E

Real Estate Specialist - #List | #Sale Northern Virginia, #McLean #GreatFalls #FallsChurch Resourceful. Knowledgable. Dependable.

[mike bski @BskiMike22802]

Bernie. Bernie, Bernie, Bernie.

Let me get this straight, because I want to make sure I am reading your economics homework correctly, and I did not eat a bowl of alphabet soup this morning so bear with me. You just listed UnitedHealth's $5.48 billion quarterly profit as proof of corporate greed. Cute. Except that profit happened WHILE the Affordable Care Act — the law that guarantees these insurers a captive, subsidized, taxpayer-fed customer base — has been the law of the land for fifteen years. You are not exposing corporate greed, Senator. You are reading me the receipt for your own bill. The ACA did not shrink the insurance industry. It turned it into a government-guaranteed cash cow, and now you are shocked, SHOCKED, that the cow got fat. Eats soup with a fork, this one.

And here is the part that should really sting. Your own party just finished a 43-day shutdown demanding MORE money be poured into that exact system, because the temporary COVID subsidies YOUR PARTY wrote into the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 — zero Republican votes on either bill, by the way — expired right on schedule, exactly as YOU designed them to. Not a single Republican voted to end those subsidies. You did. Then you shut down the government to admit, out loud, on the record, that a law literally named the AFFORDABLE Care Act cannot survive without emergency pandemic cash. That is not an insult from me. That is a confession from you.

So now the solution is Medicare for All. Naturally. Because when a fifteen-year-old government program made the insurance companies richer, the answer is obviously MORE government program, just bigger. If ignorance is bliss you must be the happiest man in the Senate. Independent estimates put full single-payer implementation at somewhere between forty and sixty percent of the ENTIRE federal budget. Forty to sixty percent, Senator. Larger than Social Security. Larger than defense. You want me to hand over half the country's checkbook to the same apparatus that just admitted its last healthcare experiment doesn't work without a subsidy IV drip.

Let's talk about who's asking. You have served in the United States government for something like forty years between the House and Senate, and by my count the bills you personally got across the finish line as lead sponsor could be counted on one hand, mostly involving the naming of federal buildings. Somewhere out there is a tree tirelessly producing oxygen for you, Senator, and it owes itself an apology for the return on investment. This is also the same man who, as a young idealist, tried out communal living on a hippie commune and did not exactly stick around long enough to collect a pension from it. Now you want the reins to fifty percent of the national budget. I keep hearing "tax the rich" out of a man worth several million dollars who charters private jets on his "Fighting Oligarchy" tour because, in his own words, he isn't waiting in line at United with the rest of us peasants. Bless your heart. That is rich even by Congressional standards. Couldn't pour water out of a boot with instructions on the heel, but sure, hand him the checkbook.

And before you tell me capitalism failed and it's finally socialism's turn — how's that working out for your ideological younger brother in New York? Zohran Mamdani just announced a THIRTY MILLION DOLLAR government grocery store in a city his own comptroller says is worse than broke. Kansas City tried this. Erie, Kansas tried this. That is not a hunch, Senator, that is a lab result, and I am a science teacher, so let me walk you through the peer review.

An experiment only counts as science if it has been REPLICATED. Not run once. Run again. And again. Under different conditions, different continents, different decades, different "well THIS time we'll do it right" true believers standing at the podium. So let's replicate it together, shall we, because apparently nobody handed you the lab notes.

Trial one: the USSR, 1920s and 1930s. Stalin seized the farms, collectivized the kulaks, and centrally planned the harvest. Result: the Holodomor, a man-made famine in Ukraine that starved somewhere between five and ten million people to death while grain was actively being EXPORTED past their starving bodies. That is not a rounding error. That is a control group that died.

Trial two: Cuba, 1959 onward. Castro nationalized every business, every farm, every bank on the island. Sugar production, once the envy of the hemisphere, collapsed. The economy shrank thirty-five percent in a single decade when the Soviet training wheels came off. Extreme poverty today sits near eighty-eight percent. Same experiment. Same result.

Trial three: Venezuela, sitting on some of the largest oil reserves on the PLANET, nationalized its oil industry and ran the socialist playbook to the letter. Production collapsed from three and a half million barrels a day to under one million. Hyperinflation peaked past sixty-three THOUSAND percent. Nine million people fled. You cannot bribe your way out of the results with oil money. We tried. It's in the data.

