It’s amazing how quickly the gatekeepers of culture decide what’s acceptable. In June, every logo becomes a rainbow. Every stadium, every jersey, every broadcast gets a political message. But put a Bible verse on your cap? Suddenly that’s “controversial.” Put an American slogan front and center? Suddenly that’s “divisive.” The NFL had no problem painting political movements in the end zone. Major League Baseball has no problem turning every June into a month-long corporate activism campaign. Yet the moment someone wants to celebrate faith, patriotism, or traditional values, we’re told those things don’t belong in sports. Funny how the people preaching inclusion always seem to have a very specific list of viewpoints they’re willing to include. If rainbow logos belong in sports, then so do Bible verses. If political messages belong in sports, then so do messages celebrating faith, family, and country. The double standard isn’t subtle anymore. EVERYONE sees it.

My Lineup

Would have been 47 years since we said “l do” Pat. I will always love and now miss you, but cherish that you got to go home first.

Her name was Yahel Shosham. She was kidnapped from Be'eri on 10/7. Released from Hamas after 50 days.

Hamas terrorists in Gaza firing RPGs and shooting AK-47s in the air as a crowd of Gazans, including children, cheer and shout "Allahu Akbar" while filming it all. These are the people the world wants to give a state to?

MISSING Jayden was last seen on May 31, 2026 in Richmond, Virginia. bit.ly/4exLgF0

16 June 1914 | A Polish man, Karol Cebula, was born in Myślenice. A law student. He was deported to #Auschwitz on 14 June 1940 from Tarnów in the first transport of Poles to the camp. No. 598 In 1941 he was transferred to Dachau. He survived. --- ▶ Watch two films about the first transport of Poles to Auschwitz:

Documentary: youtube.com/watch?v=pLIE7Kvz…

 A short Video History episode: youtu.be/kKOZLEUo2QM

15 June 1905 | A Czech Jew, Valtr Baumgarten, was born in Prague. He was deported to #Auschwitz from #Theresienstadt Ghetto on 18 May 1944. He did not survive. --- The history of deportations of Jews from the Theresienstadt ghetto to Auschwitz: bit.ly/3MdIVUA

16 June 1916 | A Polish Jewish woman, Toibe Hofenberg (nee Morozowicz), was born in Łomża. She was deported to #Auschwitz. She did not survive.

Rob Schneider is putting his money behind the message. The Hollywood star says he'll cover any potential fines for MLB players who wear Bible verses on their uniforms after league officials warned three San Francisco Giants pitchers who displayed Bible references on their Pride Night caps. The moment has quickly turned into a bigger fight over religious expression, league rules, and where MLB draws the line on what players can show on the field.

