Jennifer Dowling

[Jennifer Dowling @JenniferDo73235]

Pass single bills, one at a time!

[John Ʌ Konrad V @johnkonrad]

This is THE issue with staffers.

The omnibus bills are so vast and so tangled that no senator can actually read one, let alone understand it. To pass anything, they become beholden to the Parliamentarian and the majority staff who assemble these monsters.

And those staffers bury all manner of laws and spending deep inside them. That is precisely why they don’t want single-issue bills moving: a clean, readable bill is one they can’t hide anything in. They want everything funneled through the massive packages they alone can steer and control. And they do it in the shadows.

The job of a modern senator has been reduced to four functions:

1.Raise money
2.Approve staff junkets to luxury destinations
3. Introduce your staff to famous and powerful people
4.Take the blame on TV when something goes wrong

The senators cannot call these people out. Do it once and you trigger an autoimmune response: frozen out of the omnibus, your priorities left on the cutting room floor.

The media can’t call them out either, because the leaks dry up the moment they do.

So it falls to us. It is up to us to make these staffers famous.

Stop blaming Thune. Stop blaming Schumer. Stop praising your favorite senator.

Start pointing at the people standing behind them.

CONGRESS IS BROKEN

Make the staffers famous.

[🇺🇸 𝗧 𝗢 𝗠 𝗠 𝗬 ✦ 𝗧 𝗔 𝗧 𝗨 𝗠 ✦ 𝗡 𝗘 𝗪 𝗦 @BenKaxton]

🚨 JANUARY 6 BODYCAM FOOTAGE 🚨

Listen closely.

You can hear officers saying:

"I can't believe they let them in."

Not a protester.

Not a commentator.

Not a conspiracy theorist.

A police officer.

Captured on bodycam.

For years, Americans were told the story was simple.

The footage says otherwise.

Watch it.

Listen carefully.

Then ask yourself why comments like this never made the evening news.

The tape is the tape.

#January6 #J6 #Bodycam

[Bob Elder @southernphd]

I never met Gordon Wood, but I have a story about him.

In one of my grad school seminars, we read Wood’s Creation of the American Republic. The sheer erudition and evidentiary depth of the book bowled me over.

Back then, before kids and before life accelerated to warp speed, I used to call my mother every Sunday to catch up. Lots of times, we ended up talking about what I was reading that week in my grad seminars or for leisure. Mom had an omnivorous mind, and she was always looking for something else to read. She was a true intellectual—curious about almost everything, always eager to integrate new arguments or ideas into her existing schemas of how the world worked or to have those schemas challenged and changed.

When we talked that particular Sunday, I think I tried to describe to her part of Wood’s argument about the relationship between the state constitutions during the Articles of Confederation era and the federal Constitution. Maybe I was tired, maybe I didn’t completely understand her questions, but the end result of the conversation was that Mom had questions about Wood’s argument that I didn’t answer satisfactorily. I told her that she should probably just read the book, and we said goodbye.

She did eventually read the book, but the next Sunday, Mom started our conversation by saying, “Well, I had a lovely conversation with Gordon Wood this week.” For a split second, I thought she was joking, but then I remembered who I was dealing with. I started to sweat. “How?” I asked. A whole variety of unlikely scenarios in which the foremost historian of the American Revolution and my mother, who lived in Wichita, Kansas, might have met ran through my mind. “Oh, I just looked up his office phone number on Brown’s website and called, and he picked up!” Mom said. I decided I would have to find another profession.

As it ended up, Gordon Wood spent about an hour on the phone with my mother answering her questions about the Constitution. Ever since, I’ve had a soft spot for the man when I imagine him picking up the phone in Providence and finding Becky Elder from Wichita on the other end of the line. His generosity in that moment spoke very well of him.

Rest in peace, professor.

[Austin Justice @AustinJustice]

AUSTIN MAN charged with running a sex trafficking ring and dealing cocaine, meth, MDMA, and Adderall -- caught fleeing police in a car after firing a gun -- just walked out with a 2-year deal and watched more than a dozen felonies vanish in a single afternoon.

Kaden Caro has 62 cases in the Travis County courts. In 2024, DPS arrested him after a vehicle chase that ended in a crash and an injured victim. (See video below.)

