Scott Reuschel

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In Alabama a man said "Roll Tide" to me as a greeting.

Later that same day, the same man said "Roll Tide" as a goodbye.

I asked a woman at the store what it means.

She said, "Roll Tide."

I asked what it means.

She said, "It means Roll Tide, sugar."

So I began collecting evidence. I kept a list. I am not embarrassed about the list.

I have now heard "Roll Tide" used as: hello. Goodbye. Thank you. I am sorry. Congratulations. That is unfortunate. I agree. I disagree. And once, in a hardware store, as a complete set of instructions for installing a ceiling fan.

I heard it said at a funeral.

It was appropriate. It was the most appropriate thing anyone said that day.

I began using it. Carefully at first, the way a man handles a borrowed sword.

I said it to a cashier. She said it back.

I said it to a police officer who had stopped me for a broken taillight.

He looked at me for a long moment. He looked at my face. He looked at my taillight.

Then he said it back, and nodded once, and did not write the ticket.

I wish to be extremely clear that I am not claiming those two events are related.

I am also not claiming they are unrelated.

A man at a gas station heard my accent and asked where I was from. I told him Japan.

He said, "Roll Tide."

He meant welcome. I knew he meant welcome. There was no ambiguity at all.

I have been in Alabama eleven days.

I have one word.

It has been enough for everything.

I have started saying it in other states.

It does not work in other states.

I said it in a warehouse store in Oregon. One man turned around.

He was from Alabama. He said it back. We did not speak after that. We did not have to.

I say it anyway.

[Adam Carolla @adamcarolla]

Love this

[Thomas Sowell Quotes @ThomasSowell]

“Democracy and liberty are not the same. Democracy is little more than mob rule, while liberty refers to the sovereignty of the individual.”

— Walter E. Williams

[Scott Reuschel @bamascott85]

@KennedyNation Fuck Jane Fonda you commie bitch.

[Clay Travis @ClayTravis]

The S&P 500 just hit another all time high. The stock market is now up over 50% since this past April when economic “experts” told you the economy was collapsing. And for “I can’t afford stocks,” guy in mentions. Stop being a pussy. Buy index funds. Start with $5 or $10 a week.

[Clay Travis @ClayTravis]

AOC is now being mocked by SEC fans. Enjoy. https://t.co/8J9FHQt3mm

[Wall Street Mav @WallStreetMav]

I think 1984 was probably the best year ever for movies.

Footloose, The Karate Kid, The Never Ending Story, Sixteen Candles, Ghostbusters, Terminator, Indiana Jones Temple of Doom, Gremlins, Beverly Hills Cop, The Last Starfighter, Nightmare on Elm Street, Red Dawn ... epic year

[Jessica and Arthur Reyher @jessica_reyher]

Jan 6
Let me start by saying my husband, Arthur, and I were never big Trump supporters. We in fact we voted for Jo Jorgensen in the 2020 election. My husband has always been very liberty minded and disenchanted with the state of politics and policing in this country. He has believed for decades the system is rigged. After watching the blatant rigging of the 2020 election, we felt compelled to go to DC to show our support for a REAL investigation into our rigged elections.

January 5, 2021
We went to Washington, D.C., for what we believed would be a weekend of protests and sightseeing as I had never been to D.C. before. We walked around the city, taking in the monuments and atmosphere on Jan 5th. We had no idea what the next day would bring.

January 6, 2021
We got to the Ellipse late and only caught the end of President Trump’s speech. The crowd was massive, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people. We stood in front of the Washington Monument. When he finished speaking we stood there and waited to see if we could watch Trumps entourage make their way to the Capitol, as Trump said he would. After a short while we realized it was unlikely he was going to actually walk with the crowd, so we made our way towards the Capitol. We stopped about half way there and observed from a catwalk the enormity of the crowd as it passed. After a few minutes we rejoined the crowd and made our way to the Capitol. Upon arrival there was no fencing stopping us from walking onto the Capitol ground. The crowd had encircled the entire building. As we were coming up to the back of the building, the crowd was peacefully chanting, waiving flags and praying.

The police had mad a makeshift barrier with bicycle racks. Almost immediately, after our arrival, the police began to attack the crowd via tear gas, pepper balls, flash bangs, and rubber bullets. The crowd then became highly agitated and many started pushing through the make shift barrier. My husband immediately recognized what this was and started yelling at people that this was a setup, remain peaceful, think about the cameras. He made his way to an area between the officers and the people that were throwing things at the officers. He pleaded with the crowd to stop, no violence. The police then retreated inside the building and the crowd began making its way up the inauguration stage. Once on the inauguration stage, the crowd became peaceful again, chanting, praying, letting their voices be heard. We entered the tunnel and the doors were still intact. So we just chanted and stood around. Eventually we left the tunnel to observe the MASSIVE crowd that was forming around the Capitol. When we saw more activity around the tunnel we made our way back to see what was going on.

