Trad Catholic. Army vet. Ex-geographer. Ex-journalist: murder, organized crime, jazz, c&w, the press. Love: PA hills, Irish whiskey, good stories.
A Farm In Northeast Ohio
Joined January 2016
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The second chapter from The Rivers of Amerikay.
Book 1 of The Book of Crusoe Walker: The Ghaney
I Ain't, He Says, I Ain't, Old Kid, And I Would Pinch ' Em If I Did
It was nearly a year since we had destroyed the second Cibola, less than that since Bear-Named-Bear had ripped the throat out of the last of the Harpey brothers and my uncle, Toby Walker, was nervous - something I'd never seen in him before. We were waiting to meet old Addis Walker, the man who was called Songo by all of the Prithees and most of the family.
There were three of us - Toby and his wife, Maddie, and me - and we were expected for dinner with Songo and his almost-new wife, Rebecca, on board the Melancholie Jakewees, the very big and very elegant riverboat that had been my grandfather's home (and mine) since Butterfield the Assassin had burned down the Panopticon the year before.
At first, it had not been planned to be a dinner but, instead, a meeting between Songo and Toby. Then, because it was to be the last day of the old year, Rebecca who was as kind and good as she was beautiful and tough insisted that Maddie who was very pregnant at seven months be included because she wanted to - well, because she wanted to share as much as she could in the coming into the world of her first grandchild.
At the last minute, I'd been added to the list of those who would dine.
My father, Darby, had returned to the Tionesta along the Ghaney to spend Christmas with old friends and I'd gone back with him. Unlike the rest of the Walkers, I'd never been an outdoorsman through and through and though I could take down a deer with my rifle at least as well as all of them, I'd never learned to like field dressing one. So, I'd decided to leave Tionesta early in order to spend First Night with my friends in Nimishillen.
It was late afternoon when I'd gotten back to the Jakewees, and the sky was glooming gray and snow was spitting. I was tired, cold, wet and hungry and I'd been on the Ghaney, alone in my kayak, for a day-and-a-half.
Except for the guards, I saw and spoke to no-one as I hauled myself and my pack filled with Christmas presents - maple candies for the grown-ups and a painter-skin covering for the coming baby - up to my cabin on the Texas.
Ted Joy retweeted
What does “lose yourself in the process” even mean?
What is ‘yourself’, and how would it get lost by child rearing?
Maybe it’s in the junk drawer.
Ted Joy retweeted
A three star general sitting in a diner in Arlington with notes he took from a classified report, reading them out loud to a reporter who was writing a book… think about that for a second.
According to the internal investigation report Axios got its hands on, Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia, the man running strategy, plans and policy for the Joint Chiefs, admitted to leaking classified information on Iran and Ukraine to two reporters at two different outlets over about a year, and a U.S. official says he acknowledged it on video after he failed four polygraphs. It started as early as June 2025, it ran through Signal, and when one of those reporters lost Pentagon access he just moved the meeting to the Silver Diner. Then there is the Signal thread about Iran that he says he deleted by accident… investigators don't buy that and neither do I.
Now keep in mind the part the press is skipping. When Hegseth fired him, the Joint Staff put out a statement thanking him for 32 years of distinguished service, and according to a U.S. official it was acting Army Secretary Adam Telle's office pushing for that warm send off to limit the fallout. They pulled it once the full picture came out. So who exactly were they protecting, and why was the first instinct to polish the general instead of protecting the country he swore an oath to?
Here is the reality. This is what institutional rot looks like up close, a man with stars on his shoulders who decided the press was his chain of command, and the report even says he admitted being one of the 20 officials quoted in a story trashing Pentagon leadership. Rank was supposed to mean something. Honor was supposed to mean something. He traded both for a few pages in somebody else's book.
How many more of them are still sitting in that building? You already know the answer.
DOJ has the referral. Charge him.
🚨 HOLY CRAP! The Pentagon's Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia — who was just fired by SecWar Pete Hegseth — has ADMITTED to leaking classified Iran and Ukraine intelligence to *two reporters* at two different outlets, according to an internal investigation report obtained by Axios
AND SO THERE IT IS.
Hegseth and Trump are PURGING the leakers! Now, PROSECUTE.
He allegedly met one reporter at a Silver Diner in Arlington and read off notes from a classified report on U.S. aid to Ukraine ‼️
Officials also suspect he deliberately wiped a Signal thread with another reporter about Iran.
