Average Joe

Common sense Conservative; pro-business; family man who loves his golf; cigars and politics

[Blue Lives Matter @bluelivesmtr]

Maria Bartiromo: "10 presidents before President Trump all said the same thing: 'Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.'"

Ro Khanna: "And one president delivered! And that was Barack Obama!"

Maria Bartiromo: "No, that's not true ... Congressman, you're talking fantasy! Obama did NOTHING about it! ... other than send money to the Iranians!"

REPOST and let's get the TRUTH out there!

#thinblueline #lawenforcement

[Mike Netter @nettermike]

The mayor of Charlotte, NC asks that we not post about this lady murdered on a Charlotte train by a repeat offender with 14 prior arrests!
I say in Iryna’s memory please share and make this go viral! A repeat offender with 14 prior arrests should not be roaming the streets of ANY city! They should be locked up!! Epic failure in the justice system!

[Matt Van Swol @mattvanswol]

🚨 OH. MY. GOSH!!!!!!!

It has been revealed that the city of Asheville NC will only rebuild 8 HOUSES with the $225 MILLION grant they received from the Trump administration after Hurricane Helene.

Yes, you read that right... EIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!

...OUT OF 11,488 DAMAGED HOMES

The city allocated ONLY $3 MILLION for home repairs.

And $14.9 MILLION for "administration"

FIVE TIMES MORE for PAPERWORK than for the people whose homes got COMPLETELY DESTROYED!!!!!!

Over 100+ approved families are CURRENTLY ON A WAITLIST that will never be funded.

THIS IS CRIMINAL!!!!!!!!!!!

PEOPLE NEED TO GO TO JAIL!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Rise Of Alberta @RiseOfAlberta]

🚨 BREAKING: 301,620 signatures have officially been announced for the Alberta independence petition.

That is far beyond the required threshold to trigger the Alberta independence vote on October 19th.

A massive day for the Alberta Independence movement.

[The SCIF @TheSCIF]

Obama's Secret Stay Behind Army

Obama literally created "The Department of The Deep State" at the flick of a pen. The Senior Executive Service, or "SES" was created on September 19, 1979 during the Carter administration.

It was originally formed to professionalize career civil service, while attracting the nation's best and brightest in an effort to improve and moderate the management of the federal bureaucracy.

A position within the "SES" is considered the equivalent to general officer or the flag officer ranks in the U.S. Armed Forces. For that reason, they are often referred to as our "civilian generals."

The SES was to be a corps of non-partisan, career managers who serve as the executive management of federal agencies. Their job being to implement policy, not create it. At least it was until then President Obama changed that with a mere flick of his pen, making SES members nearly impossible to fire, once hired.

To say Obama's transformation of the SES into an army of political operatives was effective would be a gross understatement.

There are more than 2 million federal employees. And at the top of that pyramid are approximately 8,000 SES (Senior Executive Service) employees who service as the professional managerial class linking our political leaders to the civil service rank and file.

And Barack Obama as president, replaced more than 6,000 members of the 8,000-member SES during his 2 terms, assembling what became a stay-behind army of political operatives.

Here's a list of the number of SES employees that were embedded in the following government agencies at the end of Obama’s 2nd term in 2016:

Department of Education – 86
Department of Housing & Urban Development – 115
Department of the Air Force – 182
Department of Labor – 200
Department of State – 204
Department of Transportation – 231
Department of Interior – 258
Department of the Army – 261
Department of the Navy – 326
Department of Veterans Affairs – 357
Department of Agriculture – 361
Department of Commerce – 425
Department of the Treasury – 458
Department of Health & Human Services – 468
Department of Defense – 478
Department of Energy – 490
Department of Homeland Security – 639
Department of Justice – 821
All Other Agencies (non-Cabinet agencies) – 1,796

And it wasn't just a purge of patriots from governmental agencies. Obama's purge of the military was especially damaging to our national security, as he literally gutted the command structure of the U.S. military.

Cleaning out the filth from decades of infiltration and then Obama's embedded political operatives has been a long uphill battle in taking back our country and restoring our republic to making America great again.

All roads lead to Obama.

[Penguin X @ThePenguinBTC]

ABD birkaç saat önce doların gelecek 50 yılını belirleyecek bir hamle yaptı.

Dikkatli okuyun.

Birkaç saat önce ABD Hazine Bakanı Scott Bessent bir paylaşım yaptı.

Çoğu insan başlığını bile okumadı.

Ama o paylaşımda 1974'te kurulan ve 50 yıldır dünyayı dolara bağlayan sistemin geleceği yazıyor.