Once we were back at the tunnel someone was trying to break the window on the right side of the tunnel entrance. The crowd immediately chanted for them to stop, which they did. We moved into the tunnel area to see what was happening, and that’s when we saw the doors had been broken. As tensions rose, people pushed against the police line and use violence. My husband again tried to get to the front of the crowd to intervene. He raised his hands and told people “do not hit them, keep your hands up, and push”. He was repeatedly batoned, tear-gassed, and pepper-sprayed, but NEVER attempted to strike police officers. Instead he used his own body to shield them. We took weapons from violent protesters and gave them to the officers. Yet law enforcement unleashed repeated attacks on us. When an officer screamed because he was pinned in the door, we chanted to stop pushing and pushed against the crowd, so the man could be freed. We spent long periods standing in and around the tunnel, repeatedly trying to calm the crowd. At one point a man with a bullhorn seceded at calming the crowd and everyone sat down and it became peaceful once again.

It was peaceful until police came to the ledge and once again started using munitions on the crowd. This caused the crowd to become enraged once more. I believe it was after this that Officer Fanone was pulled from the building. My husband moved to secure Fanones’ safety being trampled in the chaos while trying to reach him. He was able to regain his footing and made his way to Fanone. He used himself as a human shield to protect Fanone from those that were using violence against him, with the help of 4 or 5 other protestors. My husband intervened to protect him, and later in an interview, he received a “fuck you” from Fanone.

Once Fanone was safely back with the police line we had to find each other once more as I was at the bottom of the stairs to the inauguration tunnel. Once we were able to get back to each other, we stood around in shock of what had just happened. As the violence grew we realized that nothing we could do would keep the peace, so we decided to leave the grounds. As we walked away, we saw people coming out of the side doors cheering “we got in.” We kept walking and rinsing our faces with water.

Once we were back at the AirBnB we took an extended shower which resulted in the water feeling like lava from the chemical burns. We bagged our clothes up and threw them away. Our lungs burned, our eyes were red, irritated, and burned for several days. We watched from our AirBnB that the windows were broken on the left side of the tunnel, people were removing items from the Capitol through the broken window, and we watched the rest of the events unfold on television. We had gone to exercise our First Amendment rights. We left traumatized, bruised, and gassed.

January 20, 2021
Roughly a week or two after January 6, the FBI came to our home. They were only interested in if we had made it inside the building, which we did not, though we tried like hell. He told them that it they wanted to ask anymore questions, we would need our lawyer or if at any time they decided to bring charges against us, to please call as we have kids and dogs, and we would turn ourselves in. This led us to many sleepless nights worrying if tonight would be the night they’d kick in our door and raid us. We watched in horror as story after story that this occurred.

March 2023
On this devastating Monday (March 12, 2023), we both received a phone call and learned the Department of Justice was bringing charges against us. We were instructed to turn ourselves in on Wednesday. We surrendered to the FBI on March 15, 2023. We were handcuffed, fingerprinted, I was stripped for photographs of my tattoos, and shackled like dangerous criminals. We spent the entire day in a cold processing holding cell and were forced to shuffle in a three point restraint, as they paraded us through the Indianapolis Federal courthouses. We were more fortunate than others, as the judged released on pretrial probation. From that day forward, our lives became a nightmare of government control and public hatred:
• No travel without permission
• A probation officer monitoring us
• Random urine tests
• Surrendering of our weapons
• Ban from Washington, D.C.
We were immediately swarmed with endless death threats via social media. Our names and faces plastered all over local news stations, spreading false information about us. Our businesses were attacked online. Our reviews were flooded with negativity and death threats. My husband was let go from the real estate brokerage, as they were mercilessly under attack. We lost major contracts, for his general contracting company, which was our family’s only source of income.

For the next year we lived in agonizing uncertainty, attending Zoom court hearings while our lawyers “fought” the prosecution. We were told by our counsel repeatedly how unprecedented our prosecution was and that they had never seen cases being handled so heavy handed in their entire time being a defense attorney. We were pressured into a plea of guilty, as our lawyers were warning us that other J6 defendants were rarely given fair trials and sentenced to their max. We faced up to 10 years in prison for all of our charges. As parents of 4, the terror of leaving our children for a decade was unbearable. We were first-time offenders with no criminal history and harmed no one or broke nothing. Yet, the state was coming at us with the full weight of the US government.