Trial four, and this one should make every teacher in America wince: China's Great Leap Forward, 1958 to 1962. Mao abolished private farming, herded peasants into communes, melted down their pots and pans for backyard steel that was too low-grade to use for anything. Somewhere between fifteen and forty-five million people starved. Some regions saw cannibalism. That is not a typo. That is what happens when central planners replace the price system with a five-year plan and a slogan.

Trial five: North Korea, present day, running the same command economy with the Juche twist. Famine in the 1990s killed hundreds of thousands to over a million. Markets are technically illegal and thrive anyway in the shadows, because human beings will trade even when their government threatens to shoot them for it.

Trial six is my personal favorite because it is the cleanest natural experiment in the history of economics: East versus West Germany. Same people. Same language. Same culture. Same starting point in 1945. One half got markets, one half got the Stasi and collectivized industry. East German productivity settled at roughly thirty to seventy-five percent of the West's, and the population had to build a WALL to stop its own citizens from swimming, tunneling, and hot-air-ballooning their way out. Nobody builds a wall to keep people from fleeing prosperity, Senator.

Trial seven: Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975 to 1979. They abolished money entirely. No markets. No private property. Total state control, straight out of the textbook you apparently keep on your nightstand. One point seven to three million people, roughly a quarter of the country, died of starvation, overwork, and execution in FOUR YEARS.

And for the extra credit column: Ethiopia's Derg collectivization, Tanzania's Ujamaa villages, Yugoslavia's market-socialism ceiling, Vietnam before it finally abandoned the model, India's decades of License Raj stagnation, and Poland and the rest of the Eastern Bloc running factories that burned three times the steel per unit of output compared to the free market next door. Every single trial, same hypothesis, same result. I have seen middle schoolers design better controlled experiments during a volcano science fair.

That is not one anecdote, Bernie. That is a stack of peer-reviewed, historically documented, independently verified trials spanning four continents and a full century, and the conclusion section reads the same every time: shortages, queues, corruption, and a body count north of a hundred million people once you tally every collectivized farm, every purged kulak, and every commune that ran out of rice. If an experiment fails this many times in this many labs, a real scientist stops blaming the equipment and starts questioning the hypothesis. You, apparently, would rather run trial number eight on 340 million Americans and call it "finally getting it right." Trying to reason with some folks really is like trying to baptize a cat.

Quinn's First Law of Liberalism: liberalism always generates the exact opposite of its stated intent. You want cheaper healthcare, you get record insurer profits. You want affordable food, you get a thirty-million-dollar failed grocery store. You want to fight the oligarchy, you fly private. Every single time. Set your watch by it.

I keep asking Democrats this question and I never get an answer: what have YOU actually done to help people, versus just handing out someone else's money? Because handouts without a ladder out is not compassion. It is a leash. And I think deep down you know that, Senator, or you wouldn't need the private jet to get away from the people you claim to be fighting for. You're about as useful as a screen door on a submarine when it comes to actually running anything, but boy can you point fingers.

You are the human version of period cramps on this topic, Bernie, and I mean that with the utmost respect for a man who has spent forty years discovering new ways to spend money he didn't earn. Has a leak in the think tank if he genuinely believes THIS is the moment socialism finally works. Unless your name is Google, Senator, you need to stop acting like you know everything about running an economy you have personally never had to run.

But what do I know. I am only a medically retired Army combat medic and a science teacher who actually reads the Congressional Budget Office numbers before I open my mouth about a trillion-dollar healthcare takeover.

@JoJoFromJerz @atrupar @TheYoungTurks #MAGA #Veterans #Trump

[Rand Paul @RandPaul]

Requiring an ID and proof of citizenship to vote is common sense.

It’s time to pass the SAVE America Act. RT if you agree.

[Jason Miyares @JasonMiyaresVA]

So in their first 180 days in power, far-left Democrats in Richmond voted to give themselves a 300% raise, slap a carbon tax on every power bill, pass the largest payroll tax increase in Va history AND wasted over $11 million of taxpayer money on an unconstitutional gerrymandering scheme?

[Dr Jordan B Peterson @jordanbpeterson]

To the Americans:

I've travelled all over the world. I've familiarized myself with many places, and met many people. And I'm a Canadian, although I’m privileged to reside once again in the States.