Anlatıyorum...

Petrodolar nedir?

1974'te ABD, Suudi Arabistan ile bir anlaşmaya vardı.

- Suudi Arabistan petrolünü dolarla satacak.
- Karşılığında ABD bölgesel güvenlik şemsiyesi sunacak.

Bu düzen petrodolar olarak adlandırıldı.

Dolar dünya rezerv parası oldu çünkü petrol dolarla satıldı. Dünya petrol almak için dolar bulmak zorundaydı.

ABD dolar bastı, dünya mecburen talep etti. Sistemin ana çerçevesi 50 yıl bu oldu.

Japonya ikinci ayaktı.

1985 Plaza Anlaşması'ndan sonra Japonya faizi neredeyse sıfıra indirdi. Japon tasarrufları yıllar boyunca ABD tahviline aktı.

Japonya 1 trilyon doların üzerinde ABD tahvili biriktirdi. Japon Merkez Bankası 2013'ten beri Fed'in kalıcı swap ortaklarından biri.

50 yıl boyunca dolar sistemi bu iki ayakla ayakta durdu.

Son yıllarda birinci ayakta çatlaklar belirdi.

Çin petrol ithalatının bir kısmını yuan ile ödüyor. Suudi Arabistan yuan işlemlerini test etti. Rusya yaptırımlar sonrası dolar sisteminden büyük ölçüde çıktı. İran petrolünü yuan ile satıyor.

BRICS ülkeleri alternatif bir ödeme altyapısı üzerinde çalışıyor. Çin'in SWIFT alternatifi CIPS genişledi.

Suudi Arabistan ve BAE BRICS yapısına dahil oldu.

Petrodoların tam merkezindeki ülkeler rakip bir bloğun masasına oturdu.

50 yıllık birinci ayak eskisi gibi sağlam değil.

Birkaç saat önce Scott Bessent şu açıklamayı yaptı.

"Körfez ve Asyalı müttefiklerimizle dolar swap hatları üzerine konuşuyoruz."

Swap hattı nedir?

İki ülkenin merkez bankaları arasında karşılıklı para değişim anlaşması. Kriz anında ülke dolar bulmak için piyasada satış yapmak yerine önceden anlaşılmış kanaldan geçiyor.

Açıklamasının çerçevesi şu.

- Körfez ülkeleriyle kalıcı swap hatları kurulacak.
- Bu ülkelerde dolar temelli finans merkezleri büyütülecek.
- Alternatif ödeme sistemlerinin büyümesi sınırlanacak.

"Alternatif ödeme sistemleri" doğrudan BRICS ve CIPS'e yönelik bir hamle.

Özetle ABD, petrodoların gevşeyen Suudi bağını yeniden sıkılaştırmak istiyor. Bu sefer daha kurumsal bir çerçevede.

Neden şimdi?

ABD'nin borç yükü rekor seviyede. Trilyonlarca dolar tahvil önümüzdeki yıllarda yenilenecek.

Son on yılda Çin ABD tahvili alımını yavaşlattı. Japonya bazı dönemlerde net satıcı oldu. Avrupa kendi iç sorunlarıyla meşgul.

Boşluğu dolduracak tek kaynak kimler?

Körfez.

Trilyonlarca dolarlık döviz rezervi. Yıllık petrol gelirleri. Düşük borç yapıları.

Bessent bu rezervleri ABD finans sistemine kurumsal olarak bağlamaya çalışıyor.

Körfez ülkeleri şu an iki masada oturuyor.

Bir tarafta ABD var. Güvenlik şemsiyesi. Dolar likiditesi. Batı finans piyasaları.

Diğer tarafta Çin var. Büyüyen petrol alıcısı. BRICS ortaklığı. Yuan işlemleri.

Bessent açıklaması Körfez'in ABD tarafına ağırlık vermesi için kurumsal bir teşvik.

Körfez kabul ederse dolar sistemi Körfez üzerinden yeni bir döneme girer.

Körfez kalıcı swap hattını reddederse ve BRICS'e kayarsa dolar sistemi daha hızlı erozyona uğrar.

Bu tercih önümüzdeki on yılın en kritik jeopolitik kararlarından biri olabilir.

Son nokta.

Scott Bessent'in birkaç saat önceki paylaşımı yüzeyde teknik bir bankacılık mesajı.

Altında 1974'te Suudi Arabistan ile kurulan petrodolar sisteminin yeniden inşası yatıyor.

Japonya sistemin içinde kalmaya devam ediyor. Körfez şu an masaya çağrılıyor.

Bu benim şahsi analizim.

