darktwin18 (Sam)

Maybe not a popular take but I am calling for this guy to be pardoned. Unless the DOJ plans on going after all the crooks in congress currently insider trading, this is simply skewed justice. There is no “justice” when guys like this get the book thrown at him yet members are illegally profiting every day. I don’t agree with what he did and he should be required to disgorge all the profits however, unless the DOJ plans on doing Congress next, this is not justice.

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.

@JakeSucky Gimme gimme

I AM GIVING AWAY 10 KEYS for Road to Vostok The hardcore survival game set in a post-apocalyptic border between Finland and Russia that's going viral on Steam Just Like, RT, and Reply if you want in! Good Luck

@OvidiuMuca Only thing is when you put the straw in the drink as a kid your finger isn’t on the tooth straw until after it fills up. With this demonstration with the round in the chamber the air stays in the barrel

The 7.62 mm SCAR-H assault rifle proposed to 🇷🇴 by the 🇧🇪 FN Herstal. In this video, we see how the weapon fires after being submerged in water and covered in mud. The 🇷🇴 Army wants to purchase 240,000 individual weapons for €440M, products must be manufactured in Romania

@AlexanderKorch7 @TheRealSantino @grok Can someone explain to me what happens to forward not robot in seconds 24-27. It runs behind the target just disappears.

@TheRealSantino @grok how real? sources, vids, data I crave 🫴

BREAKING: China's autonomous "killer robots" are on track to serve its military on the battlefield within two years, setting a course for a new age of AI-powered warfare which one expert called "the greatest danger to the survival of humankind." Remote forms of warfare, from drones to cyberattacks, have played an increasingly central role in this century's theatres of war. Control of the skies with unmanned aerial vehicles has been critical issue in the ongoing war in Ukraine, and last week, the U.S. Department of Defense unveiled a fresh $1 billion investment to upgrade its drone fleet. Several major powers have taken this development a step further, and begun to develop fully autonomous, AI-powered "killer robots" to replace their soldiers on the battlefield. "I would be surprised if we don't see autonomous machines coming out of China within two years," Francis Tusa, a leading defence analyst, told National Security News. He added that China was developing new AI-powered ships, submarines, and aircraft at a "dizzying rate." "They are moving four or five times faster than the States," he warned. China and Russia are already reported to have collaborated on the development of AI-powered autonomous weaponry. Per Newsweek

@MarionCero91656 @AkariK @marevlr @pokebeach Printing is up? The last data point I saw is that they printed billions, yes with a b, less cards than previous years

@AkariK @marevlr @pokebeach Exactly. It took like 9 months to get flooded with SS etbs. Printing is up but with such frequent releases it can be a long time before you see a specific set you want.

"OMG why are they printing so many sets lately?? I can't keep up!" It's literally the same schedule it's been for a decade, or over two decades if you exclude special sets...

@SavageSports_ Not saying this has had anything to do with it, but just gonna leave it here

Perfection.

@BuffaloBills @du47222292 @JoshAllenQB #ProBowlVote

WHO WANTS A @JoshAllenQB SIGNED HELMET ⁉️ 𝗥𝗘𝗣𝗢𝗦𝗧 𝗧𝗢 𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗘𝗥 + #ProBowlVote Rules: bufbills.co/AllenPB

@JohnnyCrambo Ironically this one

What's your favorite gold Pokemon card? I'll pick a random comment to receive this Mew card soon 📨

@BowTiedBroke @Dicynical1 this would be an awesome trip

Husqvarna sent me a stack of chainsaws to give away because a bear stole mine & Internet went wild. I’m adding a 4 day/3 nt stay to my Smoky Mtn cabin. (Side by side tours, meet Jimmy & me, see old moonshine stills, crazy views). To enter (100% free, no purchase necessary): 1) Follow @BowTiedBroke 2) Comment on THIS post with literally anything (tag friends = extra luck with the dartboard later 👀) Contest runs exactly 24 hours —-> closes tomorrow at 10:00 AM EST At close, @grok will instantly pick 20 random commenters with accounts older than 3 months. Then, I put those 20 names on a dartboard, film one throw, and THAT person wins everything. No bots, no BS, fully transparent. Grok posts the 20 here, the dart decides destiny 🎯 Sorry international followers (not that I have that many) U.S. followers only for this one. Cabin is in Tennessee, chainsaws are heavy, and bears don’t do passports. Let’s go! Drop a reply and let’s see who the Chainsaw stealing bear chooses.

@indigente666 @nikgeneburn They expected less than 200k players? That’s terrible expectation and foresight really

@nikgeneburn Far from being negative, quite the opposite, it's very positive for the game. It means the number of new players interested far exceeded expectations. I'll just have to wait a little longer while I have a beer and things stabilize. 🍺💪🏻👀

So, yeah, right now we are fighting for the backend stability - you all get excited and our login servers and site got overloaded unexpectedly fast (although we added a lot of additional servers). Game servers are totally fine. So, we are improving current situation minute by minute. Sorry for trouble, but it looks like part of launch day Tarkov experience. All hands on deck and we will not rest until we will stabilise everything.

this is actual battlefield here! stabilizing, hold on

Pastor Delivers Message on the Charlie Kirk Assassination youtu.be/850n2KG2V7g?si… via @YouTube

JUST IN: President Trump released a video statement following the death of Charlie Kirk, vows to go after organizations that fund radical left extremism. "This is a dark moment for America." "For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals." "This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now." "My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it..." "An assassin tried to silence him with a bullet, but he failed because together, we will ensure that his voice, his message, and his legacy will live on for countless generations to come." "Today, because of this heinous act, Charlie's voice has become bigger and grander than ever before."

@TCG_Family_2020 Meowth being a car most likely stole the fruit first and we are seeing inkay get its revenge

Look at these cards. What do you see?

@TCG_Family_2020 Premium figures are better than jumbo cards in my book

Premium Figure boxes are underrated 🗡️🐕

@TCG_Family_2020 Sadge

Both our boxes have promo errors 😲