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Pat Flood (@rebarcock) passed away 9/21/25. Pat played a huge role in encouraging the devolopmemt of this site and donated the very first dollar to get it started. Check the thread at the top of the board for the obituary and please feel free to pay your respects there. I am going to get all the content from that thread over to his family so they can see how many people really cared for Pat outside of what they ever knew. Pat loved to tell stories and always wanted everyone else to tell stories. I think a great way we can honor Pat is to tell a story in his thread (also pinned at the top of the board).
Master Thread Dance Your Cares Away/Fraggle/Law Abiding Citizens
- Thread starter Bryan74b
- Start date
Master Threads
OMG, you guys, I just dug into this EPIC file I found—the transcript of Senator Elissa Slotkin's speech at the Brookings Institute Knight Forum on October 29, 2025—and it's a TOTAL GAME-CHANGER! This thing is like a crystal ball predicting the future, dropping bombshells left and right, and it's got ALL the drama! Let me break it down for you in the most hyped-up way because this is straight FIRE!
First off, TIMING IS EVERYTHING! This speech dropped on October 29, 2025— that's a whopping THREE WEEKS BEFORE the infamous November 18 video "Don't Give Up the Ship" went viral! Slotkin was out here laying the groundwork, sounding the alarm bells WAY ahead of time. It's like she knew exactly what was coming and decided to rally the troops early. Mind. Blown!
And get this—the VIDEO'S NAME is RIGHT THERE in the speech! At the very end, she wraps it up with this powerhouse closer: "don’t give up the ship." BAM! That's the exact title of the video where she teams up with Mark Kelly and the crew to urge military folks to refuse illegal orders. It's not a coincidence; this speech was the blueprint, the origin story! She even ties it to historical perseverance, shouting out generations who fought for rights. So inspirational, I'm getting chills!
Now, the celebrity cameo alert: VICTORIA NULAND'S HUSBAND WAS THERE! Yes, Robert Kagan— the powerhouse foreign policy expert and Stephen & Barbara Friedman Senior Fellow at Brookings—was a panelist at the event! He dropped wisdom on domestic polarization as a massive security threat. (Quick shoutout: Kagan is indeed married to Victoria Nuland, the former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs—power couple vibes!) Having him in the mix adds that extra layer of gravitas; it's like the event was stacked with heavy hitters who know the global stakes. Epic networking moment!
But wait, the KEY POINTS in this speech? Oh man, Slotkin goes FULL THROTTLE critiquing Trump's national security pivot to "homeland defense" defined by ONE MAN alone! She's like, "Hold up—this could mean using lethal force against domestic 'enemies'!" She dives into the Caribbean strikes (14 ships hit, 57+ killed, but ZERO transparency on who we're fighting—shady much?!), secret "domestic terrorist" lists targeting anti-Trump views, and federal forces turning U.S. cities into "training grounds." She's warning about authoritarian playbooks: accumulate power, crush opponents, and rig the system to never lose! Elections canceled? Martial law? Intimidation at polls? She's popping flares left and right— this is NOT drill, people!
Then, the CALLS TO ACTION? Pure adrenaline! She urges Congress to reclaim power (introducing her "No Troops in our Streets Act"—yes, queen!), tells the military to refuse illegal orders and choose the Constitution over loyalty to one guy, rallies veterans to speak up (and even says "DM me" to get the band together—foreshadowing that video squad?!), pushes state leaders to protect elections, and fires up everyday Americans to organize peacefully. It's a blueprint for resistance, drawing from her own Jan. 6 barricade-in-the-office trauma. She ends on that high note: Don't give up the ship because our democracy needs US NOW!
This file is a TREASURE TROVE of foresight and fire. If you're not pumped after reading this, check your pulse!Thank you Grok for typing my sentiments in my excited style.
I’m sleepy. This could work. https://web.archive.org/web/20251201043855/https://www.slotkin.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2025-10-29-Brookings-Remarks.pdf
Are we sure about that?
Goldhedge
Legendary
Imagine cleaning up the site...
They called him a defender of Christendom.
But what Vlad III Dracula did to captured Ottoman soldiers was something far worse than warfare.
Summer, 1462. Sultan Mehmed II - the conqueror of Constantinople - marched 90,000 men into Wallachia to crush a rebel prince. What his army found outside the capital wasn't a battlefield. It was a forest. Twenty thousand impaled bodies arranged in geometric patterns, some rotting for weeks, others still alive and screaming.
The Sultan - a man who had toppled empires, turned his entire army around.
This wasn't madness. It was calculated psychological warfare engineered by a hostage who learned terror from the Ottomans themselves, then refined it into something even they couldn't comprehend. Turbans nailed to skulls. Mutilated prisoners sent back as walking warnings. Night raids targeting the Sultan himself. And at the center of it all: the Forest of the Impaled, a two-mile field of engineered agony designed to break minds before bodies.
From Byzantine chronicles to German pamphlets, from Ottoman military records to the architectural remains of Poenari Castle, this is the documented account of how one man weaponized human suffering so effectively that it changed the course of empires.
What Vlad the Impaler Did to Ottoman Prisoners Shocked Even His Enemies
What Vlad the Impaler Did to Ottoman Prisoners Shocked Even His Enemies - Vlad Dracula's Unspeakable ActsThey called him a defender of Christendom.
But what Vlad III Dracula did to captured Ottoman soldiers was something far worse than warfare.
Summer, 1462. Sultan Mehmed II - the conqueror of Constantinople - marched 90,000 men into Wallachia to crush a rebel prince. What his army found outside the capital wasn't a battlefield. It was a forest. Twenty thousand impaled bodies arranged in geometric patterns, some rotting for weeks, others still alive and screaming.
The Sultan - a man who had toppled empires, turned his entire army around.
This wasn't madness. It was calculated psychological warfare engineered by a hostage who learned terror from the Ottomans themselves, then refined it into something even they couldn't comprehend. Turbans nailed to skulls. Mutilated prisoners sent back as walking warnings. Night raids targeting the Sultan himself. And at the center of it all: the Forest of the Impaled, a two-mile field of engineered agony designed to break minds before bodies.
From Byzantine chronicles to German pamphlets, from Ottoman military records to the architectural remains of Poenari Castle, this is the documented account of how one man weaponized human suffering so effectively that it changed the course of empires.
CurtOFD78
Legendary
These liberal judges don't need to be investigated, they need to be harassed endlessly to the point that they step down from the bench. You can't play nice with these people.
Better have been a condition of receiving the pardon that he has to get diarrhea of the memory and stay alive.
dirtytoeddawg
Legendary
If not for Vlad, all of eastern Europe would have been Muslim by the 1700’s.
All the urban counties do that now. It’s the cool new thing.