February 2024
We returned to D.C. with 30 friends and family members for sentencing. Loved ones pleaded for leniency, explaining that we homeschooled our three minor children and that I was the primary caregiver for my terminally ill mother, who lived with us. My husband stood before the judge and begged to take my sentence so I could return home to our kids and ailing mother. The judge refused. He gave me 3 months and my husband 8 months. We were not permitted to serve our sentences at separate times. Our lawyers were appalled by this as it was highly unorthodox especially considering the length of our sentences.

The judge blamed us for the suicides of officers who died after January 6 and said we should be ashamed of ourselves and for the injuries of every officer, despite the fact that there was video evidence of using ourselves to protect the police from violence. When he learned we hadn’t even voted for Trump (we voted for Jo Jorgensen), he seemed shocked and asked why we were even there? It didn’t matter to himS Our lives were shattered anyway.

April 30, 2024
My husband surrendered MCC Chicago Federal Prison to began his sentence. Upon his surrender they placed him in a section mostly filled with Chicago gang members.

June 3, 2024
I surrendered and was sent to FCI Hazelton in West Virginia a high-security facility, after being told I would be serving my time at a satellite camp. Instead I was locked up with murderers, child predators, and rapists. I was housed with biological males on the compound, one being in my unit. I received no time cuts and served every single day of my 90-day sentence.

The separation from our children and each other was excruciating. Our family had never been separated like that before.

While in prison:

• May 20, 2024 my husband spent his 40th birthday in prison.

• June 11, 2024 We received the phone call every parent dreads, our son had been in a severe motorcycle accident. Neither of his parents could be there with him, the time in his 19 years of life.

• June 25, 2024 we missed our daughter’s 14th birthday, first one ever in her life.

• July 18, 2024 we missed our daughter’s 17th birthday, first one ever in her life.

• July 28, 2024 our oldest daughter’s eating disorder spiraled badly after our imprisonment; she was hospitalized Again, neither parent was there for her, for the first time in her life. Her phone was taken from her while in the hospital and couldn’t even talk to us when we called.

• August 14, 2024 we spent our 20th wedding anniversary separated, couldn’t talk to each other, in prison.

• August 18, 2024 was my mother’s last birthday and I was in prison.

• September 9, 2024 my husband was in prison for my 40th birthday.

• August 29, 2024
I was released after serving my full sentence, on 3 years probation.

• October 18, 2024 was our youngest 13th birthday. My husband was in a halfway house, and did receive 2 hours to spend with her and his family, on an ankle monitor.

• October 29, 2024
My husband was finally released, on 3 years probation and 200 hours of community service. Which, while in the halfway house he volunteered to work in the kitchen, without pay, for up to 8 hours a day, they wouldn’t accept that as his community service.

• June 2024 - to the end of Aug 2024 our two youngest children were uprooted from their home, their animals, their older siblings, and their parents. They had to live with extended family and were forced back into public school after years of homeschooling. Their entire sense of safety and stability was destroyed.

Things that happened before, during, and after incarceration:

— 2021 we received our first IRS audit for 2020 taxes, then we received another audit in 2022 for 2021 taxes. They began by sending us a letter to prove we had been married for as long as we claimed, proving the kids we had together and have claimed since 2005 were our kids. After sending the documents they asked for in, we waited months with no response. Called the IRS to find out our status and would be told they haven’t received anything yet but could take up to 6-8 months before hearing anything as they’re short staffed due to COVID. We’d receive another letter asking for something else. Proof of our 1099 expenses, proof of the truck we bought, hardware store receipt expenses, ect. We would send the information in and be told they didn’t receive it or the time it would take to process the documents. And repeat for 3 years. Before we had to surrender to prison they made a judgement against us saying we owed around $90,000.00. We filed an appeal. The court hearing was set for Aug of 2024 during my husband’s incarceration. I spoke to the judge and prosecutor over the phone and let them know the situation and they agreed to postpone the judgment. We received an email letting us know about pro-bono tax lawyers. We have been using one of the lawyers they suggested. We are still fighting the IRS.

— In 2022 we took out an SBA business loan because our businesses were doing well and we wanted to expand. Unfortunately, due to our arrest and lost businesses we are having a difficult time paying the loan back and the debt is weighing us down.

