screened for their risk to the country, dumping them into communities where the new immigrants overwhelm existing communities and the infrastructure to support the new entrants, at the expense of the historic residents, (2) introduce economic policies and massively increase spending without regard to their impact on inflation and the consequences for low-income Americans and the increase in our deficit and national debt, (3) withdraw from Afghanistan, abandoning our local partners and the civilians who worked alongside us in an unprepared, overnight withdrawal that led to American casualties and destroyed the lives of Afghani women and girls for generations, against the strong advice of our military leadership, and thereafter not showing appropriate respect for their loss at a memorial ceremony in their honor, (4) introduce thousands of new and unnecessary regulations in light of the existing regulatory regime that interfere with our businesses’ ability to compete, restraining the development of desperately needed housing, infrastructure, and energy production with the associated inflationary effects, (5) modify the bail system so that violent criminals are released without bail, (6) destroy our street retailers and communities and promote lawlessness by making shoplifting (except above large thresholds) no longer a criminal offense, (7) limit and/or attempt to limit or ban fracking and LNG so that U.S. energy costs increase substantially and the U.S. loses its energy independence, (8) promote DEI ideologies that award jobs, awards, and university admissions on the basis of race, sexual identity and gender criteria, and teach our students and citizens that the world can only be understood as an unfair battle between oppressors and the oppressed, where the oppressors are only successful due to structural racism or a rigged system and the oppressed are simply victims of an unfair system and world, (9) educate our elementary children that gender is fluid, something to be chosen by a child, and promote hormone blockers and gender reassignment surgeries to our youth without regard to the longer-term consequences to their mental and physical health, and allow biological boys and men to compete in girls and women's sports, depriving girls and women of scholarships, awards, and other opportunities that they would have rightly earned otherwise, (10) encourage and celebrate massive protests and riots that lead to the burning and destruction of local retail and business establishments while at the same time requiring schools to be shuttered because of the risk of Covid-19 spreading during large gatherings, (11) encourage and celebrate anti-American and anti-Israel protests and flag burning on campuses around the country with no consequences for the protesters who violate laws or university codes and policies, (12) allow antisemitism to explode with no serious efforts from the administration to quell this hatred, (13) mandate vaccines that have not been adequately tested nor have their risks been properly considered compared with the potential benefits adjusted for the age and health of the individual, censoring the contrary advice of top scientists around the world, (14) shut down free speech in media and on social media platforms that is inconsistent with government policies and objectives, (15) use the U.S., state, and local legal systems to attack and attempt to jail, take off the campaign trail, and/or massively fine candidates for the presidency without regard to the merits or precedential issues of the case, (16) seek to defund the police and promote anti-police rhetoric causing a loss of confidence in those who are charged with protecting us, (17) use government funds to subsidize auto companies and internet providers with vastly more expensive, dated and/or lower-quality technology when greatly superior and cheaper alternatives are available from companies that are owned and/or managed by individuals not favored by the current administration, (18) mandate in legislation and otherwise government solutions to problems when the private sector can do a vastly better, faster, and cheaper job, (19) seek to ban gas-powered cars and stoves without regard to the economic and practical consequences of doing so, (20) take no serious actions when 45 American citizens are killed by terrorists and 12 are taken hostage, (21) hold back armaments and weaponry from our most important ally in the Middle East in the midst of their hostage negotiations, hostages who include American citizens who have now been held for more than one year, (22) eliminate sanctions on one of our most dangerous enemies enabling them to generate $150 billion+ of cash reserves from oil sales, which they can then use to fund terrorist proxy organizations who attack us and our allies. Exchange five American hostages held by Iran for five Iranians plus $6 billion of cash in the worst hostage negotiation in history setting a disastrous and dangerous precedent, (23) remove known terrorist organizations from the terrorist list so we can provide aid to their people, and allow them to shoot rockets at U.S. assets and military bases with little if any military response from us, (24) lie to the American people about the cognitive health of the president and accuse those who provide video evidence of his decline of sharing doctored videos and being right wing conspirators, (25) do nothing about the deteriorating health of our citizens driven by the food industrial complex, the fraudulent USDA food pyramid, and the inclusion of ingredients in our food that are banned by other countries around the world which are more protective of their citizens, (26) do nothing about the proliferation of new vaccines that are not properly analyzed for their risk versus the potential benefit for healthy children who are mandated to receive them, (27) do nothing about the continued exemption from liability for the pharma industry that has led to a proliferation of mandatory vaccines for children without considering the potential cumulative effects of the now mandated 72-shot regime, (28) convince our minority youth that they are victims of a rigged system and that the American dream is not available to them, (29) fail to provide adequate Secret Service protection for alternative presidential candidates, (30) litigate to prevent alternative candidates from getting on the ballot, and take other anti-competitive steps including threatening political consultants who wish to work for alternative candidates for the presidency, and limit the potential media access for other candidates by threatening the networks' future access to the administration and access to 'scoops' if they platform an alternative candidate, (31) select the Democratic nominee for president in a backroom process by undisclosed party leaders without allowing Americans to choose between candidates in an open primary, (32) choose an inferior candidate for the presidency when other much more qualified candidates are available and interested to serve, (33) litigate to make it illegal for states to require proof of citizenship, voter ID, and/or residence in order to vote at a time when many Americans have lost confidence in the accuracy and trustworthiness of our voting system. I welcome your thoughts.

