April 19, 1775 What made the farmers fight in 1775? Judge Millen Chamberlain in 1842, when he was twenty-one, interviewed Captain Preston, a ninety-year-old veteran of the Concord fight:

MSN "reports" that "A senior official warned Rubio and Hegseth their jobs may be at risk if they keep opposing Trump's Iran deal."

Our first baseball game ever. Houston Astros vs Detroit Tigers. New sport unlocked.

Our most American experience so far🇺🇸 We met with the Houston Police department and ate typical Texan BBQ together. It looked in there just like in the movies. They even put on Ella Langley just for us.😂

There are about 3 hours left to leave a comment on Trump's proposed Arch. If you've not been to D.C. this piece explains the vista from Arlington National Cemetery to the Lincoln Memorial. It is a somber, moving sight. The proposed Arch w/be 2X higher than the Lincoln Memorial.

#HealthyFaithChat That was all folks! Thanks you all soo much for your upbuilding comments. Join us again on Thursday evening same time. Kevin will post who and what. Be Blessed in the Lord!

Many Republicans have pointed out to me that this type of sanctions relief likely requires the IRGC to be *de-listed* as a terrorist organization under U.S. law As someone who covered the Rob Malley-led Senate briefings in 2022, not even the Biden admin was willing to do this.

4/They do not seem to have a good grasp of US sanctions law. They laid out the possibility of a $300 billion investment fund for Iran. And one said at one point that "the sanctions relief is not tied specifically to any particular conduct. It's tied generally to them behaving more appropriately, and obviously the thing that we care the most about is the nuclear program." But sanctions are specific to particular conduct.

1/I listened to the senior Trump administration officials' call about the latest with Iran. I am in some ways more confused now than before the call. A few thoughts:

Serious people in government are freaking out, and with good reason

Good morning all & OTD in 1815, what will become the Waterloo campaign begins, as Napoleon's armies invade the Netherlands & approaches Charleroi. There are initial battles between the French & the Allies, as Wellington & Marshal Blucher try to discern Napoleon's next moves

It's not that difficult to avoid being a Nazi. It really isn't.

Only one man could pull this off!

Babies should be adopted by married couples. ie A man & a woman. These sort of crimes are horrifically predictable & result from the denial of basic human nature.

Two men adopt a healthy, happy baby. His grandmother, who looks after his sister, objects. She asks for the baby to be fostered for a few months until she is well enough to take him. This is denied. His adoptive "father" abuses him until he dies.

What can the Trump administration do to address voters' concerns about affordability? @SeanTrende joked on the RCP podcast: “Build a time machine. Go back a few months. Don’t attack Iran without a game plan to knock it out quickly.”

Rule of thumb. When the IRGC is pumped we should be worried. @ANDmagazine @WeTheBrandon @gc22gc

‘IRGC Commander Ahmad Vahidi saying "first, we take the money" in reference to the $300B in reconstruction funds and $24B in frozen funds Iran is receiving, and then the IRGC takes over the Strait of Bab al-Mandeb after Hormuz, where it plans to "play exactly the same game."’

National Hurricane Center raises alert for possible Gulf tropical storm wftv.com/news/local/national…

Ben Affleck just described something Beethoven figured out 200 years ago, except Beethoven couldn't hear a single note of it. In 1823, a copyist named Franz Schlemmer got a handwritten score from Ludwig van Beethoven that was almost unreadable. Notes crossed out, rewritten, crossed through again. Pages glued on top of other pages. Schlemmer had to guess at what Beethoven meant, and Beethoven, deaf for nine years by then, had to write corrections in conversation notebooks, furious at every mistake. The 9th Symphony took seven years to sketch. Beethoven's surviving notebooks show the famous "Ode to Joy" melody went through over 200 versions before he landed on the one you know. Early versions are almost unrecognizable. He knew. He always knew. He reportedly threw early sketches across the room and started again. Ninety percent of the time, you look at it and think: we've got a long way to go. The hardest part was the collaboration he couldn't escape. Beethoven wrote music only he could hear inside his own head. But a symphony needs 200 musicians who can't read your mind. He had to explain everything. The markings in his scores were obsessively detailed, so specific that musicians sometimes couldn't make sense of them. What was clear in his deaf skull wasn't clear to anyone holding a violin. What's obvious to you isn't always obvious to someone else. The premiere of the 9th Symphony was May 7, 1824, in Vienna. Beethoven stood near conductor Michael Umlauf and moved his body to music he literally could not hear. Umlauf had quietly told the musicians beforehand: ignore him. Follow me. The symphony ended and five thousand people erupted into applause. Beethoven kept conducting, his hands still moving to a piece that was already over. He had no idea. A soloist named Caroline Unger walked over and physically turned him to face the crowd. Five standing ovations. Security had to step in before the audience would leave. The first cut is a private failure. The final version is a public miracle. Between them is years of repetition, frustrated collaboration, and the exhausting work of making other people understand what you can only fully see inside your own head. Film is collaborative. So is a symphony. So is every complex thing humans have built. The Eiffel Tower needed 300 metalworkers and faced a petition from 300 Parisian artists calling it an iron eyesore, before a single tourist had climbed it. The first cut is supposed to be bad. The real work is the 200 versions of a melody that isn't right yet, the copyist who misreads your notation, the seven years between the first rough sketch and the night someone has to physically turn you around to face what you made.

עם הסכם, בלי הסכם - כל עוד אני ראש ממשלת ישראל, לאיראן לא יהיה נשק גרעיני >>