—January 20, 2025 - January 23, 2025
We received our pardon on Jan 20, 2025. We were calling our families and celebrating the smallest victory we had in a long time. I called my mom while she lay in a hospital bed waiting for a lung transplant. She was crying and rejoicing and just so happy for us. Just three short days later my mom passed away, January 23, 2025. She saw me freed, but I had already missed irreplaceable final months with her and I will never get that time back.

—February 2025 we were drowning in debt so we made a decision to take out some equity in our home and sold a percentage of our home, kind of like a reverse mortgage, so we could pay the debt down.

The last two years have been spent trying to rebuild from financial and emotional ruins. The death threats, being called insurrectionists, traitors, and domestic terrorists all because of ongoing media lies. Our entire family suffers from PTSD. Our children lost their parents, uprooted from our home, hospitalized, and they lost their security at formative ages. I lost precious time with my dying mother. We lost our businesses, our reputation, and our peace. My husband was fortunate enough to get a well paying job, but our ability to earn income is limited, as he is not able to advertise what it is that he does, in fear of the company he works for will be doxted and flooded with negative reviews, until they have to fire him.

The trauma cannot be measured in months served or dollars lost. We were peaceful protesters who harmed no one, destroyed nothing, protected police, and yet our family was torn apart, terrorized, and left to pick up the pieces of a life deliberately broken. No amount of compensation can restore what was stolen from us, especially the time I can never recover with my mother, but the wrongs done to our family deserve to be fully righted.

[Mike Lee @BasedMikeLee]

James Madison described the powers of the federal government as “few and defined” and those reserved to the states as “numerous and indefinite.”

We’ve been dangerously drifting from that understanding since the 1930s.

The drift has been most evident in areas now most fraught with waste, fraud, and abuse.

If we honored the Constitution’s limits on federal power, there’d be very little waste, fraud, and abuse in our national government.

Share if you’d like to see a “constitutional reset,” in which any government function that’s not obviously and necessarily federal under the Constitution would be returned “to the states respectively, or to the people,” as the Tenth Amendment specifies.

[Wall Street Mav @WallStreetMav]

The federal government is funding thousands of things that it is not authorized to do in the US Constitution.

The US Constitution assigns the federal government a few specific areas to focus on, then everything else was supposed to be done by the individual states,

[Publius @OcrazioCornPop]

🚨GROK's CONGRESSIONAL MAP: What would the MOST FAIR U.S. House map look like if we followed the Founding Fathers’ Principles?

- Apportion seats strictly by population (census)

- Draw compact, contiguous districts inside each state only

- No partisan data, no racial engineering, no weird shapes

- Prioritize whole counties & communities

RESULT: A clean map with 265-285 R to 150-170 D seats in a 50/50 nation.

Not gerrymandering - just geography.

This is what neutral, compact redistricting naturally produces.

The Founders wanted local geographic representation, not national proportional math.

No salamanders.
No tentacles.
Just logical districts.

True fairness under the Constitution isn’t forcing 50/50 seats.

It’s letting Americans vote where they actually live.

THIS MAP HONORS THE CONSTITUTION'S DESIGN.

What do you think?

MAP VIA: @JeremiahW2044

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am the Director of Strategic Planning at the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

I have held this position for seventeen years. In that time I have written four business plans, overseen six revisions, and authored eleven methodology updates. The train has not moved.

There is a hard hat on the shelf behind my desk. It was given to me at the Fresno groundbreaking ceremony in 2015. It is still in the cellophane. I use it as a bookend for the business plan binders. There are four binders. They are substantial. The hat holds them upright.

In 2008, California voters approved Proposition 1A. San Francisco to Los Angeles. Two hours and forty minutes. Fifty-five dollars per ticket. Ninety-five million annual riders by 2030. Total cost: $33.5 billion. Fifty-three percent said yes.

The current cost estimate is $231 billion.

I am sometimes asked to provide context for that figure. The state housing shortage is 2.5 million units. At the California median home price, $231 billion would produce 577,000 of them. The average public school teacher in California earns $95,000. $231 billion is every one of their salaries for eight years. The state has a documented wildfire suppression staffing gap. $231 billion would fund 6,400 additional fire crews for a century. I include these comparisons for context. They are not relevant to my work.

We have built 119 miles of infrastructure. Columns. Viaducts. Grade separations. You can see them from Highway 99 between Madera and Bakersfield. They stand in rows across land that used to grow things. No track runs on them. No train has touched them. Some of them have graffiti now. I have seen the photographs in the quarterly progress reports. I have not visited.