Stanley Kubrick demanded 70 takes from actors. He let this medically discharged Marine improvise. In 1985, R. Lee Ermey stood on a film set in England with nothing but memories and a voice that could cut through steel. He was not supposed to be there. Not as an actor, anyway. Stanley Kubrick had hired him as a technical advisor for Full Metal Jacket. The role of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman was already cast with a trained professional. Ermey's job was to teach actors how drill instructors actually behaved. But Ermey had spent years watching Hollywood get it wrong. He approached Kubrick with a request that bordered on audacity. "Let me show you what a real drill instructor sounds like." Kubrick was skeptical. This was a director who shot scenes 40, 50, sometimes 70 times until they were perfect. He controlled every word. Every gesture. Every breath. But he agreed to watch. Ermey positioned actors in formation. The cameras rolled. And he began screaming. For two hours, he unleashed a torrent of creative, devastating verbal assault. Stagehands pelted him with tennis balls and oranges to simulate chaos. He never flinched. Never broke rhythm. Never repeated himself. Because he wasn't acting. He was remembering. Ronald Lee Ermey had enlisted in the Marines at seventeen after a Kansas judge gave him a choice: jail or the military. He chose the Corps. From 1965 to 1967, he served as a drill instructor at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, breaking down civilians and rebuilding them as Marines. In 1968, he deployed to Vietnam for fourteen months. Then injuries ended his career. Medical discharge. Twenty-seven years old. No college degree. No plan. He drifted to the Philippines, enrolled in university using his GI Bill, and stumbled into film work as a technical advisor. Small roles followed. A helicopter pilot in Apocalypse Now. A drill instructor in The Boys in Company C. But nothing that changed his life. Until Kubrick watched those tapes. The director saw something no acting class could manufacture: authenticity so complete it became art. Ermey had produced 150 pages of original insults. His intensity never wavered. His knowledge was absolute. Kubrick made a decision almost unheard of in his career. He fired the original actor. He gave Ermey the role. And he allowed him to improvise more than half of his own dialogue. Stanley Kubrick, the perfectionist who demanded endless takes from every performer, needed only two or three takes from a former drill instructor with no formal training. Because you cannot fake what is real. When Full Metal Jacket premiered in 1987, Ermey's performance became instantly iconic. Real drill instructors said it was the most accurate portrayal ever filmed. Veterans said it triggered memories they had buried for decades. Ermey earned a Golden Globe nomination. He went on to appear in over sixty films. He voiced Sarge in Toy Story. He hosted military programs on the History Channel. But he never forgot his brothers and sisters in uniform. In 2002, the Marine Corps awarded him an honorary promotion to Gunnery Sergeant, making him the only retiree in Corps history to receive that recognition. He spent years visiting troops overseas, supporting veterans, and keeping the military spirit alive. R. Lee Ermey passed away on April 15, 2018. The Marine Corps called him a great American and an even greater Marine. Think about that journey. A troubled teenager from Kansas. A drill instructor. A combat veteran. A medical discharge. Odd jobs in foreign countries. And then, at forty-three, convincing one of cinema's most demanding directors to trust him with creative freedom. He did not succeed because he pretended to be something he wasn't. He succeeded because he refused to be anything else. That is not a Hollywood story. That is a Marine who improvised, adapted, and overcame, all the way to immortality.

On this day in 1775, a tall Virginia planter accepted a job that should have ruined him, and instead it made a nation. The day before, Congress had voted to create a Continental Army out of the militia swarming around Boston. Now they needed someone to lead it, and the choice was not obvious. There were older men, more experienced men, men who had commanded larger forces. But the colonies had a deeper problem than experience. New England was already carrying the fight, and if a New Englander took command, the southern colonies might never fully commit. The cause needed a leader who could bind thirteen suspicious, squabbling colonies into one army. George Washington had been quietly attending the Continental Congress in his old military uniform, a silent signal that he was ready to serve. On June 15, 1775, John Adams rose and nominated him. The Virginian was chosen unanimously. What he did next tells you everything. He stood before Congress and confessed he did not believe himself equal to the command. Then he refused a salary, asking only that his expenses be covered. This was not false modesty. He genuinely understood the odds. He was about to lead untrained farmers, with no navy, no reliable money, and no real government, against the most powerful military empire on the planet. He would lose New York. He would retreat across New Jersey in the dead of winter with his army melting away around him. He would go years without a clear victory. And he would never quit. Eight years later the empire surrendered, and the man who doubted himself in June of 1775 walked away from power instead of seizing it, stunning the world. 251 years ago today, the American experiment got the one leader it could not have survived without.

16 June 1925 | A Dutch Jewish woman, Rahel Rita Cohen, was born in Deventer. In October 1943 she was deported to #Auschwitz. She did not survive. --- 📖 Jews deported to Auschwitz from the German-occupied Netherlands: lekcja.auschwitz.org/32_en/

On this day in 1849, James K. Polk died at just 53 years old, only 103 days after leaving the White House. That is the shortest retirement of any president in history. Here is why it stings. Polk was a dark horse nobody expected to win, and he announced he would serve a single term and accomplish exactly four enormous goals. Lower the tariff. Restore an independent treasury. Settle the Oregon border. Acquire California and the Southwest. He did all four. Then he worked himself into the ground doing it, left office exhausted, and was dead within months. He may be the most ruthlessly efficient president America ever had, and almost nobody remembers his name.

True

Ooookay? #laughteristhebestmedicine

Landon says the USA reaches the quarterfinals. 🇺🇸 How far do you think they'll go? Bet team futures now on FanDuel.

