Brian C

Just another hugh cost to taxpayers. Federal workers get 11 paid days off on top of any other PTO allowance. That equates to 10%. That is a cost to taxpayers of $36 billion dollars. We need to eliminate all paid federal holidays. Folks can celebrate any day they want on their own time and dime.

@MarketPlay1980 @JohnCornyn I wonder how you feel about MLK Day

Texas passes a bill becoming the first state in the nation to make Juneteenth an official state holiday history.com/this-day-in-hi…

@atensnut Liberal women seem to be adamant about not having a dictatorship under a "King" Yet they are good with a federal agency, with no elected leadership, having control over every school in the nation.

ABSOLUTELY!!! YES… WE DID! End the INDOCTRINATION of our kids. Over half of kids can’t read or do math at grade level.

@rzrvinyl @LopatoG @JohnCornyn Don't forget Christmas.

@LopatoG @MarketPlay1980 @JohnCornyn See: Easter

Yep, my account was down 0.4% the first quarter. But wait it is up 6% year to date as the Iran conflict continues. I would like to see a study done on the stock markets negative reaction to world events as compared to actual corporate earns reports. Who sells stocks when another conflict breaks out in the middle east, which has been on going for 2000 years.

Retirement balances fell in the first quarter of 2026 amid severe market volatility sparked by the Iran war, according to a new report by Fidelity.