There was an almond grower outside Hanford. She is in our files as Parcel 417, Hanford East. The Authority acquired twelve acres of her property through eminent domain in 2016 for right-of-way clearance. The trees were removed. The soil was graded flat. The right-of-way has been clear for nine years. Nothing has been built on Parcel 417. Her file notes that she attended three public comment hearings between 2014 and 2016. I do not know what she said at those hearings. I know what we said. We called the acquisition "a critical milestone in the project's advancement." I wrote those words for the 2016 Annual Report. They were well-received. Her contact information has been flagged in the Phase 2 preliminary assessment, in case additional right-of-way is required. Phase 2 does not yet exist. Her contact information does.

The original completion date was 2020. The current target is 2032. The route has been revised from San Francisco-to-Los Angeles to Merced-to-Bakersfield. One hundred seventy-one miles. I refer to this as Phase 1.

The French national rail company, SNCF, joined the project as a consulting partner in 2010. They left in 2011. They used the phrase "political dysfunction," which is diplomatic language for a country that built the Eiffel Tower in two years telling you it cannot build your train. SNCF then went to Morocco and built a high-speed rail line from Tangier to Casablanca. Two hundred miles. Operational by 2018. Seven years.

We are in year eighteen. I included the SNCF departure in the 2022 business plan as a "comparative international case study." The lesson I drew was that Morocco has simpler permitting requirements. This is accurate. I did not draw other lessons.

The $9.95 billion bond that voters approved costs the state $647 million per year for thirty years. Roughly $20 billion in total repayment. The bond is being serviced on schedule. $647 million leaves the state treasury every year and arrives in accounts associated with a train that does not carry passengers. It has done this since 2010. The bond repayment is the most functional transit system we have built. It moves $647 million a year. On time. Every time.

In 2019, Governor Newsom said the project "would cost too much and, respectfully, take too long." He then continued funding it. I appreciated the word "respectfully." It acknowledged the problem without producing an obligation to solve it. My team delivered the 2020 business plan revision the following quarter. It was well-received.

The Governor also supported legislation to shield certain cost details from public disclosure. That same year, thousands of pages were removed from the Authority's website. I was not involved in that decision. I was involved in the pages.

Last Friday, a television host told the Governor on camera that the project now costs $231 billion. The Governor said, "No, it's not. It's not." The $231 billion figure is from the 2026 draft business plan. Page 47. I wrote page 47. The Governor then said we had gotten the project "back on track." I noted the phrasing. A rail project that has not yet laid operational track is not, in a strict sense, on one. I did not raise this.

The ridership projection has been revised from 95 million annual riders by 2030 to 36 million by 2060. I updated that figure personally during the 2024 planning cycle. The ticket price has been revised from $55 to $105. Both figures describe a service that does not yet exist.

The State Auditor published a report. The title is: "Flawed Decision Making and Poor Contract Management Have Contributed to Billions in Cost Overruns and Delays in the System's Construction." That is twenty words. We have 119 miles of columns that carry nothing. I read the report carefully. It was thorough. We incorporated its findings into the next business plan revision.

The board was scheduled to vote on the latest business plan on April 29th. The vote was delayed. Additional review was requested. I support additional review.

My pension vests in 2034. The project's current completion target is 2032. If the train is finished on schedule, my position becomes unnecessary two years before my pension matures. The completion date is determined by the business plan. I write the business plan.

The plan says the project should continue. It has always said this. I have never written one that recommended otherwise.

[Clay Travis @ClayTravis]

On Wednesday @RepJeffries called for “Maximum Warfare Everywhere All The Time,” with a picture of Trump. Again, this attempted assassin didn’t go rogue. Democrats created him with their rhetoric. He believes he’s a hero. They told him to kill Trump & he tried to do it.

[The Babylon Bee @TheBabylonBee]

'This Is A Both Sides Issue,' Says Side That Shot President Trump, Assassinated Charlie Kirk, Tried To Assassinate Kavanaugh, Tried To Shoot Trump Again, Shot Steve Scalise, Firebombed Governor Shapiro, Tried To Shoot Trump A Third Time, (cont'd) https://t.co/xtK8yqxvzK

[Kevin | Large Fam Dad @LargeFamDad]

My boss's boss is like 42, never married, no kids. Earns $275-300K per year. Goes on a minimum of two international vacations a year w/ his girlfriend. 10+ days, all out.

Eats the best food, stays in top notch accomodations. Excursions, tours, nicest beaches, etc.

Great guy, I'm happy for him.

But what I've realized is that without kids, you end up chasing a lifestyle that has to continually be topped in order for you to be satisfied and find happiness.

What he and others like him don't understand is that when you have children, seeing THEM experience life's most basic things and watching their eyes light up at all the "firsts", brings greater pleasure and joy than any vacation or travel experience ever could.