Önümüzdeki dönem kritik, sizi bilgilendireceğim.

[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.

[Rise Of Alberta @RiseOfAlberta]

The fastest way to get Alberta’s resources to market is independence. Right now we are boxed in by federal policy and political obstruction.

As a sovereign country, Alberta would have far more leverage to build pipelines, secure access, and move our energy on our terms.

[Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh]

🚨 HOLY CRAP! Nick Shirley FOLLOWED the California Speaker of the House and a Senator for pushing the Stop Nick Shirley Act, which CRIMINALIZES anti-fraud journalism

They were stumbling, panicked, REFUSING to acknowledge that levying up to $50K fines for journalism is TYRANNY

SHIRLEY: "Speaker Rivas...AB 2624? Is there a conflict of interest with Mia Bonta, and her husband being the ATTORNEY GENERAL?"

RIVAS: "I don't know." *Runs into car* 🤯

SHIRLEY: "These people won't even answer the questions."

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

In 1900, John D. Rockefeller controlled approximately 90 percent of all petroleum refining in the United States. He was, by some calculations, the richest private individual who had ever lived.

He had a problem. Scientists were discovering that compounds derived from coal tar, a petroleum byproduct, could be used as synthetic medicines. Aspirin, derived from coal tar, had been launched by Bayer in 1899. The petroleum waste stream Rockefeller had previously had to dispose of could now be sold back to the public as medicine at a markup of roughly 10,000 percent.

He had another problem. American medicine in 1900 was a competitive ecosystem of homeopaths, herbalists, naturopaths, osteopaths, midwives, and traditional doctors who used food, plants, water, and lifestyle as the primary tools of healing. Approximately half of all American medical schools taught some form of natural or alternative medicine.

Rockefeller bought into the German pharmaceutical industry, eventually taking a substantial stake in IG Farben, the conglomerate that included Bayer, BASF, and Hoechst. He then commissioned a report.

The report was written by Abraham Flexner, an educator with no medical training, funded by the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations, and published in 1910. It declared that natural and alternative medical schools were unscientific quackery. It recommended the closure of more than half of all American medical schools and the standardisation of the rest around medicine based on synthetic patented drugs.

Congress acted. Half of American medical schools closed within a decade. The remainder accepted Rockefeller and Carnegie funding on the condition that their curricula be reorganised around pharmaceutical treatment. Nutrition was removed. Herbal medicine was removed. Lifestyle intervention was removed. The doctor's job was redefined: diagnose the symptom, prescribe the drug.

The drugs were petroleum-derived. The petroleum was supplied by Rockefeller-controlled refineries. The medical schools were funded by Rockefeller. The journals were funded by Rockefeller. The AMA was supported by Rockefeller. The hospitals were funded by Rockefeller.

By 1925, the American medical system was a vertically integrated extension of the petroleum industry, operating under the marketing slogan that it was scientific.

This is the system that exists today.

The pharmaceutical industry generates approximately $1.5 trillion in annual revenue. The American population, 4 percent of the global total, consumes approximately 50 percent of all pharmaceuticals manufactured.

The system was not designed to make people healthy. The system was designed to manage symptoms in a way that produces lifetime customers. A healthy patient is a former customer. A managed patient, who takes the pill every day for the rest of their life, is an annuity.

The objective has always been to keep you in that profitable corridor between healthy and dead.

Long enough to keep buying. Not so well that you stop.

The doctor who advises you to fix your metabolism by changing your diet is, from the point of view of the system that trained him, a defective product. The doctor who prescribes you a statin, a metformin, an antidepressant, and a blood pressure medication for life is performing exactly as designed.

The system was designed by an oil baron who needed to sell the waste products of his refineries.

It still functions, 116 years after the Flexner Report, exactly the way he designed it.

You are the customer.

The corridor is where you live.

[Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson]

Sen. Tommy Tuberville Demands Speaker Mike Johnson REMOVE Ilhan Omar from All Committees

After JD Vance confirmed to me that Omar committed immigration fraud, Tuberville says it's time for Republicans to hit back — just like Nancy Pelosi did when she was Speaker.

"We should do that. She should not be allowed to walk in any committee room, do anything in terms of making a vote for or against the United States of America — which normally they’re against."

"But we have to hold people accountable. Nobody’s held accountable."

Nailed it. A known immigration fraudster who hates America has no business on any committee — or in Congress.

[Ricardo @Ric_RTP]

The world’s most respected political scientist just admitted that governments no longer run the world.

Ian Bremmer's firm writes the risk report every major hedge fund, bank, and government reads before making decisions.