Gabbard’s July 17, 2025 “Coup” Document Release: Allegations of a “Treasonous Conspiracy” Tulsi Gabbard, as Director of National Intelligence, accused Obama-era officials of orchestrating a plot against Donald Trump. On July 17, 2025, DNI Tulsi Gabbard publicly released declassified documents and a press statement showing that former President Barack Obama and his top security officials engaged in a “treasonous conspiracy” in 2016 to undermine Donald Trump’s election victory. In her press release, Gabbard charged that after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, Obama and key members of his national security team “manufactured and politicized intelligence” to falsely suggest Russian interference swung the election. She described this as laying the groundwork for a “years-long coup”aimed at subverting the will of the voters and illegitimately removing or hampering Trump’s presidency. Gabbard’s statement points to the debunked Steele dossier as a central piece of fabricated evidence that Obama’s team knew was bogus but used anyway. She emphasized that this issue “concerns every American,” casting it not as a partisan matter but a fundamental betrayal of our democracy. Gabbard vowed that “every person involved in this conspiracy must be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law” to ensure such an abuse of power never happens again. To that end, she announced that all the relevant documents were being provided to the Department of Justice “to deliver the accountability that President Trump, his family, and the American people deserve” . Key Documents and Evidence Released Gabbard declassified a trove of intelligence documents, emails, and memoranda from 2016–2017. These files, along with a DNI “Russia Hoax” memo and timeline, detail how the official narrative of Russian election interference was contrived by Obama-era officials. Below are the key documents. Pre-Election Intelligence Assessments (Mid-2016): The newly released records show that before the November 2016 vote, the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) found no sign of Kremlin intent to alter the election outcome. For example, an August 31, 2016 DHS memo to then-DNI James Clapper reported “no indication of a Russian threat to directly manipulate the actual vote count” . Similarly, a September 2016 interagency analysis (circulated via the President’s Daily Brief process) stated that “Russia probably is not trying…to influence the election by using cyber means” against U.S. voting infrastructure. On September 12, 2016, the IC even published a formal Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on cyber threats to the election, judging that “foreign adversaries do not have and will probably not obtain the capabilities to successfully execute widespread and undetected cyber attacks” on U.S. election systems. (Two days later a near-identical PDB report concurred that adversaries couldn’t “covertly overturn the vote outcome”.) Notably, when DNI Clapper and DHS publicly announced on October 7, 2016 that Russia was behind the hacking of DNC emails, that press release omitted the truth: that within the IC, the FBI and NSA had only “low confidence” in attributing those email leaks to Russia. In sum, prior to Election Day 2016 the consensus of U.S. intelligence was that Russia was not interfering in any way that could change votes or hack voting machines. DNI Clapper’s December 7, 2016 Talking Points: Shortly after Trump’s victory, intelligence officials still saw no evidence of cyber meddling with vote tallies. The documents include talking points prepared on Dec. 7, 2016 for outgoing DNI James Clapper, which state unequivocally: “Foreign adversaries did not use cyberattacks on election infrastructure to alter the U.S. Presidential election outcome.” The talking points also confirm “we have no evidence of cyber manipulation of election infrastructure intended to alter results.” These were draft lines for a Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) reflecting the IC’s post-election findings. In fact, Gabbard’s release includes the text of a declassified PDB dated Dec. 8, 2016 (prepared by DHS with input from CIA, NSA, FBI, etc. for President Obama) which concluded: “We assess that Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent US election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure.” The PDB noted that while Russian-linked hackers did breach an Illinois state voter database and attempted intrusions in other states, it was “highly unlikely” any cyber attack could actually change vote counts or outcome. In other words, as of early December 2016, official intelligence channels were reporting no successful Russian disruption of voting – directly contradicting the alarmist narrative that was about to emerge in public. White House Meeting and “POTUS Tasking” (Dec 9, 2016): A pivotal document in the release is the summary of an NSC Principals Committee meeting held at the White House on December 9, 2016. President Obama himself convened this high-level meeting in the Situation Room with his top national security deputies present. According to the “Summary of Conclusions” memo, participants included DNI James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan, NSA Adviser Susan Rice, Secretary of State John Kerry, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe (representing FBI), and other key figures. The topic was Russia. Immediately after this meeting, DNI Clapper’s executive assistant sent an email to IC leaders with the subject “POTUS Tasking on Russia Election Meddling.” In that email (now declassified), Clapper’s aide relayed that President Obama had ordered a “comprehensive assessment” of Russian interference in 2016. The IC was directed to “pull together”all available information on “the tools Moscow used and actions it took to influence the 2016 election,” with ODNI to lead the effort “per the President’s request”. The email makes clear this was Obama’s directive: “The IC is prepared to produce an assessment per the President’s request… ODNI will lead the effort with participation from CIA, FBI, NSA, and DHS.” It also set a target date of January 9, 2017 for a highly classified report to President Obama, with an unclassified version to follow . This extraordinary White House tasking, coming one month after Trump’s win, shows the effort to generate a new Russia–Trump intelligence report was explicitly initiated by Obama and coordinated at the highest levels. Suppression of a Contradictory Intelligence Report: The declassified emails reveal that, just as Obama’s team was