And here's something I've noticed, and it’s a key element of America's continuing greatness:

You bloody Americans value success, and you believe in its existence.

This is something that doesn't really happen anywhere else in the world. Even in other free democracies—the United Kingdom; Finland, Sweden, and Norway; Australia, New Zealand and Canada; Germany, France, and the Netherlands (great countries all)—a counterproductive cynicism too often reigns.

Success is equated with exploitation.
Ambition is looked upon with contempt.

This happens sometimes in the United States too—particularly among the miserable progressives, who confuse their resentment, ingratitude and unearned skepticism with wisdom.

But in your great country, by and large, striving is admired and success celebrated.

This means that more people strive and succeed in the US than anywhere else. And it's increasingly obvious. You remain stunningly more innovative and productive than any people anywhere else on the planet.

And so I say, as all should who are fortunate enough to live in the western world, let alone America:

Thank God for the United States.

Thank God for the wisdom of its founders.
Thank God for its faith in the free market and in the natural rights of man.
Happy birthday, you damn Yankees and Southerners.

Long may your admirable country dominate the world.

Long may your freedom and hope provide an example to those suffering everywhere at the hands of their malevolent states.

May your two and a half centuries of unparallelled success be just the beginning.

Your country is the light of the world, and the city on the hill.

Thank God for the USA.

Happy 250th.

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

[Jason Miyares @JasonMiyaresVA]

So NO tax relief for Virginians despite @GlennYoungkin leaving @SpanbergerForVA a billion plus surplus, yet $ to TRIPLE the salaries of politicians in Richmond. I get it, “affordability” was for themselves not Virginians!

[Tim Anderson @AssocAnderson]

Virginia Democrats approved a 194% pay increase for members of the General Assembly. This will cost tax payers $2.1 million every budget cycle.

Making life more affordable for the politicians. All you other schmucks - get to work and pay your taxes.

[Mary Talley Bowden MD @MaryBowdenMD]

Hantavirus is a RNA virus, and ivermectin should work against it.

Ivermectin blocks RNA viruses from entering the nucleus, inhibits viral replication, disrupts integrity of the viral membrane and can prevent viral replication.

[Nick Minock @NickMinock]

Today, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger announced L3Harris is expanding its operations with a more than $1.2 billion investment in Orange County.

Spanberger's husband works for L3Harris.

According to the governor's press release, "Governor Spanberger approved two grants of $12.5 million and $500,000 from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund to assist Orange County with the projects. The Governor also approved a performance-based grant of $5 million from the Virginia Investment Performance Grant, an incentive that encourages continued capital investment by existing Virginia companies. Funding and services to support L3Harris’ employee training activities will be provided through the Virginia Jobs Investment Program."

[Nick Minock @NickMinock]

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger sent media a press release titled, "Governor Spanberger Signs Bills Into Law Welcoming 3,250 New Jobs, $7.1 Billion in Business Investment to Virginia."

Each company listed in the press release announced their investment in Virginia when Glenn Youngkin was governor.

[Garren Shipley @GarrenShipley]

Not every day you get a former governor calling out a sitting governor for lying. That should tell you something.

[DataRepublican (small r) @DataRepublican]

Hello Senator Thune,

Let's expose what you're really doing with "reconciliation."

You announced it yesterday, eleven months after the House passed the SAVE America Act. You're not trying to pass this bill. You're trying to kill it in a way you can blame on process.

Here's how we know:

Reconciliation requires the Senate parliamentarian to rule that provisions are "budgetary." Citizenship verification is not budgetary. Photo ID mandates are not budgetary. The parliamentarian will gut the bill. Then you'll shrug and say "we tried." We see through you.

Meanwhile, you WON'T use the tools that actually work:

Rule XIX limits each senator to two speeches per legislative day. Keep the Senate in continuous session, file cloture daily, and the filibuster exhausts in ~12-20 days. You dismissed it as "complicated." Because if you tried and succeeded, you'd have to actually pass the bill.

Harry Reid nuked the filibuster in 2013 when he wanted results.

Mitch McConnell changed Senate rules THREE times and canceled the August recess.

Chuck Schumer used reconciliation within months on a 50-50 Senate.

You have 53 seats. You've changed nothing, canceled nothing, and waited eleven months.