Fetterman just absolutely torched Graham Platner after Platner called him an “a**hole.” “Oh, I’m devastated! I’m devastated! The tough guy who roughs up ex-girlfriends and walks around with a Nazi tattoo doesn’t like me? I’ll wear that as a badge of honor.” Then Fetterman ripped the media for treating Platner’s ugly past like a minor footnote instead of a screaming red flag. Funny how the press will dig into a Republican’s lunch order from 1997, but a left-wing clown with abuse allegations and a Nazi tattoo suddenly needs “context.” Classic media double standard. What do you think? 👇 #Fetterman #MediaBias #Hypocrisy

🇺🇸 Double Shot of Badass Americans: William J. Crawford He was a janitor at the Air Force Academy for many years. The cadets who passed him every day had no idea they were walking among a living legend. Born in Pueblo, Colorado in 1918, Crawford was drafted into the Army in July 1942. By September 1943 he was serving as a Private and squad scout with Company I, 3rd Platoon, 142nd Infantry Regiment, 36th Infantry Division in southern Italy. On September 13, 1943, his platoon attacked German positions on Hill 424 near Altavilla. After reaching the crest, they were immediately pinned down by machine gun and small arms fire from multiple enemy positions. Without orders and completely on his own, Crawford moved forward alone under heavy fire. He first located one machine gun dug in on a terrace directly in front of the platoon. He crawled through open ground under fire, closed to within a few yards of the emplacement, destroyed the gun with a hand grenade, and killed three of the crew. He kept going. Crawford spotted a second machine gun position firing on his men. Again moving alone and exposed, he advanced on the crew under fire. When he got close enough, he threw a grenade, destroyed the gun, and eliminated the crew. He still wasn't finished. He located a third German machine gun that was continuing to pin down his unit. Once more he advanced alone through enemy fire, closed on the position, killed one of the Germans with rifle fire. Two other Germans who were there fled. Crawford, the badass he was, grabbed the German machine gun, turned it around, and fired on them as they were running down the hill. Crawford had single handedly taken out all three machine gun nests that were holding up his entire platoon. A few days later he was captured by the Germans. His fellow soldiers thought he had been killed. He would spend the next 19 months as a prisoner of war. Because the Army believed he was KIA, the Medal of Honor for his actions was awarded posthumously and presented to his father in 1944. When the war ended and Crawford was returned home, he had technically already received the nation’s highest award, but he was never formally presented with it. He would stay in the military until the 1960's, retiring as a Master Sergeant. He then took a quiet job as a janitor at the U.S. Air Force Academy. For many years he mopped floors and cleaned the cadet squadrons without ever mentioning his service. Thousands of cadets passed by him over the years without the slightest clue. Then, in the late 1970s, a cadet was reading a book about the Allied campaign in Italy and stumbled upon his name. He asked the janitor about it. Crawford simply replied, “That was one day in my life and it happened a long time ago.” They were shocked to find out their janitor was that same person. The cadets spread the word and helped arrange for him to have the recognition he deserved. On May 30, 1984, nearly 41 years after his actions, President Reagan personally awarded Master Sergeant William J. Crawford his Medal of Honor during the Air Force Academy graduation ceremony. William J. Crawford is an American Badass 🇺🇸

On June 13, 1777, a 19-year-old French teenager landed on a beach in South Carolina, uninvited, to fight in someone else's war. He would become one of the most important men in American history. The Marquis de Lafayette was one of the richest young aristocrats in France. He had a beautiful wife, a fortune, and zero reason to risk any of it. But he believed in the American cause so fiercely that when the French king forbade him from going, Lafayette bought his own ship and sailed anyway. He literally went AWOL from a life of luxury to bleed for a country that didn't exist yet. Congress was annoyed at first. Another foreign officer looking for a paycheck? Then Lafayette offered to serve for free and pay his own way. That got their attention. He met Washington and the two formed one of the great father-son bonds in American history. Washington had no biological children. Lafayette named his only son George Washington Lafayette. He took a bullet in the leg at Brandywine and kept rallying the retreat. He was instrumental at Yorktown, the battle that won the war. He went home a hero on two continents. A foreign teenager believed in America before America did. 249 years ago today.