ed george 🌻🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈💙(quote me)

Russian milblogger Alexander Kots says it's time to take the gloves off, "Maybe it's time to stop waging war according to the chivalrous code and start hitting the ruling elite of Ukraine?"

🚨🚨 A new report from The New York Times reveals FDA officials blocked publication of taxpayer-funded studies showing COVID-19 and shingles vaccines are SAFE, with serious side effects extremely rare. Health experts are calling this an act of censorship. Calls for investigations are already growing.

Of all my experiences, this is my favorite story. In 2015, I was camping in the reddish moondust on the border between Jordan and Syria, a stone's throw from what was then the Islamic State. My first son had just been born. Although this was my fifth or sixth tour, adjusting to this one was difficult. Something had changed in me. Priorities had shifted. A young dog, pearl white in color, hung out with us at camp. We kind of adopted her and fed her leftovers. She appreciated having a full belly and a respite from the packs of wild dogs and angry Bedouins. We appreciated a little added security. Some part of me that was missing the new dad life I had left behind made me bond with this pup in a special way. We named her Lucy, which was appropriate, because it was similar to the Arabic word "Lulu", which means pearl. As my tour wound down, I ramped up my efforts to get Lucy back to the states. It didn't feel right just leaving her to whatever nasty death awaited her in the desert. Long story short, I managed to do this with the help of an organization called Puppy Rescue Mission, which held fundraisers and paid for Lucy's boarding (both in Amman, Jordan and in Washington, D.C.), vet bills, and airfare back to the US. The generosity of Americans was truly amazing. The only thing left for me to figure out how to get this dog from the middle of buttf***k nowhere to Amman. One day, I got lucky. This Jordanian GID officer named Ali visited us near our camp. I had met with him several times over the course of my tour and I knew him to be corrupt to the core: an incompetent ne'er-do-well son of some Jordanian big shot, who owed his position to nepotism and lived for the nightlife in the big city. I saw my chance. First, I asked him straight up to take the dog to the vet in Amman. He laughed, spat on the ground, and said something disparaging about Americans and their love for filthy dogs. So I went for his Achilles heel - his love of Oakley sunglasses. I told him I would give him my Oakleys if he drove the dog 3.5 hours to Amman and delivered her to the vet. That got him. He said he would. Surprisingly, he was true to his word, so I gave him my Oakleys and threw in a US Army wristwatch for good measure. He loved getting both items. I later heard through contacts that Ali, who had seemed to be as westernized as a Muslim in that part of the world could be, later defected to the Islamic State. I guess all the drinking, drugs, and philandering finally weighed heavily enough on his conscience that he decided to do something drastic to get back in Allah's good graces. I'm sure he got a kick out of showing his US Army watch to his jihadist buddies and regaling them with stories about stupid Americans like me. I don't know if he died trembling in some tunnel in Baghouz, found martyrdom in a VBIED, or skulked back to his dad and now holds some office in the government. All are possible scenarios. He did me a solid once, but I hope he got what he deserved. Only God knows what that is, but I hope that that's exactly what he got. His example serves to constantly remind me never to underestimate the pull of what we in the West term radical Islam, but which they just call Islam. Lucy, now pushing eleven years old, is still faithfully guarding my sheep.

Fun fact: A kid from my high school (my brother’s graduating class) won the National Spelling Bee. “Pococurante” was his winning word.