WGDIII

@billybinion You don’t need to attend brunch either.

Truly one of the worst parts of ~the culture~ today is the weirdly pervasive belief that dogs are the equivalent of babies. They aren't. They're dogs. You can love your dog, yes, but he does not need to come to brunch. He's going to be OK.

@ConnorEatsPants @MrsErikaKirk 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

@MrsErikaKirk my wife’s son was radicalized by Jimmy Kimmel

“While we may have big problems with illegal immigration in this country. I have to tell you, we have an even bigger problem when it comes to the systemic indoctrination and radicalization of our own citizens.”

Dear Microsoft, How can I authenticate my authenticator app if it has to be reinstalled and I can't access my Outlook app to authenticate it because it has to be authenticated on my authenticator app that I can't authenticate?

@3YearLetterman Where’s the 1/6 insurrectionists when they’re actually needed???

I am throwing up, crying, and shaking with rage

@3YearLetterman I normally don’t read words but this was good info.

I had a very ugly encounter with a young man - likely a socialist - at the grocery store this evening for trying to charge me for plastic bags I was buying two handles of Fireball for this week. The cashier rang me up and before I paid he asked me if I wanted bags. I said yes, and he told me there would be a ten cent bag charge “The hell there will be, junior,” I said, “Take that off the bill of sale right now.” “I can’t do that sir. But I can do is sell you one of our canvas bags. They are reusable and only cost a dollar.” “If I wanted to carry my liquor around in a burlap sack like a Depression-era vagrant, I’d move to California,” I replied. “Sir I really don’t know what you want. If you don’t want to pay for the bags just carry them out.” “I think I’ll do just that,” I said. I then snatched my debit card from him before he could charge it, picked up the two handles of Fireball, and strode out of there without paying I received a standing ovation

@DougJBalloon Exactly.

The left’s almost jocular response to last night’s gunfire at the White House Correspondents Dinner stood in marked contrast to the somber tone adopted by Republicans in the wake of the hammer attack on Paul Pelosi.

@heywildrich @Thefactsdude These are foreigners nitwit.

@Thefactsdude Foreigners driving trucks through crowds of people get less punishment than these guys will end up with.

NEW: Two 18-year-old Ocala teens arrested after riding lawnmower through Target store while filming social media stunt On Saturday, at the Target store in Ocala, Florida, 18-year-old Janek Szkaradek drove a riding lawnmower inside the store, damaging a door, while 18-year-old Luke Charske recorded the stunt for social media. Both teens were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. Charske was charged as a principal to the disorderly conduct. Szkaradek faces additional charges of criminal mischief and disorderly conduct for a separate incident the night before, where he entered a nearby Culver’s restaurant and used a leaf blower inside the business. “These actions endangered people and caused property damage,” Ocala PD stated, “They are crimes, not harmless videos.”

@Thefactsdude Deport.

@jerrodtuck Nonsense.

My grandmother lived through the Woodward F5 Tornado that killed 100's of people. They had just moved into their new house that day, and it was leveled. The only thing she carried forward from that was the realization of how worthless the Red Cross is. Till her dying day, she would turn red if you asked about the Red Cross. The people of Oklahoma don't rely on the government or NGO's. They rely on each other.

Still amazes me how many restaurant owners don’t realize that acoustics can make or break your spot. I don’t care how great your food is, if I can’t hear the other person at my table, I’m not coming back. Experience. Business tips.

1983 'Price Is Right' Prize: — Toyota Off-Road Truck ($12,190)

Showing my wife our record high portfolio balance to reinforce why the past 12 years of living below our means to aggressively invest into the stock market was worth it (she responds "oh nice" and goes back about her day).

@BrettFavre 1st Round Fraud.

2nd Round Pick 🤷‍♂️

@TonyDungy 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

In a moment only God could orchestrate Lauren is sitting next to the Governor of Hawaii Josh Green. She was his 6th grade teacher in Sewickley PA 45 years ago. Crazy 😁

@TheBrianinPGH @BradWCAttorney @3YearLetterman Brian hasn’t been to Dahlonega.

@BradWCAttorney @3YearLetterman Have you actually ever seen a squirrel?

Guess which one of these squirrels aced Cousin Brad LLC’s “How to Fake a Workers Comp Injury” class

@BradWCAttorney @3YearLetterman I don’t trust squirrels.

@DesignsMask @RepJackKimble @ManicMitch_JP @GOP @PressSec @POTUS Well said.

@RepJackKimble @ManicMitch_JP @GOP @PressSec @POTUS THIS REP. JACK KIMBLE NEEDS REMOVED SINCE HE CANT GET HIS FACTS STRAIGHT WITH THIS FACT SHEET KAROLINE LEAVITT PUT OUT.

Please pray for our President. He has given so much to this country and it’s been at great personal cost. May the treatments give him the relief he needs.

Quick point. We have had 4 baby boomer presidents. 5 if you count Biden, who is right on the edge. We’ve had ZERO Gen X. We went from almost no debt, to almost 40 trillion. That generation has left us with a debt we can never repay. The GOP boomers were so angry at “immigrants” and brainwashed by @foxnews they elected the worst president again (GOP primary and general) instead of relinquishing power to Gen X. It’s time we pass the torch.

@SamaHoole Stop your whining.

Chips fried in beef dripping were a different object to what passes for a chip today. Walk into a Whitby chippy in 1978. The fryer has been on since 11am. The fat in it is beef dripping, held at 180 degrees by a man in a white apron who has been frying chips since he was fifteen. There are no seed oils in the building. The idea would not occur to anyone. Thick-cut Maris Pipers, ninety seconds in the dripping. Dark gold at the edges, fluffy inside, crisp in a way that sets your teeth against them. Salt. Vinegar. Paper. Two bob. You eat them walking home along the harbour wall. The chip tastes of the chip and also of something underneath the chip, something deeper, something you don't have a name for because you are nine and nobody names it, it is just what chips taste like. That taste was beef dripping. By 2002, 90% of British chippies had switched to rapeseed, palm, or sunflower oil, on the advice of public health officials citing research since quietly retracted. A stable saturated fat used for ten thousand years, swapped for an industrial oil invented in 1911, oxidised at fryer temperatures for twelve hours a day. A seed-oil chip is lighter, flatter. The crust doesn't hold. The flavour stops at the potato. No deeper note. No roast beef on a Friday. Ask a British person under thirty what chips are supposed to taste like and they will describe, with complete sincerity, the chip they have always eaten. A chip their great-grandfather would have considered a practical joke. They cannot miss it, because the reference point was removed from the national palate before they were born. A handful of chippies still fry in dripping. The Magpie in Whitby. A few survivors in Yorkshire, Lancashire, the Black Country. Go. Drive. Queue. Eat them standing up, out of the paper. You will understand, in one bite, what was taken. The cow is still in the field. The suet is still at the butcher. The fryer could be switched back tomorrow. A whole country forgot what a chip was.

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.