requesting a new Russia interference assessment, they buried intelligence that didn’t fit the narrative. On December 8, 2016 (one day before Obama’s meeting), ODNI and DHS officials had been ready to publish a PDB item documenting that Russia hadn’t affected the election. An email from a DHS intelligence branch on Dec. 8 noted “due to high Administration interest, this piece is now scheduled to run tomorrow” — fast-tracking the report that concluded no cyber impact on the vote. However, within hours, the FBI – led by Director James Comey – abruptly withdrew its cooperation. The FBI, which had co-authored the draft PDB, notified the others that it “will be drafting a dissent” and asked to remove FBI’s name from the report. Following this, a senior ODNI official emailed that, “Based on some new guidance, we are going to push back publication of the PDB… It will not run tomorrow and is not likely to run until next week.” In fact, it never ran at all. The post-election PDB concluding Russia “did not hack” the election was killed internally . These communications – featuring Comey’s FBI signaling disagreement and unnamed higher-ups issuing “new guidance” to quash the report -demonstrate that contrary intelligence was deliberately suppressed. Gabbard’s investigation shows the evidence that Obama’s circle stifled the truth (that Russia hadn’t altered the outcome) in order to pursue Obama's political narrative. Media Leaks Shape a New Narrative: Immediately after the Dec 9 NSC meeting, Obama-era officials began secretly feeding a counter-story to the press. Gabbard notes that on that very day, Washington Post reports cited anonymous “senior officials” claiming that Russia did meddle in the election through cyber means. One WaPo article on Dec 9, 2016 asserted that “this presidential campaign marks the first time Russia has attempted through cyber means to interfere in, if not actively influence, the outcome of an election, attributing this to U.S. intelligence officials. Later the same evening, the Washington Post ran another bombshell leak: that the CIA had a “secret assessment” concluding Russia intervened specifically to help Trump win. These false claims were coming straight from unnamed insiders (“Deep State officials,” as Gabbard puts it) even though no official IC assessment at the time supported such conclusions. In the following days, the leaks continued to flow. By Dec 14, NBC News – again citing intelligence sources – reported that the IC now believed “with a high level of confidence” that Vladimir Putin was personally involved in the covert operation to interfere in the election. And on Dec 16, President Obama, in a press conference, ominously talked about potential Russian cyber mischief (while admitting there was “no evidence of vote machines being tampered with”). All of these statements were at odds with what the actual intelligence had been saying internally. The declassified files underscore that Obama officials fed the media a false narrative: claiming Russia had tried to sway the election outcome, contrary to the IC’s own pre- and post-election analyses. This coordinated leaking framed the public perception in December 2016, setting the stage for what followed – the formal intelligence assessment and the years-long “Russia collusion” investigations into Trump. The January 6, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment: The culmination of Obama’s tasking was a new Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) released just two weeks before Trump’s inauguration. This ICA – published on Jan. 6, 2017 – directly contradicted the IC’s previous six months of findings. It accused Putin of ordering an influence campaign to hurt Clinton and help Trump, concluded that Russia hacked Democratic Party emails and provided them to WikiLeaks, and generally lent weight to the claim that Russia’s actions aimed to assist Trump’s victory. Gabbard’s declassified records expose serious credibility issues with this ICA. According to ODNI investigators, the Jan 6 assessment was “politicized”: it “suppressed intelligence from before and after the election showing Russia lacked intent and capability to hack the 2016 election.” In other words, evidence that Russia didn’t intend or manage to affect the vote (which we now know abounded in mid-2016 IC reports) was omitted or minimized. The ICA also misled the public by implying that the IC had not assessed the impact of Russian interference on the outcome. In reality, as Gabbard’s memo notes, the IC had assessed impact – the unpublished December PDB had clearly stated Russia “did not impact” the election via cyberattacks. Thus, the new ICA gave the impression that the question of whether Russia affected the result was unanswered, when internal intel had answered it in the negative. Moreover, the Jan 2017 ICA’s content was skewed in other ways: it blamed Russia for the DNC and DCCC email hacks and leaks “with high confidence.” But the released documents show that within the IC, both FBI and NSA actually held “low confidence” in attributing the DNC/DCCC hacks to Russia – a crucial nuance that was omitted from the public report. Most explosively, Gabbard confirms that the ICA’s key claim of Putin’s pro-Trump motive relied on “further information” that had “come to light” post-election – which turned out to be the discredited Steele dossier. In other words, the only new element that emerged between the pre-election intel (showing no Russian attempt to help Trump) and the post-election ICA (claiming Putin wanted Trump to win) was the Steele dossier’s allegations. Gabbard’s team found that this dossier was used in the Obama ICA’s conclusions. Former DNI Clapper himself had reportedly viewed the Steele reports as “untrustworthy,” yet top officials (e.g. CIA Director John Brennan) pushed to include them. Obama’s intelligence chiefs knowingly injected dubious information into a high-stakes national intelligence assessment, casting grave doubt on the ICA’s integrity. The Jan 6 ICA provided the official basis for the “Trump-Russia” investigation narrative, it was the product of deliberate manipulation – a cornerstone of the alleged anti-Trump conspiracy. The documents provide a chronological narrative from mid-2016 through early 2017 showing that intelligence findings were inverted in the service of a political objective. Each piece – from early DHS/FBI emails, to the White House meeting summary, to the leaked media quotes prove that Obama-era officials coordinated a deliberate effort to falsely tie Trump’s win to Russian interference, thereby undermining his legitimacy.