Now let's talk donors:

• Goldman Sachs: $150K to you - top H-1B user
• Google: $75K - lobbies against E-Verify
• Meta: $72.5K - Zuckerberg's FWD[.]us pushes mass immigration
• Wells Fargo: $90K - banks undocumented immigrants

Same corporations sponsor Punchbowl News, where you sit for "Fly Out Days" which nobody watches except Congress staffers and K Street lobbyists who pays premium bucks for legislative intelligence. Their reporter then telegraphs to the audience the SAVE Act "will ultimately fail."

Corporate money flows to you AND to the outlet that frames your inaction as inevitable.

We see the loop.

You called grassroots anger a "paid influencer ecosystem." YOU are the paid influencer. You take the wrong side of a 80% issue because you are indistinguishable from a K Street mouthpiece, and an ineffective one to boot who won't bend the rules to get anything passed.

What we want:

1. Force a real talking filibuster.
2. Stop hiding behind process.
3. Pass the SAVE America Act.

YOU will become the reason that we will have our butts kicked in midterms. Not Candace Owens, not Nick Fuentes, not anyone else. You and you alone, and all because you want to make the 200 or so viewers of Punchbowl Fly Out Days happy. You're living in a K Street information bubble, addicted to the comforts and praises of lobbyists masquerading as journalists. You mistake the steak and martini dinners you get invited to as your own constituents.

You are not "moderate." The SAVE America Act has 98% support among Republicans. Name one other thing that has 98% support. You are an extreme minority who prides himself on being a calm leader, when in reality you are well in the running for the most ineffective Majority leader of all time.

Prove me wrong. Do the bare modicum of effort. Not symbolic. Actual effort. Cancel the recess. Get SAVE America Act passed.

[Libs of TikTok @libsoftiktok]

Fairfax County, VA Sheriff Stacey Ann Kincaid is REFUSING to honor an ICE detainer request for the adult illegal alien who’s going around school groping girls

NAME AND SHAME

[E @VT_sandman]

@AssocAnderson Does this surprise you? As @ChrisPlanteShow says, “if it weren’t for double standards, the democrats would have no standards at all.”

[Patrick Ruffini @PatrickRuffini]

Turns out when you when you try disenfranchise working people for the benefit of out-of-touch rich people in Northern Virginia, working people fight back.

[Oliver Burdick @oliverburdick]

Left side is a human lung. Right side is a tree.

The tree breathes in what the lung breathes out. The lung breathes in what the tree breathes out.

God's design is incredible.

[Lucy @TheLucyShow1]

Get a dog, they said 🤣🤣🤣

[Jennifer 🟥🔴🧙‍♀️🦉🐈‍⬛ 🦖 @babybeginner]

If for some reason you didn’t feel like watching the Olympics or you just missed it, this you should not miss! Or if you saw it, you can enjoy it again. Brilliant and magical routine by Madison Chock and Evan Bates for the team USA competition!

https://t.co/CIK2svea1X

[cinesthetic. @TheCinesthetic]

Robin Williams explaining how golf was invented remains one of the greatest stand-up bits ever recorded.

[Kaeley Triller @KaeleyT]

Ten years ago, if a man walked into the girls’ locker room at the YMCA, it was a five-alarm fire. Staff would rush. Police would be called. Parents would be outraged.

Today, a 350-pound man with a beard can sit just outside the showers watching naked girls rinse off—and hardly anyone says a word. Not because it isn’t horrifying, but because women and girls have been conditioned to doubt their instincts. To suppress their boundaries. To submit in the name of “inclusion.”

A decade of gender legislation has trained women to be like Pavlov’s dogs—flinching, silencing ourselves, learning helplessness every time we’re told that saying no makes us hateful.

This isn’t progress. It’s psychological abuse on a cultural scale.

We tell our daughters to park in well-lit areas, to carry keys between their fingers, to never walk alone at night, to trust their gut, to speak up if they feel unsafe. Then we turn around and demand they ignore that same instinct in the locker room. That is gaslighting.

The long-term cost of this is enormous. One incident of voyeurism can shatter a girl’s sense of safety and self-worth for years. It teaches her that her discomfort doesn’t matter, that her body is public property, and that no one will protect her.

When we strip women of their right to boundaries, we don’t create a more compassionate world. We create a more dangerous one.

[E @VT_sandman]

@charliekirk11 America will never be the same because you were in it and changed it for the better. Rest in peace.