Officers found him with a gun he wasn't allowed to have as a felon, plus cocaine, meth, Adderall, and Xanax he was selling. He was indicted on a stack of charges, including trafficking and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

This April, DA Garza's office let him plead to two counts and dropped almost everything else from that arrest and others:

• Sex trafficking - waived in the plea
• Dealing cocaine - dismissed
• Dealing meth - dismissed
• Dealing MDMA - no charges
• Dealing Adderall - dismissed
• Robbery - dismissed
• Gun as a felon, twice - dismissed
• Tampering with evidence - dismissed
• Unlawful restraint, exposing the victim to serious injury - dismissed
• Fleeing police in a vehicle, twice - dismissed
• A 2021 home invasion charged as burglary plus two aggravated assaults - dismissed

He pleaded to firing a gun and one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Back in 2023, Caro sat on an ankle monitor for an aggravated assault on a mother in a family violence case. A GPS company flagged him twice driving back onto her block, within 200 yards of where she lived, in violation of his protective order. The assault charge was no-billed. The protective order violations were quietly folded into the district court and then dismissed.

Across 62 cases and 15 years -- robberies, assaults, guns, drug dealing, a trafficking charge -- Caro has never once faced a jury. Every felony ended in a dismissal, a reduction, or a plea.

[Insurrection Barbie @DefiyantlyFree]

Had AI run a statistical analysis on Pratt coming in 3rd based on the ballot drops.

See below:

The trajectory established in the first three batches showed the gap closing at 0.18 points per 1% of ballots counted.

The late batches closed the gap at 0.54 points per 1% counted.

The late batches were moving 3 times faster than the early batches established.

If the trajectory from the first three batches had simply continued, Pratt would still have been leading by +2.93 points at 83% counted. He was actually trailing by -0.40 points. The late batches moved 3.33 points further toward Raman than the established trajectory predicted.

The z-scores on that deviation are -7.81 and -11.29 for the last two batches. The probability of both late batches deviating that far from the established trajectory by chance is effectively zero.

The t-statistic for the acceleration between early and late batch rates is -6.225. With two degrees of freedom, anything above 4.303 is significant at the 5% level. This is well past that.

The plain English answer: The early batches established a clear, consistent trajectory. The late batches didn’t continue that trajectory they moved three times faster in the same direction. That acceleration is not explained by the trajectory that preceded it. The probability that it happened by chance is statistically indistinguishable from zero.

[RNC Research @RNCResearch]

James Talarico: “We have to protect good paying oil and gas jobs.” 

Talarico introduced a bill in the Texas Legislature to try and eliminate the oil and gas industry in Texas.

Talarico is a fraud.

[Insurrection Barbie @DefiyantlyFree]

On election night in Los Angeles County, I pulled every statewide race directly from the California Secretary of State’s official results page. Same ballots. Same voters. Same night.

The governor’s race the most important, most advertised race on the entire ballot received roughly 100,000 fewer total votes than the controller and secretary of state races. On the same physical ballot.

The exact numbers from the official SOS website:

•Governor total votes: 796,467
•Controller total votes: 901,756
•Secretary of State total votes: 889,586

That means 105,289 more people voted for state controller than voted for governor. And 93,119 more people voted for secretary of state than voted for governor.

Do you know what the state controller does? Most people don’t. It is one of the most obscure offices on the ballot. Yet it got more votes than the race that determines who runs the largest state in America for the next four years.

All Republican governor candidates combined on election night: 222,712 votes

Republican controller candidate (Herb Morgan): 302,552 votes

Republican secretary of state candidate (Don Wagner): 291,650 votes

That means roughly 70,000 to 80,000 people voted Republican in the controller and secretary of state races but did not cast a Republican vote for governor on the same ballot.

These are not different ballots. These are not different voters. This is one piece of paper. Governor is at the TOP. Controller and secretary of state are further DOWN.

People don’t undervote on the top ballot. They undervote on the bottom ballot.

How does this make any sense?

What am I missing people who are smarter than me?

[ThePersistence @ScottPresler]

Did you know that the parliamentarian can be dismissed at ANY moment?

The parliamentarian serves at the pleasure of the Senate Majority Leader.

Thune has the sole authority to remove AND replace the parliamentarian w/o a vote from the Senate.

Fire Elizabeth MacDonough!

[Jennifer Dowling @JenniferDo73235]

😏😏😂🤣

[🇨🇭🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿InLucysHead🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇨🇭© @InsideLucysHead]

I am truly perplexed that so many people are against mosques being built...

I think it should be the goal of every Western Society to be tolerant regardless of their religious beliefs. Thus mosques should be allowed, in an effort to promote tolerance.

That is why I also propose that two nightclubs be opened next door to the mosque, thereby promoting tolerance from within the mosque. We could call one of the clubs, which would be gay, "The Turban Cowboy ", and the other a topless bar called "You Mecca Me Hot."