He doesn't do hot takes. He does FORECASTS.

And buried under a 90-minute discussion with Steven Bartlett, he dropped this bombshell:

Anthropic built a model so powerful it could hack every bank, power grid, and water system on Earth.

They didn't call Congress.

They called Jerome Powell and Scott Bessent directly.

Within hours, every major bank CEO was in an emergency meeting.

Jamie Dimon called it a "five alarm fire."

No hearings. No votes. No public debate.

A private company detected a threat, called two people, and the US financial system reorganized around it overnight.

That's not a "government."

And this is the pattern nobody's connecting:

Michael Dell just moved $6.25 BILLION to 25 million American kids using federal infrastructure Trump's team built for him. Government does the accounting. Dell gets the PR.

Jeff Bezos just came out of retirement with $6.2 billion to build "AI for the physical economy." 100 researchers. Day one. No board. No IPO. Just: go.

Jensen Huang told Joe Rogan that CUDA, the single technology that made AI possible, was built because ONE guy at Nvidia believed in it when the stock crashed 83%. Nobody voted on it. Nobody approved it. He just did it.

Elon has Starlink turning wars on and off in Ukraine.

None of these decisions went through a legislature.

None of them were debated on CNN.

None of them were on any ballot.

In Bremmer's own words:

"The most important new global leaders aren't countries. They're technology companies writing their own rules."

And once you see it, you can't unsee it.

There are two economies running in parallel right now:

Economy A is the one you see. Elections. Tariffs. Tweets. Midterms. Iran. Congressional hearings where senators ask Mark Zuckerberg how Facebook makes money.

Economy B is the one that actually decides things. 5 CEOs, 3 central bankers, and a handful of billionaires in group chats and private dinners, rerouting trillions and deploying technology that rewrites physics, biology, and labor.

Economy A is theater for the 99%.

Economy B is where the 1% already live.

And the gap isn't closing.

Bremmer's real warning wasn't about China or Trump...

It was this:

We're heading toward a split between "empowered hybrid individuals" with AI as a core relationship, and people we "won't even treat as human beings anymore."

Not different classes.

A different SPECIES.

This is a forecaster who advises Goldman, BlackRock, and the White House telling you the taxonomy of humanity itself is about to fork.

Meanwhile the public is fighting about who's going to win the midterms.

Trump is a symptom. Mdani is a symptom. Farage is a symptom.

They're all reactions to a system average people can feel has already left them behind, but can't articulate why.

But the why is simple:

The people making the decisions that will define the next 50 years of your life stopped asking for permission.

They stopped running for office.

They stopped filing quarterly reports on what matters.

They just build, deploy, and inform the government after.

[Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh]

🚨 JUST IN: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is being praised nationwide for dropping this TRUTH on leftism and "progressivism"

"Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence, and hence our form of government. It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from government."

"It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with a constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights."

You NAILED IT, Justice Thomas! 🇺🇸

This guy is the true GOAT.

[The Husky @Mr_Husky1]

She left a $4 tip on a $47 grocery order and taped a note to the door: “Please just leave it. I’m okay. Thank you for coming.”

I almost did.

I almost dropped the bags and moved on to the next stop. But something told me to knock.

It took a while before the door opened. An older man—late seventies maybe—stood there with a walker, dressed neatly like he was expecting company. His hands trembled, but he held himself with quiet pride.

“I said to leave it,” he told me, not unkindly. Just tired.

“I know, sir. I just wanted to make sure everything got to you okay.”

He glanced at the bags, then at his walker, then back at me. He didn’t say a word.

“Let me bring them in,” I offered.

He stepped aside.

Inside, everything was tidy but worn—like a life lived carefully. The carpet was thin in the paths he walked every day. The furniture was old but clean. Nothing extra. Nothing wasted.

As I unpacked the groceries, I noticed a notepad on the table. Every item was written out, priced, crossed out, recalculated. Over and over until it fit what he could afford.

He had planned this trip down to the penny.

“My daughter used to come Saturdays,” he said from the doorway. “She moved to Phoenix. New job.”

“That’s far.”

He nodded. “She calls.”

No bitterness. Just truth.

The fridge was nearly empty. A couple eggs. Butter. Instant coffee. Seven prescription bottles lined up by the window.

Seven.

“I manage fine,” he added, straightening a little.

And I believed him—because he had probably managed his whole life. But now “managing” meant choosing between medicine and meals. Stretching time, stretching money, stretching everything.

“Did you work?” I asked.

“Thirty-one years. Sheet metal. Union.” A small, proud smile. “Hard work.”