Sylvia, the Joint Staff's top military planner, reportedly confessed on video after FAILING four polygraph tests
The Pentagon has referred the case to the DOJ for possible prosecution.
The media fearmongered when Hegseth started cleaning house, and now we know why he did it!
@PeteHegseth did the right thing here. We don't want these people near our national security.
It's not just been during the past 20 years, it began when Westmoreland became the American commander in Viet Nam in 1964 and, then a few years later, the Army Chief of Staff.
Generals? What Generals?
The bar for becoming a general officer is in the fucking basement. You can see a trend in my posts as of late. I've gone full bluntness on this topic since nothing else seems to work.
We spent twenty years losing wars while rewarding the people who learned how to survive the system that was losing them. Strategic failure became “complexity.” No victory became “persistent engagement.” Nobody got fired, everyone got another star, and the bureaucracy learned the oldest trick in Washington: rename failure until it sounds like expertise.
Then came the cultural surrender.
The same generals who couldn't produce victory abroad stood almost mute while the formation was carved up at home by race, sex, identity, extremism stand downs, demographic targets, and an expanding DEI bureaucracy. They watched warfighting institutions absorb the language and priorities of academia and HR, then called the corrosion “leadership.”
That's the stunning indictment nobody wants to touch: a general is supposed to protect the formation from threats outside it and rot inside it. Too many did neither.
We promoted custodians of decline and called them strategic leaders. I'm sick and tired of having to pretend the system isn't absolutely cracked in half by people who serve themselves over the nation.
No more.
Ted Joy retweeted
December 20, 1943. An American B-17 bomber limps away from a raid on Bremen, Germany, alone and barely flying.
A German fighter pilot pulls up right next to it.
He has one more kill to earn one of the highest honors in the Luftwaffe. The bomber is helpless.
He doesn't fire.
The bomber was called Ye Olde Pub. Its pilot was Second Lieutenant Charlie Brown, 21 years old, from West Virginia. It was his first combat mission.
It went wrong almost immediately. Flak tore into the plane before it even reached the target. Engines were damaged. It fell out of formation, and once a bomber was alone, German fighters swarmed it.
The attacks shredded the B-17. The nose was smashed. Part of the tail was shot away. Most of the guns were knocked out. The tail gunner was killed. Several of the crew were wounded. Brown himself was hit and blacked out as the plane spiraled toward the ground.
He came to just in time to pull it out of the dive.
Now they were flying low and slow over Germany, trying to get home on what was left of the plane.
They passed over a German airfield. On the ground, a pilot named Franz Stigler was refueling his fighter. He was an ace with 22 victories. One more and he'd likely receive the Knight's Cross.
He took off to finish the bomber.
As he pulled up behind it, he couldn't believe it was still flying. He could see right through the holes in the fuselage. He could see the crew inside, wounded and bleeding. The tail gunner was slumped over his gun, dead.
Stigler remembered something his old commander had told him. That if he ever shot a man in a parachute, the commander would shoot him himself.
To Stigler, this was the same thing. These men couldn't fight back.
So instead of firing, he flew alongside. He tried to signal Brown to land in Germany or head to neutral Sweden. Brown and his crew had no idea what this German was doing. They just stared at him, terrified.
So Stigler did something even more dangerous. He stayed right on the bomber's wing as it crossed over the German coast, so the anti-aircraft gunners below would see a German fighter there and hold their fire.
Once they were over the sea, Stigler saluted, banked away, and was gone.
If anyone had found out, he could have been executed.
The B-17 made it across the North Sea and crash landed in England. Brown told his superiors about the German who let them go. He was told to keep quiet. The story was classified.
Both men survived the war. Neither ever forgot.
Decades later, Charlie Brown started searching for the pilot who spared him. In 1990, he put a notice in a newsletter for former fighter pilots.
He got a letter back from Canada. Franz Stigler had moved there after the war.
When they met, Stigler described details only someone who had been there could know.
They became close friends. They traveled together, spoke at events together, and treated each other like brothers.
They died within months of each other in 2008.
Ted Joy retweeted
I voted Democrat in Oregon!
Of course, I voted for Governor Tina Kotek. I can't believe the race against Republican Christine Drazan is so close.
Probably because people believe all the bad stuff they see on social media.
The truth is, Portland is doing just fine.
The Democratic values of compassion, empathy, and endless second chances have made Portland what it is today.