Next door should be a butcher shop that specializes in pork, and adjacent to that an open-pit barbecue pork restaurant, called "Iraq o' Ribs."

Across the street there could be a lingerie store called "Victoria Keeps Nothing Secret ", with sexy mannequins in the window modeling the goods.

Next door to the lingerie shop there would be room for an adult sex toy shop, "Koranal Knowledge ", its name in flashing neon lights, and on the other side an off-licence called "Morehammered."

All of this would encourage Muslims to demonstrate the tolerance they demand of us, so their mosque issue would not be a problem for others.

[ThePersistence @ScottPresler]

Will any brave member of Congress write a stand-alone piece of legislation

to BAN ballot harvesting for federal elections in all 50 states?

[Lara Logan @laralogan]

Yep - none at all…

[NotKennyRogers @NotKennyRogers]

All 1,765 mail-in ballots received from this blue homeless tent in Los Angeles went to either Karen Bass or Nithya Raman:

[Joe Redden | The Older Millennial @teameffujoe]

3 1/2 inches is perfectly respectable.

[miguelifornia @miguelifornia]

"There's no evidence of Capitol Police escorting protesters into the Capitol on J6" - @kwelkernbc to President @realDonaldTrump on @MeetThePress

[Byron Donalds @ByronDonalds]

To you, it's just a Cracker Barrel parking lot. To me, it's where I gave my life to Jesus Christ.

I was 21 years old. I was working at the Cracker Barrel in Tallahassee after some of the worst years of my life. I'd made mistakes. Real ones.

I grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, raised by a mom who worked hard and didn't accept excuses. But I made decisions that should have ended my story before it ever really started. By the grace of God, they didn't. But every day, I was carrying them.

One afternoon, a church group came into the restaurant, just back from a revival. I served them their meals like I served any other table. But something happened while I was serving them. I can't fully explain it to you. The Lord spoke to me. He said, “Stop running from Me.”

It knocked me back.

I went to find the table, and they were all gone. I could see through their windows that they were getting on their bus, and I knew deep down that if I let them drive away, I was going to keep running. So I went outside. The last woman, just as she was stepping onto the bus, turned to me and asked, “Are you okay?”

I told her, “No ma’am, I’m not okay.” I told her the Lord was telling me to stop running.

That whole bus emptied out, stood with me in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel in Tallahassee, Florida, and prayed over me right there.

I gave my life to Christ that day. Right there.

I still get emotional about it. Because I know what I was before that moment, and I know what He's done since. He gave me a wife who shares my faith. He gave me three sons. He gave me a career, a community, a calling I never would have dared to ask for. He took a kid from Crown Heights who’d run out of chances and gave him a life that doesn't make sense apart from grace.

People ask me sometimes why I talk about it. Why I bring up the parking lot. Why I don't just keep that part private and let folks see the polished version.

I'll tell you why.

Because there's a young man out there right now — maybe in Tallahassee, maybe in Tampa, maybe in Miami, maybe in a small town in the Panhandle — who thinks his story is already over. Who thinks the mistakes he's made disqualify him from the life he could have had. Who thinks God doesn't want anything to do with somebody like him.

I'm here to tell him: that's a lie.

In life, you're not who you are at the lowest point. You're who you choose to become after.

The Lord met me in a Cracker Barrel parking lot. He'll meet you wherever you are.

You just have to stop running.

[Jennifer Dowling @JenniferDo73235]

@joelpollak This is where the electoral college refuses California results without a federal audit

[Brandon Avedikian @bavedikian]

Bought a $1,742.80 camera online from BestBuy.

The FedEx delivery driver stole it. FedEx admitted it.

But BestBuy won’t give a refund. They said we need to “work with local law enforcement.”

Thought everyone should know if you buy from @BestBuy and a @FedEx driver steals what you paid for, your money is gone. Neither company will make it right.

I’ve spent over $30K at BestBuy and will never spend another penny there.

[Christopher Hale @ChristopherHale]

“If you think the world is selfish and rotten, go to the cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer overlooking Omaha Beach. See what one group of men did for another on D-Day, June 6th, 1944.” — Andy Rooney

[Chuck Ross @ChuckRossDC]

Graham Platner says he’s different because moneyed interests can’t buy him. He literally went to work for Blackwater/Constellis as a contractor in a war he morally opposed just for the money.

[Jennifer Dowling @JenniferDo73235]

@didem5654 110