@unusual_whales Useless data unless it is broken down by age groups and average age for each group when withdrawals begin. Not to mention that less than 60% of working age folks even have a direct contribution account(s).

Average retirement account balances in the US, per CNBC

@GuntherEagleman I'm going to save myself.

Choose carefully… and be ready to defend it in the comments. This ought to be interesting. I’m really sorry I’m making y’all choose. 😂

@MarioNawfal AI was stolen?

🇺🇸 Bernie Sanders meets Sam Altman at the White House tomorrow, a sit-down Altman set up himself. Bernie's bill would hand the public a 50% stake in major AI companies through a one-time tax. He says it's time to "reclaim what was stolen."

@QuiverQuant Seems like a smart bet to me. If he didn't bet all the money he had, that would be the crime.

BREAKING: The DOJ is reportedly investigating former Representative George Santos for insider trading. He allegedly bet on his own attendance the State of the Union. Santos was pardoned by President Trump last year, after pleading guilty to wire fraud and identify theft.

@ZannSuz @almostjingo They didn't even have the sense to use a Ford Truck. It is hard to fake it when you really don't know jack s4it.

The more I think of this picture the more I have to laugh. Democrats are straight up delusional. They are tanking hard with men so their solution is to shove forward this limp wristed Talarico clown who hates everything real Texas stands for. Now they slap a pristine cowboy hat and five o’clock shadow on him and parade him around like some cheap parody of the oil field grit, ranching, farming, and hunting culture we live every day. Real Texans smell this plastic consultant bullshit from a mile away. We’re not voting for this manboy.

@KyleSeraphin @GregoryKBovino If you ever worked anywhere you would understand that people come and go for different reasons. One person's separation from Border Patrol, irrelevant of the circumstances, is meaningless.

New DHS Sec Mullin on @GregoryKBovino: "I never met the guy. He's irrelevant to me." Bovino joined the Border Patrol the year Mullin graduated high school (1996) and left last year. I'm sure this comment goes over well with USBP officers.

@unusual_whales Stock market crashes are prevented by $2 trillion in government deficit spending and monthly contributions to 401k accounts. The ladder has lead to large amounts of money in the stock market that are high restricted on "selling"

“We will have a crash, I just can't tell you when, and I can't tell you how deep. But I can assure you, unfortunately, I wish I wasn't saying this, we will have a crash,” Andrew Ross Sorkin has said.

These are post meant to instigate discord. Wealthy people don't have a pile of cash locked up in a vault preventing others from having it. The top wealthiest people actual "wealth" is in ownership in companies that employ workers. There is a major disconnect between the profit and lost of a company and their stock price. With 2 trillion government deficit spending and monthly 401k money injected into the stock market every month. What did you expect to happen. Every payday when your 401k contributions are deducted. They are used by a hand full of investment banks to blindly buy stocks. It is like in the movie America Made when Tom Cruise is trying to find place to put money.

The top 0.01% of US households control 14.5% of the nation's wealth, per Moneywise.

There are approximately 135 million households in the US which means that 1.35 million households have a net wealth of $13 million or more. To be in the top 10% of wealthiest US households you need $1.9 million total wealth. That would be total 13.5 million households To be in the top 50% of households would require $195,000 or 67.4 million households.

The top 1% of U.S. households control almost a third (31.9%) of the nation’s wealth, per Moneywise.

@unusual_whales My daughter makes 50% more that that as an engineer. And I see the same trait. It's like they are counting on an inheritance as a retirement plan.

Kevin O’Leary has said Gen Z stays poor because they spend $28 on lunch when they only make $70,000, per Parade Magazine.

@ClayTravis Countries should not allow agitators into enter, especially the United States.

This is absurd. I don’t agree with these guys politics, but free speech is collapsing in England. No American citizen should be barred from entering England based on their political opinions.

@JoshMosh138 @unusual_whales Name these countries where the workers control the economy. There are exactly zero.

@MarketPlay1980 @unusual_whales Nobody is waiting for me to tell them about the skills I spend 20 years developing and perfecting. But workers controlling the economy works quite well if you look at the countries that do it.

"Workers are now taking home the smallest percent of America's economic output since records began in 1947," per MorePerfectUnion

@sevenoutlaw @unusual_whales Based on what I see here in Texas: Lawn care Dry wall Roofing installation / repair Industrial farming Home construction House keeping Nail salon workers

@MarketPlay1980 @unusual_whales Who will the unskilled illegal invaders that don’t speak English be competing with?

@JoshMosh138 @unusual_whales "Worker controlled economy" OK, please do tell how much will you pay yourself for doing nothing. By the way, we are all waiting for you to disclose this "Marketable skill" you have.

@MarketPlay1980 @unusual_whales "Anyone who doesn't learn a marketable skill" let me stop you right there. How do you know what skills will be marketable? I had a "marketable skill" until the corporations dominating my industry decided they didn't want my skills anymore. We need worker control of the economy.