Seeing THEM try blueberries for the first time is greater than dining at the best 5 star restaurant in Europe.

Seeing THEM learn how to walk is greater than walking the Great Wall of China or strolling along the most picturesque beach.

Watching THEM giggle uncontrollably at "peek-a-boo" tops any A-list comedian act.

Seeing THEIR excitement when building a fort out of cardboard boxes and making a door big enough for daddy is superior to staying at 5-star resorts.

Flying kites with THEM far outweighs excursions like parasailing or helicopter rides.

Seeing THEM perform a recital on stage for the first time is more rewarding than watching a Broadway show or top notch symphony orchestra.

-----------------

When you have children, all of a sudden you realize that life's greatest joys are not in the pursuit of things or pleasure or travel, but rather in the LOVE and bond you share with your very own image bearers.

Seeing the beauty and magnificence and wonder of life all over again for the first time through THEIR eyes and expressions gives you something the world simply cannot offer, nor even come close.

[LHGrey™️ @Grey_0G]

No British government ever imagined an American president might finally tell the truth about the “special relationship.”

Until now.

Spare me the pearl-clutching obituary from The Economist, that decaying salon of transatlantic nostalgia where the ghost of Churchill is still being pimped out like a rent-boy for Davos subscriptions.

Your precious bunting of flags in the bin isn’t some tragic metaphor for Trump’s “betrayal.”

It’s the autopsy photo of a one-way parasitic bargain that America has carried on its back like a drunk uncle for eighty goddamn years.

And the drunk finally woke up, looked around, and said: Fuck this.

This isn’t “turning his back.”

This is a sovereign nation refusing to keep subsidizing a continent of strategic eunuchs who have spent decades castrating their own militaries, hollowing out their industrial bases, and importing the very pathologies that make them security liabilities rather than allies.

You want the special relationship?

Earn it. Reciprocate it. Stop treating the United States like an ATM with nuclear weapons.

Geopolitically and militarily, the numbers don’t lie and they never have.

The United States still shoulders roughly sixty percent of total NATO defense spending...$845 billion out of a collective $1.4 trillion last year.

Most of your European “partners” couldn’t hit the 2% GDP target even after Russia parked tanks on Ukraine’s border and started lobbing missiles at civilian infrastructure.

Britain under Starmer talks a big game about “global Britain” while quietly slashing capability, courting CCP-linked cash, and letting its own streets burn under the weight of demographic transformation and speech codes that make the old East German Stasi look libertarian.

You lecture us about values while your own government criminalizes tweets and turns Rotherham into a cautionary tale the media still refuses to fully autopsy.

Historically, the ledger is even more damning. We bled for you in 1917 and 1941 when your empires were on the ropes.

We bankrolled your reconstruction, anchored your defense for the entire Cold War, and let you punch above your weight on the world stage because sentimental Anglosphere nostalgia still meant something.

In return? Suez 1956, where you expected us to back imperial nostalgia while we were trying to contain Soviet expansion.

Vietnam, where you sat it out. Iraq, where you half-assed it and then spent the next twenty years sneering at us in your broadsheets. And every single time an American president dared put America First, your commentariat wailed like Victorian widows about the death of the alliance...as if the alliance was ever meant to be a suicide pact.

You’ve internalized a victimhood narrative so profound it borders on the clinical...projecting your own national decline, your own loss of agency, your own self-inflicted castration onto the one country that still possesses the will to act like a great power.

Trump doesn’t “deprioritize” the relationship; he simply refuses to indulge the delusion any longer.

He sees what you refuse to admit:

the United Kingdom of 2026 is no longer the reliable offshore balancer of 1945.

It’s a mid-tier European power wrestling with internal entropy, elite disconnect, and a demographic trajectory that makes long-term strategic partnership… let’s just say, complicated.

We are sick of it. Sick of the free ride. Sick of the lectures from people whose capitals are turning into no-go zones while their defense ministers beg Washington for more F-35s and more carrier groups to patrol waters they can no longer secure themselves.

Sick of the pomp, the pageantry, the royal visits, and the hand-wringing editorials that treat American self-interest as some kind of moral failing.

The special relationship isn’t dead. It’s being stress-tested by reality.

And reality, Mr. Economist, is a vicious bitch with a ledger in one hand and a mirror in the other.

Look into it.

💀⚖️🗡️

[Kyle Becker @kylenabecker]

We're not saying that Charlottesville itself is a "hoax."