Woah. Chills. Will you, @Nike?

Time for our side to wake up to some hard realities, fast: 1. Stop calling on Biden to step down or to be forced out. That will just give Kamala all the benefits of running as an incumbent U.S. President. And she won’t be any better for America in the next 5 months than Biden will be. 2. Stop attacking Kamala for locking up too many people as a prosecutor. It lends credibility to the otherwise ridiculous claim that she’s a “law-and-order” candidate. 3. Stop saying that Kamala covered up to help Biden, while also saying that Kamala staged a coup to overthrow Biden. It doesn’t make sense to say both at once. And if we say things that don’t make sense, we will lose votes. Our biggest risk isn’t that voters will suddenly fall in love with Kamala. She didn’t even make it to her own party’s Iowa caucus because voters didn’t like her, *despite* fake enthusiasm the media tried to generate around her even back then. Our biggest risk is we get distracted & forget to offer our own vision for the future of the United States of America. We’re going to win this thing by defining who we are & what we actually stand *for*. Merit. Free speech. Self-governance. The rule of law. A historic landslide for Trump is still achievable. It’s up to us to seize it. 🇺🇸

So, if I’ve got this right, far-left protesters can riot in Washington D.C., sometimes for days, burn the American flag, torch leaders in effigy, take over buildings, disrupt official proceedings, and force a former president into a bunker, but the only time it’s an “insurrection” is when some protesters happen to be “Trump supporters”? The only thing burning faster than this American flag is the state-controlled media’s credibility.

We’re the country where we can disagree like hell and still be friends at the end of it. That’s the America we miss. We don’t have to be a nation in decline. We can still be a nation in our ascent. A nation whose best days are actually still ahead of us. That’s what we get if we put Donald Trump back in the White House. That’s how we Make America Great Again.

Another Harrison Butker W

Every House democrat just voted to -keep men in women's sports -put men in women's bathrooms & locker rooms -house men in women's dorms -control your speech & demand the language by which you call these men Every. Single. Democrat...even those with daughters of their own. Evil.

When you run an ad standing up for women and girls' sports, you get banned for life from @tiktok_us. Here's the ad. Offensive right? 🙃

Today I'm launching my own clothing brand. It's the only athletic brand to stand up for female athletes and the protection of women's sports. It's called XX-XY Athletics. I hope you'll join us. @xx_xyathletics @Riley_Gaines_ @PaulaYScanlan @icons_women

Tom Brady blowing up the internet with TRUTH!

Bill Maher Drops Unexpected Bomb on Left’s Outrage for Harrison Butker’s Speech “I don’t see what the big crime is.” “I really don’t. And I think this is part of the problem people have with the left is that lots of people in this country are like this. Like he’s saying, some of you may go on to lead successful careers, but a lot of you are excited about this other way that people, everybody used to be. And now, can’t that just be a choice, too?”

It's always been the goal for @CUlsaker to get back to Topeka, and now the @IchabodMBB & McPherson alum gets that chance as the new head coach for @TWChargersBBall Meet the Chargers' new leader:

Here's @CUlsaker's message to Topeka West players and families as he takes over as head coach of the Chargers🏀 "Highly competitive, but also understanding...I want my players to know they always can come to me, regardless of the situation" @TWChargersBBall @TopekaWestAthle

Great to catch up with new @TWChargersBBall head coach @CUlsaker today! After five years leading Wabaunsee, the Washburn MBB alum is back in Topeka🏀 "This is home to me...if there's a 501 [school district] job that ever opened up, it'd be Topeka West"

. @TPS_501 approves @CUlsaker to take reins of @TWChargersBBall program. The @IchabodMBB product has coached Wabaunsee the past five seasons, leading the Chargers to a runnerup finish in Class 2A in 2021. ... topsports.news/news/topeka-we…

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Fill in the blank: This rally was ________? Relive the epic point in No. 4 @HuskerVB's victory over No. 21 Kentucky. 🤯

BIG TIME! So excited for the Davis era!

"I want my legacy to be the impact that I can have on young kids and the people in the state of Iowa and I hope I brought them a lot of joy this season." - Caitlin Clark on her legacy