Thirty-one years of it.

And now this.

I told him I’d be right back.

I drove to a nearby deli and bought what I could—hot food, bread, fruit, a few things that didn’t require planning or counting.

When I came back, he was sitting at the table, notepad closed.

I set everything down and started putting it away.

He watched quietly.

“Son,” he said, voice catching. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

He looked at his hands—scarred from decades of work, wedding ring worn thin.

I left before it got too heavy.

Sitting in my car, I kept thinking about it.

We call people like him the backbone of this country. We honor them in speeches and posts.

But somehow, they end up alone—doing math at a kitchen table, trying to make survival add up.

He gave thirty-one years building things with his hands.

He deserved more than that note on the door.

Check on someone this week.

Not a text.

Show up.

[Nick Sortor @nicksortor]

🚨 HOLY CRAP! ICE Director Todd Lyons just revealed ICE recently busted the largest gift card fraud scheme EVER — and that stolen money was being sent DIRECTLY BACK to military units in CHINA

It was being carried out by illegal Chinese men who were let in under BIDEN

All military aged, of course.

The scam is fairly simple: these Chinese fraudsters steal barcodes off gift cards from retail stores, place them back on the shelf, and when a shopper buys it, that money is IMMEDIATELY skimmed by CCP operatives who have the numbers in a database

And the American consumer is left with a worthless piece of plastic, unbeknownst to them.

ICE agents are doing HEROIC work — no matter what the Democrats say.

[dejanira @dejanirasilveir]

🚨🚨Eurodiputado por Rumania EXPONE la TRAMA de Ursula Von der Leyen 🔥:

"Von der Leyen está casada con el médico alemán Heiko von der Leyen... que es el Director de Orgenesis, PROPIEDAD de PFIZER..."

La misma Empresa con la que Ursula firmó un contrato de 71,000 MILLONES de EUROS para COMPRAR la cifra astronómica de 4,600 MILLONES de DOSIS (10 por ciudadanos) 😳👇

TRIPLICARON SU FORTUNA CON LA PLAN-DEMIA ⚔️🔥

[Wall Street Apes @WallStreetApes]

EXCELLENT breakdown of what Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger and 18 other Democrat Governors, including DC, have signed to permanently change how we elected the President of the United States

“Virginia's governor just signed a law that makes your vote for President irrelevant
— On April 13th, governor Spanberger quietly signed HB 965, a bill that joins Virginia to something called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

Here's what that actually means. If Virginia votes one way for president, but the rest of the country goes the other direction, Virginia's electoral votes go with the country, not with who you voted for. Now, the framing they're selling is every vote matters equally, which sounds great, but here's what they're not telling you.

The Electoral college wasn't broken. It was designed specifically to make sure that rural states, small states and communities outside of major cities still had a voice in who becomes president.

Under this compact presidential campaigns would have zero reason to care about Virginia outside of Richmond and Northern Virginia. I mean, why would they? You just hand your votes to wherever New York and California go?

Some legal scholars have argued, the framers of the Constitution explicitly rejected the idea of popular elections for President, and that changing the system requires a constitutional amendment, not a state level workaround.

And here's the part that should bother everyone regardless of party.

As of March, 2026, every single governor who has signed this compact into law has been a Democrat, not one Republican. This wasn't bipartisan reform. This was a party using a legislative shortcut to restructure how presidents get elected without touching the constitution.

We are a republic, not a pure democracy. That distinction matters because pure democracies let 51% of the country permanently ignore the other 49%. Virginia just took a step toward erasing its own voice in national elections, and they did it while nobody was watching.”

[Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh]

🚨 HOLY SMOKES. Every single Democrat in the Minnesota House Rules Committee votes to BLOCK investigations into fraud under Tim Walz

With a straight face, Democrats endorsed $9B+ in stolen tax dollars

They're panicked and don't want anyone finding out how this was allowed to happen.

REMOVE WALZ FROM OFFICE and start the criminal proceedings for complicity!

[Gunther Eagleman™ @GuntherEagleman]

What kind of Congress pays $17,000,000.00 of taxpayer money to silence victims who were s*xually assaulted by members of Congress and then refuse to tell the taxpayers who the perpetrators are?

Ain’t fcking right.

[Inspector General Anthony D'Esposito @USLaborIG]

For those keeping score at home, the legislation to silence @nickshirleyy was filed by @MiaBonta — wife of @AGRobBonta.

The same guy who, just days ago, claimed he was cracking down on fraud.

Quite a web woven in California.
@billessayli @AntiFraudClub https://t.co/fW9x7HXQd4