And I think the results speak for themselves! 💙🗳️
Ted Joy retweeted
Yes, I voted Democrat.
Because of the Republicans, I'm gonna lose my Medicaid benefits soon.
Now they expect me to work 80 HOURS A MONTH just to keep my healthcare.
Look, not everybody wants to spend all their time working.
Some of us got other things to do. 💙🗳️
Ted Joy retweeted
JUST IN: Republican Alaskan Governor Mike Dunleavy REFUSED to commit to CERTIFYING the election if Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mary Peltola wins. “We are ready to do whatever we need to do to ensure that our elections are deemed credible… We AREN’T going to send a scam to Washington.”
NewsNation’s Blake Burman: “If she were to win and if she's still under investigation, would you certify the election there in Alaska?”
Gov. Mike Dunleavy: “Alaska is going to cause a real issue, isn't it? Not just for Alaska, but for the country. And that's why this race is important. That's why it's important that it's done the right way. We are going to investigate it. We're going to follow the law. And if we conclude that there were things that should not have happened, let me put it that way, that are illegal, we will act on that. And that may, in fact, impact whether somebody is seated in the U.S. Senate. That'll be a discussion with, obviously, the head of the U.S. Senate as well. But whether we send something down or not, we won't be able to determine that until we have enough information to make that decision. But we are ready to do whatever we need to do to ensure that our elections are deemed credible.”
“We're going to investigate if we find out there's wrongdoing. And if that means that the certification then is stopped or changed, then that's what happens. But we're going to work through this thing methodically so that everyone believes that this is done the right way.”
Patriot!
Ted Joy retweeted
In the Summer of 2025, Mary Peltola’s campaign was instructing staffers to "find as many Dan Sullivans as they could."
They didn’t stop there. The Democrat campaign was also attempting to form a fake "MAGA party" to pull votes from Sen. Sullivan. They consulted this plot with Jacquelyn Lopez from the Elias Law Group.
In the Summer of 2025, Mary Peltola was paying Marc Elias thousands for legal fees. 🤯
Ted Joy retweeted
I voted Democrat in Alaska!
I voted for Mary Peltola for U.S. Senate because she supports abortion rights.
Women should be able to decide whether to continue their pregnancies.
I also believe Black lives matter and trans lives matter.
Unless their moms decide otherwise. 💙🗳️
Ted Joy retweeted
WOW.
Democrat Mary Peltola just lost the libs at TMZ.
"I hope the Democrats take over Congress... That said, if I lived in Alaska I would not vote for Mary Peltola after finding out that she and her people did by trying to rig that election... to deliberately confuse voters... She was trying, I hate using Donald Trump's word, trying to rig this election."
Ted Joy retweeted
Reminds me of this classic from Norm MacDonald:
youtu.be/l0SS39YcZn4
Ted Joy retweeted
One major difference is that termite colonies cannot transmit or preserve knowledge, so today's termite colonies are up to exactly the same things they always have been. Literally everything about Dennett's lecture, this post, and its replies relies on the accumulation of preserved knowledge over time.
American public education ranged from pretty good to excellent up until 1957 when the Soviets launched Sputnik.
After that it became even better and stayed that way up until the mid-1970s when reforms motivated by the Civil Rights Movement, Feminism, and the Counterculture kicked in and it all went to hell.
Ted Joy retweeted
I’m now convinced our kids are being intentionally setup to fail by our education system
American parent has her child show the new way they are being taught to do math
This is the most insane thing you’ll ever see. You just need to see this for yourself…. Apparently this is called TouchMath and instead of doing math, you just count dots on letters
No Math is being done here
Ted Joy retweeted
Everyone is furious at the prankster.
They are missing the real tragedy.
Man A wakes up at 5 AM, works 10 stores,
and misses his 4 kids' bedtime—
yet still can’t afford his mortgage.
Boy B produces nothing, mocks working men
with a phone, and makes thousands in clout.
The problem isn't a pizza company.
It’s a broken system that punishes the Builder
and rewards the Parasite.
When a father’s sweat buys less than
a clown’s disrespect, a nation loses its soul.
Restore the dignity of honest work.
Ted Joy retweeted
Yes. Unless you find yourself in a dysfunctional school, teaching is a very good job, quite aside from the satisfaction of working with kids. The pay is decent, the benefits are good, your colleagues are good company (there's always an exception), and the calendar lets you be on vacation the same time your own children are on vacation.