We are saying the SPLC allegedly *HELPED* to engineer the conditions for it happening, and then materially aided-and-abetted a Unite the Right organizer and thereby promoted a clash between protesters and counter-protesters.

Then the SPLC fundraised off it, successfully, and the Democrats weaponized it to push a bogus narrative in the 2020 election.

So the SPLC benefited financially and the Democrats benefited politically. That is why the Biden administration shut down an investigation into the SPLC after banks flagged its suspect activities.

I don't know why you leftists continue to pretend that we're all stupid. It's a tired act.

When you flail with these vapid counter-arguments, it just makes you look like a huckster, in addition to a race grifter.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I have two stacks on my desk. The left stack is financial disclosure forms from members of Congress. The right stack is waivers for members who filed their financial disclosures late.

The right stack is always taller.

On Wednesday morning, I watched a soldier get arrested on CNN.

I am a Disclosure Analyst for the House Ethics Committee. I have held this position for eleven years. My job is to receive the forms, verify their completeness, and file them. I do not investigate. I do not flag. I do not refer. I file. I have a lanyard. The lanyard says ETHICS.

The soldier's name is Gannon Ken Van Dyke. He is thirty-eight years old. He was stationed at Fort Bragg. He was Special Forces. In December, he created an account on a prediction market called Polymarket. On January 2nd, he bet $32,500 that the president of Venezuela would be removed from power. On January 3rd, he helped remove the president of Venezuela from power. He collected $409,881.

He has been charged with five federal crimes. Commodities fraud. Wire fraud. Unlawful use of confidential government information. Theft of nonpublic government information. Unlawful monetary transaction. The Department of Justice called it "the first-ever insider trading prosecution on event contracts."

I watched this on the television in our break room. Then I walked back to my desk and processed a late financial disclosure from a member of the House Financial Services Committee who purchased $250,000 in bank stocks eleven days before his subcommittee held a closed-door hearing on proposed capital reserve changes.

The filing was forty-seven days late. The STOCK Act requires disclosure within forty-five days. The penalty for late filing is $200.

I waived it.

I waive most of them. In 2021, fifty-four members of Congress and senior staff violated the reporting rules. The fines were minimal. Most were waived. I have a form for the waiver. The form has a box that says "Reason." I write "administrative delay." In ethics, "administrative delay" means the member's office forgot and then remembered when a reporter called. My approval rate is one hundred percent. In any other field, that number would trigger an audit. In mine, it is called thoroughness.

Let me show you what I processed this year.

January. A senator on the Armed Services Committee sold defense contractor shares worth $1.2 million. Three days later, his committee received a classified briefing that the Iran campaign had exceeded its projected cost by 340%. The stock dropped 8%. He filed the disclosure sixty-one days late. I calculated the fine. $200. His chief of staff asked if it could be waived. He did not ask what the senator traded on. Nobody asks that. The form does not have a field for it. I waived the fine. The senator's portfolio returned 23.4% in 2025. The S&P 500 returned 16.8%.

February. A representative on the Energy and Commerce Committee bought pharmaceutical stocks worth $400,000. Two weeks later, her committee advanced a bill that would extend patent exclusivity for the exact drug class she purchased. The stocks rose 14%. She filed on time. There was no fine. There was no investigation. There was nothing to investigate because buying stocks in companies regulated by your own committee is not illegal. It is legal. The STOCK Act made it legal by making it disclosed. In Congress, disclosed means legal. In my office, legal means filed.

March. A member whose spouse manages a portfolio worth $9.2 million reported forty-three separate transactions in a single quarter. Twelve of them were in sectors directly affected by legislation the member co-sponsored. The timing on eight of those twelve was within a two-week window of committee action. I logged all forty-three. None were flagged. We do not flag. We file.

I asked my supervisor once what would happen if I flagged a filing. She said we do not have a form for that. I never asked again.

In 2020, I processed 847 disclosures. In 2023, 1,211. In 2025, 1,614. The number of enforcement actions in each of those years was zero. The numerator changes. The denominator does not.

I want to tell you about the soldier again.

He made $409,881. He tried to delete his Polymarket account by calling customer service and saying he lost access to his email. He moved his profits into a foreign cryptocurrency vault and then into a new brokerage account. He used his real identity. He placed thirteen bets. Every single one was connected to an operation he personally participated in.

In my eleven years, I have processed disclosures from members of Congress who traded on:

Pending FDA approvals they learned about in committee.
Defense appropriations they voted on.
Trade policy they negotiated.
Pandemic response measures they drafted.
Interest rate decisions they were briefed on before the public.

