Thank you to everyone who supported the North Carolina Special Olympics through our local Polar Plunge.
In our town, we were able to raise over $15,000.
You can still give here- give.specialolympicsnc.com/fundraiser/7...
Thank you to everyone who supported the North Carolina Special Olympics through our local Polar Plunge.
In our town, we were able to raise over $15,000.
You can still give here- give.specialolympicsnc.com/fundraiser/7...
Help me be brrrr-ave as I take the Polar Plunge for Special Olympics North Carolina!
I'll be jumping in shortly and I need your last minute support.
Every dollar I raise makes a difference in the lives of these amazing athletes. Please give if you can.
give.specialolympicsnc.com/fundraiser/7...
Help me be brrrr-ave as I take the Polar Plunge for Special Olympics North Carolina!
I'll be jumping in shortly and I need your last minute support.
Every dollar I raise makes a difference in the lives of these amazing athletes. Please give if you can.
give.specialolympicsnc.com/fundraiser/7...
I’m raising money for the Special Olympics North Carolina by joining a Polar Plunge that Saturday.
This is your last chance to help support this fundraiser.
I'll be sure to post videos of the plunge tomorrow. Forecast is 50°.
Please give if you can.
give.specialolympicsnc.com/fundraiser/7...
I’m raising money for the Special Olympics North Carolina by joining a Polar Plunge that Saturday.
This is your last chance to help support this fundraiser.
I'll be sure to post videos of the plunge tomorrow. Forecast is 50°.
Please give if you can.
give.specialolympicsnc.com/fundraiser/7...
Can you help me reach my goal for the North Carolina Special Olympics?
I'm taking a Polar Plunge this Saturday to support these athletes and their families.
Please donate and share if you can.
give.specialolympicsnc.com/fundraiser/7...
Can you help me reach my goal for the North Carolina Special Olympics?
I'm taking a Polar Plunge this Saturday to support these athletes and their families.
Please donate and share if you can.
give.specialolympicsnc.com/fundraiser/7...
I’m raising money for the Special Olympics North Carolina by joining a Polar Plunge
They provide year-round sports training and competition for athletes at no cost to them or their families.
If you’re able, please consider supporting my fundraiser.
give.specialolympicsnc.com/fundraiser/7...
I’m raising money for the Special Olympics North Carolina by joining a Polar Plunge
They provide year-round sports training and competition for athletes at no cost to them or their families.
If you’re able, please consider supporting my fundraiser.
give.specialolympicsnc.com/fundraiser/7...
Republicans are still trying to pass the SAVE Act—a bill that would make it harder to vote and disenfranchise millions of Americans. Join @redistrictingaction.org and tell your member of Congress to vote no: act.redistrictingaction.org/a/natl-saveact-cte
11.02.2026 23:03 — 👍 15732 🔁 7341 💬 450 📌 342
I've carried the weight of this for 20 years.
I'll be damned if another generation lives with mistakes of one man.
And the hardest part isn’t anger — it’s knowing that even if you do everything right, you might still be asked to clean up something you never wanted to be part of again.
“I can treat the wound. I can’t treat the knowledge that we caused it.”
That memory makes you slower to celebrate force and faster to dread proximity to civilians. It makes you hyper-vigilant, not just about saving lives, but about preventing the moment where you’re kneeling over another kid and realizing the blood is on your side of the line.
05.01.2026 00:25 — 👍 27 🔁 7 💬 1 📌 0
You don’t think about geopolitics.
You think: “I never want to see that again.”
You know how quickly rules of engagement blur when fear spikes. You know how one bad angle, one panicked second can end up in a child’s skull and then it’s your hands trying to undo something that can’t be undone.
Every medic has that patient. The one who permanently rewires how you see war.
For me, it’s an Iraqi child — an American round, an American war, an American consequence. A small body that didn’t understand flags or reasons or orders.
So when I think about Venezuela, that image comes back first.
Most won’t say this, but they think it:
“I can keep people alive, but I can’t make this make sense.”
You do the job because the person bleeding in front of you didn’t choose geopolitics. You focus on hands, airway, breath, pulse because that’s the only way to survive the moral weight of it.
A medic also thinks past the invasion.
You think:
“How many amputees will this create?”
“How many TB cases will explode when clinics shut down?”
“Who is going to take care of these people when we leave?”
Because you know, the cameras go home long before the wounds heal.
Medics are trained on LOAC, neutrality, treatment of detainees.
In a controversial invasion, you’d be hyper-aware that:
Every treatment is watched
Every death is photographed
Every mistake becomes propaganda
You worry about your people breaking
You don’t just treat bodies — you treat your platoon’s psyche.
You’re watching:
19-year-olds see starving families for the first time
Guys who signed up to fight bad guys now guarding food lines.
Venezuela isn’t a small, clean battlefield. It’s dense cities, jungle, mountains, poor infrastructure, and a civilian population already stressed by shortages of food, medicine, and electricity.
You’re not just treating gunshot wounds, you’re treating collapse.
My forecast of the situation in Venezuela as a former combat medic that served in Iraq.
As a medic, the immediate, almost reflexive thought is:
“This is going to be a lot of casualties, fast.”
Cont.
Predators are not going to see through the canopy.
Those little drones are going to be the killers. The jungle will absorb the buzz they create and when you notice them, it's too late.
This will be nasty and just like Iraq, the military infrastructure is dispersed among the civilian population.
We have fought wars in open deserts for decades.
Jungle warfare to protect oil companies is not something we do well or have experience with regardless of what Trump thinks.
All those fancy I-pads that our officers use in the field will be useless in the mountains.
The medivac helicopters will be sitting targets over the jungle.
This is the perfect recipe for a draft and an endless war that spans into the next election.
"Trump says US not afraid of ‘boots on the ground’ as it ‘runs’ Venezuela during transition."
As a US Army Veteran, nothing would scare me more than my boots stepping one foot into those jungles.
This is Vietnam over again.
www.stripes.com/theaters/ame...
BREAKING: The Indiana Senate has rejected the Trump-ordered, mid-decade gerrymander!
This outcome was made possible by the thousands of Hoosiers who rallied, called, wrote, and demanded lawmakers put people over politics.
There are reports that ICE/CBP plan to conduct actions in the Raleigh area
•Do not open the door unless presented a signed warrant with your name on it
•You have the right to remain silent
•You do not have to sign anything
•You have the right to speak to a lawyer
www.aclu.org/know-your-ri...
Service doesn’t stop when the uniform comes off.
Team Rubicon gives veterans a new mission: responding to disasters, helping families rebuild, and finding purpose again through service.
Please give to Team Rubicon in honor of Veterans Day this year.
fundraise.teamrubiconusa.org/give/f599568...
In honor of Veterans Day and a Boots binge watch marathon, here are my boot camp photos.
Spring/Summer of 2000 at Fort Benning Georgia.
Hurricane Melissa hit Jamaica hard and Team Rubicon is already there providing medical support & assessing clean water needs.
Meanwhile, Greyshirts are still in Alaska helping communities recover from Typhoon Halong.
Please give to support Team Rubicon-
fundraise.teamrubiconusa.org/give/f599568...