None of them have been charged. None of them have been investigated by the Department of Justice. None of them have been referred to the SEC. The STOCK Act has produced zero prosecutions since it was signed on April 4th, 2012.

Fourteen years. Five hundred and thirty-five members. $635 million in trades last year alone. Zero cases.

My daughter asked me once what happens when someone breaks the rules. I told her we write it down. She asked what happens after that. I said it depends. She was nine. She is twenty now. It does not depend. Nothing happens after that.

The soldier made $409,881 and faces decades in prison. Nancy Pelosi entered Congress in 1987 with a portfolio worth approximately $785,000. It is now worth $133.7 million. That is a return of 16,930%. The Dow Jones returned 2,300% over the same period. Professional fund managers who beat the market for three consecutive years are considered exceptional. She has beaten it for thirty-seven. If a hedge fund produced those returns, the SEC would subpoena the records on a Thursday. She produced them from a building with a chapel and a gift shop.

She announced her retirement last year. No investigation was opened. No disclosure was flagged. Her filings were on time. In my office, on time means compliant. Compliant means closed.

I want to tell you about the fine.

$200. That is the maximum penalty for violating the STOCK Act's disclosure requirements. $200 for a member of Congress whose portfolio gained $4.7 million in a single quarter. I calculated what $200 represents as a percentage of $4.7 million. It is 0.004%. I could not find a comparison that made it meaningful. It is less than the price of the parking pass in the Rayburn garage. It is less than lunch at the members' dining room if you order the crab cakes, which I am told are excellent though I eat at my desk.

Since 2012, thirty-one bills have been introduced to restrict congressional trading. I keep a list. The list is longer than the STOCK Act itself.

On March 5th, 2026, a representative from Michigan introduced the thirty-second. He called it the "No Getting Rich in Congress Act." The bill would prohibit the President, Vice President, members of Congress, and their spouses from trading individual stocks, cryptocurrency, futures, and commodities while in office.

The bill was referred to committee. The committee has not scheduled a hearing. The committee is chaired by a member whose spouse executed $2.1 million in trades last year.

The bill will be reviewed. In my office, reviewed means read. Read means acknowledged. Acknowledged means a status has been assigned. A status is the absence of an action that has been given a name so it looks like one.

The soldier used classified information to make $409,881 on a prediction market. He has been charged with five federal crimes. The Department of Justice announced the case on the same day I processed three disclosures from members who traded on committee knowledge worth a combined $3.8 million.

The difference between the soldier and the members is not what they did. It is the building they did it in. He did it from Fort Bragg. They did it from the Capitol. He used a prediction market. They used the New York Stock Exchange. He bet on a military operation. They bet on the legislation they write.

He did not write the law. They did. They wrote the STOCK Act. Then they funded its enforcement at zero dollars. Then they set its maximum penalty at $200. Then they gave my office the authority to waive it. Then they traded $635 million.

The soldier flew to Caracas. He breached a compound. He put his body between a mission and a bullet. The people who ordered the operation were in a building with a credenza and sparkling water. They did not go to Caracas. They went to their brokerage accounts. The soldier made $409,881 and is now in federal custody. The people who knew what he was going to do before he did it made more and filed less. His prosecution is not a failure of the system. It is the system. One conviction per decade, at the lowest level, so the briefing slides can say enforcement exists. The $409,881 is not the crime. It is the cost of making $635 million look supervised.

In my field, we call this self-regulation.

The soldier's Polymarket account has been frozen. His military career is over. He will spend years in federal prison. My office will process every congressional disclosure filed this year. Every trade logged. Every $200 fine calculated and waived. The system is immaculate.

Fourteen years. Zero prosecutions. $635 million a year. A 16,930% return.

I have not leaked a document. I have not filed a complaint. I have not deviated from the process one single time. The process was written by the people whose forms I process.

As long as the disclosures go up and the cases don't, my performance review says I am meeting expectations.

My lanyard still says ETHICS. In eleven years, nobody has asked me to define the word.

[The Rabbit Hole @TheRabbitHole]

The Political Left is responsible for the destruction of American race relations.

They used their proxies in organizations like BLM and the SPLC to generate fake controversies and their media monopoly to spread these stories. They used their influence over corporations and universities to discriminate using Affirmative Action and DEI. The result? A more divided America.

There should be accountability. Modern racism is largely the fault of the Left; it’s time to be honest about this.

[End Wokeness @EndWokeness]

Texas Republicans take 73% of districts in a state they won by 15%

Media: 🚨 FASCISM!!!! 🚨

Virginia Democrats take 91% of districts in a state they won by 5%

Media: 😍 DEMOCRACY 😍